In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? Then you need to make the most of today's hottest marketing method—search engine opti
In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? Then you need to make the most of today's hottest marketing method—search engine optimization
Entrepreneur

You can't resist the temptation. Fixated on your computer screen, you anxiously type keywords relevant to your business into your favorite search engine. A list of search results appears. You cringe as you spot several competitors, then grumble because your company's Web site is nowhere to be seen. Where is it? That depends. Where is your search engine marketing strategy?

Gone are the days when adding keywords in meta tags to your site produced rankings. Search engine marketing has evolved into a complex and competitive program. It's also profitable--according to a March 2003 report by Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Safa Rashtchy, online search is the most cost-effective direct-marketing method. The average cost per lead from search is 29 cents, far less than e-mail (50 cents), the Yellow Pages ($1.18), banner ads ($2.00) and direct mail ($9.94).

Gather your Web design and marketing staff; both teams are required. Understanding search engine marketing basics will help your team execute a strategy in-house or outsource it to specialists. The sooner your site is visible for relevant keywords, the sooner future customers will find your company.

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?

Many business owners are unaware that search engines feed their results to each other. For example, if you type a keyword into MSN Search on Microsoft's consumer information and entertainment site (www.msn.com), the Web site listings displayed could be from Inktomi, Microsoft or Overture. Overture provides search results not only to MSN Search, but also to AltaVista and Yahoo! Could a top site on Overture then appear as a top site on a distribution partner's site? Yes. Unfortunately, these distribution relationships change frequently, making it difficult to determine exactly where results come from.

The challenging part, however, is figuring out how to land a top position in the search engines. There are two complementary yet completely different types of methods: optimization and advertising.

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to enhancing your Web site design to make it more appealing to crawler-based search engines. An automated robot, also referred to as a spider, is sent out to crawl the Web looking for site pages to add to the search engine's database. A mathematical algorithm then determines the ranking of pages in the database for the keywords consumers use. These rankings are referred to as natural or organic listings.

Search engine advertising, on the other hand, enables you to buy listings for your keywords. Positions achieved this way are referred to as paid or sponsored listings. The most popular program in this category is pay-for-placement. These programs typically allow advertisers to open an account for $5 to $50, then bid on keywords for a minimum amount of 5 or 10 cents per click. Advertisers outbid each other for a higher position by increasing their bids by 1 cent per click. Only when a consumer clicks your listing is your account debited.

Are you disappointed to learn that search engines don't magically and objectively find the "best" sites on the Web? That's understandable. However, it was always possible to influence search results. Today, it simply costs more. Yet, for companies willing to invest the time and money, it's well worth it. The plan begins with the right set of keywords.

MAKING KEYWORDS COUNT

If you have the wrong set of terms, your site won't rank well in algorithm-based search engines. Plus, you'll waste money on pay-per-placement programs by attracting browsers, not buyers. To create an effective list of keywords, start with these suggestions:

* Company names: Start with the name of your company, products and services. Include misspellings and plural forms of words, if appropriate.

* Themes: Consider related words your customers might use to describe your business. People looking for an automobile insurance company might type in "car insurance" or "auto insurance." Perhaps drivers are likely to switch insurance providers when they buy a new car or used car, which would be good terms, too.

* Profile your competitors: Your competitors are excellent sources of ideas. Study the keywords in their Web sites and their metatags. From your browser toolbar, click on "View," and then select "Source." If they're using metatags, you'll see keywords listed at the top of the page.

Then, brainstorm ideas about how your customers are looking for your business. "Think like your customers," recommends Nacho Hernandez, 30-year-old co-founder of online Mexican grocery store MexGrocer.com, a La Jolla, California, firm that projects 2004 sales to hit more than $1 million. "A majority of our customers are English-speaking Americans, but most use Spanish keywords because they want the more authentic products. So they'll search for 'salsa verde' instead of 'green sauce,'" Hernandez says. "While we market hundreds of keywords equally split between Spanish and English, we were surprised to see [that] 440 percent more traffic and 200 percent more sales come from the Spanish words."

Of course, if nobody is looking for certain keywords, it's pointless to promote those. That's why a popularity check is important. Search engine marketers typically use Overture's free Search Term Suggestion Tool (www.overture.com) and the subscription-based program Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). These tools reveal how many people search for your keywords. Moreover, these tools and Google AdWords' free Keyword Suggestions tool (https:// adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd= keywordsandbox) will provide suggestions of related phrases consumers use. Finalize your list to include relevant yet popular keywords.

GETTING OPTIMAL RESULTS

Modifying your site to please the search engine spiders can be tedious. Be prepared to wait weeks or months for your site's natural rankings to improve. Although top listings aren't guaranteed, time-consuming efforts can pay off.

"The credibility boost is huge," says Gary Salzman, 47-year-old co-founder of coffee resource retailer site WholeLatteLove.com. The Victor, New York-based business projects 2004 sales of more than $10 million. "Consumers see that natural listings are awarded to highly relevant sites. That's the match they want."

To make your site relevant for your keywords, it's important to realize that sites don't compete against other sites for rankings. It's Web page against Web page. Therefore, each site page needs to be assigned a set of keywords. Focus on the pages that have valuable content for your visitors and are good for new visitors to land on first. A few places your keywords need to be include:

* Meta tags: This tactic alone has absolutely no impact on your rankings, but your keywords still need to be in the meta title, description and keyword tags of each site page you'd like ranked. The page title and description are often used as the Web site listing in the search results.

* Alternative text (ALT tag): Mouse over an image, and you may see a text box appear if the Web designer has used alternative text. Try to use a different, but related, phrase for each ALT tag on a page.

* Page copy: The keywords you want your site to rank well for must be in your page copy. The thought is, if your site visitors can see them, then your page is relevant for those terms.

* Hyperlinks within your site: Don't link "click here" copy to other pages within your site. Hyperlink keyword phrases instead, because search engines follow these links and the keywords in them.

Link popularity is also a chief ingredient in an SEO campaign. Your site needs to link to other related sites and, more important, well-ranked and content-relevant sites should link to yours. Run a search for your keywords in Google or Teoma (www.teoma. com) and evaluate the natural listings. Contact sites that aren't direct competitors, and offer to trade links or buy one. Marketleap (www.marketleap. com) has a free Link Popularity Check tool which shows you how many pages link to yours and how many link to your competitors.

You're not done yet. Once your site is optimized, a majority of search engines need to be notified to crawl your site. Unfortunately, most search engines now require an inclusion fee. It may be a per-URL fee, a fixed per-click fee on any site rankings you achieve, or a combination of both. Inktomi, Overture and Teoma are examples. Google is still free and will index your site on its own; however, you can use the "Add URL" form if your site isn't in its database.

"Analyze, optimize, submit, monitor, then repeat the process," says Shari Thurow, webmaster and marketing director of SEO firm Grantastic Designs and author of Search Engine Visibility. "Getting top-10 positions and maintaining them is an ongoing process. A site should always get consistent, high-quality traffic from the search engines," Thurow adds. "It's also an ongoing challenge to determine what competitors are doing to achieve search engine visibility."

Thurow recommends evaluating site statistics reports monthly. Once your site is fully optimized and submitted to the search engines, maintenance can usually be done on a quarterly basis.

Is your anxiety level increasing yet? Don't worry. There's a quick way to get any position you want. Just buy it.

BUYING YOUR WAY TO THE TOP

Pay-for-placement is the easy way to get a top position in search results. Open an account, then choose your keywords, set keyword bids, write a title and description for each keyword or group of keywords, then designate a landing page for each keyword or group of keywords. Your ad listings will be live as soon as editors approve them. Typically, these listings are placed under a "Sponsored Listing" type of header to set them apart from natural listings.

On FindWhat.com, Kanoodle.com and Overture, positions are awarded to the highest bidder. A one-penny bid over an advertiser moves your listing above his. On Google AdWords, positions are given based on the combination of bid amount and click-through rate. That means the highest bid doesn't automatically get the number-one spot. Consumers are part of the voting process. Ad listings that aren't clicked will drop.

Wondering how often to update your bids? Watch your competitors. If they perform daily or weekly updates, you'll probably need to do the same to keep the positions you want. Maintaining a top-three to top-five position is important, because those generally appear as sponsored listings across the distribution network. That means greater visibility and resulting traffic.

Bid management tools such as BidRank and PPC Pro automate this process for you. Companies such as Atlas OnePoint (formerly Go Toast, www.atlasonepoint.com) and Did-it.com even offer tools that manage your bids based on your cost-per-lead or cost-per-sale goals. Pay-per-click is still time-consuming to manage, but at least the results are instantaneous and often rewarding. For example, these campaigns added more than 60 percent to WholeLatteLove.com's total growth in 2003.

Tools alone won't improve your conversion rates. Compelling ad listings and landing pages that persuade people to complete an intended action make or break your results.

"Don't misrepresent your offer," warns Salzman. He noticed that out of 60 competing ad listings for "espresso machine reviews," only 38 percent showed what they said they would in their ad copy. "Consumers make snap judgments in seconds. Lose their trust, and they'll back out of your site to click on your competitors' listings. The back button is not your friend."

Don't panic over this crash course in search engine marketing. In addition to the resources listed here, you can turn to SearchEngineWatch.com, the educational hub for search engine marketers. You can also meet with search engine representatives and marketing experts at Jupitermedia's Search Engine Strategies conferences, or breathe easier by outsourcing your campaigns. Just make sure your Web site can be found by using relevant keywords. Your customers are waiting.

GET PROFESSIONAL HELP

Do you prefer to let a team of specialists worry about fluctuating algorithms and bids? You're not alone. However, finding a quality search engine marketing firm is challenging, especially for search engine optimization (SEO), because much of it happens behind the scenes, and you can't easily tell if a company is using ethical tactics. Here are a few tips:

* Find the experts. Read articles and books, and attend conferences to identify the companies with strong industry visibility. Even if they're not good matches for you, they could recommend other reputable firms.

* Interview firms. Don't be afraid to quiz companies about their marketing philosophies, process, tools, reporting and results. Ask them to define spam, then refer to your resources to see if experts agree or disagree.

* Avoid responding to e-mail spam. The "Get a number-one position for $99" spam is likely from companies that will spare the search engines, too.

* Speak to client references. Ask them to describe their experiences, results and recommendations for working with the company you're interviewing.

* Outsource. Some companies manage their own paid placement campaigns in-house while other companies manage SEO. Find out what your options are.

Programs and pricing vary tremendously in this industry. However, with a little research, you'll find the right marketing partner.

TABOO TACTICS

There are good and bad search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Good methods can improve your rankings. Bad tactics put your site in danger of losing rankings, getting kicked out of the search engines' databases, and possibly being banned forever. The following activities are considered spam, and, if caught, your site could pay the penalties:

1. Stuffing keywords in your meta tags: Repeating a keyword too many times in your meta tags is a red flag. Study other top-ranked sites to see what seems to be an acceptable range.

2. Hiding keywords: For example, avoid hiding text on your pages by making it the same color as your background.

3. Using tiny text: Think tiny text is too difficult to read? Maybe by your visitors, but not by spiders.

4. Using redirects: This code is placed on a Web page to send visitors to another page without the visitors clicking any links.

5. Linking with free-for-art sites: These sites link to each other for the sole purpose of improving their link popularity. Don't link to or from them.

These aren't the only dangerous SEO tactics. But they're some of the oldest and most obvious forms of spam, so avoid using them.
Full Article

In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? Then you need to make the most of today's hottest marketing method???search engine opti
In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? Then you need to make the most of today's hottest marketing method???search engine optimization
Entrepreneur

You can't resist the temptation. Fixated on your computer screen, you anxiously type keywords relevant to your business into your favorite search engine. A list of search results appears. You cringe as you spot several competitors, then grumble because your company's Web site is nowhere to be seen. Where is it? That depends. Where is your search engine marketing strategy?

Gone are the days when adding keywords in meta tags to your site produced rankings. Search engine marketing has evolved into a complex and competitive program. It's also profitable--according to a March 2003 report by Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Safa Rashtchy, online search is the most cost-effective direct-marketing method. The average cost per lead from search is 29 cents, far less than e-mail (50 cents), the Yellow Pages ($1.18), banner ads ($2.00) and direct mail ($9.94).

Gather your Web design and marketing staff; both teams are required. Understanding search engine marketing basics will help your team execute a strategy in-house or outsource it to specialists. The sooner your site is visible for relevant keywords, the sooner future customers will find your company.

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?

Many business owners are unaware that search engines feed their results to each other. For example, if you type a keyword into MSN Search on Microsoft's consumer information and entertainment site (www.msn.com), the Web site listings displayed could be from Inktomi, Microsoft or Overture. Overture provides search results not only to MSN Search, but also to AltaVista and Yahoo! Could a top site on Overture then appear as a top site on a distribution partner's site? Yes. Unfortunately, these distribution relationships change frequently, making it difficult to determine exactly where results come from.

The challenging part, however, is figuring out how to land a top position in the search engines. There are two complementary yet completely different types of methods: optimization and advertising.

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to enhancing your Web site design to make it more appealing to crawler-based search engines. An automated robot, also referred to as a spider, is sent out to crawl the Web looking for site pages to add to the search engine's database. A mathematical algorithm then determines the ranking of pages in the database for the keywords consumers use. These rankings are referred to as natural or organic listings.

Search engine advertising, on the other hand, enables you to buy listings for your keywords. Positions achieved this way are referred to as paid or sponsored listings. The most popular program in this category is pay-for-placement. These programs typically allow advertisers to open an account for $5 to $50, then bid on keywords for a minimum amount of 5 or 10 cents per click. Advertisers outbid each other for a higher position by increasing their bids by 1 cent per click. Only when a consumer clicks your listing is your account debited.

Are you disappointed to learn that search engines don't magically and objectively find the "best" sites on the Web? That's understandable. However, it was always possible to influence search results. Today, it simply costs more. Yet, for companies willing to invest the time and money, it's well worth it. The plan begins with the right set of keywords.

MAKING KEYWORDS COUNT

If you have the wrong set of terms, your site won't rank well in algorithm-based search engines. Plus, you'll waste money on pay-per-placement programs by attracting browsers, not buyers. To create an effective list of keywords, start with these suggestions:

* Company names: Start with the name of your company, products and services. Include misspellings and plural forms of words, if appropriate.

* Themes: Consider related words your customers might use to describe your business. People looking for an automobile insurance company might type in "car insurance" or "auto insurance." Perhaps drivers are likely to switch insurance providers when they buy a new car or used car, which would be good terms, too.

* Profile your competitors: Your competitors are excellent sources of ideas. Study the keywords in their Web sites and their metatags. From your browser toolbar, click on "View," and then select "Source." If they're using metatags, you'll see keywords listed at the top of the page.

Then, brainstorm ideas about how your customers are looking for your business. "Think like your customers," recommends Nacho Hernandez, 30-year-old co-founder of online Mexican grocery store MexGrocer.com, a La Jolla, California, firm that projects 2004 sales to hit more than $1 million. "A majority of our customers are English-speaking Americans, but most use Spanish keywords because they want the more authentic products. So they'll search for 'salsa verde' instead of 'green sauce,'" Hernandez says. "While we market hundreds of keywords equally split between Spanish and English, we were surprised to see [that] 440 percent more traffic and 200 percent more sales come from the Spanish words."

Of course, if nobody is looking for certain keywords, it's pointless to promote those. That's why a popularity check is important. Search engine marketers typically use Overture's free Search Term Suggestion Tool (www.overture.com) and the subscription-based program Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). These tools reveal how many people search for your keywords. Moreover, these tools and Google AdWords' free Keyword Suggestions tool (https:// adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd= keywordsandbox) will provide suggestions of related phrases consumers use. Finalize your list to include relevant yet popular keywords.

GETTING OPTIMAL RESULTS

Modifying your site to please the search engine spiders can be tedious. Be prepared to wait weeks or months for your site's natural rankings to improve. Although top listings aren't guaranteed, time-consuming efforts can pay off.

"The credibility boost is huge," says Gary Salzman, 47-year-old co-founder of coffee resource retailer site WholeLatteLove.com. The Victor, New York-based business projects 2004 sales of more than $10 million. "Consumers see that natural listings are awarded to highly relevant sites. That's the match they want."

To make your site relevant for your keywords, it's important to realize that sites don't compete against other sites for rankings. It's Web page against Web page. Therefore, each site page needs to be assigned a set of keywords. Focus on the pages that have valuable content for your visitors and are good for new visitors to land on first. A few places your keywords need to be include:

* Meta tags: This tactic alone has absolutely no impact on your rankings, but your keywords still need to be in the meta title, description and keyword tags of each site page you'd like ranked. The page title and description are often used as the Web site listing in the search results.

* Alternative text (ALT tag): Mouse over an image, and you may see a text box appear if the Web designer has used alternative text. Try to use a different, but related, phrase for each ALT tag on a page.

* Page copy: The keywords you want your site to rank well for must be in your page copy. The thought is, if your site visitors can see them, then your page is relevant for those terms.

* Hyperlinks within your site: Don't link "click here" copy to other pages within your site. Hyperlink keyword phrases instead, because search engines follow these links and the keywords in them.

Link popularity is also a chief ingredient in an SEO campaign. Your site needs to link to other related sites and, more important, well-ranked and content-relevant sites should link to yours. Run a search for your keywords in Google or Teoma (www.teoma. com) and evaluate the natural listings. Contact sites that aren't direct competitors, and offer to trade links or buy one. Marketleap (www.marketleap. com) has a free Link Popularity Check tool which shows you how many pages link to yours and how many link to your competitors.

You're not done yet. Once your site is optimized, a majority of search engines need to be notified to crawl your site. Unfortunately, most search engines now require an inclusion fee. It may be a per-URL fee, a fixed per-click fee on any site rankings you achieve, or a combination of both. Inktomi, Overture and Teoma are examples. Google is still free and will index your site on its own; however, you can use the "Add URL" form if your site isn't in its database.

"Analyze, optimize, submit, monitor, then repeat the process," says Shari Thurow, webmaster and marketing director of SEO firm Grantastic Designs and author of Search Engine Visibility. "Getting top-10 positions and maintaining them is an ongoing process. A site should always get consistent, high-quality traffic from the search engines," Thurow adds. "It's also an ongoing challenge to determine what competitors are doing to achieve search engine visibility."

Thurow recommends evaluating site statistics reports monthly. Once your site is fully optimized and submitted to the search engines, maintenance can usually be done on a quarterly basis.

Is your anxiety level increasing yet? Don't worry. There's a quick way to get any position you want. Just buy it.

BUYING YOUR WAY TO THE TOP

Pay-for-placement is the easy way to get a top position in search results. Open an account, then choose your keywords, set keyword bids, write a title and description for each keyword or group of keywords, then designate a landing page for each keyword or group of keywords. Your ad listings will be live as soon as editors approve them. Typically, these listings are placed under a "Sponsored Listing" type of header to set them apart from natural listings.

On FindWhat.com, Kanoodle.com and Overture, positions are awarded to the highest bidder. A one-penny bid over an advertiser moves your listing above his. On Google AdWords, positions are given based on the combination of bid amount and click-through rate. That means the highest bid doesn't automatically get the number-one spot. Consumers are part of the voting process. Ad listings that aren't clicked will drop.

Wondering how often to update your bids? Watch your competitors. If they perform daily or weekly updates, you'll probably need to do the same to keep the positions you want. Maintaining a top-three to top-five position is important, because those generally appear as sponsored listings across the distribution network. That means greater visibility and resulting traffic.

Bid management tools such as BidRank and PPC Pro automate this process for you. Companies such as Atlas OnePoint (formerly Go Toast, www.atlasonepoint.com) and Did-it.com even offer tools that manage your bids based on your cost-per-lead or cost-per-sale goals. Pay-per-click is still time-consuming to manage, but at least the results are instantaneous and often rewarding. For example, these campaigns added more than 60 percent to WholeLatteLove.com's total growth in 2003.

Tools alone won't improve your conversion rates. Compelling ad listings and landing pages that persuade people to complete an intended action make or break your results.

"Don't misrepresent your offer," warns Salzman. He noticed that out of 60 competing ad listings for "espresso machine reviews," only 38 percent showed what they said they would in their ad copy. "Consumers make snap judgments in seconds. Lose their trust, and they'll back out of your site to click on your competitors' listings. The back button is not your friend."

Don't panic over this crash course in search engine marketing. In addition to the resources listed here, you can turn to SearchEngineWatch.com, the educational hub for search engine marketers. You can also meet with search engine representatives and marketing experts at Jupitermedia's Search Engine Strategies conferences, or breathe easier by outsourcing your campaigns. Just make sure your Web site can be found by using relevant keywords. Your customers are waiting.

GET PROFESSIONAL HELP

Do you prefer to let a team of specialists worry about fluctuating algorithms and bids? You're not alone. However, finding a quality search engine marketing firm is challenging, especially for search engine optimization (SEO), because much of it happens behind the scenes, and you can't easily tell if a company is using ethical tactics. Here are a few tips:

* Find the experts. Read articles and books, and attend conferences to identify the companies with strong industry visibility. Even if they're not good matches for you, they could recommend other reputable firms.

* Interview firms. Don't be afraid to quiz companies about their marketing philosophies, process, tools, reporting and results. Ask them to define spam, then refer to your resources to see if experts agree or disagree.

* Avoid responding to e-mail spam. The "Get a number-one position for $99" spam is likely from companies that will spare the search engines, too.

* Speak to client references. Ask them to describe their experiences, results and recommendations for working with the company you're interviewing.

* Outsource. Some companies manage their own paid placement campaigns in-house while other companies manage SEO. Find out what your options are.

Programs and pricing vary tremendously in this industry. However, with a little research, you'll find the right marketing partner.

TABOO TACTICS

There are good and bad search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Good methods can improve your rankings. Bad tactics put your site in danger of losing rankings, getting kicked out of the search engines' databases, and possibly being banned forever. The following activities are considered spam, and, if caught, your site could pay the penalties:

1. Stuffing keywords in your meta tags: Repeating a keyword too many times in your meta tags is a red flag. Study other top-ranked sites to see what seems to be an acceptable range.

2. Hiding keywords: For example, avoid hiding text on your pages by making it the same color as your background.

3. Using tiny text: Think tiny text is too difficult to read? Maybe by your visitors, but not by spiders.

4. Using redirects: This code is placed on a Web page to send visitors to another page without the visitors clicking any links.

5. Linking with free-for-art sites: These sites link to each other for the sole purpose of improving their link popularity. Don't link to or from them.

These aren't the only dangerous SEO tactics. But they're some of the oldest and most obvious forms of spam, so avoid using them.
Full Article

13 SEO Techniques Every Web Developer Should Know

When web developers create a new site, or approach a site redesign, they seldom do so from the perspective of search engine optimisation (SEO). Instead, their goal is to inject a high level of aesthetic appeal. Flash videos and engaging images take precedence over a site architecture designed for easy search engine indexing and competitive organic ranking. Indeed, it is a rare developer who considers SEO a priority.

The challenge is that the development process can cause enormous problems with regard to a website's ability to rank well. Because search engine optimisation is a core marketing strategy, these problems often have a severe impact on a site's profitability. With this in mind, here are 13 SEO techniques every web developer should integrate into a site's design:

#1 - Streamline Your Code

Many web developers create attractive sites, but the underlying code they use is staggeringly heavy. Search engine spiders enjoy efficient, light code. They can crawl it more quickly and index it more accurately. Not only does that lead to higher organic rankings for a site's target keywords, but it's also easier to maintain those rankings.

It's worth noting that clean code does not hamper a web developer's design creativity. It merely streamlines a page's structure. For example, an external CSS file can accomplish the same thing as a heavy HTML table, but it does so with far less code.

#2 - Choose One Main Keyword For Each Page

For optimal search engine optimisation, each page should be designed to focus upon one main keyword. The content, tags, and surrounding code on the page should be developed to emphasize that keyword. Two or three secondary keywords can be used to add thematic support, but the main keyword should be the priority.

#3 - Place Keywords In Title Tags

Organic search algorithms rely heavily on page titles to determine the thematic relevance of a page's topic to a searcher's query. If all pages within a site's architecture have similar title tags, that will have a negative influence on each page's respective ability to rank competitively. Each page should have a unique title that includes its primary keyword. Furthermore, that keyword should be placed as closely as possible at the beginning of the title.

#4 - Use "Friendly" URLs

A site's URL structure plays a key role in supporting - or hampering - the owner's SEO efforts. Web developers will often design a site with URLs that are unfriendly to search engine spiders. For example, pages might look like the following: domain.com/?page24&num=4197&fs=thur34&q=dr476

While spiders can crawl such URLs, their ability to index them properly is limited. What's more, the above URL does little to support the page's main keyword. If a page is focused on "running shoes," the following URL would be far more search engine "friendly": domain.com/running-shoes/.
Search algorithms can identify keywords within an URL; they are used to further identify thematic relevance to searchers' queries.

#5 - Seed Keywords Throughout Each Page

Besides the title tag and URL, a page's main keyword should be used in specific ways throughout the page. It should be positioned at the top and placed within H1 header tags. It should be used within the first paragraph of content. If possible, the keyword should also be placed within H2 header tags.

#6 - Limit Your Use Of Flash

Many web developers continue to use Flash in order to create visuals that engage visitors. While Flash can be a powerful design tool for captivating an audience, it cannot be read by search engine spiders. If the spiders cannot read the underlying content, they cannot index it properly. This is the main reason beautifully designed sites rank poorly in the search engines. Spiders read text and little else.

#7 - Create Semantically-Related Content

As noted above, each page's main keyword should be used in specific ways on the page. However, it is also important to develop content that employs phrases that are semantically related to the main keyword. When search engine spiders crawl a site's content, they determine relevance based partly upon whether a coherent theme exists.

For example, consider a site that reviews products developed by Apple Inc. The pages are more likely to rank well for queries about Apple's products (rather than the fruit) if each page uses phrases related to electronics, MP3 players, and computers. A good web development company will typically offer strong SEO copywriting services.

#8 - Use Internal Linking

Links are the vehicle used by search engine spiders to find pages throughout a site. Normally, a sitemap will contain links to every page. However, web developers can further improve a page's organic ranking ability by generously linking to internal pages. Internal links should be placed within a page's body content and use anchor text that includes the linked page's main keyword.

#9 - Approach Ajax Cautiously

Ajax loads dynamically, which reduces the load time of individual pages. It is a popular development tool for web applications because it offers a near-seamless browsing experience for visitors. The drawback is that Ajax cannot be spidered well by the search engines. As a result, the individual pages that load dynamically cannot be indexed properly -- leading to poor search engine optimisation.

#10 - Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the practice of seeding a keyword throughout a page (including within the underlying code) with an alarmingly high repetition. It is done as a search engine optimisation strategy. Not only is stuffing an ineffective website marketing technique over the long run, but it can also result in a site's organic rankings being penalized. While keyword density is important for ranking competitively, it should rarely climb above 3%; in most cases, it should remain under 2%.

