Free Internet Marketing Advice

URL Redirection

2010-05-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

Similar domain names

A web browser user might mis-type a URL—for example, "exampel.com" and "exmaple.com". Organizations often register these "mis-spelled" domains and re-direct them to the "correct" location: example.com. For example: the addresses example.com and example.net could both redirect to a single domain, or web page, such as example.org. This technique is often used to "reserve" other top-level domains (TLD) with the same name, or make it easier for a true ".edu" or ".net" to redirect to a more recognizable ".com" domain.

Moving a site to a new domain

A web page may be redirected for several reasons:

* A web site might need to change its domain name.
* An author might move his or her pages to a new domain.
* Two web sites might merge.

With URL redirects, incoming links to an outdated URL can be sent to the correct location. These links might be from other sites that have not realized that there is a change or from bookmarks/favorites that users have saved in their browsers.

The same applies to search engines. They often have the older/outdated domain names and links in their database and will send search users to these old URLs. By using a "moved permanently" redirect to the new URL, visitors will still end at the correct page. Also, in the next search engine pass, the search engine should detect and use the newer URL.

Logging outgoing links

The access logs of most web servers keep detailed information about where visitors came from and how they browsed the hosted site. They do not, however, log which links visitors left by. This is because the visitor's browser has no need to communicate with the original server when the visitor clicks on an outgoing link.

This information can be captured in several ways. One way involves URL redirection. Instead of sending the visitor straight to the other site, links on the site can direct to a URL on the original website's domain that automatically redirects to the real target. This technique bears the downside of the delay caused by the additional request to the original website's server. As this added request will leave a trace in the server log, revealing exactly which link was followed, it can also be a privacy issue.[1]

The same technique is also used by some corporate websites to implement a statement that the subsequent content is at another site, and therefore not necessarily affiliated with the corporation. In such scenarios, displaying the warning causes an additional delay.

Short aliases for long URLs
Main article: URL shortening

Web applications often include lengthy descriptive attributes in their URLs which represent data hierarchies, command structures, transaction paths and session information. This practice results in a URL that is aesthetically unpleasant and difficult to remember, and which may not fit within the size limitations of microblogging sites. URL shortening services provide a solution to this problem by redirecting a user from a longer URL to a shorter one.

Meaningful, persistent aliases for long or changing URLs

Sometimes the URL of a page changes even though the content stays the same. Therefore URL redirection can help users who have bookmarks. This is routinely done on Wikipedia whenever a page is renamed.

Manipulating search engines

Some years ago, redirect techniques were used to fool search engines. For example, one page could show popular search terms to search engines but redirect the visitors to a different target page. There are also cases where redirects have been used to "steal" the page rank of one popular page and use it for a different page, usually involving the 302 HTTP status code of "moved temporarily." [2][3]

Search engine providers noticed the problem and took appropriate actions[citation needed]. Usually, sites that employ such techniques to manipulate search engines are punished automatically by reducing their ranking or by excluding them from the search index.

As a result, today, such manipulations usually result in less rather than more site exposure.

Satire and criticism

In the same way that a Google bomb can be used for satire and political criticism, a domain name that conveys one meaning can be redirected to any other web page, sometimes with malicious intent. The website shadyurl.com offers a satirical service that will create an apparently "suspicious and frightening" redirection URL for even benign webpages. For example, an input of "http://en.wikipedia.org" generates "http://" followed by "5z8.info/hookers_e4u5_inject_worm".

Manipulating visitors

URL redirection is sometimes used as a part of phishing attacks that confuse visitors about which web site they are visiting[citation needed]. However, because modern browsers always show the real URL in the address bar, the threat is lessened. However, redirects can also take you to sites that will otherwise attempt to attack in other ways. For example, a redirect might take a user to a site that would attempt to trick them into downloading antivirus software and ironically installing a trojan of some sort instead.

Blogger Buzz: Monetize!

2010-05-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

Blogger Buzz: Monetize!

7 Tactics for SEO

2010-03-28T06:01:00.000-07:00

30+ Advanced SEO Tactics, Techniques and Resources (55+ Links)

These methods are no doubt advanced in the sense that they are new and progressive, sometimes more difficult than basic SEO or require special tools and expertise. Some of the tactics are no short term tactics, they’re probably strategies.

Also I’ll attempt to debunk the wide spread notion that just a few tactics out there are somehow advanced SEO by virtue of their sheer complexity, difficulty in implementing or tediousness.

Most notably I refer to the controversial practices of so called PageRank sculpting and IP delivery. While both are highly contested to be valuable at all or “advanced SEO” most SEO methods below are not controversial. They have an undeniably positive impact on your SEO efforts. Some will contest whether they are advanced or even SEO but they don’t hurt your site or business like the two above often do or at least might when badly executed.

