SEO News and SEO Tips from SEO Expert

200 – OK The file request was successful. For example, a page or image was found and loaded properly in a browser.

301 - Moved Permanently A server response code, meaning “page has been permanently moved to x” A 301 redirect is commonly used to redirect sites or individual pages in cases where a domain or page name is changed and is usually the preferred method of redirection by search engines.

302 – Found A server response meaning, “Page has temporarily moved form this location”.

304 - Not Modified If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified, the server SHOULD respond with this status code.

307 - Temporary Redirect The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests.

400 - Bad Request The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.

401 – Unauthorized The request requires user authentication. The response MUST include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource.

403 – Forbidden he server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated.

404 - Not found The server was unable to locate the URL.

410 - The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent.

500 - Internal Server Error The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.

501 - Not Implemented The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.

Above the Fold - The part of a Web page that is visible once the page has loaded. It is normally the top part of a Web page. This term comes from the newspaper industry and refers to the top half of the front page, which is visible when the newspaper is folded in half.

Alexa ranking - Alexa is a famous search engine that provides extra information such as traffic rankings. An Alexa ranking is an indicator used to gauge site performance.

Algorithm - A set of mathematical equations or rules that a search engine uses to rank the content contained within its index in response to a particular search query.

ALT Image tag - Spiders cannot able to read images as such, so the alt tag or text attribute describes what the specific image represents.

Analytics - Technology that helps analyze the performance of a website or online marketing campaign.

Anchor Text - The visible text component of a hyperlink.

Associate - A synonym for “affiliate.”

Auto-Approve - An affiliate application approval process where all applicants are automatically approved for an affiliate program.

Auto-Responder - An email feature that automatically sends an email reply to anyone who sends it a message.

Banner Ad - An electronic billboard or ad in the form of a graphic image that comes in many sizes and resides on a Web page. Banner ad space is sold to advertisers to earn revenue for the website.

Benchmark Report - A report used to market where a website falls on a search engine’s results page for a list of key words. Subsequent search engine position reporters are compared to that.

Black hat - A person engaged in or tactic used to increase search engine rankings using methods prohibited by search engines.

Blog - A chronological journal that is available on the Web. Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.

Blogosphere or Blogsphere - The current state of all information available on blogs and/or the subculture of those who create and use blogs.

Bot - Used in reference to a search engine robot or spider; software applications that retrieve web page information to feed into a search engine database.

Browser - A client software program such as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Opera that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.

Charge Back - An incomplete sales transaction (for example: merchandise is purchased and then returned) that results in an affiliate commission deduction.

Click and Bye - The process in which an affiliate loses a visitor to the merchant’s site once they click on a merchant’s banner or text link.

Click Fraud - The deceitful practice of posing as pay-per-click (PPC) traffic for the purpose of costing advertisers’ money or helping to generate false revenue by those affiliates serving the ads.

Click Through - The process of activating a link, usually on an online advertisement connecting to the advertiser’s website or landing page.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) - The percentage of those clicking on a link out of the total number who see the link. For example: if 20 people do a Web search and 10 of the 20 people all choose one particular link, that links has a 50 percent click-through rate.

Client - A software program that is used to contact and obtain data from a server software program on another computer, often across a great distance. Each client program is designed to work with one or more specific kinds of server programs and each server requires a specific kind of client. A Web browser is a specific kind of client.

Cloaking - A deceptive process that sends search engine spiders to alternative pages that are not seen by the end user. Also the process of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different from what the visitor sees. It is often done as a way to obtain more favorable search positions.

Co-branding - The situation where affiliates include their own logo and branding on the pages to which they send visitors through affiliate links.

Collaborative Commerce Networks - An organization of merchants and websites that work together as true business partners. Merchants give their affiliates the same support that manufacturers would give to their resellers.

Commission - The income an affiliate receives for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a merchant’s website. Sometimes it is called a “referral fee,” a “finder’s fee” or a “bounty.”

Context-centric - The process of matching your product or service offer closely to the visitors of an affiliate’s site. By placing the product or service in an area close to related or relevant item, more people will buy.

Contextual Link - The integration of affiliates links with related text.

Contextual Merchandising - The act of placing targeted products near relevant content.

Conversion Rate - The percentage of clicks that result in a commissionable activity such as a sale or lead.

Conversion Reporting - A measurement for tracking conversions and lead generation from search engines queries. It identifies the originating search engine, keywords, specific landing pages entered and the related conversion for each.

Cookies - Small files stored on the visitor’s computer that record information of interest to the merchant site. With affiliate programs, cookies have two primary functions: to keep track of what a customer purchases and to track which affiliate was responsible for generating the sale and is due a commission.

Cost Per Acquisition - Online advertising ROI model in which return is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales and registrations as measured against the marketing costs associated with that sale or registration.

Cost Per Action (CPA) - The cost metric for each time a commissionable action takes place.

Cost Per Click (CPC) - The cost metric for each click to an advertising link.

Cost Per Order (CPO) - The cost metric for each time an order is transacted.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM) - The cost metric for one thousand banner advertising impressions.

Crawl - The process by which search engine spiders fetch web page information.

Crawler - Component of a search engine that gathers listings by automatically trolling the Web and following inks to Web pages (also called a spider or robot or bot). It makes copies of the Web pages found and stores them in the search engine’s index.

CSS - Cascading Style Sheets. Used mainly to decrease the amount of source code on a page, by referencing a single set of instructions on how to display various elements on web page.

Customer Bounty - The merchant payment to an affiliate partner for every new customer that they direct to a merchant.

Deep Linking - Linking to a Web page other than a site’s home page.

Delisting - When Web pages are removed from a search engine’s index.

Directories - A type of search engine where listings are gathered via human efforts rather than by automated crawling of the Web.