#11 - Take Advantage Of The Image Alt Attribute

Search engine spiders cannot "read" an image; they have no contextual understanding, regardless of how simplistic the image appears. However, they can easily read an image's description if it is placed within the accompanying alt attribute. This is an on-page SEO technique that is simple to use, yet often neglected by web developers. By using a description that supports the page's main keyword, developers can further boost that page's organic ranking ability.

#12 - Fix Broken Links

Broken links are dead-ends for search engine spiders. While it is not known for certain how large an influence they have on a site's overall ranking ability, they have an impact. When spiders come upon broken links, they do not simply turn around and retreat. They collect data about the missing page as well as the page that carried the link. When the spiders return to the search engine, that data is used to determine thematic relevance, topical authority, freshness, and the resulting ranking power that should be attributed to the site.

Again, the level of damage broken links can have upon a site's ranking ability within its space is unknown (though, it is widely speculated). However, they play a role and should be fixed.

#13 - Develop For Inbound Links

Inbound links are the driving force behind a website's ability to rank competitively for its target keywords. Though many web developers don't realize it, there is a lot they can do to design a site that attracts high-quality links. Using "friendly" URLs (described in #4 above) is important, but creating engaging content is what ultimately draws attention.

When people link to a website, their links create ranking authority for the site, especially if they use thematically related anchor text. This creates long-term momentum. As a site or page climbs within the search engine's organic listings, its visibility increases. Assuming the content is engaging, the page's higher ranking draws more links over time, helping to fortify its position.

As millions of website owners have discovered, a beautiful site can go unnoticed by its target audience. It needs exposure. Web developers can use the 13 SEO techniques above to design - or redesign - a site that looks attractive while climbing the search engine listings.

About the Author

About the Author: Nikita Adnani is the Director of http://www.designjunction.com.au a leading Internet Marketing, eCommerce, Web Design & Development services company. She has about 15 years of experience in the field of Web Design, Visual Communication, Web Development and Search Engine Marketing Services. She has spent the last 9 years of his career devoted solely in pursuing Search Engine Marketing and Web Development strategies to help businesses improve their profit.

© Copyright 2009, www.designjunction.com.au

Article Source: Content for Reprint

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Kinsley Out as Editor of Atlantic's New Business Site
Back in October, I reported that Atlantic Media had hired Michael Kinsley, the Slate founder and all-purpose genius, to develop and launch a business-news site. The site is still coming along, but Kinsley, it turns out, won't be its editor. The search is on for someone to replace him, Kinsley confirms to DailyFinance.

Continue reading Kinsley Out as Editor of Atlantic's New Business Site

Kinsley Out as Editor of Atlantic's New Business Site originally appeared on DailyFinance on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:30:00.

Filed Under: People, Media
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In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? Then you need to make the most of today's hottest marketing method—search engine opti
In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? Then you need to make the most of today's hottest marketing method—search engine optimization
Entrepreneur

You can't resist the temptation. Fixated on your computer screen, you anxiously type keywords relevant to your business into your favorite search engine. A list of search results appears. You cringe as you spot several competitors, then grumble because your company's Web site is nowhere to be seen. Where is it? That depends. Where is your search engine marketing strategy?

Gone are the days when adding keywords in meta tags to your site produced rankings. Search engine marketing has evolved into a complex and competitive program. It's also profitable--according to a March 2003 report by Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Safa Rashtchy, online search is the most cost-effective direct-marketing method. The average cost per lead from search is 29 cents, far less than e-mail (50 cents), the Yellow Pages ($1.18), banner ads ($2.00) and direct mail ($9.94).

Gather your Web design and marketing staff; both teams are required. Understanding search engine marketing basics will help your team execute a strategy in-house or outsource it to specialists. The sooner your site is visible for relevant keywords, the sooner future customers will find your company.

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?

Many business owners are unaware that search engines feed their results to each other. For example, if you type a keyword into MSN Search on Microsoft's consumer information and entertainment site (www.msn.com), the Web site listings displayed could be from Inktomi, Microsoft or Overture. Overture provides search results not only to MSN Search, but also to AltaVista and Yahoo! Could a top site on Overture then appear as a top site on a distribution partner's site? Yes. Unfortunately, these distribution relationships change frequently, making it difficult to determine exactly where results come from.

The challenging part, however, is figuring out how to land a top position in the search engines. There are two complementary yet completely different types of methods: optimization and advertising.

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to enhancing your Web site design to make it more appealing to crawler-based search engines. An automated robot, also referred to as a spider, is sent out to crawl the Web looking for site pages to add to the search engine's database. A mathematical algorithm then determines the ranking of pages in the database for the keywords consumers use. These rankings are referred to as natural or organic listings.

Search engine advertising, on the other hand, enables you to buy listings for your keywords. Positions achieved this way are referred to as paid or sponsored listings. The most popular program in this category is pay-for-placement. These programs typically allow advertisers to open an account for $5 to $50, then bid on keywords for a minimum amount of 5 or 10 cents per click. Advertisers outbid each other for a higher position by increasing their bids by 1 cent per click. Only when a consumer clicks your listing is your account debited.

Are you disappointed to learn that search engines don't magically and objectively find the "best" sites on the Web? That's understandable. However, it was always possible to influence search results. Today, it simply costs more. Yet, for companies willing to invest the time and money, it's well worth it. The plan begins with the right set of keywords.

MAKING KEYWORDS COUNT

If you have the wrong set of terms, your site won't rank well in algorithm-based search engines. Plus, you'll waste money on pay-per-placement programs by attracting browsers, not buyers. To create an effective list of keywords, start with these suggestions:

* Company names: Start with the name of your company, products and services. Include misspellings and plural forms of words, if appropriate.

* Themes: Consider related words your customers might use to describe your business. People looking for an automobile insurance company might type in "car insurance" or "auto insurance." Perhaps drivers are likely to switch insurance providers when they buy a new car or used car, which would be good terms, too.

* Profile your competitors: Your competitors are excellent sources of ideas. Study the keywords in their Web sites and their metatags. From your browser toolbar, click on "View," and then select "Source." If they're using metatags, you'll see keywords listed at the top of the page.

Then, brainstorm ideas about how your customers are looking for your business. "Think like your customers," recommends Nacho Hernandez, 30-year-old co-founder of online Mexican grocery store MexGrocer.com, a La Jolla, California, firm that projects 2004 sales to hit more than $1 million. "A majority of our customers are English-speaking Americans, but most use Spanish keywords because they want the more authentic products. So they'll search for 'salsa verde' instead of 'green sauce,'" Hernandez says. "While we market hundreds of keywords equally split between Spanish and English, we were surprised to see [that] 440 percent more traffic and 200 percent more sales come from the Spanish words."

Of course, if nobody is looking for certain keywords, it's pointless to promote those. That's why a popularity check is important. Search engine marketers typically use Overture's free Search Term Suggestion Tool (www.overture.com) and the subscription-based program Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). These tools reveal how many people search for your keywords. Moreover, these tools and Google AdWords' free Keyword Suggestions tool (https:// adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd= keywordsandbox) will provide suggestions of related phrases consumers use. Finalize your list to include relevant yet popular keywords.

GETTING OPTIMAL RESULTS

Modifying your site to please the search engine spiders can be tedious. Be prepared to wait weeks or months for your site's natural rankings to improve. Although top listings aren't guaranteed, time-consuming efforts can pay off.

"The credibility boost is huge," says Gary Salzman, 47-year-old co-founder of coffee resource retailer site WholeLatteLove.com. The Victor, New York-based business projects 2004 sales of more than $10 million. "Consumers see that natural listings are awarded to highly relevant sites. That's the match they want."

To make your site relevant for your keywords, it's important to realize that sites don't compete against other sites for rankings. It's Web page against Web page. Therefore, each site page needs to be assigned a set of keywords. Focus on the pages that have valuable content for your visitors and are good for new visitors to land on first. A few places your keywords need to be include:

* Meta tags: This tactic alone has absolutely no impact on your rankings, but your keywords still need to be in the meta title, description and keyword tags of each site page you'd like ranked. The page title and description are often used as the Web site listing in the search results.

* Alternative text (ALT tag): Mouse over an image, and you may see a text box appear if the Web designer has used alternative text. Try to use a different, but related, phrase for each ALT tag on a page.

* Page copy: The keywords you want your site to rank well for must be in your page copy. The thought is, if your site visitors can see them, then your page is relevant for those terms.

* Hyperlinks within your site: Don't link "click here" copy to other pages within your site. Hyperlink keyword phrases instead, because search engines follow these links and the keywords in them.

Link popularity is also a chief ingredient in an SEO campaign. Your site needs to link to other related sites and, more important, well-ranked and content-relevant sites should link to yours. Run a search for your keywords in Google or Teoma (www.teoma. com) and evaluate the natural listings. Contact sites that aren't direct competitors, and offer to trade links or buy one. Marketleap (www.marketleap. com) has a free Link Popularity Check tool which shows you how many pages link to yours and how many link to your competitors.

You're not done yet. Once your site is optimized, a majority of search engines need to be notified to crawl your site. Unfortunately, most search engines now require an inclusion fee. It may be a per-URL fee, a fixed per-click fee on any site rankings you achieve, or a combination of both. Inktomi, Overture and Teoma are examples. Google is still free and will index your site on its own; however, you can use the "Add URL" form if your site isn't in its database.

"Analyze, optimize, submit, monitor, then repeat the process," says Shari Thurow, webmaster and marketing director of SEO firm Grantastic Designs and author of Search Engine Visibility. "Getting top-10 positions and maintaining them is an ongoing process. A site should always get consistent, high-quality traffic from the search engines," Thurow adds. "It's also an ongoing challenge to determine what competitors are doing to achieve search engine visibility."

Thurow recommends evaluating site statistics reports monthly. Once your site is fully optimized and submitted to the search engines, maintenance can usually be done on a quarterly basis.

Is your anxiety level increasing yet? Don't worry. There's a quick way to get any position you want. Just buy it.

BUYING YOUR WAY TO THE TOP

Pay-for-placement is the easy way to get a top position in search results. Open an account, then choose your keywords, set keyword bids, write a title and description for each keyword or group of keywords, then designate a landing page for each keyword or group of keywords. Your ad listings will be live as soon as editors approve them. Typically, these listings are placed under a "Sponsored Listing" type of header to set them apart from natural listings.

On FindWhat.com, Kanoodle.com and Overture, positions are awarded to the highest bidder. A one-penny bid over an advertiser moves your listing above his. On Google AdWords, positions are given based on the combination of bid amount and click-through rate. That means the highest bid doesn't automatically get the number-one spot. Consumers are part of the voting process. Ad listings that aren't clicked will drop.

Wondering how often to update your bids? Watch your competitors. If they perform daily or weekly updates, you'll probably need to do the same to keep the positions you want. Maintaining a top-three to top-five position is important, because those generally appear as sponsored listings across the distribution network. That means greater visibility and resulting traffic.

Bid management tools such as BidRank and PPC Pro automate this process for you. Companies such as Atlas OnePoint (formerly Go Toast, www.atlasonepoint.com) and Did-it.com even offer tools that manage your bids based on your cost-per-lead or cost-per-sale goals. Pay-per-click is still time-consuming to manage, but at least the results are instantaneous and often rewarding. For example, these campaigns added more than 60 percent to WholeLatteLove.com's total growth in 2003.

Tools alone won't improve your conversion rates. Compelling ad listings and landing pages that persuade people to complete an intended action make or break your results.

"Don't misrepresent your offer," warns Salzman. He noticed that out of 60 competing ad listings for "espresso machine reviews," only 38 percent showed what they said they would in their ad copy. "Consumers make snap judgments in seconds. Lose their trust, and they'll back out of your site to click on your competitors' listings. The back button is not your friend."

Don't panic over this crash course in search engine marketing. In addition to the resources listed here, you can turn to SearchEngineWatch.com, the educational hub for search engine marketers. You can also meet with search engine representatives and marketing experts at Jupitermedia's Search Engine Strategies conferences, or breathe easier by outsourcing your campaigns. Just make sure your Web site can be found by using relevant keywords. Your customers are waiting.

GET PROFESSIONAL HELP

Do you prefer to let a team of specialists worry about fluctuating algorithms and bids? You're not alone. However, finding a quality search engine marketing firm is challenging, especially for search engine optimization (SEO), because much of it happens behind the scenes, and you can't easily tell if a company is using ethical tactics. Here are a few tips:

* Find the experts. Read articles and books, and attend conferences to identify the companies with strong industry visibility. Even if they're not good matches for you, they could recommend other reputable firms.

* Interview firms. Don't be afraid to quiz companies about their marketing philosophies, process, tools, reporting and results. Ask them to define spam, then refer to your resources to see if experts agree or disagree.

* Avoid responding to e-mail spam. The "Get a number-one position for $99" spam is likely from companies that will spare the search engines, too.

* Speak to client references. Ask them to describe their experiences, results and recommendations for working with the company you're interviewing.

* Outsource. Some companies manage their own paid placement campaigns in-house while other companies manage SEO. Find out what your options are.

Programs and pricing vary tremendously in this industry. However, with a little research, you'll find the right marketing partner.

TABOO TACTICS

There are good and bad search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Good methods can improve your rankings. Bad tactics put your site in danger of losing rankings, getting kicked out of the search engines' databases, and possibly being banned forever. The following activities are considered spam, and, if caught, your site could pay the penalties:

1. Stuffing keywords in your meta tags: Repeating a keyword too many times in your meta tags is a red flag. Study other top-ranked sites to see what seems to be an acceptable range.

2. Hiding keywords: For example, avoid hiding text on your pages by making it the same color as your background.

3. Using tiny text: Think tiny text is too difficult to read? Maybe by your visitors, but not by spiders.

4. Using redirects: This code is placed on a Web page to send visitors to another page without the visitors clicking any links.

5. Linking with free-for-art sites: These sites link to each other for the sole purpose of improving their link popularity. Don't link to or from them.

These aren't the only dangerous SEO tactics. But they're some of the oldest and most obvious forms of spam, so avoid using them.
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A few tips on increasing your rank and optimizing your website for search engines - Montreal:
Montreal SEO Company Tips: Did you know that, before search engine users visit a specific Web site, they already have made four separate and distinct choices: Choice number one: They choose to use the Internet to find a specific product or service, to research an issue of interest to them or solve a problem, as much in their professional careers as in their personal lives. Choice number two: They choose one of the five to six major search engines on the Internet to launch their search, the most popular by far being Google. Choice number three: They choose a particular keyword or phrase as the basis of their search, trying to narrow it down as best they can. Choice number four: They discriminate among the first ten search results on the same, first page. Then they take their final decision as to wich web site (or company) will get their business.These are your ultimate targeted web site visitors. These web visitors are already fifty to sixty percent of the way toward reaching a final buying decision as a result of having taken the initiative to use a good search engine to investigate or research a specific product or service. This is exactly the visitor that you want to attract to your web site. These are real, serious buyers. A few tips on increasing your rank and optimizing your website for search engines - Montreal: Be bold. Use the bold tags around some of your company web site keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty. Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries? Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives. First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar (avoid at all costs), include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page. Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the website with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten articles, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page. Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "X name related" occasionally, etc. Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar. Your ultimate strategy Did you know that, after investing thousands, sometimes hundred of thousands of dollars developing a Web site, Montreal businesses often discover that the site is invisible in the major search properties. Failing to take your Web site's search engine and directory visibility into consideration when making site development decisions is an untimely and very expensive mistake. As a direct consequence, companies must either reinvest in a post-launch redesign of their site, or accept the extremely limited results that they will achieve with their site, if any. By recognizing both the importance and the need of search engine optimization Montreal Cygnus in the development of your Web site, you hold a significant advantage over your competition. As an example, after making the decision to implement a website positioning strategy, one Rank for Sales client now maintains a sizeable advantage over its competitors. Boasting significantly more and higher rankings in every major search engines including key players such as Google, AltaVista and Yahoo! Because of their decision to implement a website optimization strategy, companies in Montreal, our client has since closed a number of new business deals through search. Users of Internet search engines are on a "mission" to solve a "problem." How quickly they are able to find an answer to their problem is directly related to customer satisfaction. How quickly they are able to find your website, if they are searching for you by name, is directly related to their opinion of your brand. Where and if your website places itself in a priority position on top of the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) is entirely up to your site's optimization features, or lack thereof. So a lifetime relationship with your brand is very literally at stake every time someone conducts a query via a search engine. Divide and conquer Did you know that, Search Engine Optimization (SEO - Company Montreal) can be a very controversial and hotly disputed subject and is actually a discipline finding itself in a constant state of movement. Major search engines such as Yahoo!, Google, AltaVista and the others are relentlessly changing their search engine ranking algorithms and related criteria on which they determine what factors they consider important for delivering the most relevant results to user search queries. Search engine optimization Company Montreal and positioning is taken by us as an art as well as a science. These criterias have an extremely powerful influence on your search engine rankings. Montreal company, What's more, partnerships change, new search properties emerge, mergers or buyouts happen and others disappear altogether. All of these changes can directly impact your search engine rankings.
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Search Engine Robots Sharing Cookies?

There’s a little park straddling Delaware and Maryland which has a monument marking the boundary between the states. Etched across the top of the stone marker is a line that indicates the separation between the states, and shows the point where an arc starts, which separates Delaware from Pennsylvania. If you look at a map of the border, you’ll see that the top of the state of Delaware is an arc shape that measures 12 miles from a cupola on top of a courthouse in Historic New Castle, Delaware. The arc between Delaware and Pennsylvania was defined in a deed to William Penn from the Duke of York in 1682. Maryland’s territory was also involved in the setting of borders.

You can hop atop the marker and sit on the state line if you’d like. The monument is surrounded by woods, and you have to travel down a path in the park to reach it.

We take the surveying of such lines, between states, between countries, surrounding towns and cities and counties for granted, as well as the exploration and discovery of the places where we live. The programs that search engines use to discover new pages on the Web and revisit old pages are a little like those explorers and surveyors - finding material online to add to their indexes so that we can explore those indexes and search for information and pages hosted on servers scattered around the globe.

Those programs are often referred to as crawlers or spiders or robots or bots, and there are many restraints that limit how well they might be able to explore and define the pages that we find online.

Crawlers from the major search engines tend to be fairly simple, and don’t view pages as we do with browsers. They often don’t run the java scripts that we do when we visit pages, or resolve images and view any text that we might see on those images.

Simple and Complex Crawling Programs

In April, IBM was granted a patent (originally filed on June 30, 2000) that described a Web crawling program that would see pages on the Web in a very similar manner to what we see when we browse the Web. The patent, System and method for enhanced browser-based web crawling, looks at the “inline-frames, frames, images, applets, audio, video, or equivalent” on web pages, and renders those to get an understanding of the final HTML markup that shows up at a URL when someone might visit a page. It even describes using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to read text that may appear in images.

If a search engine were to follow the detailed exploration process described in IBM’s patent, it would probably be a pretty computationally expensive process to use, and would likely take a fair amount of time and effort to index many pages. The crawlers that the major commercial search engines use seem much simpler, and don’t explore the pages on the Web in that much depth. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines describe the simplicity of the crawling programs that they use with this statement:

Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.

Lynx is one of the very early web browsing programs, and a very simple one, which lets you look at the text on pages.

Watching Out for Cookies

One of the efforts that someone performing search engine optimization may and should take on a site is to see how search engine friendly the pages of that site might be. Part of that inquiry is making sure that search engine crawling programs can visit all of the pages of a site that the site owner wants indexed, and that meaningful information from crawled pages can be indexed by search engines. One stumbling block to indexing a site is when a search engine crawling program is required to take a “cookie” to see pages.

A cookie is a small string of text that might be sent by a site to be stored on a visitor’s computer. A cookie usually consists of name-value pairs storing information about a visitors travels on the site, consisting of information such as the contents of shopping carts, user preferences for the site, and information that can help track the pages that a visitor goes to on a site. A cookie can help a site personalize the experience that a visitor has on its pages. Crawlers don’t usually take cookies, and crawlers may not be able to visit pages where the taking of a cookie is required.

Cookie Enabled Search Crawlers

A newly published patent filing from Google describes how it might enable crawling programs to accept cookies when visiting the pages of a site. One of the challenges behind a crawler accepting cookies is that a search engine may have more than one crawler or spider or robot visiting the pages of a site while crawling those pages, and it would be ideal if they “shared” a cookie. That’s the focus of the patent filing:

Search engine with multiple crawlers sharing cookies
Invented by Anurag Acharya, Michal Louz-On, Alexander C. Roetter
Assigned to Google)
US Patent 7,546,370
Granted June 9, 2009
Filed: August 18, 2004

The patent identifies the problems that search crawlers have with sites that require cookies as follows:

Conventional network crawlers have no facility for obtaining such cookies, nor for handling various cookie error conditions. As a result, conventional web crawlers are unable to crawl a full set of pages or documents in web sites that require cookies, thereby reducing the amount of information available through use of such search engines.

In addition, conventional network crawlers have no facilities for coordinating the efforts of a parallel set of network crawlers with respect to crawling a full set of pages or documents in web sites that require cookies. There is a need, therefore, for an improved search engine that uses multiple crawlers to access web sites that require cookies.

The patent filing goes into a great amount of detail on cookies, and how search crawling programs might share them. There’s no indication that Google has started to crawl pages that can only be visited by accepting cookies, but it might in the future.

Until then, if you own or work on a web site, and you require visitors to take cookies to see certain pages and want those pages indexed, make sure that search engines aren’t required to accept cookies to see those pages.

At some point, we may even start seeing crawling programs like the one described in the IBM patent that look at text in images, information that shows up in frames and iframes, and other parts of pages that are triggered by java script and other applets.

When they do, search engine indexes may be more like the maps we have today than the surveys of geographical borders of surveyors from years gone past.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit

[In addition to blogging, I?m also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu]

Over the last few weeks I?ve been polling developers to see how many are using the new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) toolkit to increase traffic to their web-sites.  I?ve been surprised by how many people either have never heard of the tool, or have not yet had a chance to run it against their websites.  This blog post provides a quick summary about why anyone doing web-development should check it out.

Why use the free SEO Toolkit?

In a nutshell ? the free SEO Toolkit Analyzer helps you increase traffic and visitors to your site, and as a result can increase the revenue you directly or indirectly make through your web-site.

The SEO Toolkit Analyzer increases traffic to your site by helping you assess and improve the search relevancy ranking of your site with search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.  As your search relevancy ranking improves, and your site becomes more search engine optimized, you?ll find that your site receives more and more user traffic from search engine queries. 

Takes less than 5 minutes to download and run the SEO Analyzer

It takes less than 5 minutes to download and run the SEO Toolkit Analyzer against your web-site.  You simply point the tool at the top-level URL of your web-site, and then it will automatically crawl your site like a search engine would ? following each link, reviewing the HTML on each page, and generating a human friendly report of every SEO or content violation it finds on the site - along with suggestions on how to fix each of them:

 

It works with any web-server

The SEO Toolkit works with any web-server. It works with IIS5, IIS6, IIS7 and IIS7.5 ? it will even work with Apache web-servers running on Linux.  Basically you can point the SEO Analyzer at any remote HTTP server and it will crawl the site and generate a SEO report.  You do not need to setup any software on the remote server ? instead the tool crawls and analyzes the site remotely just like a search engine would.  This means you can even run the site on your friends (or potential customers) sites and generate reports for them.

The SEO Toolkit does require that you have the IIS7 Admin tool installed on your local dev/client machine in order to host the SEO Analysis admin UI tool.  The IIS7 admin tool is a built-in feature of Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008.  The IIS7 admin UI only needs to be installed on your local dev machine though ? you do not need to have IIS7 installed on the server.  The SEO utility running inside it will work fine against your IIS5, IIS6 and other web servers.

How to download and install the SEO Toolkit

You can easily install the SEO Toolkit using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. 

Use the green ?Install Now? button on the IIS SEO Toolkit download page in order to automatically install the SEO Toolkit on your development machine (clicking the button will also download and install the Web Platform Installer if you don?t already have it installed).

How to Learn More

I wrote up a tutorial on how to use the SEO Toolkit this past summer (the UI in some of the dialogs has changed a little ? but the functionality is the same). 

You can also watch this IIS SEO Toolkit Video (5 minutes) or this longer IIS SEO Toolkit Video (15 minutes) to see the SEO Toolkit in action. 

You can post questions and get help in the SEO Toolkit Forum on www.iis.net.

Summary

If you haven?t downloaded the SEO Toolkit and used it to analyzer your web-site yet, then I highly recommend spending 10 minutes now and giving it a try.  You?ll find it provides a really easy, automated way to quickly find and identify SEO issues you have on your web-site ? along with suggestions on how to fix them.  Fixing them will increase the traffic and visitors to your web-site.

Hope this helps,

Scott

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What is Link Popularity, its Building and Strategies

What is Link Popularity? or Link Popularity Building Services

Link popularity is one of the most important factors in top search engine ranking. Search Engines give importance to the web site which have incoming or backward links from quality and theme based related web sites. Search engines consider these incoming links as VOTE for your web site which is given by others quality web sites to select your web site on top or as winner web site in search results.

It does not mean the number of sites pointing to your site is your link popularity and the more links for your web site, the higher your ranking will be. Search Engine are very intellegent and they have very advanced ranking algorithms to find the relevancy of incoming links related to your web site.

How does Link Popularity work ?

Here's an example of how I believe link popularity works:
Let's say that "Hotels Web Site" Web site has a link to "Web hosting web site". This probably won't help "Web hosting web site" link popularity for the keywords "Web Hosting" However, if both "Hotel Web Site and Web Hosting Web Site" are located in the India and in both the India keyword is mentioned on the page some where, and people are searching for "india web hosting" the quality of that link, may have just gone up a little. There's now a common word (India) between the sites. It probably won't help for those people simply searching for "Web Hosting", but may help if they're searching specifically for "Web Site Hosting in India". A higher quality link for "Web Hosting Web Site", however, would be one from "Web Hosting Related Pages or Directories," which has a theme of "web hosting". That is exactly the kind of link that the search engines would credit toward link popularity. The key is in having that common thread between the sites.

What to do to increase the link Popularity ?

Directories Listing

It is important to note that the sheer number of incoming links is not as important as the quality of the sites that are doing the linking. It is important to get listed in the popular directories, such as Yahoo and the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org). yahoo can list for free for non-commercial sites ( Although it takes a while to get listed) otherwise you have to pay for listing in Yahoo Diretory and while listing in DMOZ search the proper deep category in the directory and read the guidelines and submit your web site. More directories you can search on the google like joeant.com, goguides.org, galaxy.com etc...