Web Design/Development

* Landing page optimization for organic search results
* ROI oriented usability testing (Split A/B Testing etc.)
* Streamlining information architecture towards a predefined sales funnel
* Enforcing security considerations to prevent crackers from compromising your system and hijacking your site’s authority
* Implementing dynamic scalability for large sites by self replicating processes
* Siloing content on important keyword optimized pages (instead of PageRank sculpting)

Web Analytics

* Identifying the target audience by age, income, education, computer skills, region and understanding it
* Conversion attribution to find out how many stages were involved in making a person finally appear on site or buy
* Twitter analytics to follow your true fans and connectors who spread the word and realistic Twitter traffic numbers
* Monitoring long tail keyword combinations and frequency for early acknowledgment of trends
* Time based and historic keyword research to identify potentials for recurring traffic spikes

Content Creation

* Creating videos, ebooks, infographics and other rich media for SEO purposes
* Semantic SEO trying to understand user intent and serving the appropriate content
* Business blogging beyond solely SEO copywriting keyword rich content for search engines
* Writing of “magnetic Web content“, with “killer headlines” and irresistible hooks
* Defining an SEO code of ethics for your company and anticipating upcoming industry standards
* Allowing and managing and user generated conent with crowdsourcing, tagging/folksonomy
* Predictive SEO in order to be the first to offer supplies for demands that don’t exist yet

Link Acquisition

* On topic widget bait for long term recurring results (not just link bait)
* Creating both funny and engaging quizzes. Example: SEO expert quiz
* Preparing and implementing contests to actively empower audiences as brand evangelists
* Establishing reputable awards or annual best of collections. Examples: Web 2.0 awards, Semmys
* “Pulling a Calacanis” that is stirring controversy to gain attention and make adversaries and supporters to link to you

Social Media Outreach

* Proactive online reputation building, instead of just reactive firemen like management
* Social CRM for all relevant groups (beyond “customers”). Example: Influencers
* Creating and spreading viral memes through various media independently of your own presence there
* Creating communities both inside and outside your own websites. Example: Dell Idea storm
* Disseminating social media press releases and cultivating blogger relations

Expanding into New Markets

* Embracing Twitter plus other Microblogging for business purposes
* International multilingual SEO on one site or creating parallel sites
* Geo-location based local SEO and IP delivery for international businesses
* Mobile search optimization with appropriate CSS formats for different use cases
* Introducing “real life” SEO with links you can scan with your mobile

7 tricks to Viral Web Marketing

2010-03-18T01:54:00.001-07:00

Concept of Viral Marketing

Start from 1 to another 2 to another 4 and so on.....

Viral marketing (word-of-mouth marketing) is a really cool thing. Just think about it... instead of spending an insane amount of money on newspapers ads, TV commercials or banner ads, you spent nothing - and let your fans do all the work for you.
With viral marketing, your campaigns will suddenly get a life of its own - and start to spread like a virus. Everyone want to see it, and when they do, they all want to share it.
It is immensely powerful, usually having 500-1000 times greater impact than what you get from regular advertisements.

But how?

There are a lot of tricks to viral marketing. Here are 7 important ones:

1: Make people feel something

The most important trick of all is to create a very strong emotion. You need to have an opinion, to express an idea with commitment and dedication. You want people to:

be filled with love or hate.
be very happy or insanely angry
be an idiot or a genius
be deeply compassionate or an egoistic bitch

You want people's blood to be pumping of excitement.
Forget neutral, trying to please everyone, supporting several target groups or any of the many ways to be unbiased. Viral marketing is 100% about emotions.

2: Do something unexpected

This one explains itself. If you want people to notice you campaign, you have to do something different - something unexpected. Forget about trying to promote your products as just being great - everybody does that. Forget about trying to make it look cool - everyone else has "been there, done that".
Remember the bear being attacked by a man? That was unexpected - and it is one the most effective viral advertisements ever.
...and above all - never be a copycat.

3: Do not try to make advertisements (that sucks)

One of the biggest mistake companies make is when they think viral marketing is just advertisements that people share - it is not. Traditional marketing is about promoting your product, showing how good it is, giving it center stage - and generally being incredibly selfish (and possibly using supermodels or movie stars). But guess what, nobody cares about you!
Viral marketing is all about a good story. When BMW put out BMW Films, the main ingredient was not the cars, but the story. Replace the car with another one, and it would still be great. When Sony made their Bravia TV ads, the product was not even seen - yet everyone remembers it.
Forget about you, your product or your company. Focus exclusively in creating a good and interesting story. Sure, you can add you product into the mix, but it must not be the most important thing.

4: Make sequels

People have just seen your campaign. They think it was interesting, unexpected and their emotions has reached a high level - you have their complete attention.
Now what do you do?
If you do like most companies you will simply do nothing... and that is a big mistake. When you got people's attention you need to act, and one the best ways of doing that is to give them more - make sequels. This can be many things;

It can be extra movies similar in concept to the first one - like BMW Films and Nissan did.
It can be a behind the scenes look
Bloopers
A blog about the process (like Nissan did)
Extra material, goodies etc.
...or all of the above

Never leave people standing with nothing.
BTW: Forget about countdown releases - i.e. releasing a new episode every 2 weeks. People's attention span does not last that long. Give them everything now!