Finding Link Partners

After directory listing, search for theme based link partner web sites or theme based web site, when i say theme based i alwasy mean that if your web site is related to "web hosting" business, then search web hosting and web services web sites to get links. . Google is a best search engine to use when looking for theme linking partners by typing "your keyword + links" . Typing in keywords that you think your customers might use to find you, look for quality, well-ranked, non-competing sites that have "links" or "resources" pages. It is also very useful to look at each of the sites on these "links" pages, as many of them might also be potential link partners. When you have found a good number of sites, add a link to each of them from a "links" page on your own site. It is important to do this before contacting the site owners, as they are much more likely to reciprocate if they see that you have already taken the trouble to link to them. Follow these link partners until you get your site listed on these web sites and once listed, also take care that your link is not removed by the partners.

Writing Articles

If you can write articles, you can use them on your website and you build your website content. You can also submit your articles to other sites. These articles makes your web site more important when it comes the matter of the content of the web site as well as with more keyword-rich text articles on more pages, you will increase the number of pages indexed by the search engines. Also these articles and informational pages are being considerd as important by search engines in these days. You can write informational articles about your products and services or technology being used in them. You can take the advantage of these artcles as below:-

1. Put these articles on your web site in separate section, Add a link to your main articles page on your sitemap, and a link to each new article on your articles page, and you are on your way to having your good content indexed. Make sure your visitors and the search engine robots can find your new pages.The more pages you add to your website, the better chance the already visiting search engine robots will also pick up your new pages to be indexed. More pages mean more links. Be sure to make an archive of your articles on your website. Always keep your pages in directories close to the root of your site for optimum indexing by the search engine robots.

2. Submit to the article web sites and search engines - Submit your new pages to the mainstream search engines and directories as well as artilce web sites on the internet. In addition, look for specialized, topical directories related with your particular subject. While submitting these articles, give your web site link below with your name, after all you are doing this work for link popularity.

Forum Discussions
These days, search engine are giving much importance to the links from the discussion forum thread related to your web site, These are being considered as the backward links by the search engines. but be careful while taking part in these thread, the thread should be related to your web site business and the links given in the signature in the footer in your posting should be related to the thread.

For example, There in one thread is going on "Reseller web Hosting" in the disscussion forum, then if you take part in that disscussion and your links given in the signature are related to "clothes business" then there will be no advantage for you. The advantage will be if you use the links related to "Web hosting" Web Site in your signature.

About the Author

Megrisoft
http://www.megrisoft.com
Web Services Company Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources____________________________
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How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding
How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding
Information Outlook

Summary

This is the second of three articles. Part 1 appeared in the August issue of Information Outlook.

Search engine optimization and marketing covers a wide range of activities, many of which are similar to what a reference librarian, systems librarian, or market researcher does. Although the focus is the World Wide Web, many of the tools that are used have broader applications for special librarians.

Internal corporate processes. Web analytics tools measure and analyze corporate sales, customer preferences and problems, viable products and channels, and other issues that may provide answers for questions received by special librarians.

Competitive intelligence/market research. Keyword research, Web site saturation and popularity tools can provide information on a company's competitors: how they are marketing on the Internet, what they are spending on online marketing campaigns, how they are pricing their products.

Legal issues. Who Is tools can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues. Link Popularity tools can show who is deep-linking to your site. Log files, in conjunction with Who Is tools, can tell you who may be committing click fraud on your paid placement campaigns or spamming your e-mail servers.

Back end knowledge of how Web sites work. These tools can show you what may be keeping search engines from indexing your site and can highlight customer service issues.

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SECOND OF THREE ARTICLES

Web site saturation and popularity tools show how much presence a Web site has on search engines through the number of pages of the site that are indexed on each search engine (saturation) and how many times the site is linked to by other sites (popularity).

If your company wants to generate leads from Web site traffic, you need to understand your organization's Web presence, particularly in relation to that of your competitors. Generally, the more Web presence you have, the easier it is for people to find your site; that is, if those pages contain the keywords people are looking for and if they rank high enough in search engine rankings for people to see them. Most search engines include some form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms. Pay attention to this so you can learn the number of sites that are linking to yours, which is very important. Knowing where your site stands in these two areas can give you a good idea of what you need to do to improve your Web presence.

Many tools measure various aspects of saturation and link popularity. My favorites are Link Popularity +, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Marketleap's Link Popularity and Search Engine Saturation.

Link Popularity + (http://www.uptimebot.com) shows much more than its name implies. It measures the number of back-links (incoming external links to your site); linked domains (all pages that link to any page in your domain, including internal pages); pages of your site that are indexed; and pages that contain your URL in the Google, Yahoo, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Hotbot, MSN, Teoma, Lycos, AOL, and Alexa search databases. (See Figure 1.)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Once you register (it's free), you can also see overall Google page rank, the number of pages you have at each Google page rank, and whether your site is listed in the DMOZ Open Directory, one of the major search directories. Page rank is one indicator of a page's popularity and authority. Registration lets you do mass reviews of up to 16 domains and have the results e-mailed to you. (See Figure 2.)

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

This has become one of my favorite tools, because it provides one of the most comprehensive snapshots of Web presence as far as the number of search engines it covers and the type of information it shows. The one area it doesn't cover is competitor comparisons. When I need to do a competitor comparison, I use the Top 10 Google Analysis and Marketleap tools.

Top 10 Google Analysis (www.Webuildpages.com/tools/internet-marketing-google.htm) provides the top 10 search results for a keyword on Google, along with the ranking of the base URL. This makes it a great competitive intelligence tool. (See Figure 3.)

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

The results also show the number of pages indexed by Google and Yahoo; the number of backlinks for the reference URL and for the domain as a whole from Yahoo, Google PageRank, Yahoo Web Rank, and AllInAnchor (query words in anchor text of links pointing to the site); body keyword density (ratio of keywords to total words); and link keyword density (ratio of keywords in links to all links).

This tool is a good indicator of the overall standings of your competition on the two major search engines and provides information about what gives them their rankings (keyword density, number of links to the site, number of links with keywords to the site, number of pages indexed, and page ranks). By analyzing the key characteristics of the top 10 sites for a keyword, you can get a good idea of what it takes for the term to rank well. (See Figure 4.)

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

To use this tool, you need to have a Google API code, available free from Google (www.google.com/apis). The API code lets you run a limited number of specialized searches on Google.

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

Marketleap offers a suite of free SEM tools, including the Search Engine Saturation Validator, the Link Popularity Analysis, and the Keyword Verification Tool. (See Figure 5.)

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

The Search Engine Saturation Validator (www.marketleap.com/siteindex/default.htm) shows the number of pages that several top search engines have in their databases for your Web site and the sites of up to five competitors. The search engines covered are AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Google/AOL, Hotbot, MSN, and Yahoo. I use this tool primarily to see how the site I'm optimizing compares with specific competitors on the number of pages indexed by the search engines. In general, the more pages a site has indexed, the greater the opportunity to be found by searchers. (See Figure 6.)

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

What I like most about the Link Popularity Analysis (www.marketleap.com/publinkpop) is its ability to choose competitors with whom to compare link popularity, along with the ability to see the link popularity for 25 other Web sites in a company's industry category. If your company's industry isn't included, you can choose General, which shows the link popularity for 25 companies across a number of industries. What you get back is how your site compares with others in your industry on link popularity on the AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Google/AOL, Hotbot, MSN, and Yahoo search engines. (See Figure 7.)

The tool shows your presence on the Web in terms of number of pages in each search engine's index that contain a link to your site, including your own Web site. Another valuable component of this tool is that it gives you an idea of whether your link numbers make your company a major player on the Web:

* Limited presence: 0-1,000 references.

* Average presence: 1,001-5,000 references.

* Above-average presence: 5,001-20,000 references.

* Contender: 20,001-100,000 references.

* Player: 100,001-500,000 references.

* 900-pound gorilla: 500,000+ references. (See Figure 8.)

[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]

Needless to say, there are very few 900-pound gorillas. In some niche industries, there may not be any sites that come close to having this many total "references" across all the major search engines. (Note: "Total" data are inflated, because they include the total of all links for the six search engines, which means many duplicates. Nevertheless, the total is a good relative indicator of what it takes to be a top site.) The General Industry category lists 14 gorilla sites; the top five are listed in Figure 9.

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

By looking at the sites linking to your site, you can get an idea of the volume and quality of pages linking to you and who may be referring traffic to you. Once you know who is linking to you and the part of your site they are linking to, you can examine the areas of your site that are performing well and those that aren't. By checking out competitors who are outperforming your site, you can see who is linking to them and figure out what you need to do to improve your visibility. (See Figure 10.)

[FIGURE 11 OMITTED]

Marketleap's Keyword Verification Tool (www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm) provides a quick way to see if your site ranks in the top 30 keywords through keyword verification. Many studies have shown that the vast majority of people don't look beyond the first 30 search results. You may have numerous pages indexed with plenty of links pointing to your site, but if you're not ranked in the top 30 on keywords that people use to search for your products and services, you're not visible. The Keyword Verification Tool covers AlltheWeb, AltaVista, AOL, Google/AOL, Lycos Pro, Hotbot, MSN, Netscape, and Yahoo. (See Figure 11.)

Thumbshots (http://ranking.thumbshots.com) lets you compare the top 100 results for a term on two different search engines or compare two different terms on the same search engine. You can highlight a particular site to see where the site ranks on both search engines. (See Figure 12.)

[FIGURE 13 OMITTED]

The output is visual, with lines connecting pages that rank in the top 100 on both search engines or keywords. Pages from your site are in red, and those of other sites that have pages on both sides are in blue. Hover your mouse over any of the hundred circles and see the URL, rank, and, if available, a thumbnail image of the page. The text output includes the number of overlapping links and number of unique links. (See Figure 13.)

[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]

The comparisons also show how little duplication there is on the Web--there are usually very few connecting lines between search engines. In a search on "retail displays," only 15 pages ranked in the top 100 on both Google and Yahoo.

[FIGURE 15 OMITTED]

I like this tool because it shows you where your site is ranked along a 100-dot line for a phrase on two search engines or how it ranks for two different phrases on one search engine. I use it more for seeing how two different terms rank on the same search engine than for search engine comparison, as there are other tools to do that. I've used it most often for demonstrating to clients the success of using one phrase over another in their site's content. (See Figure 14.)

Link Desirability

The next two tools are designed to help you determine the "desirability" of having another site link to yours. Not all links are created equal--some can even hurt your search engine rankings. Generally, a popular site that contains a few relevant links will be a better site to seek a link from than a "link farm" site that is nothing more than a collection of links. Although Google's PageRank is considered to be an important indicator of the link popularity of a site, I don't give it much weight when I'm looking for a site from which to request a link. Instead, I look at whether the site is a good fit for the one I'm marketing, and whether a link on that site would benefit both sites. (See Figure 15.)

[FIGURE 16 OMITTED]

One tool, Link Appeal by Webmaster Toolkit (www.Webmaster-toolkit.com/link-appeal.shtml), calculates the desirability rating of a link on the URL you specify. The calculation includes factors such as page rank, number of outbound links, and overall percentage of links to HTML. It is intended as a guideline for evaluating whether you should ask for a link on a certain page or not. (See Figure 16.)

[FIGURE 17 OMITTED]

The Class C Checker (www.Webmaster-toolkit.com/class-c-checker.shtml) allows you to check whether two domains are hosted on the same Class C IP range. Links from sites that are not on the same range as your site are thought to give more weight. (See Figure 17.)

[FIGURE 18 OMITTED]

Search engines don't like duplication in search results, so having a different IP address can help separate sites that are located on the same servers and may share databases or programming elements. Because EBSCO hosts many sites, I use Class C Checker more for the latter purpose than for link popularity. (See Figure 18.)

[FIGURE 19 OMITTED]

Other Ranking Tools

While the following tools aren't strictly SEM tools, I find them very valuable in my work.

The main Google search engine doesn't number results, which can make it difficult to figure out where you rank on a particular term. But Google Results (www.google.com/ie?q=&num=100&hl=en) gives numbered results. A disadvantage is that it only shows title and URL information, so identifying your site among the results can be difficult (unless your site name is in the title). I generally do a search on the main Google search engine and use the browser's Find option to see if my site's URL is in the top 30 or 100 results. If it is, I make a note of the title, then go to Google Results and redo the search. I check to see my site's numbered ranking. This is a lot easier than trying to physically count search results on a screen. (See Figures 19 and 20.)

Google Dance (www.google-dance-tool.com) has two uses. The first shows how you rank on the various Google servers; the second presents numbered results. I use this tool primarily for numbered results, unless I've discovered that I'm getting vastly different rankings when I search on a term within a short period of time. (See Figure 21.)

[FIGURE 20 OMITTED]

Froogle (www.froogle.com) is Google's shopping search engine. It allows companies to add their products to the site free of charge. I use Froogle in two ways: to expand a site's listings on the Internet and to illustrate price comparisons. Because Froogle is free, it is the simplest way for an e-commerce company to get all its products listed online. And because Froogle results sometimes appear at the top of Google results, it's a good way to get a site to show high in rankings if it doesn't do so organically. Currently, Google is generally not allowing new sites into top-ranked positions for at least six months after launch. (See Figure 22.)

[FIGURE 21 OMITTED]

Froogle is valuable in price comparisons because it helps me understand where my clients' pricing is compared with that of their competitors. You can do price comparisons on the other shopping search engines, but the only Web sites you find on those are companies that pay to be on them. All our e-commerce clients who meet the requirements for Froogle are added to it when ESWS redesigns a Web site. (See Figure 23.)

[FIGURE 22 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 23 OMITTED]

Figure 9

Marketleap Top 5 Most-Linked-To Web Sites

Most-Linked-To Web Sites Number of Links

Yahoo.com 51,624,212
Mp3.com 26,652,540
Amazon.com 24,213,964
Microsoft.com 18,340,881
CNN.com 10,777,438
RELATED ARTICLE: How to use keyword saturation and popularity tools

1. Top 10 Google Analysis, and Marketleap's Search Engine Saturation and Link Popularity can help you identify some of your online competitors and determine how you compare in the terms you use to describe your products and services.

2. If you get a question about why your company Web site isn't performing as well as a competitor's site in search engine rankings, the Link Popularity +, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Search Engine Saturation tools can illustrate why--or show why your site is doing well.

3. Librarians often spend a lot of time explaining to people why it is important to use more than one search engine in doing research. Thumbshot is a good tool to graphically show the lack of duplication in search results.

4. The Google Dance tool is good to know about if two searches for the same phrase return different results. Use it to see if Google is in the midst of updating its index.

5. Use Google Results or Google Dance for a concise list of numbered search results.

6. Froogle and the other shopping search engines are an easy and effective way to find out what your competitors are charging for your type of product and how your pricing compares. Because Froogle is a free service, it has a broader range of companies to compare with. However, Froogle also has a smaller percentage of visitors, so it may not be representative of all shopping visitors.
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Role of Meta Title Tag in SEO

Do you want to secure a top ranking in search engine result pages(SERP)?

I think every one is going to answer - Yes. And a very common belief is that add lot of most searched keywords in the meta tags of your web pages and see your site skyrocketing. But it feels highly frustrating when this magic proves of no avail. Remember, meta tags alone don't do a magic in getting better placed in the search pages. These meta tags sure help you to describe your web pages to a search engine and gain a better place in its results. But at the same time they help search engine too to prevent indexing of improper web pages. Which may have good weight keywords in their meta tags but having no relationship with the contents of the page.

Meta tags are the blocks which contain information about the contents of your web page and they exist into the head area of your web page. They are basically meant to communicate with the search engine. Most of the Meta tags are visible to the search engine only and not the visitor on your web page. But, Title tag is one which is visible to the search engine and the visitor as well. Most importantly, it attracts the search engine and the visitor very aggressively. Most search engines consider this tag as the primary information about the site and also an human visitor sees this information as the first thing on top left corner of the browser. Moreover, when one bookmarks the site, the text in this tag appears in the bookmarks list.

In this article, I have tried to focus mainly on 'Title Meta Tag' that how a good Title Meta Tag can render a great help in optimization of a website.

What is the significance of Meta Title Tag

Amongst the three major Meta tags (Meta Title Tag, Meta Keywords Tag, Meta Description Tag) the Title Tag is one which is given the most weight by search engines' algorithms. In fact, this tag should be written so that it should give the idea about your site instantly. A perfect written Title tag can generate quick and appreciable traffic to your site. The text written in this tag appears as clickable text in the search engine result page (SERP) and if it is really meaningful and conveys most about the web page, more clickthroughs will be the result.

This small example explains the function of Meta Title tag better. Suppose I need to visit San Francisco and need a road map of the city and go to a book store to find the same. There are lot of books on tourism and travel with different titles but my attention will go to a title which says something like "Latest Road Map of San Francisco" rather than a title "All about San Francisco". May be the second book contains better information about the subject I am looking for. But the title of first one speaks exactly about what I need. This how a better title gains priority over the other because of the contents of its title. This is exactly what happens with search engine. It picks the most matching title with the query and places in its result page as clickable text.

Should the Company name appear in Title Tag

Well, I would say sure if your company is really a big entity like IBM, Microsoft or Cisco or some well know brand like Sony, Phillips etc. Because people may want to search for those companies or brands with their names. But in normal cases it should not be so.

Suppose, your company is "Larry Tours and Travels" in San Francisco. Instead of writing "Welcome to the home of Larry Tours and Travels" in the title tag it would be better to write something like "tour operators, travel agents, car rental,bay area tours, san francisco tours - Larry Tours and Travel". Do a good research to find best keywords and phrases which describe your site best. My suggestion is that the length of the title tag should be between 15 to 20 words making it attractive enough that it looks interesting to the person searching for your business and he clicks through.

Few tips for writing good Title tags.

Try including the content relevant keywords in the title tag. This would help placing your site better in search engine result page (SERP) when someone searches those keywords.

Also do not use repeating keywords and phrases in your title tag because this may be treated as spamming by search engines and they may affect your ranking.

Either don't include your company name in the title tag or add it after few most relevant keywords, phrases into the title tag.

Write different title tags for each web page of your website instead of writing a common title page for the complete site. Make sure that each title tag has relevance with the contents of that web page where it appears.

Try to keep the length of your title tag small (between 15 to 20 words). Some search engines allow small title tags only and truncate the extra part of the longer ones which at times may render your title tag completely meaningless.

I would say that write very meaningful, impressive title tag they are a really powerful can be best tool to optimize your site. The title tag has most dominant role while the search engines make their decision about the theme of the website. When a search for keywords is conducted, the Title tag is given heavy consideration by most search engine algorithms. As I said earlier, since each page in your website is unique so it needs a different Title tag.

So, Writing relevant and meaningful title tag is something which may achieve high rankings in search engine result pages (SERP) and result high clickthroughs to your site. The Meta Keywords Tag and Meta Description Tag also need to be taken care of and optimized equally in addition to that of Meta Title Tag to secure a place at the top of the search engines and in convincing a search engine that your site's contents are more relevant than that of your competitor's.

About the Author

Prashant K Shukla offers expert advice on Search Engine Optimization. He is also a Internet marketing researcher. You can visit his website at http://www.mysmartseo.com where you will find lot of Books and articles on SEO, free and paid SEO tools.

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Search engine visibility designed to get your web site noticed
RegisterNuke.com now offers tool to optimize your internet presence
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Search engine visibility designed to get your web site noticed
RegisterNuke.com now offers tool to optimize your internet presence
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How Search Engines Might Identify and Handle Soft 404s and Login-Required Pages

When people in the mideastern United States don’t hear something that someone says, they may say “excuse me,” to ask the person whom they are having a conversation with to repeat what they just said. If you’re having a conversation in the Southern United States and you say “excuse me” to get someone to repeat themselves, it might evoke a blank stare (I’ve seen it).

Non-verbal communication that doesn’t seem to match the message sent with words might also cause confusion and misunderstanding (been there, too).

Many websites are set up incorrectly, in a way that when a visitor or a search engine crawling program attempts to reach a URL that doesn’t exist on the site and is redirected from that inaccessible URL to a dedicated error page showing the visitor a 404 (not found) or 403 (forbidden) or 5xx (server error) message on their screen, the message in the header from the site’s server may be a “200″ ok message, which indicates that there isn’t a problem - even though there is. Some pages are only inaccessible temporarily, like when a database may be down. When a server error shows for those, the message that is sent from the server shouldn’t be a 200 (ok) message either.

Sometimes visitors are redirected from inaccessible URLs to a site’s main homepage as well.

That kind of miscommunication creates confusion and can mean that non-existent pages at accidentially mistyped or miswritten URLs or pages that may have been removed from a Web site may be added to or kept in a search engine’s index, even though those pages shouldn’t be included or should be removed. And would possibly be removed if the correct 404 or 403 or 5xx error message was sent back to a search engine.

Some other links that might be found on the web may point to pages that aren’t acccessible unless someone is logged in to a site, and if they aren’t, a redirection may take them to a login page or to a page that tells them that authorization is required to view the page. And those pages on the other side of the redirect may also send 200 (ok) messages back to a search engine, which can’t login. These links point to pages that also shouldn’t be included in a search engine’s index.

Because a search engine receives the 200 (ok) message, it may treat those pages as if they are actual live web pages.

When a visitor sees a page that tells them there has been a 404 error, but the header message sent from the server indicates a 200 (ok) page, those errors have been called “soft 404″ pages.

A new patent application from Yahoo tells us that soft 404 error pages exist in large numbers on the Web:

According to one article, “Sic transit gloria telae: towards an understanding of the web’s decay“, by Z Bar-Yossef et al. (2004), it is estimated that soft 404s account for more than twenty-five percent of the dead links on the web. The Z Bar-Yossef article proposes a method to detect whether a particular web page is a soft 404 page.

In an ideal World Wide Web, the right error messages should be sent through a server error message, and miscommunication should be avoided. Site owners should check to make sure that this kind of misunderstanding doesn’t happen. But, as the quote above indicates, this kind of soft 404 problem happens frequently. It is to the benefit of site owners and search engines to avoid problems like that.

The patent application tries to identify soft 404 errors, redirects to login pages, and other similar problems by clustering together web pages from a site that share many similarities based upon “characteristics of the content of the web pages” in each of those clusters.

After pages are clustered together like that based upon their content, the process described in the patent filing tells us that it looks for a metric involving a similarity between the URLs For each of the pages in each of the clusters, and the similarities based upon content and URL structures can be used to determine “similarity classes” for the URLs of pages on a site. For example, one such class might be a “soft 404 similarity class”

The patent application is:

Unsupervised Detection of Web Pages Corresponding to a Similarity Class
Invented by Mahesh Tiyyagura
Assigned to Yahoo
US Patent Application 20090157607
Published June 18, 2009
Filed December 12, 2007

In addition to a class for soft 404 error pages, other classes might also be determined, such as for pages that indicate:

• Out of stock
• Program exception
• Permission denied and
• Login required

The crawling of web pages usually happens independently of the indexing of content on those pages. Before the pages are indexed, some analysis of the content and URLs found on a site may take place, including a process like the one described in this patent filing, which may determine similarity classes of the web pages.

Why a Search Engine Might Want to Identify Soft 404s

Some of the reasons why a search engine might want to determine if there are soft 404 pages on web sites can include:

1) A recognition that that the soft 404 pages and their URLs do not pertain to useful information, which means that a search engine wouldn’t need to index those pages.

2) Reducing (or decaying) a “freshness” value for pages linking to those soft 404 pages, which those pages might have gained based upon a link-based ranking algorithm. In other words, pages with dead links may rank less highly in terms of “freshness.” If a search engine doesn’t recognize that one or more links on a page point to soft 404 pages, it might rank that page more highly based upon a freshness factor. Identifying soft 404s means that a search engine won’t give a page a ranking boost based upon freshness.

3) For pages on sites that might show advertising from search engines, where a soft 404 is shown or a requirement to login, or another similarity class that doesn’t provide useful information, the patent filing tells us that it is assumed that visitors are likely to want to navigate quickly away from such pages. We’re also told that more generic advertising might be shown on those pages, or ads that occupy more screen real estate than for other pages on a site.

The patent filing provides some details on how pages might be clustered together based upon their content, and how URLs might be determined to be similar. The paper Syntactic Clustering of the Web is mentioned as an example of a clustering and shingling technique that could be used, as is the process described in the patent Method for Clustering Closely Resembling DataObjects.

Conclusion

This patent application from Yahoo describes a process that might be used when a site isn’t set up properly to communicate such things as a proper 404 (not found) server message when a visitor might see a 404 message on a page that they view, but their browser and search engine crawling programs get a 200 (ok) message instead.

It’s recommended that site owners fix problems like soft 404s rather than relying upon processes like the ones described in this patent filing. It’s to the benefit of the search engine and site owners to reecognize when miscommunications like soft 404s happen, but it’s even better if the wrong messages weren’t sent in the first place.

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Finding, Researching and Downloading Books, Dictionaries and Encyclopedias on the Net

As technology advances, we're seeing more and more libraries offering digital downloads of their catalogs. Online libraries of material have become more popular as sighted folks discover iPods and electronic book readers and search engines now offer the ability to search printed texts and even download electronic versions of the texts. Online dictionaries and encyclopedias are making it possible for people who are blind or visually impaired to independently search for reference material.

As a result, I am going to combine several Fred's Head records into one large resource document that will help you find and download books from a variety of search engines and websites. I encourage you to visit the Fred's Head Database or the Fred's Head Companion blog and search for the word "book" to see other resources. I will also reference many online dictionaries and encyclopedias that are free and accessible.

Louis Database of Accessible Materials for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired

Produced and maintained by the American Printing House for the Blind (APH), the Louis Database of Accessible Materials for People Who are Blind or Visually Impaired contains complete bibliographic and location information for more than 163,000 titles of accessible materials from over 200 agencies throughout the United States. These items include books in braille, large print, sound recording, and computer file; braille music; and American Printing House for the Blind (APH) products.

Louis is updated daily and is searchable free via the APH website. Persons without Internet access who require reference assistance can contact APH using its toll free number.

American Printing House for the Blind, Inc.
1839 Frankfort Avenue
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 6085
Louisville, Kentucky 40206-0085
Toll Free: 800-223-1839
Phone: 502-895-2405
Fax: 502-899-2274
E-mail: info@aph.org
Web site: http://www.aph.org
APH Shopping Home: http://shop.aph.org

Search Your Library with WorldCat

I love discovering new ways to search the Internet. Not only is it entirely helpful in finding cool Websites to share with all of you, but I just love the developments that are being made to make searching more fun! Today, I found a search engine that allows you to search libraries near you for books, media, etc.

Simply type a title, subject or person into the search field and click the Search button. Want more options? Then click the Advanced Search link underneath the search field. In the advanced search, you have more options, such as looking by author, keyword, ISBN, ISSN or OCLC number. You can also limit your searches by language, format and publication date.

If you register for a free account, which took no time at all for me to do, you can make your own list of items the library has that you want to check out over time. You can also share these lists with friends or family.