5: Allow Sharing, downloading and embedding´

Sharing is what viral marketing is all about. Everything you do to make that easier is going to improve your campaign. That means that you need allow people to:

Download the content, in a usable format (videos in MPG, pictures in JPG etc.)
Allowing them to easily embed the content on their own sites (Note: remember bandwidth issues)
Sending it to friends, either using a link or by sending the content directly.
Publishing it on varies social networks - Digg, YouTube etc.
Allow people to add it the bookmarking sites

Note: This also easily be overdone. You do not want to clutter up your page with a zillion "share me, dig this etc." icons.

6: Connect with comments

Another important element is to connect with your audience. Remember you got their attention, they are excited and now they want talk. Comments is one of the most effective ways to do this.
Keep in mind that the best viral marketing campaign is one that creates a strong emotion. This means some people will really like it - while others will get very angry. You have to accept both in your comments, and you have to welcome both opinions. But, at the same time you must prevent individuals to wage war against each other.
It is not a sin to delete comments from people who attack another person, or if the comment is off-topic. But, it is a sin to delete comments from people who just have an negative opinion.
And, most importantly. Connecting with people through comments means talking back. Do not add comments if you do not want to participate yourself.

7: Never restrict access!

Viral marketing is also about your campaign getting a life on its own - spreading like virus. In order to do that, in order to become "viral", it needs to be free.
Never add restrictions to the mix.

Do not require people to register
to become members
to download special software
to enter "unlock" codes
...or to do something in order to get the right link.

Viral marketing is never about exclusivity. It is about getting it out there for everyone to see.

There is a common message in all of these tricks. It is that you need to make it right - or not do it at all. Only the best viral marketing campaigns make it - the rest literally sucks.
If you have any tips of your own, I sure would like to know about them! Also, If would very like to see any cool viral advertisement that you might know.

On page factor for Organic SEO

2010-03-18T00:42:00.000-07:00

On page optimization
Getting a good ranking in search engine hasn't been as easy as the people think. Nowadays search engines are getting more smarter and intelligent, so now having good content is not enough, On page optimization is the very first step of SEO and being a webmaster you should look into it and it won't take your more than an hour to learn the techniques and its implementation in Organic SEO.

*Title tag Optimization
*Meta tag Optimization.
*Alt tag Optimizaion.
*Anchor Text Optimization.: i.e Horizontal Reference
*Text style{CSS or Cascading Style sheet}
*Header and Footer links
*Header Elements {h1,h2,h3.........h6}
*Content Management
*Navigation Link/Nifty links
*Keywords Density
*Site Map

Methods

2010-03-17T23:23:00.001-07:00

Getting indexed

The leading search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click.[29] Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.[30] Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review.[31] Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.[32]

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.

Preventing crawling

To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.

Increasing prominence

A variety of other methods are employed to get a webpage shown up at the search results. These include:

* Cross linking between pages of the same website. Giving more links to main pages of the website, to increase PageRank used by search engines.[35] Linking from other websites, including link farming and comment spam. However, link spamming can also have a bad impact on your search result position.
* Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrase, so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries.[36] Adding relevant keywords to a web page meta tags, including keyword stuffing.
* URL normalization of web pages accessible via multiple urls, using the "canonical" meta tag.[37]

Histrory

2010-03-17T23:20:00.000-07:00

History

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a "spider" to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[1] The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.

Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997.[2]

Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. Using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank for irrelevant searches.[3] Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[4]

By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, allowing those results to be false would turn users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.

Graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "backrub," a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[5] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.

Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[6] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[7]

By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[8] The leading search engines, Google and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen, have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums and blogs.[9][10] SEO practitioners may also study patents held by various search engines to gain insight into the algorithms.[11]

In 2005 Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[12] In 2008, Bruce Clay said that "ranking is dead" because of personalized search. It would become meaningless to discuss how a website ranked, because its rank would potentially be different for each user and each search.[13]

In 2007 Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[14] On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links. Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that Google Bot would no longer treat nofollowed links in the same way, in order to prevent SEOs from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting[15]. As a result of this change the usage of nofollow leads to evaporation of pagerank. In order to avoid the above, SEOs developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated Javascript and thus permit PageRank sculpting. Additionally several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, Flash and Javascript. [16]

In December 2009 Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results [17].

Real-time-search was introduced in late 2009 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results. [18] This new approach to search places importance on current, fresh and unique content.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

2010-03-17T23:15:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym "SEO" can refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Internet Marketing Advice

2010-03-14T11:58:00.000-07:00

Overview
Internet Marketing
The word Internet is not new for us in the same way marketing too,but have you ever thought that these two words is itself offers a vast opportunities to promote your business to online users,In fact with these two words you can let the world knows not even about your business but also about your products and services.

Search Engine Marketing
search Engine Marketing is a part of Internet Marketing which includes:-

· Organic SEO - Free service

· Inorganic SEO - Paid Inclusion/Implements on affiliate model

Organic Search Engine Optimization

Black Hat SEO
Grey Hat SEO
White Hat SEO

Inorganic Search Engine Optimization

· PPC- Pay Per Click,sometimes so called Cost Per Click
Example:-Adwords/Adsense