To register, click the link at the top of the page and then fill out the following information: username, password, e-mail address, agree to the terms of use and then click "I Agree." Next, confirm that you requested the account in the verification email that comes to the email address you provided. Once you're logged in, you can use the sections under the My WorldCat tab, which will give you access to edit your profile, change your password, etc.

You also have the option to put WorldCat on your own Website so that others can discover it from your page. Or, you can add it to your browser's toolbar with an easy and quick download.

What other features do I love? Well, Ask a Librarian is a very nifty option. It allows you to get help from a librarian in your search results. You can also review materials and rate them. Or, you can get information on the Details section of an item in a Wiki type style.

I hope you'll get a lot of use out of this search engine. I mean, how else can you stay in touch with libraries all around you with the simple use of a search field? Enjoy it! Click this link to visit http://www.worldcat.org.

Finding eBooks On the Internet

In the last decade the Internet has rapidly become one of the most important ways of accessing information for people who are blind and visually impaired. As the Internet has grown in size and popularity, so has the availability of accessible electronic books in a number of different formats.

Today, we know that there are thousands of eBooks that can be accessed. but how do we go about finding specific titles? And once we find them, how do we download them? And how do we read the different formats?

Finding eBooks on the Internet tells you how. Finding eBooks on the Internet is a publication of the National Braille Press. This book shows you the step-by-step process of how to obtain public domain books from sources like Project Gutenberg and the eText Spider, how to acquire commercially available accessible books from companies like Baen, and how to go about getting books in accessible formats from sites like Web-Braille and Bookshare.org.

What makes this a unique book is that it is written by Anna Dresner, who uses assistive technology herself. The book includes keyboard commands for both JAWS and Window-Eyes. This publication is available in braille and large print.

Finding eBooks on the Internet by Anna Dresner
National Braille Press
Toll Free: 888-965-8965
Email: orders@nbp.org
Web: http://www.nbp.org

Etext Archives, Academic Resources, & Linguistic Links

Welcome to Camera Obscura's meta-index of academic and scholarly resources. All of the archives and resources indexed in this document are either easily navigatable with speech or have been extensively re-indexed so that the information they contain is easily and immediately accessible via speech-synthesis and/or text-based access. This document also contains speech-friendly submission forms for many standard reference works, as well as telephone and address directories and resources which are easily navigated using speech-synthesis and a text-based browser.

The purpose of this meta-index is to facillitate easy and immediate access to the wealth of etextual resources on the internet to blind and visually impaired individuals using speech-synthesis and/or refreshable braille.

Click this link to visit Camera Obscura's meta-index of academic and scholarly resources.

Find Books with Google

The Google Book Search is a feature you can use to search the Internet for copies of books. You can search among various subjects that interest you and when you're done, you can also find out where you can borrow them or even buy them. The book search works just like a search engine. You type your area of interest into the search box and in a matter of seconds, you will see lists and lists of books that fall under that category.

When you do a book search, you will see that under each listing, there is an "About this book" link. This gives you basic information on the book, including the title, author, publication date and the length. Some of the books also have some additional information, such as key terms, phrases, references, chapter titles and even a list of related books with the same subject.

It's important to note that not every book will come in the full text version. Each book is assigned a different preview length and these are displayed clearly for each listing in your book search. Each book will either have a full view, a limited view, a snippet view or there may be no preview available. The full view option is usually active when the book is out of its copyright date or if the publisher gave permission to allow viewers to read the book in its entirety. If this is the case, you can read it as many times as you'd like.

If the book is a limited view copy, you can only see certain parts of the book. With this feature, the publishers of the book has joined Google's Partner Program and they allow you to see a few of the pages from the book but there is a limit to what you can see online.

In the snippet view, you can do special searches for information within the book. >From those results, up to three snippets of the text will be shown. If the book you have found has no preview available, you won't be able to see any parts of the book, but you can read the information provided under the "About this book" link.

Every book you find with the Google Book Search has links included that will take you to places where you can buy or borrow the book. There will be listings for book sellers if you want to buy the book or you might be able to find it in a library. If you're really interested in a certain book, you'll definitely want to check that out. Now, you may be wondering where the books come from to make this search possible. Well, they mainly come from the book publishers and from libraries.

Click this link to start searching http://books.google.com.

New Free Books

Here's a website filled with links to free, legal, complete eBooks still covered by copyright. Novels, mystery, romance, saga, self-help, history, and more. They are legal, in most cases from the author's own website.

Click this link to visit http://newfreebooks.com.

Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts

This site has about 14,000 classic public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.

Click this link to visit the Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts.

The Etext Archives

Home to electronic texts of all kinds, from the sacred to the profane, from the political to the personal

Click this link to visit the The Etext Archives.

The Dusty Library

This website is filled with public domain books, poems and short stories. All books are screen reader friendly and the site's font size can be changed for people with low vision.

Click this link to visit the Dusty Library at http://www.dustylibrary.com.

500,000 Free E-Texts at the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is home to more than one million digital resources. More than half of the digital resources on the Internet Archive are e-texts. There are seven sub-categories of e-texts. I spent some time exploring the "American Libraries" sub-category and found quite a few texts that could be used with a United States History class for example. I also found a number of resources that would be appropriate for use in an American Literature course.

The Internet Archive is a great place for students and teachers to find digital resources that can be used under a Creative Commons license. The e-texts are especially valuable as supplementary materials for a variety of courses. The e-texts are available as PDF files to save and use on your local computer. In the more than 500,000 e-texts in the Internet Archive there is bound to be something for almost everyone.

Click this link to visit the Text Archive section of the Archive website.

Find Books with Microsoft

Microsoft's version of a book search engine is called Live Search Books and they are going up against their competitor, Google. The concept of the book search goes along the same lines as the Windows Live Search in how it searches the Internet for information. The Live Search Books uses the same process when scanning the Internet for books.

This program goes hand-in-hand with Microsoft's book scanning project that they have been working on for some time now. Users can search for books by using a regular search engine. When someone performs a search, keywords are used to filter out the results. The search only includes the books that have been scanned via the scanning project.

Live Search Books has a feature called "Search inside a book," which gives the users the opportunity to search the full text of the books. Right now, the search includes books that have no copyright date and only books that have been scanned from the collections of the British Library, the University of California and the University of Toronto. Other locations, such as the New York Public Library, Cornell University and the American Museum of Veterinary Medicine, are said to be included in the very near future. Other copyright books from publishers who have given permission will also join the search soon.

The one big difference between Microsoft's and Google's book searches is that Microsoft only offers the full text of the books. They can be downloaded onto your computer in the PDF format, so if you would like to search for books yourself, be sure to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed before you begin.

Click this link to start searching with Microsoft.

Specific Sites for Books

The following is a list of independent company websites that offer books for download. These books may be text or audio.

Free Book Resources

The Story Home

notaland.com's The Story Home is a collection of classic and original children’s audio stories.  Every other week a new story is added by storyteller Alan.  All audio stories are FREE!! 

The stories can be listened to right from The Story Home website or by subscribing to The Story Home on iTunes podcast. Students will love listening to audio stories on The Story Home.  Set up a listening center in your classroom where students can listen to stories.  As they listen, they could practice various comprehension strategies. If you have an iPod program at your school, load up the iPods with stories that students can listen to at home.  Find stories that correspond with your classroom curriculum and introduce new concepts with an audio story.

Click this link to visit http://thestoryhome.com.

ReadPrint

The ReadPrint website is a free library of online books for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast. Thousands of novels, poems, stories and easy to read books are online.

Click this link to visit http://www.readprint.com.

Fantastic Fiction

Fantastic Fiction allows the user to look up books by author, for example, and learn all the titles the person has written. It lists a series in chronological order. It also lists the author's book recommendations.

Click this link to visit http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk.

Learn Outloud

Here's another valuable source. They do sell books, but they also have a large collection of audio and video presentations for free download. Every Friday they provide a free downloadable book; and every month, they have a free book of the month. Each Wednesday, they recommend a free podcast.

Click this link to visit http://www.learnoutloud.com.

Repeat After Us

From the site:

"Created by a high school student, RepeatAfterUs is an award-winning online library with the best collection of copyright-free English texts and scripted recordings. Our free audio clips provide an excellent resource for students and literature lovers of all ages.

Click this link to visit Repeat After Us at http://www.repeatafterus.com.

Planet eBook

Planet eBook is a free service where teachers and students can find classic literature titles available as free downloads. Planet eBook adds new titles at regular intervals. Subscribe to the Planet eBook blog or newsletter to keep track of the latest additions to the collection. For browsing purposes, Planet eBook offers previews of titles through the Issuu pdf publishing service. Using the previews students can get an overview of a title without committing to downloading the entire ebook.

Click this link to visit http://www.PlanetEbook.com.
Classic Reader is another great site for free and accessible books: http://www.classicreader.com.

Literal Systems

Literal Systems is another great resource for free, downloadable audio books. You'll find that the navigation is simple with the menu on the right side of the page, for those of you with some vision. There you will find the following sections:

• Download Audio: Here you will find the titles that are currently available to listen to on the site. Choose a title and you'll be taken to its page. There you will find the links you need in order to listen to it under the Download section. The credits for it are shown above it as well. There is only a small selection of titles at the moment, but I have every hope that the list will grow and grow as time goes by. These performances are truly enjoyable to listen to. I was impressed by the quality of sound and of the ability of those reading them.
  
  
• Home Page: This will take you back to the main page of the website.
  
  
• The People: Here you can learn about the people behind the recordings on both the technical and performance end. I think it is nice to be able to see the face behind the vocal talent, as well as, the people who make it all happen!
  
  
• Contacting Us: You'll find contact information here with a phone number and an e-mail form.
  
  
• Auditions: Here you can find information about the auditions they are holding. I'm guessing they're for voice talent.
  
  
• Volunteers: Here you will find information on what they are looking for in volunteers to help make the site more interesting and keeping it up to date.
  
  
• F.A.Q.: Here you will find the most frequently asked questions submitted to the site. I suggest checking it out if any questions pop into your head while you're visiting.

I truly enjoyed listening to the offerings here and I hope you will too. Check out Literal Systems by clicking this link: http://www.literalsystems.org/abooks.
Here's a site that they link to that may also have some audio files of interest: http://www.LoudLit.org.

Baen Books Offers Free Downloads

For several years, Baen Books: http://baen.com has provided fantasy and science fiction titles for download in unecrypted formats, including RTF, at reasonable prices. Now the company is offering all its electronic titles free to people who are blind, dyslexic, paralyzed, or are amputees. Disability must be documented. Read this article to learn more.

Talking Pages

Talking Pages is a non-profit web-based lending library that lends audio books to those who are blind or visually impaired.

You can select the audio books you want to borrow from their catalog. They will then ship you the audio books you select, along with a return label and postage. There is no fee for using the service; the costs are covered through donations.

Users of Talking Pages must sign up for library cards that permit users to borrow audio books and also check the status of what books they have currently on loan.

Please note that this service is available only to persons living in the United States.

Click this link to visit the Talking Pages website at http://www.talkingpages.org.

Listen To Spoken Word Internet Radio Station

I discovered a free radio station dedicated to broadcasting stories, drama, poetry and interviews. They broadcast popular audio books by best-selling authors, as well as promoting new and unsigned writers from around the world.

• Easily listen to radio online from work or home
  
• Free non-music entertainment for the more discerning listener
  
• Listen to popular audio books narrated by professional actors
  
• » View the week's programme schedule to see the great variety of choice offered

The Audio Book Radio Email Newsletter is a way to keep you up to date on programming information, news about the radio station and providing access to audio books free download clips of the latest audio books and forthcoming titles heard on the station.

Click this link to visit the Spoken Word Internet Radio Station: http://www.audiobookradio.net/index.php.

The Online Books Page

Aman Singer emailed Fred's Head with this site. Besides listing and searching Project Gutenberg, several government and religious sites, and a variety of other resources, this site provides direct links to smaller resources like The Calibration of Women Writers and Banned Books Online. The search and browse functionality are both excellent and the page as a whole lists over 25000 books on the web.

Click this link to visit The Online Books Page: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/.

Books for the Blind Online Library

In 2005, this service went live with a few dozen books in e-text format for reading by screen-reader or e-braille or screen-magnifier. It now has nearly a thousand titles. Recently, a lot of work has been done with the SpeakOn program to make it easy to get books and have the computer read them to you almost instantly.

A user said, "I've been playing with the system using an infra-red numeric keypad and can sit away from the PC and get a book in a few seconds. SpeakOn turns the computer into a sort of Talking Book machine - I'm using the Daniel voice which is pretty good".

Library membership is restricted to the visually impaired who are also UK or EU residents. Click this link to learn more about this online library for the blind: http://www.seeingear.org.

Read Free Full Text Books Online

Here's a site with thousands of books that are easy to read online, or save to your computer or portible reading device. The books are listed in alphabetical order and would be great if you're looking for something different, maybe for a book report?

Click this link to visit http://www.FullBooks.com.

World eBook Library Consortia

Housed in World eBook Library Multi-Terabyte server network is the world's largest digital archive of PDF eBooks and eDocuments. This collection hosts more than 250,000+ PDF eBooks and eDocuments. As a member you can have complete access to the entire collection. The collection is constantly growing.

• More than 250,000+ unabridged original single file PDF eBooks by the original authors
  
• Adobe PDF eBooks Included Software Reads Books To You
  
• Fully Searchable, Quotable Text, & Bookmarking Capability
  
• It's like having over 250,000+ Books in your living room
  
• Enough for several Lifetime's Worth of Reading

Click this link to visit the World eBook Library Consortia: http://worldlibrary.net.

Legends

Growing up some of my favorite stories were those of Robin Hood, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, not to mention pirates, fairy tales, and such. Now at Legends you can explore these stories that have not only lasted through time but have inspired people enough that we still enjoy them.

Explore Robin Hood, King Arthur, Beowulf, Pirates and Privateers, Ballads and Broadsides, Swashbucklers and Fops, Fairy Tales, Shakespeare's Stories, Sagas & Sea Kings, Paladins and Princes, Poets and Painters, and Erin and Alba.

I was so happy I found more stories that I could explore than I already knew. Like Sigurd the Dragon Slayer, old ballads, and poetry even.

Then you can also check out Legendary Resources, Search Legends, What's New, and Notes on the Illustrations.

"Search Legends" is a Google based search engine that will search both the site, and the World Wide Web if you want it to. It's a very nice search engine.

I found the Notes on the Illustrations section to be interesting and informative.

I hope you enjoy these adventures as much as I did. Click this link to visit the Legends web site: http://www.legends.dm.net/.

Wired For Books

In order to use this site you need to have RealPlayer which is a free download, you will find the link to download Real Player near the top of their page.

Why would you want to have Real Player for this site? Well because you get to listen to famous, and not so famous, people read works of literature.

In the "Kid's Corner" you can listen to the tale of Peter Rabbit, and right next door you could listen to Alice 's Adventure's in Wonderland. Not to forget great literary works like Macbeth, The Illiad or the The Aeneid.

There is also poetry from "classic English poems, including poetry by Blake, Burns, Byron, Donne, Herbert, Hunt, Keats, and Shakespeare," to the "Den of Lions" poems, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Not to mention all the wonderful non-fiction and fiction that you can listen to! This site gets an A++ in my opinion for being so diverse, and for bringing so many wonderful poems, and stories together in one place for people to listen to.
Click this link to visit the Wired For Books website: http://wiredforbooks.org/

Free Classic AudioBooks

This site has MP3 and M4B files of books that are out of copyright, a great resource for struggling readers! Most titles are for secondary students, including Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Picture of Dorian Gray, and Romeo and Juliet (the only Shakespeare title so far). Check back often for new titles.

Click this link to visit http://freeclassicaudiobooks.com.

Project Gutenberg

The philosophy of Project Gutenberg is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search.

Included in the materials are U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the whole US Constitution, the Bible, Shakespeare, literature, reference resources and general works.

Click this link to visit the Project Gutenberg home page: http://www.gutenberg.net. Don't forget to check their section of books that have been converted to audio at http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/2.

Another way to access the books in this library is to point your browser to manybooks.net: http://www.manybooks.net where books can be converted to other formats.

Audio Books From Librivox

Here's a worthwhile project you may wish to participate in: "LibriVox wants all books in the public domain to be available, for free, in audio format, on the internet. We ask volunteers to record chapters of books in the public domain, and release them into the public domain."

They also have books that you can receive through their podcasts, how cool is that?

Click this link to visit the LibriVox website: http://librivox.org.

Bibliomania - Free Online Literature and Study Guides

• Free Online Literature with more than 2000 Classic Texts
  
• Literature Book Notes, Author Biographies, Book Summaries and Reference Books
  
• Read Classic Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Short Stories and Contemporary Articles and Interviews
  
• Study Guides to the most read books and Help for Teachers
  
• Research their Reference Books, Dictionaries, Quotations, Classic Non-fiction, Biographies and Religious Texts
  
• Buy the books personally read and recommended by Bibliomania

Click this link to visit Bibliomania: http://www.bibliomania.com.

FREE computer books and Internet books online with hard copy buying options

Here's a great collection of computer ebooks for your reading pleasure.

Click this link to find hundreds of computer and technology related books: http://hogan-productions.com/books/webbooks.html.

Doctor Who E-Books

In the 1950s kids hid behind the sofa when Professor Bernard Quatermass battled aliens on the BBC whilst ITV gave us Pathfinders in Space - the brainchild of Canadian Sydney Newman.

Fast forward to 1962 and Newman, now promoted to Head of BBC Drama, needed a new Saturday night family series to fit snugly between Grandstand and Juke Box Jury.

Concepts pitched for the show included telepathy, flying saucers, scientific trouble-shooters from the future - and a time machine. We all know who won.

The main stars of the show would be a couple of school teachers - the square-jawed Ian Chesterton and the improbably bouffant Barbara Wright. The teen audience could identify with Susan Foreman, one of their pupils. Even if she was an alien.

Finally, a mysterious anti-hero in the mould of Conan-Doyle's Professor Challenger would complete the line-up. He would be known only as 'The Doctor'. Doctor Who?

Travelling in their time and space machine, the TARDIS, the Doctor and co. began their adventures on November 23rd 1963 by voyaging 100,000 years into Earth's past to help some slightly dim cavemen discover fire.

That's how it all began, and the series is still alive and well today. The BBC has created a site where you can read the continuing adventures of Doctor Who. All e-books feature brand new artwork and extensive notes by the original authors. If you are a fan of this cult classic show, this is the site for you.

Click here to visit the BBC Doctor Who page at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/ebooks/index.shtml

Books in a Podcast

Here are some sites that podcast audiobooks:

• Open Culture: Audiobook Podcast Collection: http://www.oculture.com/weblog/2006/10/audio_book_podc.html
  
• http://www.podiobooks.com
  
• http://www.bmw-audiobooks.com
  
• http://www.silentuniverse.com
  
• http://www.darkerprojects.com

Subscription Services

Bookshare.org

Even though braille and recorded books have existed for decades, supply is limited, production costs are high and using them can be cumbersome.

Many sight-impaired people use inexpensive scanners to prepare their own reading material for computer-synthesized speech. The page-by- page process often takes two to three hours per book.

The high-speed machine used by Bookshare.org can scan an entire book in 10 minutes. The technology can scan both sides of a page simultaneously after a book's binding has been removed.

With Bookshare.org, members submit their own scanned books for the collection and download as many as they like for use with Braille printers, computer-synthesized speech programs or other reading aids. Members pay a $25 initial setup fee and annual $50 dues.

To join Bookshare.org, members must send a letter from a doctor or other professional that attests to their disability. After paying the fees, they get a copy of Victor Reader Soft software that translates digital files into computer-synthesized speech.

Word about Bookshare.org has spread to students and teachers who prompted the organization to add a staff member dedicated to working with schools.

About 95 percent of Bookshare.org members are legally blind or dyslexic, while the remainder live with physical disabilities that prevent them from turning the pages of a book.

Driven by member submissions, the popular collection leans toward romance and science fiction. Volunteers search the files for errors and add titles, like the complete set of Pulitzer Prize winners or college reading lists.

Some Bookshare.org members even convert files to the MP3 format so they can load them onto an iPod.

The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Disabled, operated by the U.S. Library of Congress, has offered Braille and recorded books since the 1930s, but it often takes two to three years for a best-seller to be made available to the public via that service.

While the service distributes books to a network of libraries around the United States, users can face a months-long waiting list to receive a book. Bookshare.org offers quicker satisfaction.

Another advantage over recorded books is the ability to skip chapters or search for keywords, especially helpful with textbooks, news or nonfiction material.

The organization has appealed to publishers to donate digital copies to Bookshare.org when books are released, in keeping with the 1996 federal law that requires digital textbooks to be made available to disabled students at the same time as print versions.

Click this link to visit the bookshare.org website.

Diesel eBooks

Search and download over 35,000 titles, including 750 free downloads.

Click this link to visit the Diesel eBooks website: http://www.diesel-ebooks.com

Jiggerbug

jiggerbug.com an online audio book rental service, delivers their extensive collection of best-selling audio book titles to subscribers - digitally!

Based on the Netflix model, current Jiggerbug subscribers enjoy quick and simple mail service delivery of their favorite book titles on either CD-ROM or cassette tape. A newer service gives Jiggerbug subscribers the option to instantly download their favorite titles in an easy-to-use, take-it-with-you digital format. Powered by OverDrive technology, digital delivery is ideal for commuters, frequent gym goers or anyone who wants to create more time in their day by multitasking with an entertaining best-seller, self-help title or any of the thousands of book options available.

Growing time demands make it difficult for many to enjoy the latest "must-read" titles. To bridge the gap between time and desire, Jiggerbug's audio books offer a solution - allowing people to listen to their favorite book or subject during times that may otherwise be wasted ( lengthy bus commutes, gym time, etc. ). By freeing-up the hands, Jiggerbug is freeing-up time for busy executives, multitasking moms and housewives or anyone who wants to make more efficient use of their day. Audio books ( available on tape, CD or Instant Download ) are also the ideal answer for the elderly, beginning readers, or anyone with sight restrictions. With the Digital Download service option, ordering is as easy as:

1. choose a title and checkout
   
2. instantly download the title for immediate playback
3. at the end of the loan, the title is automatically returned to the collection - with nothing more to do.

Powered by OverDrive, audio titles will be available in the industry standard WMA format for easy playback on your home computer or on hundreds of portable devices, including MP3 players. The OverDrive Audio Book technology contains advanced accessibility features that make it easy for blind and visually impaired listeners to enjoy titles. Users simply choose their favorite book from Jiggerbug's expansive collection of titles, download the book for instant, on-the-go playback using an audio device or listen offline on the subscribers PC.

For more information, click this link to visit www.jiggerbug.com.

Pay Per Listen: An Electronic Download Service of Audiobooks.com

PayPerListen, a service of Audiobooks.com delivers an extensive selection of audiobooks in an electronically downloadable format at approximately 75-80% less than the cost of typical CD's and cassettes.

The PayPerListen.comSM and MediaTunnel.com SM combined services employ state of the art electronic ordering, file transfer technology, and encrypted security to bring to you a downloaded title which is immediately available and there is no delay or additional cost for shipping regardless of where you may be throughout the world!

They call their titles "Electronically Downloadable Audiobooks," and the selection is great. There are also some helpful articles to help with the download process.

SoundsGood.com, a Consumer Shopping Service for Audio Entertainment

SoundsGood.com is a premier audio download and traditional media service providing consumers with an easy way to access thousands of best selling audio books, classic radio shows, theatre performances, and a growing collection of audio newspapers, magazines, lectures, self help and wellness courses, modern day radio shows and other spoken word entertainment.

SoundsGood.com is a unique one-stop shop that provides customers with both digital downloads for immediate listening as well as the ability to purchase CDs and audio cassettes for those more comfortable with traditional media.

SoundsGood supports digital downloads that are compatible with MP3 players, CD players, PCs and some high-end smart phones that support the Windows Media audio format.

SoundsGood offers a wide range of audiobook titles ranging from New York Times best-sellers to the obscure.

SoundsGood.com incorporates software designed by OverDrive, an audio playback technology designed for enhanced audiobook listening in combination with the Windows Media Player. Benefits of the OverDrive system include the ability to bookmark audio points, utilize visual chapter marks to more easily jump between chapters, and to audibly slow down or speed up the reader's pace of the story playback. Such features will allow the consumer to very simply mark where they are in an audiobook, find their way back to the point, and skip ahead or back if necessary. The system is also fully enabled to provide ease of use for the visually impaired and blind community.

Click this link to visit SoundsGood.com.

Ebooks in Spanish and German

Those looking for electronic books in Spanish, German and to a lesser degree in other languages can explore Tiflolibros, a growing library from Argentina. Their German collection is growing very rapidly! Here is the English information page, with links to the main page in Spanish.

Online Dictionaries and encyclopedias

The Internet is a rich source for dictionary and other reference materials. If you have screen access software and an Internet connection, there are a number of sites that you may want to check out.

Before we go too far, let me suggest that you take some time to read this great page called How to use Dictionaries.

Acronym Finder: http://www.acronymfinder.com has more than 480,000 human-edited entries, Acronym Finder is the world's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms. Combined with the Acronym Attic, Acronym Finder contains more than 3 million acronyms and abbreviations.

Do you need a dictionary in a foreign language? If so, then you need to search Dictionaries > By Language in the Yahoo! Directory: http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/dictionaries/language/.

http://www.yourdictionary.com has links to over 500 dictionaries so you're sure to find what you're looking for!

Are you trying to keep up with the latest slang terms? If so, then you need to search Slang Dictionaries in the Yahoo! Directory: http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/dictionaries/slang/.

“…translate and learn words in their original context.” The mission of lingro.com is to create an on-line environment that allows anyone learning a language to quickly look up and learn the vocabulary most important to them.” In addition to dictionaries in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish and Swedish, you can put in a URL and all the words on that page become clickable with definitions popping up everywhere!

Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers and operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Wikipedia began as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia on January 15, 2001. It has steadily risen in popularity, and has since spawned several sister projects, such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. It is edited by volunteers with wiki software, meaning articles are subject to change by nearly anyone. Wikipedia's volunteers attempt to uphold a policy of "neutral point of view" under which views presented by notable persons or literature are summarized without an attempt to determine an objective truth. Due to its open nature, vandalism and inaccuracy are constant problems in Wikipedia.

Wiktionary is a sister project to Wikipedia, intended to be a free wiki dictionary (including thesaurus and lexicon) in every language. It was set up on December 12, 2002.

Bartleby.com: http://www.bartleby.com gives you access to the American Heritage Dictionary, the Columbia Encyclopedia, the Roget's Thesauri, Quotations, English Usage, Modern Usage, Strunk Style, Cambridge History, the King James Bible, Oxford Shakespeare, Gray's Anatomy, Farmer's Cook Book, Host Etiquette, Brewer's Phrase and Fable, and other interesting books.

The Merriam-Webster online Dictionary: http://www.m-w.com, gives you access to definitions from the Merriam-Webster Collegiate® Dictionary and Thesaurus. This Web site also features the "Word of the day," "Word games," and "Word for the Wise."

The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com was featured in the Rvers Computer Help Newsletter. It has a dictionary and other related services.

Dictionary.com: http://www.dictionary.com is a unique site. When you type a word to be looked up, dictionary.com retrieves and displays definitions from different sources at once. For instance, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, WordNet 1.6, and Acronym Finder.

The Internet is also a great resource for more specialized reference materials. To find these materials just go to your favorite search engine --Google, Yahoo, Altavista, etc. and do a search on the word "dictionary". You will find resources ranging from technical terminology like Webopedia.com: >http://www.webopedia.com, an on-line dictionary for computer and internet terms, to Dinodictionary.com: http://www.dinodictionary.com, the most complete dinosaur dictionary on the web. You can also find books for medical terminology, law, measurement conversion, foreign languages, biology, semantics and more.

Most Web reference materials are free and easy to use. Just type a word or words in an "Edit box" and do a search. The results will be displayed in an HTML format. The main disadvantage that free Web materials have over the commercially available software is the amount of unwanted information within the results page, such as advertisements and navigation links. If you plan to use these reference materials frequently, you will be better off purchasing the CD-ROM, or subscribing to their service in order to get a clean version and save time searching. However, if you just want to search these materials occasionally, take a look at your screen access manual. Your software should have useful tips and features that will allow you to navigate a Web page efficiently by skipping unwanted information.

The Encyclopedia Britannica

Since its first publication in 1768, The Encyclopædia Britannica has been considered the world's most comprehensive reference product. Unfortunately, for more than 200 years this reference material was not accessible in its entirety to people who were blind or visually impaired.

With the advances in the field of technology and the power of the Internet, this research tool is now available to blind computer users.

Encyclopedia Britannica Online includes the complete encyclopedia, the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and the Britannica Book of the Year. The Encyclopedia Britannica Online can be used to search an Internet directory that includes more than 130,000 links to Web sites selected, rated, and reviewed by Britannica editors.

Through this service, one can find more than 72,000 articles, updated and revised by EB editors and contributors. The Encyclopedia contains over 10,000 illustrations, including photographs, drawings, maps, and flags. The Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary contains more than 75,000 definitions, including pronunciation guides and word histories.

Encyclopedia Britannica Online offers different kinds of subscriptions to Individuals or families, and site license subscriptions to multi-user organizations. Including corporations, libraries, primary through secondary schools, colleges, and universities. Pricing varies by market and size of organization.

For more information contact:

Encyclopedia Britannica
Toll Free: 1-800-621-3900
Email: inquiries@eb.com
Web: http://www.eb.com

The Canadian Encyclopedia

Search or browse by broad topic for almost any aspect of Canadian history and culture. You can also explore a timeline of Canadian history, the 100 greatest events in Canadian history, interactive resources, or quizzes that test your knowledge of Canada. The site also includes the full text of the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.

Click this link to visit the Canadian Encyclopedia: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com.

Answers.com

Using Answers.com is fun, easy, and with free, instant access to reliable facts, definitions and information on over a million topics, it's sure to keep you coming back for more learning, not searching!

Click this link to visit http://www.teachers.answers.com.

Flags of the World

Want to learn about flags? If you answer yes this site is for you. I had no idea the number of flags found in the United States. Even cities have flags! You can also view maps of various places as well. Click this link to visit Flags of the World.

We got this comment on another article and I wanted to add it to this one because its another great resource.

Hello,,

While searching the web for ideas on what to do this 4th of July, I came across your blog, The Fred's Head Companion. I really liked your 4th of July post and I would like to share with you a site that I found helpful. Http://www.accessmylibrary.com is a free online searchable library with thousands of articles you only need a library card to access. I went there and searched for "4th of July" and came up with dozens of articles on 4th of July activities.

Click this link to search http://www.accessmylibrary.com. You may want to add it to your favorite links or mention it in your blog; I think your readers would find it very useful. Thank you for the blog and Happy 4th!

Sincerely,

Sarah Deak

SCIFIPEDIA

Welcome to Scifipedia! This is where you can find almost anything about the Science Fiction genre. And even better, if what you're looking for isn't here, you can easily add the information yourself.

I was absolutely thrilled by how much there was to explore. There are over 3,000 entries here and the collection is growing daily.

• Today's Featured Article: The site features a different article about something in the genre.
  
• This Day in SCI FI: Where you'll find out about the birth and deaths of people who've worked in the genre in some way or another.
  
• Did You Know? Here you can get a dose of SCI FI trivia.
  
• Hot Topics: These are some of the most popular topics on the site at the moment. When I was there, Fanguage was one of them. It explained some of the languages used by fans of SCI FI.
  
• Editor's Journal: Here you can find an entry from one of the editors about something SCI FI.
  
• Shout Outs: Here is where the editors thank fans for their hard work in making this site more complete. It is a big public thank you to the people who put forth their efforts.

Now, that's just the information on the main page. On the side menu, you will find links to the many different forms of media that Science Fiction has found a home in and the articles that fit into each category. You'll also find, if you scroll down a little bit, the most recent additions to the database, as well as, an FAQ section and a helpful Tutorial feature.

Click this link to visit SCIFIPEDIA at http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/Main_Page.

Double Tongued Dictionary

Welcome to the Double Tongue Word Wrester Dictionary where you will find slang, jargon and less frequently used terms defined for you. For a full explanation of what is included in this dictionary, check out the About section, which is where you will also find information about the author of the site.

On the main page, you will find the newest entry defined near the top. You will also find a listing of the newest entries so you can easily check out what was recently added. You will also see that there is an Alpha Index on the side of the page and beneath the newest entries, a listing of newest citations.

There is a menu bar with these options: About, Categories, Citations, Cohort, Word-a-Day, Entries, Feeds, Login and Search. Let's look at each one of these options in more detail.

Categories: This is another way for you to browse the entries on the site. Only here, you'll do it by finding the words that relate to the name of the category. So, if you wanted to see advertising slang or jargon, you could do so by clicking on the Advertising link in the category section. You will also be able to check out Register, Language and Class as a way to view words just beneath the categories section. Register deals with certain types of words like colloquial, derogatory, euphemism, jargon, slang, etc. Language is where you can check out words from the many different languages around the world. Class is a section devoted to abbreviations, acronyms and eponyms.

Citations: Here you can check out the citation queue for recently added words. The most recent will be on this page to go back further. Either click the numbered links just under the citation queue area or click the Last link for the last page of entries.

Cohort: Here you will find links to sites in different languages and the option to nominate sites to be listed.

Word-a-Day: You can sign up to get the daily email from this site. It contains a definition or several definitions and comes directly to your Inbox each day. To find out more about it and how to sign up, check out this section.

Entries: This is another way for you to view the words that are added here. The newest entries are shown on this page, as well as the option to check out the ones that were added previously. It uses the same navigation system as the Citations section.

Feeds: If you are into RSS feeds (and who isn't) you can find four from this site that you can subscribe to. Entry Feed gives you the 10 most recent entries. Complete Feed gives you the 10 most recent dictionary entries. Citation Feed gives you the last 20 citations that haven't been fully developed yet and the last is a feed to the author's blog.

Search: Here you will find the search engine that offers you several ways to search the site. It even offers advanced search options to really help you find what you're looking for.

Click this link to learn some new words from the Double Tongued Dictionary: http://www.doubletongued.org.

Babiloo

Babiloo is a program developed to read offline dictionaries. Supports SDictionary and StarDict formats. HTML displaying for supported dictionaries. Download more dictionaries within the application.

Click this link to learn more about Babiloo: http://babiloo-project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page.

eBooksRead.com

We found another site offering a large collection of electronic books. eBooksRead.com offers largely public domain books from nearly 100,000 authors. It's a bit cluttered with ads, but worth a visit, especially if you're looking for an obscure classic.

Click this link to visit http://www.eBooksRead.com.

How about that for research? If you know of any sites that I've left out, please click here to email me at fredshead@aph.org and tell me about them.

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Website Optimization

The sheer success of any online business lies on a number of factors out of which website optimization plays a major role. Website optimization or in other words Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be defined as the process of optimising and promoting a website so that its presence is strong on the internet thus ensuring top rankings on search engines.

There are quite a few important dynamics worth considering while optimizing a website. This would include content, structure and backend coding, layout, submission process and the number of links going to your website. Backend coding would include Meta and proper HTML tags so that your site can be traced easily by search engines.

The process of website optimization needs to be performed on an ongoing basis so that your site's ranking are maintained or improve on search engines. Major search engines like Google are always on a look out for fresh and new content as well as links to your site from well placed third party websites.

How to get high ranking?
In addition to having a well optimised and designed website there are a few other factors that can surely assist you in obtaining better rankings. These would be:

Number of incoming and outgoing links to your website
How old and aged is your website
The quality of content and frequent updates done on your site
New web pages added to your website
Title and Meta tags

An Effective Approach
If you are not familiar with web optimization then it is to be certain that you are familiar with the ethical way of optimizing your website rather than optimizing it in such a way that it has a negative impact.

Over the last few years many search engines have stopped recognizing websites that have adopted non ethical standards of optimization. Such examples are keyword stuffing, hidden text and doorway pages. It is imperative that you should understand the non ethical ways of optimizing and avoid them lest your site may be banned forever. Whether you have a new site or optimizing an old one, you need to spend tremendous amount of time in marketing, link building, placing keywords, building content and placing links.

Experts usually recommend that certain percentage of keywords and/or key phrases should be used in a single webpage spread evenly in the content. The quality of content should be good so as to attract online viewers and if possible should be refreshed occasionally.

In case you have a website and are not sure about the correct way of optimizing your site then it is always best to consult a professional web optimization and development company. Companies like IT Chimes have considerable amount of expertise in the online domain.

Some people often wonder why should I opt for a web application development company to develop online interfaces for my website. Well, this would be for the simple reason to ensure your site is more interactive and user friendly. Many web application companies offer superb online services at very competitive rates. This is why outsourcing your web development plans is not a bad idea at all. You or your team could be tied up in various other activities or may not have the technical expertise and that is why outsourcing web application development makes your job much quicker, easier and reliable.

Many online businesses are choosing to make their site more interactive by embedding certain applications. These applications not only help the visitor to be more engaged with the website but can also help in increasing more traffic. A typical web application development company would always engage with you to understand your basic requirements and then would develop a prototype of the kind of online application you would require for your site. Once approved, the company would upload the particular interface on your website so that it can be made accessible to the public or visitors who come to visit your website.

Online applications could be of various types. The most common are online forms that capture vital data of visitors like name, address or phone numbers etc. This form would be attached with a database which would save all vital data. The most complex online applications are like payment gateways, online shopping carts, mobile applications and keeping track of online inventories. Chat software and intranet applications are also commonly used interfaces that most companies require for their day to day business.
Online web applications are proven techniques of engaging online visitors and helping in increasing overall ROI. While choosing a web application development company you would need to keep various points in mind. Not all companies can offer the sort of online applications that you require hence making a comparative analysis is all the same imperative. In order to evaluate the company you can always ask for portfolios of the company and/or any recommendations or testimonials. You may want to go through the work done by the company by yourself and evaluate the quality. If satisfied then the next question you may want to ask is the Turn Around Time. How quickly can they develop and deliver the application to you. The application has to be free of bugs and should have the option to further expand in case you need to add more functionalities in the near future.

Although there are many companies that claim to offer the best of online and web application development services but only a handful can offer 100% reliability. If you are looking to outsource your web application needs and also to make huge savings then outsourcing your requirements to a country like India is not a bad idea. Companies like IT Chimes can deliver what you want and when you want it at prices that can easily fit into your budget. Such companies have hired professionals who come from various backgrounds and can deliver world class quality products that you and your customers would enjoy browsing through online.

Vibhu Satpaul is a graduate from London School of Economics, UK. Vibhu is the Business Development for Search Eccentric and is heading the International Business Domain.

About the Author

Vibhu Satpaul is a graduate from London School of Economics, UK. Vibhu is the Business Development for Search Eccentric and is heading the International Business Domain.
For more information on Website Optimization visit Search Eccentric or email info@searcheccentric.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

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Why Your Web Site Is Important? - Montreal web Design
Your Competitor Has A Web Site Customers use the Internet to find everything. A small competitor or start-up gains instant credibility with a well-constructed web site design. If theirs is the only site found, that's who your potential customer will buy from. Don't let your competitor be the first to construct a web site. It takes months for a site to become visible in the Search Engines. Internet marketing is a track meet. Get off the blocks first! Satisfied Customers More Easily Tell Friends An email with your web site address is a lot easier than finding and faxing or mailing a brochure. A web site = easy, efficient referrals. A Web Site Beats Hiring A Salesperson When the number of clients generated by a web site are compared with advertising and salesforce costs, a web site provides a much higher Return On Investment (ROI). Customers Look For You On The Internet Using Google to find a person's or company's phone number or address is so popular it's called "Googling." Make sure you're there when you or your company is "Googled." The Best Customers Use The Internet Well-funded, well-equipped businesses use the Internet extensively for email and to gather information. These are the most valuable prospects- they have money to spend! If they can't find you, they may go somewhere else. Customers Investigate Before Making Contact The anonymity of the web has given the customer an advantage-they can investigate without personal contact and avoid repeated sales calls or giving away information through personal queries. They can visit your site and decide if you have the goods or service that they want. This also means that the customer who makes contact is "pre-qualified" - they already know you have what they want, making your job easier. Web Site ROI, Much Better Than Brochure ROI When the cost of creating, printing, distributing and updating a brochure is taken into consideration, your more-easily-maintained web site is a better investment. We know a brochure can be important, but, if you have a brochure you should have a web site. If you don't have a brochure, you should create a web site first. A Web Site Makes Your Business Card More Effective A business card is low-cost and gives your customer a way to remember you. But, the most common information kept is the email address and the web site address. You Can Tell Your Story Since you control your web site's contents, you can tell your complete story. It's the one arena you control absolutely. Most customers will not visit your offices and they may miss or ignore advertising. The secretary who answers the phone may flub the call. But you control absolutely how your web site presents itself. It serves as a credibility and competency check for every visitor. The Bottom Line Every business needs a web site. This may be most important for a small business that cannot afford missed opportunities and needs the most efficient way to conduct its affairs. What Should You Do? Already have a web site? If so, unext step is to make it visible by search engines SEO, Cygnus can help decide if anything more needs to be done. Don't have a web site? If this article makes business sense to you, contact us (info@cygnus-es.com-514.999.5303) and let's talk about what we can do for you. We can build a web site in stages, starting with a small site designed for easy, logical expansion as you gain more confidence in this new medium.
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Website Design
We are a web design company providing professional web design with a touch of art. We offer a full range of services including professional web design, affordable web design, custom web design, web page design web site design, web-design, web design services, and small business web design. Our design solutions We provide all inclusive solutions. This means that, besides domain and hosting assistance, maintenance, custom graphics and search engine submission, we include different valuable services at effective cost. Our design package -- Mail form (on request) -- Email riddles keep your site safe from spam -- Professional photography and illustrations to give your site an extra value -- Photo gallery or slideshow to display pictures on your web site -- Search engines submission: your site will be submitted to general search engines like AltaVista - AOL - Google - Lycos - MSN - Yahoo…etc -- Traffic tracker system keeps an eye on your site traffic -- Broadcast of your personal video and audio clips give your web site a warm and human touch For more information about our design please visit the www.portfolio.versatilesolution.com
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What the Search Engines Want.. and How to Give it to Them

What the Search Engines Want.. and How to Give it to Them

by Elizabeth Kirwin, Sidhe Communications
& Mike Pires, 4YourWebsite.com

One question which should concern all internet marketers is --- What are the search engines looking for? Search engines are based on computer logic, which sees information in text or numerical form, and has a hierarchical approach to font sizes, typefaces, and repetition of words or phrases. This article will give details about search engine preferences and explain how website content can be constructed to cater to these preferences to increase ranking on Google and other search engines.

Is Your Site a Template? Google Ranks these Sites Low

If your site is a template (mortgage, real estate, etc) and Google reads many sites repeated in the same format on the web, this picky search engine may kick your site from the top to the bottom of the list.

Repetition of Industry Keywords

Industry specific keywords can be harvested from website statistics programs or constructed from a strategic plan to draw the right traffic to a site. For example, a realtor would want to repeat the words retirement, relocation, and purchase a second home along with a geographic location to draw long distance homebuyers to their site. By repeating industry specific keywords, a company or organization may increase site ranking in Google. Article writing on a given topic is a very effective tool for placing repetitive keyword text on a home page.

Page Title, Headline, Subhead, Bolded Text

Choose your page titles very carefully and be sure that they include your most important keywords. Not only does this increase the relevance of your page to the search engines, but it also looks better in the search results. When your page title looks better in the search results more searchers will choose your page from the list of possibilities, the more searchers choose your page, the higher it will rank. Be sure to use your keywords liberally in a headline, in subheadings, in the first sentence of the page and in bolded text. This will help your page rank well, while at the same time reassuring the internet searcher that they have landed on a page that is pertinent to what they are looking for.

Graphic Name Tags and Keywords

If you were designing your web pages just for the search engine spiders you would not use graphics at all, but it is necessary to strike a balance between making a page that is pleasing to look at vs. one that will satisfy the search engines. Choose images for your page that also relate to your keywords and make sure that your keywords are in your image alt tag. Make your image alt text describes what the image actually is. Look at your page with the images turned off to be sure that all of your images have accurate, useful and keyword-rich descriptions.

Link Text

Link text is one of the most important ranking criteria. If you want to see how powerful link text is, try a Google search for "miserable failure". You will find George Bush's official bio and Michael Moore's home page at the top of the list even though neither page contains the phrase or even one of these words!

Keywords in Menu Items and other Internal Links

Internal links within a website direct users to your other pages. Keywords in menu items and other internal links are critical because search engines read them as another link. Don't waste links on text like "Click Here" or "This Page", use your keywords instead. Think of the link text as a vote to the search engines for what your website is about. When you vote make sure to use your keywords, if you won't vote for your own pages then who will?

Inbound Links

How many times is your website mentioned on the web? This is another way search engines rank sites. Each time your site is mentioned on the web, insert keywords to introduce the site instead of "for more information" or "click here". Also, be aware that when inbound links are embedded on other sites, your site rises in ranking - any link will help, but a link with your keyword(s) is best. Article writing and syndication on the web ensures that inbound links to your site (contained in bios) are resident on many sites. Writing and disseminating national press releases on the web is another way to increase the number of inbound links. Links to the website are repeated in the press release.

Outbound Links

Placement of links with websites of prominence is most important. This creates traffic. However, a savvy internet marketer will choose placement of links on web pages selectively, to increase company profits or an organization's visibility. Use outbound links that help an internet surfer find even more information about your target keywords and you will increase your website's level of authority for your keywords.

Reciprocal Links

The general consensus seems to be that reciprocal links don't really help your search engine ranking and, in fact, can actually hurt your page rank if you are not careful. Swap links with websites that are already ranked well for your keywords and/or sites that will use your keywords in their link text. This will generate quality traffic to your site even if it does not have an effect on your page rank. Don't link to sites that have nothing to do with the subject of your keywords and especially do not link to sites that are nothing but a bunch of uncategorized links, links to these free-for-all link farms can do more harm than good.

Planting Invisible or Tiny Text Behind Home Page

Uploading massive amounts of invisible keyword writing on the home page was once a favored tool of web designers. It is no longer a good idea to mask keywords on the page in any way. Search engines may be fooled at first and your site may land on top of the list for a while, but once filters are run to detect this, search engines may semi-blacklist your site or remove it from results completely. Avoid trying to trick the search engines and stick to techniques that enhance your website's usefulness and relevance to its target audience. The rankings, the traffic and the loyalty of your visitors will follow automatically.

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IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit

SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the important considerations that any Internet web-site needs to design with in mind.  A non-trivial percentage of Internet traffic to sites is driven by search engines, and good SEO techniques can help increase site traffic even further.

Likewise, small mistakes can significantly impact the search relevance of your site?s content and cause you to miss out on the traffic that you should be receiving.  Some of these mistakes include: multiple URLs on a site leading to the same content, broken links from a page, poorly chosen titles, descriptions, and keywords, large amounts of viewstate, invalid markup, etc.  These mistakes are often easy to fix - the challenge is how to discover and pinpoint them within a site.

Introducing the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit

Today we are shipping the first beta of a new free tool - the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit - that makes it easy to perform SEO analysis on your site and identify and fix issues within it.

You can install the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer I blogged about earlier this week.  You can install it through WebPI using the ?install now? link on the IIS SEO Toolkit home. 

Once installed, you?ll find a new ?Search Engine Optimization? section within the IIS 7 admin tool, and several SEO tools available within it:

The Robots and SiteMap tools enable you to easily create and manage robots.txt and sitemap.xml files for your site that help guide search engines on what URLs they should and shouldn?t crawl and follow.

The Site Analysis tool enables you to crawl a site like a search engine would, and then analyze the content using a variety of rules that help identify SEO, Accessibility, and Performance problems within it.

Using the IIS SEO Toolkit?s Site Analysis Tool

Let?s take a look at how we can use the Site Analysis tool to quickly review SEO issues with a site.  To avoid embarrassing anyone else by turning the tool loose on their site, I?ve decided to instead use the analysis tool on one of my own sites: www.scottgu.com.  This is a site I wrote many years ago (last update in 2005 I think).  If you install the IIS SEO Toolkit you can point it at my site and duplicate the steps below to drill into the SEO analysis of it.

Open the Site Analysis Tool

We?ll begin by launching the IIS Admin Tool (inetmgr) and clicking on the root node in the left-pane tree-view of the IIS7 admin tool (the machine name ? in this case ?Scottgu-PC?).  We?ll then select the ?Site Analysis? icon within the Search Engine Optimization section on the right.  Opening the Site Analysis tool at the machine level like this will allow us to run the analysis tool against any remote server (if we had instead opened it with a site selected then we would only be able to run analysis against local sites on the box). 

Opening the Site Analysis tool causes the below screen to display ? it lists any previously saved site analysis reports that we have created in the past.  Since this is the first time we?ve opened the tool, it is an empty list.  We?ll click the ?New Analysis?? action link on the right-hand side of the admin tool to create a new analysis report:

Clicking the ?New Analysis?? link brings up a dialog like below, which allows us to name the report as well as configure what site we want to crawl and how deep we want to examine it. 

We?ll name our new report ?scottgu.com? and configure it to start with the http://www.scottgu.com URL and then crawl up to 10,000 pages within the site (note: if you don?t see a ?Start URL? textbox in the dialog it is because you didn?t select the root machine node in the left-hand pane of the admin tool and instead opened it at the site level ? cancel out, select the root machine node, and then click the Site Analysis link).

When we click the ?Ok? button in the dialog above the Site Analysis tool will request the http://www.scottgu.com URL, examine the returned HTML content, and then crawl the site just like a search engine would.  My site has 407 different URLs on it, and it only took 13 seconds for the IIS SEO Toolkit to crawl all of them and perform analysis on the content that was downloaded. 

Once it is done it will open a report summary view detailing what it found.  Below you can see that it found 721 violations of various kinds within my site (ouch):

We can click on any of the items within the violations summary view to drill into details about them.  We?ll look into a few of them below.

Looking at the ?description is missing? violations

You?ll notice above that I have 137 ?The description is missing? violations.  Let?s double click on the rule to learn more about it and see details about the individual violations.  Double clicking the description rule above will open up a new query tab that automatically provides a filtered view of just the description violations (note: you can customize the query if you want ? and optionally export it into Excel if you want to do even richer data analysis):

Double clicking any of the violations in the list above will open up details about it.  Each violation has details about what exactly the problem is, and recommended action on how to fix it:

Notice above that I forgot to add a <meta> description element to my photos page (along with all the other pages too).  Because my photos page just displays images right now, a search engine has no way of knowing what content is on it.  A 25 to 150 character long description would be able to explain that this URL is my photo album of pictures and provide much more context. 

The ?Word Analysis? tab is often useful when coming up with description text.  This tab shows details about the page (its title, keywords, etc) and displays a list of all words used in the HTML within it ? as well as how many times they are duplicated.  It also allows you to see all two-word and three-word phrases that are repeated on the page.  It also lists the <a> text used on other page to link to this page ? all of which is useful to come up with a description:

Looking at the URL is linked using different casing violations

Let's now at the ?URL is linked using different casing? violations.  We can do this by going back to our summary report page and by then clicking on this specific rule violation:

Search engines count the number of pages on the Internet that link to a URL, and use that number as part of the weighting algorithm they use to determine the relevancy of the content the URL exposes.  What this means is that if 1000 pages link to a URL that talks about a topic, search engines will assume the content on that URL has much higher relevance than a URL with the same topic content that only has 10 people linking to it.

A lot of people don?t realize that search engines are case sensitive, though, and treat differently cased URLs as different actual URLs.  That means that a link to /Photos.aspx and /photos.aspx will often be treated not as one URL by a search engine ? but instead as two different URLs.  That means that if half of the incoming links go to /Photos.aspx and the other half go to /photos.aspx, then search engines will not credit the photos page as being as relevant as it actually is (instead it will be half as relevant ? since its links are split up amongst the two).  Finding and fixing any place where we use differently cased URLs within our site is therefore really important.

If we click on the ?URL is linked using different casing? violation above we?ll get a listing of all 104 URLs that are being used on the site with multiple capitalization casings:

Clicking on any of the URLs will pull up details about that specific violation and the multiple ways it is being cased on the site.  Notice below how it details both of the URLs it found on the site that differ simply by capitalization casing. In this case I am linking to this URL using a querystring parameter named "AlbumId".  Elsewhere on the site I am also linking to the URL using a querystring parameter named "albumid" (lower-case ?a? and ?i?).  Search engines will as a result treat these URLs as different, and so I won?t maximize the page ranking for the content:

Knowing there is a problem like this in a site is the first step. The second step is typically harder: trying to figure out all the different paths that have to be taken in order for this URL to be used like this.  Often you'll make a fix and assume that fixes everything - only to discover there was another path through the site that you weren't aware of that also causes the casing problem. To help with scenarios like this, you can click the "Actions" dropdown in the top-right of the violations dialog and select the "View Routes to this Page" link within it.

This will pull up a dialog that displays all of the steps the crawler took that led to the particular URL in question being executed. Below it is showing that it found two ways to reach this particular URL:

Being able to get details about the exact casing problems, as well as analyze the exact steps followed to reach a particular URL casing, makes it dramatically easier to fix these types of issues.

Looking at the page contains multiple canonical format violations

Fixing the casing issues like we did above is a good first step to improving page counts.  We also want to fix scenarios where the same content can be retrieved using URLs that differ by more than casing.  To do this we?ll return to our summary page and pull up the ?page contains multiple canonical format violations? report:

Drilling into this report lists all of the URLs on our site that can be accessed in multiple ?canonical? ways:

Clicking on any of them will pull up details about the issue. Notice below how the analysis tool has detected that sometimes we refer to the home page of the site as "/" and sometimes as "/Default.aspx". While our web-server will interpret both as executing the same page, search engines will treat them as two separate URLs - which means the search relevancy is not as high as it should be (since the weighting gets split up across two URLs instead of being combined as one).

We can see all of the cases where the /Default.aspx URL is being used by clicking on the ?Links? tab above.  This shows all of the pages that link to the /Default.aspx URL, as well as all URLs that it in turn links to:

We can switch to see details about where and how the related ?/? URL is being used by clicking the ?Related URLs? drop-down above ? this will show all other URLs that resolve to the same content, and allow us to quickly pull their details up as well:

Like we did with the casing violations, we can use the ?View Routes to this Page? option to figure out of all the paths within the site that lead to these different URLs and use this to help us hunt down and change them so that we always use a common consistent URL to link to these pages. 

Note: Fixing the casing and canonicalization issues for all internal links within our site is a good first step.  External sites might also be linking to our URLs, though, and those will be harder to all get updated.  One way to fix our search ranking without requiring the externals to update their links is to download and install the IIS URL Rewrite module on our web server (it is available as a free download using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer).  We can then configure a URL Rewrite rule that automatically does a permanent redirect to the correct canonical URL ? which will cause search engines to treat them as the same (read Carlos? IIS7 and URL Rewrite: Make your Site SEO blog post to learn how to do this). 

Looking up redirect violations

As a last step let?s look at some redirect violations on the site:

Drilling into this rule category reminded me of something I did a few years ago (when i transferred my blog to a different site) - that I just discovered was apparently pretty dumb. 

When I first setup the site I had originally had a simple blog page at: www.scottgu.com/blog.aspx  After a few weeks, I decided to move my blog to weblogs.asp.net/scottgu.  Rather than go through all my pages and change the link to the new address, I thought I?d be clever and just update the blog.aspx page to do a server-side redirect to the new weblogs.asp.net/scottgu URL. 

This works from an end-user perspective, but what I didn?t realize until I ran the analysis tool today was that search engines are not able to follow the link.  The reason is because my blog.aspx page is doing a server-side redirect to the weblogs.asp.net/scottgu URL.  But for SEO reasons of its own, the blog software (Community Server) on weblogs.asp.net is in turn doing a second redirect to fix the incoming weblogs.asp.net/scottgu URL to instead be http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/ (note the trailing slash is being added).

According to the rule violation in the Site Analysis tool, search engines will give up when you perform two server redirects in a row. It detected that my blog.aspx redirect links to an external link that in turn does another redirect - at which point the search engine crawlers give up:

I was able to confirm this was the problem without having to open up the server code of the blog.aspx page. All I needed to-do was click the "Headers" tab within the violation dialog and see the redirect HTTP response that the blog.aspx page sent back. Notice it doesn't have a trailing slash (and so causes Community Server to do another redirect when it receives it):

Fixing this issue is easy. I never would have realized I actually had an issue, though, without the Site Analysis tool pointing me to it.

Future Automatic Correction Support

There are a bunch of additional violations and content issues that the Site Analysis tool identified when doing its crawl of my web-site.  Identifying and fixing them is straight-forward and very similar to the above steps.  Each issue I fix makes my site cleaner, easier to crawl, and helps it have even higher search relevancy.  This in turn will generate an increase of traffic coming to my site from search engines ? which is a very cost effective return on investment.  Once a report is generated and saved, it will show up in the list of previous reports within the IIS admin tool.  You can at any point right-click it and tell the IIS SEO Toolkit to re-run it ? allowing you to periodically validate that no regressions have been introduced.

The preview build of the Site Analysis tool today verifies about 50 rules when it crawls a site.  Over time we?ll add more rules that check for additional issues and scenarios.  In future preview releases you?ll also start to see even more intelligence built-into the SEO Analysis tool that will allow it to also verify on the server-side that you have the URL Rewrite module installed with a good set of SEO-friendly rules configured.  The Site Analysis tool will also allow you to fix certain violations automatically by suggesting rewrite rules that you can add to your site from directly within the site analysis report tool (for example: to fix issues like the ?/? and ?/Default.aspx? canonicalization issue we looked at before).  This will make it even easier to help enforce good SEO on the site.  Until then, I?d recommend reading these links to learn more about manually configuring URL Rewrite for SEO:

• IIS7 and URL Rewrite: Make your Site SEO
• 10 URL Rewriting Tips and Tricks
• URL Rewrite Module
• URL Rewrite Walkthrough

Summary

The IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit makes it easy to analyze and assess how search engine friendly your web-site is.  It pinpoints SEO violations, and provides instructions on how to fix them.  You can learn more about the toolkit and how to best take advantage of it from these links:

• IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit Home (including download link)
• Walkthrough: Using Site Analysis to Crawl a Website
• Walkthrough: Using Site Analysis Reports
• Carlos Aguilar Mares? IIS Search Engine Optimization Blog Post (he is the guy who built it!)

The IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit is free, takes less than a minute to install, and can be run against any existing web-server or web-site.  There is no need to install anything on a remote server to use it ? just type in the URL of the site and you?ll get a report back a site analysis report with actionable items that that you can use immediately to improve it.

Today?s release is a beta release, so please use the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit Forum to let us know if you run into any issues or have feature suggestions.

Hope this helps,

Scott 

 

Full Article

6 Easy Ways to Increase your Adsense Revenue
How much revenue do you generate from Google Adsense?

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about people who earn over $10,000 a month just from Adsense. Furthermore, there are rumors of a few individuals who earn over $1 million a year just from using the power of Google advertisements.

So what is Google Adsense and how can you use this program to earn a six-figure income?

About two years ago, Google created this program to help websites to monetize their web-traffic.

Here's how it works:

Webmasters obtain a special code from Google which then displays targeted ads on their website. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of these ads, the webmaster earns a commission. Unlike other online businesses, there is no selling involved. All you need to do is get people to click on the ads.

Although this is an excellent way to generate an income, many websites are not effectively maximizing their Adsense potential. As a result, they are leaving a lot of cash on the table.

The question is how can you increase your Adsense revenue without increasing the number of web visitors?

The key to earning an income with Google Adsense is to have your ads match the rest of the site, making them look like part of your content. Your focus is to avoid having the Adsense blocks look like blatant advertisements.

The following are six ways that you can do this and increase your revenue at the same time:

1) Find the right place- Most website visitors read content that is in the middle of a webpage. As a result, the best place to put your Adsense block is in the top part of the page, at the beginning of your web content. You want to weave the Google Ads into your web content to give the appearance that they are extra links which expand on the information of the page.

2) Use the Large Rectangle-With Google Adsense, you have the option of picking different ad formats. Most of the time people opt to use the Leaderboard (728x90) or Wide Skyscraper (160x600) style ads. Unfortunately, this is the wrong choice, because both look like blatant advertisements. Instead smart webmasters have found that using the Large Rectangle (336x280) yields the best amount of click-thrus.

3) Ditch the border- Many people experience a sharp increase in Adsense revenue when they changing their border. What they change is very simple…they get rid of the border on their Adsense blocks. This is another way to make the advertisements look like useful web content.

4) Adapt the font- Whenever you write content, it should be the same font size and style as your Google Adsense block. This will help make it appear that the advertisements are a natural part of your website.

5) Match the colors- In addition to changing the fonts, you also should match the colors of your website. For instance, if your content is written in black, and your hyperlinks are blue, then the Adsense blocks should also be the same color. Again, this helps the advertisements appear to be normal web content.

6) Don't have too many distractions- On a webpage, it is important to give web visitor a limited number of options. By having too many links and graphics, the web visitor might go to a section that doesn't help increase your profits. While it is important to inform and entertain your web visitor, it is also vital that you monetize your site. So if the main focus of your site is to earn an income through Google Adsense, then get rid of all non-essential links and graphics.

By taking the time to implement these six simple steps, you'll see a dramatic increase in the click-thru ratio of your ads. If added to all of the content of your site, your Adsense income will skyrocket!



Google... one of the Internets MOST powerful search engines recently announced a new FREE service that makes it easier for you to improve your websites coverage within Googles index through its NEW collaborative crawling system.

On the down side though, Google does not 'Guarantee' immediate inclusion, But, is still good news for those of you who have just finished building a website and are ready to submit to the top search engines.

So, what's this NEW service called that Google just released?

It's called "Google Sitemaps".

The real cool thing about "Google Sitemaps" IS it accepts RSS(Real Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds with the .XML extension as one of the accepted formats for submitting your websites Sitemap for inclusion in Googles index.

This is just one of the four formats Google accepts and is the one that I'm going to use for the rest of this article to show you how to generate your own .XML sitemap of your website for inclusion in Google.
It's real easy to do so don't worry about it being to complicated.

So, with that said, lets go to Step #1.

Step #1. Sign up for "Google Sitemaps".


This step is easy, simply follow the link provide below and sign up for a Free account. It should only take you a few minutes to do, then once your done, come back here and go to Step #2.

Go to: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Step #2. Generate your .XML sitemap.

In this step your going to generate a .XML sitemap for your website using a Free online sitemap generator.

This Free online generator will build you a sitemap up to 500 pages. If you have a larger website with thousands of webpages you'll have to use a paid service and/or software to generate yours.

Go to: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com

Enter your required information on the form provided.


Step #3. Upload your generated .XML sitemap to your server.

Once your generated sitemap is finished(your generated .XML file should be called site.xml.gz) it's now time to upload it to your server using your FTP(File Transfer Protocol) program.


This is very important that you do this before submitting it to Google Sitemaps for inclusion.

Step #4. Submit your NEW .XML sitemap to "Google Sitemaps".


Now that you have generated your "Sitemap" for your website and uploaded it to your server all you have to do now is to go to "Google Sitemaps" and submit your sitemap URL.

(ex. http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.gz)



That's it.

Now, depending on Google, your sitemap should get downloaded within the next 24 hours, so be sure to check and see that it did and that there wasn't any problems or errors.

Also, your going to want to be able to track your indexed webpages within the search engines, especially Google, so you can see how things are going, so I'll leave you with one last resource that will do this for you.

Go to: http://www.uptimebot.com

All you have to do is enter your URL and click "GO".


The results page will list the results from Google and 9 other popular search engines.

Well, there you have it... "4 Quick and EASY Steps To Getting Your Website IN Through Googles 'Back Door'".




How to Make Every AdSense Ad on the Google Network Pay You!
by: Diane Nassy

Wouldn’t it be great if every keyword in Google’s entire inventory could be relevant to your site? Imagine that no matter what any person searched for, all of the ads that came up in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) paid you whenever someone clicked on them.

Sound good to you? That’s great. I think it sounds pretty cool as well, so let’s get busy making it happen for your web site.

Here’s a very much overlooked opportunity for AdSense users

That opportunity is called Google Search and this is how it works:

Tucked inside of your AdSense control panel is a section for creating a Google search box. Most AdSense users don’t even pay attention to it, and that’s a shame because hidden inside of that box is a lot of money that’s wanting to be yours.

When you add that search box to your web site you are creating an instant portal into Google’s entire keyword inventory. Any time a visitor runs a Google search from your site, every resulting AdWord ad that appears on the SERPs is tagged back to you. That means that no matter which ads they click on, money goes in your pocket. Got that? What an amazing earning opportunity.

By combining AdSense with the Google search box you open yourself up to an incredible opportunity to monetize your site. In fact, many AdSense users say that they earn more money from searches then they do from AdSense ads on their own page. And it makes sense when you think about it.

A clever idea gets even better

Just as you would expect, Google doesn’t leave you hanging without support or some great ways to make even more money. Take a look at the features and options that you can set up right from within your AdSense control panel.

Customized look and feel

You can grab the standard Google search box and be up and running in seconds. Or you can add your logo and make the box match your site’s color scheme with over 200 available colors.

Control the scope of your user’s search

You can configure the search box to search just your site or the entire Google network. It’s your choice. You can even provide your visitors with radio buttons that let them perform either search. No matter which search they choose, you’re making money every time they click on an ad.

Google will even host your internal site search result pages for you so you don’t have to spend a penny buying extra bandwidth or disk space from your ISP. How’s that for user-friendly?

Online Tracking Tools

Of course, Google also provides you with online tracking and reporting tools so you can see how well your shiny new search box is doing for you. You can see your queries, clicks, click-through rate and total earnings just like with your AdSense for Content ads.

So if you’re not earning money from every ad in Google’s inventory, log into your AdSense control panel and make it happen.

About the author:
Diane provides marketing and internet profit tips.
For more Google AdSense tips, visit http://google-earn-money.blogspot.com/
Email : koolpspasion@gmail.com



Where’s the best place to put Google Adsense Ads?


Why, on your web pages of course. Ok, just kidding. The real question should be: “Is there really any truth to the rumors that where you place those Google AdSense ads can actually improve response?” According to my best information, the answer to that question is: Yes.

Google’s own AdSense experts say that that there is a direct correlation between the placement of the AdSense ads and the resulting clickthrough.

When ads are placed in “content zones”, rather than in “advertising zones”, response rates on Google AdWords goes up. There are also indications showing that ads appearing on the right side of the page get clicked more than ads appearing on the left side.

Advertising analysts with degrees in human behavior and psychology have spent thousands of man-years (people-years?) studying how people read printed and Internet content and what it takes to get them to respond to ads. While some of these studies are proprietary, or are only available to anyone with $10,000 or more to spend on a copy, other studies have been made public and can be read by anyone who is interested.

Google themselves has released some relevant information which is focused directly on increasing your Google AdSense response. You can read their findings here
(https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html).

Of course, all of the studies in the world aren’t worth a hill of beans if the findings don’t work on your web site. That’s why it is important to test, test and test again. Experiment with your Google AdSense placement and track the results over a period of time. Google provides response tracking tools in your AdSense control panel. Learn how to use them. As you begin to see what may be only subtle differences in response, you’ll be able to determine what works best for your particular site. But don’t get complacent. What’s working for you now might not work next month if you change your site design or content.

One of the most important factors in determining placement of your ads is the type of content that your site delivers. If you are primarily an e-commerce site, and you have a lot of pictures and ad copy for your own products competing for attention against AdSense ads, then it is going to be a particularly tough challenge getting any kind of decent Google AdSense clickthrough. It is situations like this that require very thorough testing and a lot of trial and error.

Blogs seem to have a lot of success generating high response rates to Google AdSense listings. Perhaps it’s because blog readers realize that ad revenue is the only way that their favorite blogmaster can keep the lights on, so the readers think of clicking on ads as a way to make a donation.

Regardless of what the experts say, your best bet is to tailor your Google AdSense ad placement to what your own experience shows works best for you. In the end, you’re the only expert who matters.

Google AdSense and Blogs
by: Diane Nassy

If you have a blog, or are thinking about starting a blog, then you are definitely going to want to read this article. It’s all about how to line your pockets with money that’s just waiting to be made without working much harder than you already are.


No only are blogs the hottest thing on the ‘net right now, but they are custom-made for Google’s AdSense program. Why? It’s simple. Blogs represent constantly changing and fresh content to Google’s search engine spiders. Feeding fresh content to those little spiders is just like tossing raw meat to a tiger. They just gobble it up. The more pages of your blog that get indexed, the more traffic you get. And the more traffic you get, the more exposure your AdSense ads get. Are you beginning to see where I’m heading here?

It’s not just Google that loves new content, all of the major engines do. In fact, some web-savvy bloggers are testing Google ads on one page and Overture ads on the other. It doesn’t take too long to see which ads are doing the best when you have nearly side-by-side comparison statistics to look at. Just don’t make the mistake of putting Google and Overture ads on the same page together. While they won’t kill each other like a pair of Siamese fighting fish in the same bowel will, you will be violating both sites’ Terms of Service, and it isn’t worth killing the goose (geese) that laid the golden egg.

It’s a snap to set up Google AdSense ads on your blog. Everything you need to know is right inside of the Google control panel. What’s not so easy is figuring out what ads are going to appear on each page. Since Google targets your key words, and your blog articles could possible wander towards any subject, you never know what you’re going to get.

Well, “never” is a strong word because there actually IS a way to pre-test your blog’s ads before you post your newest edition. Here’s what you do:

• Write your blog article like you normally would
• Plug in your AdSense code and then post your newest page to a sub directory that’s not part of your blog.

• Click refresh a few times until Google wakes up and starts sending ads.
• If you don’t like what you see then fine-tune the article until you see the
types of ads that you’re looking for.


With some ads paying as much as $5 per click or more, I’d certainly spend an extra 30 minutes or so tweaking my blog. That’s for sure.

If you’re working hard to get your blog in front of visiting eyeballs, then it doesn’t make any sense at NOT to be using Google AdSense to draw every penny out of your site that’s possible. OK, that’s the end of the article. Now get busy tweaking your blog and checking your ads. You’ve got money waiting to be made!
Full Article

Back to Basics: Making Sense of Internet Insanity - use of Internet-based marketing within art industry and online resources
Back to Basics: Making Sense of Internet Insanity - use of Internet-based marketing within art industry and online resources
Art Business News

Learn what the growing presence of the Web will mean for brick-and-mortar galleries

A visit to the Internet search engine Yahoo! is all it takes to see how intertwined the art and Internet worlds have become. Type the word "art" in the search space at Yahoo! and you're told that there are 39,999 sites for you to visit. That's 39,999 now; at the rate that artists and galleries are creating new home pages, that number could topple 50,000 next year.

Amid the thousands of Web sites and millions of pieces of artwork for sale on the Internet, analysts say it is impossible to determine what revenue art has generated on the Internet. The growth of art Web sites is a sign that there is money to be made.

But if people are buying art on the Internet, does that mean it's coming at the expense of the local gallery or frame shop? Not exactly. While it's far too early to determine how the rapid expansion of art and frame sales on the Internet will shake out for "brick-and-mortar" stores, it is clear that the Web could add to gallery and frame shops' bottom lines.

What is clear is the art industry is making a decided shift into the online world. With a click of a button, a customer sitting at home or work can have a framed Ernesto Rodriguez landscape print with a black wood frame and ivory mat shipped to their doorstep for $400.

And online art buying isn't the only change the Internet is creating. In October OneMade.com launched an online art and crafts festival where Internet browsers and buyers shopped for one-of-a-kind handmade works. Many museums already have online stores and larger museums, like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, allow an online visitor to view a number of paintings in various collections in crisp, clear color.

The Internet has gained importance in all levels of the art world, from $50 prints to $40,000 works of art. But where do you turn to get your feet wet before diving into the online art world?

First, it may be comforting to know that there are two distinctly different Web sites out there serving the art community--one, is the business-to-customer (B2C) site, the second is business-to-business (B2B).

B2B, sites are geared toward businesses working with businesses before products reach the end user. Those differ from B2C sites that sell items online directly to the customer.

FrameYourArt.com is one of those business-to-business sites in the industry. Charging a monthly fee to members, now approximately 1,000 `mom and pop' frame shops,

In this world of dot.com mania, there are literally hundreds of Web sites devoted to art, so singling out a single one is tough. But in an effort to get you plugged in, here's a glimpse at three sites that offer Web opportunities for galleries and publishers.

ALL ART PORTAL ART AFFAIRS
www.allartportal.com www.artaffairs.com

MISSION STATEMENT The site is A Web portal for the
dedicated to the global professional art
needs of publishers, and framing community,
photographers, art ArtAffairs.com features
buyers, a directory and exposure
manufacturers and and access to databases
the independent of prospective art and
frame shop and moulding trade clients,
gallery owner. suppliers and publishers
Meeting needs by with no third party
providing software, involvement.
support and service
and creating
profitable
relationships is a
company goal.

TARGETED FOR A true B2B and B2C The site is strictly B2B
site, it allows and is targeted at the
consumers to buy art art and framing
online but links industries, publishers
those customers and distributors and
directly to frame galleries, not the
shops in their area. general public.
The local frame shop
makes the sale.
AllArtPortal.com
makes its revenue
from participating
frame shops paying a
membership fee.

SETS THEM APART Under the ArtAffairs.com will be
AllArtPortal.com circulating a printed
umbrella is Frame version of its Web site
YourArt.com, a site to further promote
that offers members business activities and
exclusive sales on new product
wholesale art and announcements as they
framing products. take place online. With
The site is also the launch of
designed as a ArtAffairs.com's new
centralized site for e-commerce center, the
art professionals buying and selling of
and offers a variety art and art supplies
of features designed will become the primary
to help art focus of the site.
professionals
navigate the Web and
stay on top of the
news.

QUOTE FROM THE Al Marco, c.e.o.: Meir Gluzberg, director:
PRESIDENT "The moment I "Our site will soon
started the Web focus strictly on the
site, I had the business to business
small businesses in aspect. We have a more
mind. Our mission is global view with offices
facilitating the off in Europe and Asia, and
line with the online we believe we will offer
community." our customers the
greatest price
advantages."

SPECIAL FEATURE You can look up The "Take a Poll"
stock quotes and the feature allows visitors
site offers a direct to cast a vote on
link to the Weather certain art-related
Channel's Web site. questions. The site also
has a "Today in Art
History" section and a
"Quote of the Day."

ART WORLD COMMUNITY
www.artworldcommunity.com

MISSION STATEMENT ArtWorldCommunity.com is a place for consumers,
art enthusiasts, artists and businesses in the
art and framing industry to come together for
commerce, education, entertainment and
information. The community is separated into two
distinct sites called the Art World Marketplace,
which is open to the public and the Art and
Framing Exchange, a password protected site for
trade only.

TARGETED FOR The Web portal is attempting to bring the
fragmented art industry into one global online art
community marketplace and to uncover e-commerce
potential. The site has the feel of a financial or
commodity exchange where art is the commodity.

SETS THEM APART The site is very consumer oriented and offers
various auctions that offer fine art, jewelry,
housewares and a host of other products.

QUOTE FROM THE Steve Addi, c.e.o.: "We don't see a lot of new
PRESIDENT players coming into the online art world. The cost
to get involved is too prohibitive and the sites
are up and running now clearly have a huge
advantage."

SPECIAL FEATURE A host of features geared toward the financial
aspect of art, including a "Currency Conversion"
section and a news ticker.
Advice for Building Your Own Site

Steven Sams could be the new face of the modern struggling artist. By day, he is a Web site designer, steeped in the world of technology designing Web sites for businesses. By night, he switches gears to his passion and picks up a paint brush. He's a struggling artist--not financially, but artistically--hoping that an audience finds his work.

But Sams isn't waiting for customers to come to him. More than a year ago, Sams, who lives in Atlanta, used his day job to help out his evening passion by creating a Web site to showcase more than a dozen of his original works." I saw the huge potential the Internet provided," he said.

So did Haruo Kimura, owner of East Frames store in Brooklyn, N.Y. East Frames, a small, independent frame shop specializing in custom frame jobs, unveiled a Web site in 1996. Like Sams, Kimura built the East Frames site himself. Unlike Sams, Kimura isn't a professional Web designer.

"It took time, but I did it myself and I have gotten a pretty good response from it," Kimura said. "I get e-mails from all over the world that I obviously never would have received without the Web site."

As computers and the art world head down paths that appear to becoming more intertwined, many small gallery owners, artists and dealers want to have a presence on the Internet but wonder how to take the first step. While the easy answer is money--paying someone to design a home page for your business--there are ways to be "on the net" and not sink wads of cash into it.

While Sams is a professional Web designer, he's the first person to tell people that writing a big check to a Web designer isn't necessary for a gallery or artist to have a home page.

"Software that will walk you through building a Web site is available for under $100, and you can buy a scanner for less than $100. An ISP (Internet Service Provider) will cost $20 a month. An artist or gallery could get a simple home page up for around $200," Sams said.

Sams is partial to Microsoft Front Page, software ideal for creating a corporate Internet or Intranet site. A 45-day trial CD costs about $12, including shipping, at www.microsoft.com.

Time, more than money, is the cost of doing the job on your own, both men said. But the alternative can run thousands of dollars spent on a professional Web designer. Kimura gives this advice: don't expect a perfect Web site the first day it's up and running. The East Frames site improved over time as Kimura became more familiar with design and pulled advice from his friends.

Meanwhile, Sams would tell small businesses to give designing a Web site on their own a go before turning to a paid professional. "As a small business owner, I'd be looking to save money, and Web designers aren't cheap," he said. the site sells prints and frames to customers online. The orders are then filled at the closest member frame shop to the customer ordering the art.

Though the print, frame or both are ordered online at FrameYourArt.com, the order is filled at a member frame shop. Thus the online world and the brick-and-mortar worlds meet.

"Our mission is to facilitating the off line with the online community," said Al Marco, president and c.e.o.

A player in the business-to-consumer side in the online world is Artnet.com, featuring a stable of thousands of artists to choose from. Customers can click on any artist's name and see a sample of his or her work for sale. Buying is as simple as a mouse click and entering credit card information.

But ArtNet.com is also a business-to-business site as the company matches 1,100 galleries, 25,000 works of art and more than 10,000 artists with buyers worldwide.

GalleryRow.com offers work of hundreds of artists along with live auctions, exclusive art and featured works that change periodically.

"We provide artists with connections and speed with our backbone being marketing and advertising," said Wayne Melton, spokesman for GalleryRow.com. "For an artist to create what we provide them on the Internet we estimate it would cost $25,000."

What is a Virtual Gallery?

They're called "virtual galleries" and they are popping up all over the Internet as fast as you can say "www.buy-my-art.com." Some are beautiful Web sites with clear graphics and e-newsletters, others are simple Internet stops with little description and unclear images. The galleries also range in size from the massive Galleryrow.com that can show the works of thousands of artists all the way down to www.jasonejones. com, an online gallery for one artist--Jason E. Jones.

"The Internet is a wonderful tool because it allows me to reach people I would never have come in contact with," said Jones, an artist who lives in Chicago."I know that in the long run, the amount of people I could reach is enormous."

For those in the art world who aren't familiar with an online gallery, imagine visiting a traditional gallery and staring at a painting on the wall. Now shrink the painting down to a two-by two-inch square and imagine it appearing on your computer screen. While you walk from room to room in a gallery, on the computer each click of the mouse takes you to a new artist or a new painting. Sure you don't get to see the original up close. You can't view it hanging on a wall or run your fingers against the frame, but you can see all the works by Jones in a matter of minutes.

To get a larger scope of how prevalent art is on the Internet go to eBay.com and visit the Fine Art page. There, the type of art you want is broken down to dozens of subjects, styles and collections. On eBay.com, a search under "acrylic works" yields more than 50 paintings; in the prints section, customers can choose from more than 100 pieces. Ebay.com also provides links to auction houses, where bids can be made.

Still, the online art world is far from problem free. "There will always be a problem in selling original works over the Internet for a myriad of reasons," said Jerry Toefel, a private art broker. "But some of the weaknesses that come with buying work on the Internet could be turned around into positives."

Toefel compared buying art over the Internet to buying clothes online. If the company offers good service, a flexible return policy and competitive prices, people will use the Internet to buy.

"For someone to buy a $200 print online, have it mailed to their house and hang it on the wall and, if they don't like it, can easily return it, that will be tough for the brick-and-mortar stores to compete with," he said. "But the type of buyer I deal with won't buy online. But they would certainly research the painter and take a look at the photos of the pieces online."

"I didn't think [the Internet] would be met with such open arms by the art world. That said, the galleries will always be here, but they will compete more and more with the dot.coms," he said.
Full Article

Cyber-democracy or cyber-hegemony? Exploring the political and economic structures of the Internet as an alternative source of information
Cyber-democracy or cyber-hegemony? Exploring the political and economic structures of the Internet as an alternative source of information
Library Trends

ABSTRACT

Although government regulation of the Internet has been decried as undercutting free speech, the control of Internet content through capitalist gateways--namely, profit-driven software companies--has gone largely uncriticized. The author argues that this discursive trend manufactures consent through a hegemonic force neglecting to confront the invasion of online advertising or marketing strategies directed at children. This study suggests that "inappropriate content" (that is, nudity, pornography, obscenities) constitutes a cultural currency through which concerns and responses to the Internet have been articulated within the mainstream. By examining the rhetorical and financial investments of the telecommunications business sector, the author contends that the rhetorical elements creating "cyber-safety" concerns within the mainstream attempt to reach the consent of parents and educators by asking them to see some Internet content as value laden (sexuality, trigger words, or adult content), while disguising the interests and authority of profitable computer software and hardware industries (advertising and marketing). Although most online "safety measures" neglect to confront the emerging invasion of advertising/marketing directed at children and youth, the author argues that media literacy in cyberspace demands such scrutiny. Unlike measures to block or filter online information, students need an empowerment approach that will enable them to analyze, evaluate, and judge the information they receive.

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According to figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau (2001), more than half of school-age children (6 to 17 years) had access to computers both in school and at home in the year 2000 (57 percent). With some 17 million children using the Internet in some capacity, including email, the Web, chat rooms, and instant messaging (Silver and Garland, 2004, p. 158), the Census Bureau estimates that 21 percent use the Internet to perform school-related tasks, such as research for assignments or taking courses online.

While these statistics underscore the growth and popularity of the Internet, particularly in schools and educational institutions, concerns have grown about the "safety" of using computer-mediated communication technology. Since the Internet became a mass medium in 1995, parents and schools have approached online content with reservation. As such, politicians, educators, child advocacy groups, and, most importantly, the computer industry, have been vocal advocates for patrolling the Internet and censoring certain kinds of illicit or objectionable content. Beginning in the late 1990s, Federal Trade Commission member Christine Varney summarized the emerging concerns about online safety:

All of us agree that children's online safety concerns are real and
pressing and that we must support the involvement of parents
raising children in this new, digital age. We understand that we
must all work together--industry, law enforcement, educators,
advocates--if American families are to realize the potential of this
new medium for enriching the lives of our children and fostering
their future success. (Rubin and Lamb, 1997)
Starting in 1997, an Internet/Online Summit was held in Washington, D.C., to enhance the safety and benefits of cyberspace for children and families. Key political figures, such as former vice president Al Gore and former attorney general Janet Reno, joined parents, as well as politicians, law enforcement officials, and educational administrators, to launch a national public education campaign, "America Links Up: An Internet Teach-In," designed to help Americans understand how to guide kids online (Rubin & Lamb, 1997).

On October 21, 1998, former president Bill Clinton signed into law the "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act" (COPPA). This measure was enacted by Congress on April 21, 2000, to "prohibit unfair or deceptive acts or practices in connection with the collection, use, or disclosure of personally identifiable information from and about children on the Internet" under the age of thirteen (Grossman, 2000). Along this trajectory, Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Neighborhood Internet Protection Act (NCIPA) in December 2000, which required schools and libraries that receive federal money for Internet connections to adopt Internet safety policies in 2001. The proposed safety measures include usage agreements for proper student use of this medium, audit-tracking devices to supervise student Internet perusal, and software filtration devices designed to block inappropriate sites in schools (Trotter, 2001).

In 2002 the Bush administration proposed a "National Strategy to Secure Cyber Space," offering security recommendations for U.S. citizens, businesses, and organizations using computers (Carlson, 2002). Since then the Federal Trade Commission has offered testimony before special committees and the House of Representatives about online pornography through a series of "law enforcement actions against fraud artists whose deceptive or unfair practices involve exposing consumers, including children, to unwanted pornography on the Internet" (Federal Trade Commission, 2004, p. 1).

In addition to these federal initiatives, many states have measures designed to protect children from online predators. In Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott added more investigators to the Texas Internet Bureau to keep kids safe from those who use online means to prey on children. As Assistant Attorney General Sparks explained, "The Attorney General wants the public to know that he's tasking people with patrolling the Internet and trying to make it safe for kids; the down side is that more and more children on a daily basis are getting online and on the Internet and as every additional child gets on, that's one more potential target" (quoted in Ochoa, 2003).

Likewise, educators have expressed concerns about online information overload. According to one school administrator, accessing the Internet in schools is less predictable: "If you used to bring your class to the school library, you pretty much had a sense of what was available for the children to research; now you have no idea ... they are going to hit sites that are appropriate and sites that are inappropriate" (quoted in Shyles, 2003, p. 176).

Despite a commitment to online "security" in schools, libraries, and homes from so many constituents, few recommendations have materialized into solid strategies or funding initiatives. Almost all of the proposed solutions and policies ignore the more relevant question of how private computer companies, Internet service providers, corporations, and governments stand to gain financially and politically by deciding what kind of information will be "censored" and what kind will be promoted. In fact, it could be argued that the Internet content "crisis" dominating public policy and mainstream media coverage has produced a cultural climate ripe for the commercial exploitation of parents and educators. In this article I argue that such a discursive trend manufactures consent through a hegemonic force that overlooks the invasion of advertising or marketing strategies targeted at young people online. By examining the rhetorical and financial investments of the telecommunications business sector, I contend that the mainstream articulation of "Internet safety" invites parents and educators to regard some Internet content as value-laden (sexuality, obscene language), while disguising the interests and authority of profit-minded commercial enterprise (advertising and marketing).

What is more, the democratic potential of the Internet as a means to accessing alternative information and perspectives otherwise absent from the mainstream media continues to be threatened by the consolidation of increasingly powerful global media giants, such as Time Warner and Microsoft, which have much to gain from controlling the content Internet users access at home or at school. Consequently, an examination of the political and economic forces on the Internet is necessary for librarians and educators interested in understanding the benefits and limits of the Internet as a means of alternative communication.

EXPLORING THE MEANS TO FILTERING ONLINE CONTENT

Parental Guidance

As a result of this discourse, a number of solutions have been advanced to ward off illicit content appearing on the computer screens of young Internet users, beginning with parental guidance. CyberTipLine grew out of the 1997 Internet/Online Summit and is currently in operation today. Run by the U.S. government and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, parents can notify authorities of incidents of online child pornography and child predation. Another derivative of the summit's "America Links Up" project is the industry-sponsored "GetNetWise" Web site, which was launched in 1999. The "user empowerment" service, which involves a coalition of numerous Internet industry partners and advocacy organizations, (1) offers parental advice, including information about filters to block sexually explicit material, as well as a variety of tools to help parents and caregivers monitor a child's online activities and find browsers for kid-friendly sites. As one sponsor, AT&T, notes in its promotional material, "Our involvement with GetNetWise reflects our commitment to help users have the best possible online experience" (GetNetWise, 2004).

A more well-known parental guidance initiative, passed in April 2000, was the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In accordance with COPPA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation offers "A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety," which advises parents to "utilize parental controls provided by your service provider and/or blocking software" and "Monitor your child's access to all types of live electronic communications (chat rooms, instant messages, Internet Relay Chat, etc.), and monitor your child's email" (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2004).

Other parental guidance measures have been created to address online advertising and marketing as well as issues of privacy. Parent advocacy groups, such as Commercial Alert, Consumer Action, the Center for Media Education, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, have taken up the cause of parents concerned about online marketing measures targeted at children. For example, Commercial Alert has made requests to the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to require disclosure of embedded advertising in a variety of media and has created a "Parent's Bill of Rights" seeking to empower parents in the face of an aggressive commercial culture (Commercial Alert, 2003).

Proof-of-Age/Shielding Systems

In addition to parental guidance, many online providers and Webmasters have adopted proof-of-age/shielding systems that use credit card access as another means of content filtering. While COPPA sought to protect children thirteen and under, those located in the fourteen to eighteen year range were not covered by legislation. Providing proof of age before being allowed to access the content of a desired online site emerged as a means to address this gap. This system works in the same way that fraud-screening technology works: merchants collect user information at their Web sites for instant age or identity verification. Once online users submit their name, zip code, date of birth, and age, they are checked through an international electronic database of government-issued identifications. This allows site providers or merchants to determine the consumer's identity within seconds. Sometimes additional measures, such as online name signature, are required so that user signatures are bound to a public record.

Proprietary Environments

Another reaction to the discourse of online safety has been the advocacy of proprietary environments, where content is screened by editors into specific categories. For example, the leading Internet service provider, America Online (AOL), provides a blocking service that allows users (ostensibly parents) to limit a child's selected screen name to either a "Kids Only" area, which is recommended for children under twelve, or to a preteen/teen environment, with restricted use of chat rooms or newsgroups. According to the site, "Kids Only" is a collection of educational resources and entertainment areas as well as a preselected collection of child-oriented Internet sites, with AOL staff monitoring of message boards and chat rooms. AOL also promotes the company's "Parental Phone Line" for instructions and advice on choosing and maintaining the settings of this product (the premise here is that the settings are likely to be tampered with by savvy teens and preteens).

In addition to "Kids Only," AOL has aggressively marketed its AOL@School service, which had been adopted by more than 14,000 schools by 2004 (Williams, 2003). AOL@School offers six online learning portals for grades K-5, middle school, and high school so that students can access Web sites that have been preselected by educators as content and age appropriate. The software needed to access the portals comes with AOL's "parental controls" designed to "help ensure a safe, secure, age-appropriate experience" that can include school-controlled email, chat, and instant messaging (AOL, 2004). The popularity of "child safe" proprietary environments has not waned as Web browsers and popular search engines have created their own directories in an attempt to create safe havens for (and develop customer loyalty from) younger online users. Yahooligans' "Web Guide for Kids" is a collection of predominantly commercial links to online games, music, TV, science, news, jokes, "cool pages," arts and entertainment, and sports. Like most commercial proprietary environments, Yahooligans is riddled with advertisements and synergistic ties to commercial media products.

Internet Ratings Systems

For those seeking additional regulatory measures, Internet rating systems offer another approach. Unlike the rating system for television content that is uniformly and centrally organized by the television industry, Internet ratings are not assigned consistently by a centralized group of online content providers. The goal is the same, however: industry self-regulation over government regulation. According to ratings system advocates, many of whom work in the software and computer industry, Internet ratings are designed to make it "safe" for schools and parents to let their children access nonpornographic material without government directives. According to Paul Resnick, chairman of the World Wide Web Consortium group at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, which includes AT&T Laboratories and Microsoft, the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) was originally created to allow parents, teachers, and librarians to review questionable materials that they would not want their children to come across on the Internet (Resnick, 1997).

Resnick explains, "prior to PICS there was no standard format for labels, so companies that wished to provide access control had to both develop the software and provide the labels. PICS provides a common format for labels, so that any PICS-compliant selection software can process any PICS-compliant label" (Resnick, 1997, p. 107). Yet unlike uniform rating labels,

a single site or document may have many labels, provided by
different organizations. Consumers choose their selection software
and their label sources (called rating services) independently.
This separation allows both markets to flourish: companies that
prefer to remain value-neutral can offer selection software
without providing any labels; values-oriented organizations,
without writing software, can create rating services that provide
labels. (Resnick, 1997, p. 107)

One of the leading Internet rating systems that uses PICS is SafeSurf, a group that offers ratings along with other tools to help parents and "net citizens" filter online information. One means to achieving its goal is to encourage online content providers to fill out a questionnaire using content descriptors to rate their Web sites. Unlike government- or industry-wide regulatory labeling efforts that may "brand" content, SafeSurf is interested in maintaining First Amendment rights by offering content providers greater latitude to self-rate their Web material. For example, rather than branding content that includes nudity as pornographic, users can distinguish their inclusion of nudity as scientific, sociocultural, artistic, titillating, graphic, or illegal. Once content providers rate their Web sites or directories, they can download the SafeSurf rated logo of their choice. A SafeSurf staff member verifies the rating and sets up the chosen ratings label. Parents and educators can then use PICS compliant software/browsers to read the settings and to use the ratings to filter content that is not desired. As the SafeSurf group explains, "PICS allows content providers to rate their pages and parents to set passwords and levels for their children. Then, PICS compliant software/browsers will read the settings and use the ratings to filter content that is not desired" (SafeSurf, 2004a).

The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is another international, independent, nonprofit organization that seeks to "empower the public, especially parents, to make informed decisions about electronic media by means of the open and objective labeling of content" (ICRA, 2004). ICRA's dual aims are to "protect children from potentially harmful material and to protect free speech on the internet." Like SafeSurf, Web authors complete an online questionnaire describing the content of their site, upon which ICRA generates a content label using PICS computer coding, which the author adds to his/her site. Parents and Internet users can then set their Internet browser to accept or decline access to Web sites based on the labels and user preferences. PICS is now a standard feature included in Internet software and browsers such as Microsoft Explorer.

Third-Party Rating Systems

While ratings systems are designed to allow content providers to voluntarily label the content they create and distribute, third-party rating systems "enable multiple, independent labeling services to associate additional labels with content created and distributed by others. Services may devise their own labeling systems, and the same content may receive different labels from different services" (ICRA, 2004). In other words, online watchdog groups interested in protecting children from online predators or illicit material can offer their own set of restrictive control tools for material that they deem to be objectionable. One such group is WiredSafety, formerly known as CyberAngels, led by Parry Aftab, an experienced international attorney and author of The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your Children In Cyberspace and A Parent's Guide to the Internet. Lauded as "one of Internet safety's most influential players," (Hill, 2000), Aftab has emerged as a nonprofit leader who has created coalitions with many governmental and nongovernmental agencies, including the FBI's Innocent Images anti-child pornography and exploitation task force. She was appointed the founding American director of UNESCO's global Child Safeline project and currently heads WiredSafety, "the largest online safety, education and help group in the world" (WiredSafety, 2004). With more than 9,000 volunteers worldwide, the group is a coalition of various Internet safety groups, such as WiredKids.org, WiredTeens, Teenangels, and CyberMoms and CyberDads, and their affiliate, WiredCops.org, all of whom patrol the Internet for child pornography, child molesters, and cyberstalkers. Additionally, WiredSafety offers a variety of educational and help services for online users. Some of its volunteers access and review family friendly Web sites, filter software products and Internet services, and post their findings on the Web. The group even has a "Cyber911 help line" that offers net users access to help when they need it online. SurfWatch is another online ratings system designed for parental supervision. It too prevents access to Web, gopher, and FTP sites that SurfWatch's team of "net-surfers" have found objectionable. They maintain an updated list of "not-for-children" Web sites that can be subscribed to electronically.

Commercial Filtering Software and Databases

A more intensive effort to censor "inappropriate" online content has come from commercial filtering software companies (often working in conjunction with powerful Internet content providers and third-party ratings systems). Also known as "censorware," these filtering products, which include Net Nanny, CyberPatrol, Cyber Sitter and N2H2, range in cost from $25.99 to $80 and are heavily marketed to parents, educational administrators, and libraries. Designed to be installed on home or school computers or to work with network routers or firewall, cache, or proxy devices, these products claim to offer safety measures for youth using computers for online research and recreation. Essentially, most of these programs work by using a combination of filtering and blocking strategies, such as the blocking of Web sites denoted through keywords and databases and the blocking of individual Web sites by specific URLs.

One of the first filtering programs--and most commercially lucrative--is Net Nanny. According to its promotional Web site, Net Nanny[R] 5 is "the world's leading parental control software, [and] provides customers with the broadest set of Internet safety tools available today. Our award-winning software gives customers control over what comes into and goes out of their home through their Internet connection, while respecting their personal values and beliefs" (Net Nanny, 2004). Launched in 1998, Net Nanny is a tool allowing parents, teachers, administrators, and librarians to screen incoming and outgoing Internet information, particularly pornographic material. By identifying and blocking various sites and subjects considered inappropriate, the program blocks the Web addresses of known pornographic and illicit sites. Parents can add to the collection of forbidden "code words" used to detect and flag sites. The program works with all major online providers and in email. It can also prevent children from accessing specific files on a PC's hard drive, floppy drive, or CD-ROM. Like audit-tracking software programs, Net Nanny keeps a record of a child or student's Internet perusal, meaning that parents and teachers can check up on the sites that a child has perused.

With all of these features, it is no surprise that Net Nanny's popularity and financial success has led it to offer additional blocking software such as Net Nanny's Pop-Up Scrubber, which blocks pop-up ads, Net Nanny's AdFree, which blocks a range of Internet ads, spyware, and profiling cookies, and Net Nanny's Chat Monitor, which monitors and filters Instant Messaging and other online chat.

Another commercial service, CyberPatrol, works in the same way as Net Nanny by filtering harmful Web sites, newsgroups, and Web-based email. Also commercially successful, CyberPatrol licenses its "CyberLIST" database of site ratings to several additional vendors. Among its ratings categories are violence/profanity, partial nudity, full nudity, sexual acts, gross depictions, intolerance, satanic or cult, drugs and drug culture, militant/extremist, sex education, questionable/illegal and gambling, and alcohol and tobacco. Likewise, Cybersitter blocks sites and subjects deemed unacceptable by Internet users. It offers site lists for automatic blocking and allows parents to have added input in restricting programs, files, and games. According to PC Magazine, Cybersitter offers the strongest filtering and monitoring features, blocking content related to violence, hate, sex, and drugs (Munro, 2004). It also allows parents to choose from thirty-two content categories, such as free email sites, file sharing, wrestling, cults, and gambling, for those interested in added blocking categories. As with other similar products, it lets parents filter and monitor their children's activities without their knowledge and can record both sides of Instant Messaging sessions.

Joining in the mix of filtering software providers is N2H2 (acquired by Secure Computing in 2003), a company endorsed by eTesting Labs and the Kaiser Foundation as "the most effective and accurate" filtering program and extensive database of objectionable Internet sites (N2H2, 2004). It offers two product lines: Sentian, which is geared toward helping businesses manage their employee Internet access, and Bess, a popular program and database adopted by many schools and endorsed by the American Library Association to help schools and libraries meet CIPA rules for young Internet users.

With so many companies vying to be the best provider of filtering software, it is not surprising that Microsoft would venture into this area by offering its own industry standard Internet filter aimed at regulating youth-directed online content. AS part of its monopoly on the Internet browser software Internet Explorer (which accompanies its Windows platform), Microsoft has also implemented a filtering system that can be configured to block or log all data transfers, including World Wide Web pages, newsgroups, types of messages within any newsgroup, Internet Relay Chat, or Internet hosts known to have objectionable material for children.

QUESTIONING THE VIABILITY OF ONLINE "SAFETY" INITIATIVES

Although some of these Internet resources and restrictions make sense for certain schools depending upon the age group and grade level of Internet users, there are some problematic areas within each method that should be cause for concern. The main underlying difficulty raised by these "quasi-solutions" is that they narrowly define what is "inappropriate," relegating most objections to issues of nudity, sexuality, trigger words, or adult content. This focus neglects to confront the invasion of advertising or marketing strategies directed at children. In many respects, Internet commercialism seems to be a more serious concern, but one would never guess this considering the ad-strewn and content-compromised "solutions" to appropriate Internet content.

First, although child-directed advertising might not be as blatantly offensive, it certainly fosters "values" that, at present, are not considered objectionable to most governmental, parental, and commercial watchdog groups. Although the first tenet of media literacy explains that all media are constructions, the problem with advertising and marketing strategies is that they are so much a part of our social landscape and our everyday life that they appear to be natural. Subsequently, the conceptualization of what is inappropriate for children or students only helps to sustain the interests of a commercial system through the omission of advertising; advertising is omitted and thereby deemed appropriate. Just as parents, educators, and anticommercial groups, such as Commercial Alert, have protested the commercial imperatives of satellite-delivered school programs such as Channel One, a company that offers schools free satellite equipment in exchange for a captive audience of students forced to watch its daily, advertisement-driven programming, and the computer equivalent ZapMe!, which tried to turn "the schools and the compulsory schooling laws into a means of gaining access to a captive audience of children in order to extract market research from them and to advertise to them" (Commercial Alert, 2000), we need to be equally circumspect about the amount of advertising and marketing proliferating on "Kids Only" sites and via kid-safe filtering software (Schiffman, 2000).

Moreover, sustaining an Internet-based market economy whereby consumer software programs and proprietary environments become the antidote to inappropriate material is directly at odds with democratic means of dealing with these issues through public discourse, political action, and critical media literacy skills. Most of the products previously analyzed are produced and distributed by profit-making and publicly traded enterprises, such as the media conglomerates Time Warner, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. Obviously, it is good business to create and sell blocking software products or to offer third-party rating systems that decide--for parents, educators, and librarians--what is in their (both children/students and the company's) best interest. In a self-fulfilling business transaction, reports of inappropriate content as well as media and political hype about the Internet as an "unsafe environment" lend credence to, or create a functionalist need for, such products. As stated earlier, advertising is overlooked as "inappropriate content" because it is part of everyday consumer culture, unlike pornographic and hate sites, which exist beyond the boundaries of what is deemed "good" for children and teenagers. As Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1971) has noted, hegemony works within the terrain of everyday life and requires the consent of audiences--or in this case, parents, educators, and librarians. Hence, the commonly employed rhetorical elements that create paranoia about Internet content within the mainstream attempt to reach the consent of parents and educators by inviting them to see some Internet content as value-laden or problematic while camouflaging the interests and authority of a profitable computer software and hardware industry.

Although serious discussion about government regulation goes beyond the purviews of this study, several concerns must be raised regarding commercial software programs. First, the decision to block some sites over others is a very subjective decision. The problem with this kind of regulation is that some groups and individuals might attempt to censor material (under the guise of concerns for "safety") that threaten their own political and/or religious agenda. Dependence upon commercial Internet service providers and related filtering products limits the democratic principle of the free flow of information and puts commercial enterprise at the helm of online navigation, a troubling fact given that corporate culture can often be extremely conservative and self-serving when it comes to making censorship decisions. In one instance, America Online was charged with using filters to block out several Web sites associated with "liberal" political organizations. One of the top stories featured in Censored 2001 was AOL's liberal blacklist, whereby sites for the Democratic National Committee, Ralph Nader's Green Party, Ross Perot's Reform Party, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and Safer Guns Now were labeled as "not appropriate for children" (Phillips & Project Censored, 2001, p. 111). Ironically, the youth filters did not prevent access to nudity or to conservative groups, including the National Rifle Association. Designed for America Online by the Learning Company, an educational software company owned by Mattel, such filtering programs confirm suspicions about the process of labeling and omitting Web sites according to political and economic interests.

This kind of censorship raises flags about the capabilities of large media conglomerates to limit access to material deemed politically at odds with commercial interests. Inasmuch as Disney was in a position to rebuke the distribution of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's political documentary produced through Disney's Miramax film division, large multimedia conglomerates are poised to censor content that is politically or economically damaging to their enterprise.

Second, some of the trigger words used to block Internet sites might be legitimate subjects for research. For example, the often-cited example of an Internet user not being able to access research on breast cancer or sex education (if these words were denoted as trigger words) is indeed troubling. As PC Magazine reviewers of Cybersitter 9.0 explain, "Cybersitter errs on the conservative side; by default it may block sites you would deem okay" (Munro, 2004). A telling example of this problem is offered in an article featured in Electronic School Online. Author Lars Kongshem writes,

CYBERsitter yanks offending words from web pages without providing
a clue to the reader that the text has been altered. The mangled
text that results from this intervention might change the meaning
and intent of a sentence dramatically. For example, because
"homosexual" is in the list of CYBERsitter's forbidden words, the
sentence, "The Catholic church is opposed to all homosexual
marriages" appears to the user as, "The Catholic church is opposed
to all marriages." (Kongshem, 1998)

Likewise, Karen Schneider, a librarian for the Environmental Protection Agency, has led a filtering software assessment project involving more than thirty librarians around the world. She has found that filters "are not reliable and they're hard to maintain" (cited in Gebeloff, 1999). In one example, recipes using "chicken breast" were blocked due to sensitive word triggers. Rob Gebeloff, author of Screening Zone: The Trouble with Net Filters and Ratings, continues to problematize the use of all types of "censorware" programs by pointing out numerous gray areas in judging content. He asks:

Do you want your kids going to Web sites that discuss birth
control? What about AIDS education? Or what about the
exploration of Mars? [A recent New York Times article pointed out
that one filtering program blocked out every Web site with the
word "sex" in it, including a site that had the word
"marsexploration" in it's title]. So clearly, if you're going to go
with filtering, be prepared to make tough calls. (Gebeloff, 1999)
Peacefire--a group critical of filtering software--explains, "We have always felt that filtering software is not only ineffective, but also a violation of the trust between students and staff... Unfortunately, most of the censorware companies block anything controversial, not just pornography. I find it very discouraging that this includes information like suicide prevention, safe sex, and gay youth resources" (g. Jenkins, quoted in Kongshem, 1998).

Third, students and computer hackers have already found flaws with such programs and have managed to acquire information from sites that have been blocked. When product evaluators at Consumer Reports tested over nine different Web content filters, including AOL's parental controls, they discovered that, although AOL offered the best protection, as much as 20 percent of easily located Web sites containing sexually explicit content, violently graphic images, or promotion of drugs, tobacco, crime, or bigotry slipped through the filters. In fact, "Net Nanny displayed parts of more than a dozen sites, often with forbidden words expunged but graphic images intact" (ConsumerReports.Org, 2001).

Fourth, there is an inherent conflict of interest when the main advocates challenging the government's attempts to protect children from online predation and pornography are the very same groups that seek to profit directly from a "free marketplace" of online smut. In its June 2004 press release, SafeSurf applauded the Supreme Court for its ruling in the Internet pornography case Ashcroft v. ACLU "because the High Court concluded that Internet filtering solutions, such as those originally proposed by SafeSurf over nine years ago, are a better way to proceed than the government restrictions imposed under the Child Online Protection Act" (Jules, 2004). As the chairman of SafeSurf, Ray Soular, exclaimed, "This decision has revealed that the High Court has seen the wisdom in protecting the Internet from governmental censorship and in enabling parental discretion through an intelligent filtering and labeling system. Maybe now, Congress will focus more attention on what has become known as the 'Safe Surfing' method of protecting children online" (Jules, 2004, emphasis added). Yet the court's wisdom is more the result of intense lobbying than constitutional insight. SafeSurf has been lobbying Congress about the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act since its implementation, arguing its case before the Congressional Commission on Child Online Protection (COPA) in July 2000,just a few months after COPA's passage.

Gebeloff addresses this conflict of interest in his critique of net filters and ratings for Money Talks:

I once had a chance to interview Gordon Ross, the fellow who
designed Net Nanny.... I asked Ross how he, with his background
in computer systems, comes up with the list of bad words and
unacceptable Web sites that his program blocks. Basically, he told
me, it started from a list he put together and then evolved over
time to reflect feedback from users. "And we have a disclaimer
saying we're not liable for the list." (Gebeloff, 1999)
This leads Gebeloff to deduce the ironic disposition of this practice: "We don't want the government to be our censor, so why should we turn the job over to a computer programmer from British Columbia? The answer, of course, is that we shouldn't, but that's what happens when a parent buys filtering software, installs it, and then walks away from their child's machine" (Gebeloff, 1999).

With laws mandating the use of various forms of censorware to meet government regulations like CIPA, and liability issues at school, the library, or work, it is no surprise that the marketplace of ideas has increasingly channeled its financial resources into for-profit filtering products. Companies easily win over school and library administrators by guaranteeing adherence to government legislation as well as liability protection and parental approval. For $14.95, SafeSurf markets Safe Eyes as an effective tool that "uses the N2H2 website database which has been proven time after time to be the most accurate database available ... In recent tests, both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Kaiser Family Foundation found N2H2 to be the best" (SafeSurf, 2004b). Official endorsements from prominent governmental, industrial, and educational groups are an added selling point, such as N2H2's official stamp of approval from the American Library Association for meeting CIPA rules.

As for the pervasiveness of filtering products, a poll conducted as early as 1998 at the Technology + Learning conference revealed that 51 percent of surveyed teachers, technology directors, school board members, and other educators had adopted some form of censorware for all or some students in their district (cited in Kongshem, 1998). Another poll conducted in 2000 by MSNBC.com found that "many users rely on an Internet service provider, or ISP, to do the filtering for them. The big names in this market are America Online, The Microsoft Network, Mayberry USA, Rating-G Online and Getnetwise.com. Filters that are popular with Christians and conservatives include Family.Net, Integrity Online and Hedgebuilders.com" (Nodell, 2000). With no centralized board or groups to review the practices of these filtering companies or ISPs for their effectiveness or appropriateness, it is easy to see how those seeking to meet the needs of their schools, libraries, work, or homes turn to various programs without clear indication of their validity and reliability, especially institutions pressured to have some "safety plan" to meet CIPA legislation or issues of liability.

Accordingly, it is no surprise that filtering producers and marketers stand to gain financially by lobbying for nongovernmental solutions to censorship, as well as a deregulatory media environment allowing telecommunications firms to continue to merge and expand their online assets and streamline Web content. MSNBC's interest in polling Internet user preferences for filtering is not purely for newsworthiness given its partnership with Microsoft. The same is true for AOL Time Warner. What is more, in addition to cornering the market for libraries, schools, and homes, many of these companies have ventured into the work environment. As MSNBC.com reporter Bobbi Nodell explains, "many filter companies are moving into the corporate market, which is booming because employers are concerned about workers 'wasting time' on the job and want to keep them from shopping, checking investments and playing games ... the corporate market is expected to grow from $60 million in 1999 to $500 million in 2004" (Nodell, 2000).

Confirmation of this trend can be found with Net Nanny. Looksmart, a leading business firm in online search technology, recently acquired Net Nanny for approximately $5 million in cash and stock in April 2004. Indeed, in their ability to promote and streamline commercial content (while limiting "inappropriate" sites), monitor Internet user habits, profile users for direct marketing purposes, and market products to users, filtering software products can be considered stepchildren of the highly lucrative commercial search engines, which became the most lucrative Web properties in 2003 due to their increasing ability to promote commercial Internet content. As LookSmart CEO Damian Smith stated in 2004:

This acquisition is both strategic and prudent for LookSmart ...
Strategic, because integrating our search technology into Net
Nanny provides a stronger product for their users, while also
providing LookSmart with a desktop platform froth which to launch
high margin search and paid listings applications. Prudent, because
Net Nanny is expected to produce positive margin contributions for
LookSmart in 2004. (LookSmart, 2004)
In other words, this partnership, along with MSN funding, will allow LookSmart to apply its tracking and marketing capabilities to Net Nanny's software and related proprietary environments. As the company explains to its shareholders, such a partnership "will enhance the leading online filtering software and provide high-quality proprietary search traffic for LookSmart."

While filtering technology continues to thrive in the Internet's "free market" system, and as Web content continues to grow exponentially, the profits for filtering technology continue to expand commercially. Net Nanny's acquisition by LookSmart makes clear that one of the leading "protectors" of illicit online content is poised to become a predator of tracking and marketing to today's Internet users as it shifts its mission to "high margin search and paid listings applications" (LookSmart, 2004). With substantial profit predictions for filtering companies expanding their business within the corporate market, the goals to protect Internet users, including children, are becoming further marginalized at a time when schools, libraries, and businesses are becoming increasingly dependent upon filtering technology.

To make matters worse, "the Internet's status as an open forum for ideas" has come under attack since 2002 with a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling that shields cable companies from having to open their networks to smaller competitors and civil liberties and consumer advocacy groups (Wolverton, 2002). As Karen Charman (2002) explains, "without public policies mandating open access," cable will monopolize broadband width, denying access to other Internet Service Providers in order to capitalize off of hyper-commercialized services that make it easier to buy products. Troy Wolverton (2002) of ZDNet news explains that "lack of competition among cable Internet providers could be a form of censorship ... even if they don't completely block Web sites, cable companies could slow access to them to the point that they become all but impossible to reach ... while they could speed access to their own sites and those of preferred partners." Subsequently, if "the Internet content accessed by K-12 youth is patrolled by capitalist institutions, rather than by the government, educational institutions, public libraries or communitarian groups, it will inevitably become more difficult 'to turn the one-way system of commercial media into a two-way process of discussion, reflection, and action'" (Thoman, 1998, p. 3). As Resnick explains, no matter how well conceived or executed, any labeling or blocking system will tend to stifle noncommercial communication since the time and energy needed to label will inevitably lead to many unlabeled sites: "Because of safety concerns, some people will block access to materials that are unlabeled or whose labels are untrusted. For such people, the Internet will function more like broadcasting, providing access only to sites with sufficient mass-market appeal to merit the cost of labeling" (Resnick, 1997, p. 106). This form of censorship is a serious problem as the possibilities for a decentralized and openly available information network will once again be delimited by a top-down capitalist hierarchy where nondominant, noncommercial, or alternative sources of information will remain peripheral.

Finally, information filtering does not prepare students to learn how to analyze and evaluate information once they are no longer using the Internet within an educational setting. This point has gained momentum as media literacy educators, librarians, and scholars have been grappling with the need for solid media literacy curricula that include a critical and analytical approach to learning with and about online communications technology (Fabos, 2004; Frechette, 2002; Paxson, 2004; Tyner, 1998).

TESTING CONTENT CONTROLS FOR CYBER-CAPITALISM

The hegemonic impulse of online safety profiteers becomes clear when we take a look at some ratings organizations, online proprietary environments, ISPs, and databases recommended by parents, the government, educational institutions, and the industry. First is SafeSurf, a rating organization that claims to be "dedicated to making the Internet safe for your children without censorship." Through an information database of objectionable sites, a proprietary environment for children, and safety tools for parents, SafeSurf believes they "will enable software and hardware to be developed that will enable more effective use of the Internet for everyone" (SafeSurf, 2004a, emphasis added).

My skepticism about claims that "everyone" benefits through SafeSurf's methods developed when visiting the SafeSurf home page, where I reviewed their policies, claims, and method to create an environment that is child tested and parent approved. What first drew my attention to their Web site were the various advertisements centered on the page. One ad displayed a large colorful rectangle for Card Service Online, "the leader in online real time credit card processing," featuring Mastercard, Visa, Discover, and American Express. Directly under it was an ad for Child Magazine, on sale at the reduced price of $7.95; its pitch: "One year for the price of a bottle." Beneath this was a bold advertisement link to "Update Microsoft's Internet Explorer to support SafeSurf Ratings." Combined, these ads validated my forewarning about the interconnections between powerful computer firms, such as Microsoft, and blocking software products.

My findings led me to presume that more advertising would emerge on the SafeSurf Wave link, which offers Kid's Wave, a list of "top sites" purportedly "devoted to educating and entertaining children." On the Kid's Wave front page, I was informed "There are great places to take your children online." Below was a grid of partial listings of SafeSurf-approved sites by category. The first category was the "favorite site of the month," which was Squigly 's Playhouse. By clicking on the cartoon graphic, my hypothesis was reaffirmed: the unfolding visual displayed a large color advertisement for Disneyland with moving graphics and a photo of the Magic Kingdom. The flashing text read "[frame 1: photo and text depicted Disneyland Resort] To really enjoy yourself here; [frame 2: photo of Mickey Mouse described as 'the Disneyland Trip Wizard'] Pick up your custom schedule here."

In case the ad was overlooked, each separate clickable Kid's Wave link for an activity or game was infused with the Disney Resort campaign. For instance, the "Squigly's Games" page had another large, flashing, color ad for Disney at the top that read, "[frame 1: photo of Mickey Mouse] Are you the Ultimate Disney fan?; [frame 2: photo of Goofey] Click here--enter to win"; on the bottom, a three-frame flashing ad targeted at parents read, "[frame 1 ] You know what you put on your card; [frame 2] but do you know what he put on your card? [picture of a crowd with a man circled in red] ; [frame 3] Find out with your free credit report online." Other pages, like "Squigly's Writing Corner" or "Brainteasers," featured separate Disney ads as well as credit card ads (presumably targeted at parents, but also at a new generation of consumers).

Disney, it seems, is a frequent advertiser on filtering software products. In addition to selling nonsoftware products, such as $40 embroidered golf shirts, Net Nanny's Internet Web site had an advertisement for Disneyland featured on its front page. Most troubling, however, is that advertising clients are also the sponsors of Net Nanny content. Among its "safe-sites" for kids were "fun" links to Disney, Crayola, and Kids Channel. Under the category "Education" was a Colgate "Kidsworld" link with prominent product advertisements for Colgate toothpaste. Describing its mission in philanthropic terms, Colgate Palmolive Co. purportedly maintains the Internet site "as a service to the Internet community." A closer look at the page proves otherwise. First, I had to type in my first name and specified password of the day, "toothpaste," in order to enter the "No Cavities Clubhouse." There, I was greeted by "Dr. Rabbit" who appeared in his clubhouse holding a toothbrush and Colgate toothpaste. Although this Web site offered "interesting oral care facts, games, and stories aimed at raising children's awareness of oral health," I could not get away from Dr. Rabbit and his Colgate endorsement no matter what activity I clicked on. Moreover, in spite of its "intention" to adhere to the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) Guidelines for advertising on the Internet and online services, my name and email were still requested so that the "Tooth Fairy" could send me an email message--no doubt carrying her Colgate toothpaste and brush in cyber-flight.

Although not nearly as plastered in advertising as SurfWatch or Net Nanny, CyberPatrol's Web site unquestionably catered to/partnered with commercial Web sites, including Disney's Internet empire of kid-targeted Web addresses. A recommended "safe" site was "Toy Story Games," a game developed by Disney based on its Toy Story movie. Not surprisingly, Disney's home page was saturated with child and adult-directed advertising. Although the advertising contained here was "2nd level," meaning that I had to click on the recommended sites before being inundated with ads, the sites contained on the page remained uncontested as child appropriate.

As evidenced within these kid-designated Web sites, the far-reaching clutches of advertisers are rendered invisible in the discourse or underlying rationale of Internet protectionism. While children are deemed to be impressionable when it comes to sex, pornography, adult content, and nefarious language, concerns about manipulative advertising campaigns go largely undetected within "kid-safe" Internet domains.

CONCLUSION

Media literacy scholar Len Masterman's explanation of critical autonomy, to "develop in pupils enough self-confidence and critical maturity to be able to apply critical judgments to media texts which they will encounter in their future" (1985, p. 24; emphasis added), does not fit within the logic of commercial filters and the self-regulated corporations attempting to control and streamline Internet content. As Elizabeth Thoman (1998) clarifies, "the media have become so ingrained in our cultural milieu that we should no longer view the task of media education as providing 'protection' against unwanted messages." Hence, a learning model of awareness, analysis, reflection, action, and experience leads to better comprehension, critical thinking, and informed judgments.

Contrary to filtering mechanisms designed to censor or reduce student exposure to "inappropriate" Web sites and online information, a much better approach toward new information technologies is to go beyond teaching students about how to use computers, email, Web browsers, etc. First and foremost, the goals of media literacy must go hand in hand with computer training and online access through the instruction of critical skills by which students learn to discriminate all types of information. While there are hazards to over-regulation and under-regulation of the Internet, educators and librarians have an important role to play in developing online media literacy initiatives so that students can become discerners of the types of information they need. The goals for taking media literacy to the Internet must go beyond the critical evaluation and use of information to include an analysis and understanding of the impact of political and economic forces that drive and control much of the Internet. Within a "media literacy in cyberspace" model, the issues of ownership, profit, control, and related effects are essential to helping students formulate constructive action ideas that will lead to their own Internet choices and surfing habits (Frechette, 2002). As PICS chairman Paul Resnick (1997) admits, "no labeling system is a full substitute for a thorough and thoughtful evaluation." In the end, if the power of Internet content labeling, ratings, and restrictions are left to a third party or profit-making companies, then educators, librarians, and parents need to lobby that they serve the public interest rather than private commercial interests.
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New Article: Search Engine Strategies for Success: 2006


by John Wooton Author and Creator, The SEO Journal Blog and Asbjorn Lonvig.



 
Readers of my latest Art News Artblog have asked me to write about how I got a relatively good presence on the internet. Yesterday's statistics: 150,000 hits on Google.com and 100,000 hits on Yahoo.com on the search term "lonvig" and 64,708 hits and 1,176,552,123 bytes transferred per day on my web site www.lonvig.dk.





 



John Wooton: As you know, every year is always rocked by a plethora of changes in the search engine marketing world. The acquisition of smaller companies by the Big 3 changes the marketing landscape as we know it every month and with every update to the index that is made, we hold our breath and hope that we come out better (if not, the same) in the end. So when it comes to the new year, there are many things that we should look out for to stay on top of the rankings.



1. Quality Content: I say this so often and I cannot overemphasize this enough: Content is KING! Search engine spiders, crawl the net to find what? Content! Your site has information (hopefully) that you want the spiders to see and include in their index. By the creation and publication of quality content, you give the search engines more reason to return. You are feeding them what they want. In 2006, you should be finding creative ways to get your content noticed and viewed as well as finding creative ways to publish fresh content on a regular basis. A very good way this is done is through the use of message boards (hosted on your site) and by blogs (enabling you to publish more frequently).



Asbjorn Lonvig:



Tell a story. Every time I enter something on the internet, on my own website or another web site like an online gallery I tell a story. Like what Jose Dali said about my fairy tale character Crab-Mac-Claw or Alice Garibaldi's view of my computer drafts of sculptures in Rome. For search engine optimization and submission to selected search engines I use the software IBP Internet Business Promoter by Axandra, Germany. For check of meta tags I use the free Meta Tag Analyzer from Submitexpress.com. This is to ensure 100 % title relevancy to page content, 100 % description relevancy to page content and 100 % keyword relevancy to page content.



 



 




Don't focus on your web main page (index page) - focus on every page, only 1.56 % of my visitors enter through the web main page.




__________________



 



John Wooton:



2. Don't Overextend Your Link Exchange Structure: Backlinks were a popular way to increase your rankings fast in the search engines. The tradition holds: find a PR7 website and trade backlinks and you'll be indexed in Google within 24 hours. That strategy still holds true and is beneficial for new web sites. But in my opinion the days of tremendous link swapping are coming to an end. Many website have been founded with the purpose of allowing you to exchange links with other web sites. This has caused a massive influx of web masters who want to exchange a ton of links with the hope that it will help them in the search engines. But what really matters when it comes to links is the amount of quality one way backlinks that direct users to your website. You want the balance of links to be in your favor, that is what leads to success. Also, there has been talk of search engines taking notice of these "link farms" and penalizing those who take part in them. So if you do take part in link exchanges, please be moderate in respect to the number of exchanges you take part in.



Asbjorn Lonvig:



I do not concentrate upon links any more. I only make links that are relevant to my content. If I am asked to link to a Kangaroo farm in Canberra, New South Wales, Australia, I sure will do it. Now and then I run a Link Popularity Check on my online galleries to check their degree of presence on the internet. The Link Popularity Check program is free and it is from Axandra, Germany. Absolutearts.com has the highest link popularity of all online galleries.




__________________



 



John Wooton:



3. RSS and XML: Two new technologies that have begun to take center stage especially in 2005 include a programming language that has been around for several years called XML. XML is short for extensible markup language and is a derivative from HTML. The main difference is your ability to create descriptive tags for your data. This has led to the advent of RSS or real simple syndication. RSS is a way for you to publish your data to an XML file hosted on your site. Users subscribe to your RSS feed via the XML file and whenever you make a changes to your XML file they are notified. It's become a major technology used by news agencies and bloggers alike as a simple method of publishing your information across a wide variety of platforms. XML has also proved useful with the Google Site maps program, newly released in 2005. The optional tags available with the XML site map allow you to be descriptive about the individual pages on your site including dates the individual pages were modified. There are some small things you need to pay attention to when creating this: namely you have to follow the Google xml schema, and you have to be diligent about tracking and fixing errors in the code. But if used correctly, it is a great way to help Google index the hidden pages of your website due to javascript or flash.



Asbjorn Lonvig:





I have made an RSS to all main pages on my web site and an RSS to every online gallery. I use the FeedForAll RSS feed creation tool to built my own RSSs. This way I have built 73 "hand made" RSSs. I use the following blogging systems for posting a lot of news and for automatic building of RSSs, ATOM feeds and RDFs: Blogger.com, Blogger.dk, Blog.com, Bloglines.com, Spaces.msn.com, Squarespace.com, Angelfire.com and Artday.org. Artday.org is Japanese. It is from Tokyo. And so is the image to the left. It's the Tokyo skyline with Tokyo Tower. The title is "Tokyo Moonlight". All of the above RSSs, ATOM feeds and RDFs - both my own "hand made" RSSs and the RSSs, ATOM feeds and RDFs generated automatically by blogging systems - are submitted to selected directories and search engines with the software RSS FEEDS Submit from rssfeedssubmit.com - if you need an introduction to RSS news feeds, you'll find it on rssfeedssubmit.com. I have built one site map in English and one in Danish.




___________________



 



John Wooton:



4. Stay away from Flash and Javascript for the time being: Flash and Javascript are very powerful tools for creating dynamic and eye catching web sites. The most prominent problem with the two technologies is that the spiders can't index through them (at least not yet). This limits your ability to have the search engines index portions of your site. Many have speculated that the Big 3 are working on solving this problem, but for the time being, avoid or limit your use of these technologies. 5. Avoid Unethical SEO: There are a lot of programs out there that help you to achieve maximum link back ratios in a very short amount of time. Some of them are good; some are bad. In fact, some of them will waste your effort trying to post trivial comments on blogs or trying to maximize your link exchanges. In my opinion, you should seek success in SEM the right, ethical way. Seek out honest web companies to exchange a moderate amount of links with. Post only relevant comments to forums and blogs because that behavior leads to lasting link backs. Also, don't try to manipulate your website to make it appear to have a higher PR than you really do. Google sees that one!



Asbjorn Lonvig:



I stay away from Flash and.....
I stay away from unethical SEO.




_____________________



 



John Wooton:



6. Last, but not least, Articles: There is a little bit of controversial talk about whether it is right to post articles for free use in directories. In my opinion, you are providing a well needed service to web masters and I don't see this one as a potential loss for 2006. Information is valuable. And web sites that need content (especially fresh content) desire what you do to make their efforts a success. So it is natural for your web site rankings to benefit through backlinks from those articles. It's a win win situation. One other thought on this subject. Right now, the search engines can punish web sites for having duplicate content, and that is an argument that many will propose. But, the search engines will usually only punish you if the html format of a web site is similar, not a couple of articles. So posting articles is safe for now. But be cautious. Many lucrative methods of ethical SEO can be turned into a problem when too many people attempt to abuse the technology. So that's it. Short, but informative. SEO is both an art and a technology that we have to use correctly for the right type of success. Who knows what the year ahead may bring, but playing your cards right, you can achieve success and avoid any pitfalls that may come.



Asbjorn Lonvig:





This Art News Artblog article is an example of Articles. I write articles to as you know WWAR/Absolutearts, to Editorial Qroquis - a printed art magazine in Buenos Aires (translated into Spanish) and ADN World ArtNews in Tokyo. Furthermore my articles are published on selected RSSes of my own, on all the blogging systems mentioned above and on the online gallery ArtCad.com in Paris. To keep track of the effect of my efforts to have a relatively good internet presence I use a server based statistic system on my web hotel called InSite. I use Google Alerts to continuously inform me what new things of mine have been indexed. Occasionally I check presence on Yahoo.com. And then I check the online galleries. January 2006 WWAR/Absolutearts topped with 73,000 hits followed by ArtWanted in Salt Lake City with 21,000 hits. Other online galleries like Yessy.com in Denver Colorado had 17,000 hits and a new online galley in Paris - ArtPourTous - had reached 4000 visitors. "Grand Maitre" to the right - that is Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - is of course exhibited in Paris. I'm working hard to produce decent traffic on all online galleries.



 



__________________



 



Asbjorn Lonvig:




Thoughts. Your sales has nothing to do with your artistic talent, with your exhibition at Chicago Athenaeum or with nice words written about your art in a French book on "How to communicate through pictures". It's all about your internet presence???



Thanks. I want to thank John Wooton Author and Creator, The SEO Journal Blog for permitting me to use his article "Search Engine Strategies for Success: 2006", which I read 5 January 2006 in Entireweb Newsletter.



Questions. Ask all the questions you like in comments to this entry.



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There're people who talk about Me on the Internet?

 

Here’s a complete guide to some of the best tools that will help you track what other people are saying about you, your business or your products on other websites, forums and social media sites.

You can secretly "listen" to conversations happening on the web in almost real-time and can then respond if you think a "negative" comment posted on another site may harm your own reputation or that of your brand.

All the "buzz monitoring" services mentioned in this guide are available for free and they can help you monitor almost every part of the "public" web including blogs, forums, websites, video sites, user comments and even some social networks.

Monitor Your Name or Business on the Internet

1. Google Search – Type your name (or that your business) in the Google search box and use the "Past 24 hours" with "Sort by Date" option to find the most recent web pages, blog posts, forum threads, etc. that are talking about you (see example).

If people tend to misspell your name, you should always use a search phrase that includes both your real name and the misspelled version separated by OR (in caps). 

Since Google doesn’t offer feeds, you should consider adding the results page to your bookmarks folder that you open every morning.

2. Yahoo! Alerts – If you are some sort of a celebrity who’s frequently quoted in the press or if you’re a business looking to track your brand mentions in print media, Yahoo! Alerts can be great option. It will send you an email message as soon as there’s a news story in some publication that mentions you or your brand.

3. Google Alerts – Unlike Yahoo! News Alerts that primarily track mainstream media sources, Google Alerts will include stories* from blogs, regular web pages as well as traditional media if you go for the "comprehensive" option. You can even subscribe to Google Alerts in your favorite feed reader.

Google Search vs. Google Alerts – Google Search (mentioned at #1) will find each and every web page that mentions you but Google Alerts will only find web pages that appear in the top twenty results of Google Web search so you are likely to miss some pages if you rely solely on Google Alerts.

[*] See tutorials on how to use Google Alerts and Google News effectively.

4. Facebook Public Search – Facebook has 300+ million members and chances are high that some of them are talking about you or your product in their status updates and wall posts.

Type your name in the Facebook search box (upper right corner) and then use the "Posts by Everyone" option to finds status updates, links and notes written by other Facebook member that mention your name. This will show content from all Facebook members who have enabled their posts to be viewed by people other than friends.

5. Yahoo Pipes (for blogs) – Google Blog Search, Technorati and Bloglines from Ask.com are some popular blog search engines to help you discover blog posts that link to one of your web pages.

You can type the address of your website in this Yahoo! Pipe and it will merge results from all the different blog search engines into one feed that you can either subscribe via email or in your feed reader.

6. Twitter Search – In addition to regular search operators, Twitter search also supports location parameter so you can limit search results to a particular geographic region.

For instance, if you are handling PR for a US based company who just launched a new product in India, you can use a query like "Product Name near:India" to find reactions on Twitter only from India and nearby regions (just what your client wants).

7. Digg Search – Do you know that Digg, like Google, also supports the site: search operator. Use this with your site, choose the "newest first" option and you’ll immediately know when people add your stories on Digg.

They may not hit the front page but will you’ll still know about them – see example.

8. Back Tweets -  Type your web domain name and it will show you all messages on Twitter that include a link to your website (see example). This is just like another useful version of Google’s link: operator but for Twitter (see related services).

9. Back Type – Unlike blog search engines that only index blog posts, Back Type indexes the comments left by other users on blog and other social sites including FriendFeed and Digg.

Type the name of your product or service in the search box, choose "all" (default setting is "relevant") and it will help you find comments /discussion on the Internet that mention you (see example).

10. StepRep – This is another brilliant service for online reputation management. It monitors what people are saying about you (or your products) online and will notify you by email when new results are found.

There may be some overlap with Google Alerts but StepRep can routinely discover sites that mention you but have been missed by Google Alerts. You may use your existing Google Account to log into StepRep.

11. Truveo Video – AOL owned Truveo is probably the largest search engine for video that indexes video clips from all possible video sources on the web including YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, and more. And this is precisely the reason why you should prefer Truveo over Google Video Alerts for tracking your brand mentions on video sites.

You can subscribe to Truveo search results in a feed reader.

12. Social Mention – Another excellent service that helps you track your name across different social media sites like Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc. from a central place. You may get results via RSS or subscribe to once-a-day email alerts for all the keywords that you are monitoring on the web.

13. Webmaster Central - This is one of the best tools to find out other sites that are linking to your web pages (another tool that you may use is Yahoo! Site Explorer).

Assuming that you’ve already verified your site with Webmaster Central, go to "Your site on the web" -> "Links to your site" and there you’ll see a list of all external pages that link to one of your pages. This table can be huge if you run a popular site but there’s an option to export the complete result-set into Excel for further analysis.

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