DMOZ - Directory MOZilla is a human reviewed directory, the contents of which appear on many sites, including Google. A listing in DMOZ said to assist boosting rankings in general search results.

Doorway Page - A page used for driving traffic form any page to another specific page and usually focusing on specific keywords. Generally, doorway pages are designed for search engines only, human visitors never see them - consequently, they are illegal one. Doorway pages must not be confused with landing pages, a legitimate strategy.

Dupe/Duplicate content - Usually used in reference to a penalty applied by a search engine for the same content appearing on different pages/sites.

Email Link - An affiliate link to a merchant site in an email newsletter, signature or a dedicated email blast.

Email Marketing - The promotion of products or services via electronic mail.

Email Signature (Sig File) - The signature option allows for a brief message to be automatically inserted at the end of every email that a person sends.

eZine - The short term for an electronic magazine, which can be electronic versions of existing print magazines or exist only in digital format.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) - A document that answers the most common questions on a particular subject.

FFA - Free For All pages; basically a link farm. You add your site link to the page, it then gets pushed down as other links are added until your link is ultimately pushed off the page. Not a standard method of promotion or link building.

Flux - A term describes the shuffling of positions in search engine results in between major updates.

G - Google, also known as The Big G or The Mighty G.

Gateway Page - A Web page created in hopes of ranking well for a term in a search engine’s non-paid listings. Sometimes called a “doorway page.”

Geographical Segmentation - The ability to determine from which geographical area Web traffic is coming.

Geographical Targeting - The analytical process of deciding upon which regions and locales a company should focus its marketing efforts.

Google Algorithm - A mathematical formula used in calculating search engine ranking. The goal of any SEOP is to understand the algorithm as best as possible. Algorithms of course are very closely guarded secrets and possibly you’ll never meet anyone who has “cracked” an algorithm. Search engine algorithms change regularly to prevent anyone from guessing the system.

Graphical Search Inventory - Banners and other advertising units that can be synchronized to search keywords.

Grey bar - A Google PR score that can indicate a ban in place on the page currently being viewed; i.e. the page does not appear in Google search results.

Grey hat - Optimization strategies that are in a unknown area of reputability/validity.

Hidden Text - The deceptive process of filling Web pages with keywords that are not visible to visitors but will still be indexed by search engines to help achieve higher rankings.

Hit - Request from a Web server for a graphic or other element to be displayed on a Web page.

HTML Code - The code used to build Web pages. Affiliates use HTML code to put links on their websites. Affiliate solution providers often provide a tool so that affiliates can simply copy the code for an affiliate link and paste it into their own HTML pages.

Hybrid Model - An affiliate commission model that combines payment options (i.e., CPC and CPA).

IBL - Inbound Link. Links pointing from another site into your site.

Impression - An advertising metric that indicates how many times an advertising link is displayed.

Index - The collection of information a search engine has that can be queried against.

In-house - An alternative to using an affiliate solution provider; building an affiliate program architecture within a company.

Interactive Agency - An agency offering a mix of Web design and development, Internet advertising and online marketing, or e-business/e-commerce consulting.

Interstitial - An advertisement that loads between two content pages.

KDA - Keyword Density Analyzer or Analysis. The ratio of keywords or keyphrases in relation to other text on a page.

Keyword Marketing - A method of getting your message in front of people who are searching using particular words or terms.

Keyword Stuffing - Where a keyword or phrase is used excessively in page content or alt tags in an attempt to gain higher rankings. Can result in page penalties or bans.

Keyword/Keyphrase - A word or words that strongly relate to a page/site topic or search engine query.

Landing pages - Pages that are optimized and very targeted towards a particular subject. An effective/valid site optimization and sales conversion strategy.

Lifetime Value of a Customer - The amount of sales in dollars that a customer will spend with a particular company over their lifetime.

Link Farms - Pages that consists of little else but links to other sites and usually the sites listed have links back to the farm page. The goal of a link farm is to artificially boost rankings through link popularity and is consequently at risk of penalty or ban.

Link popularity - A gauge of a site’s popularity based on the number of inbound links. Link popularity is a major factor in search engine ranking and has greater strength (in theory) where inbound links are from other quality sites.

Listing - The information that appears on a search engine’s results page in response to a search.

Manual Approval - An affiliate application approval process where all applicants are manually approved for an affiliate program.

Merchant - An online business that markets and sells goods or services. Merchants establish affiliate programs as a cost-effective method to get consumers to purchase a product, register for a service, fill out a form or visit a website.

Meta tag - These mainly refer to the title, keywords and description tags. They are summary of the content that is on the page in different formats. Metatags content does play a role in rankings for many search engines.

Mini-site - A prefabricated HTML page for affiliates that displays new or specialized products with integrated affiliate links.

Mirror Site - A copy of a site with some content differences to target particular keywords. Not a recommended strategy as it can trigger a penalty or ban.

MSN - A reference to Microsoft’s search engine.

OBL - Outbound Link. A link pointing from your site to another site.

ODP - Open Directory Project - DMOZ

Off-page factors - Factors such as inbound links and the popularity of sites with links pointing into your site that you have little control over, but that still play a role in your site’s rankings.

On-page factors - A reference to the elements on your site and their role in your rankings, for example, Meta Tags, Code Cleaning relevance etc.

OOP - Over Optimization Penalty. Where a search engine algorithm detects that changes you are making to a page or the way the page is constructed is to influence rankings over being useful to a site visitor.

Organic search results - the results displayed after a search engine query that are not paid for by the listed site’s owner.

P2P - Pay To Play. Any search engine marketing strategy that requires payment to the search engine company.

Pagejacking - the copying of a page by unauthorized parties in order to filter off traffic to another site.

Paid Inclusion - Advertising program where pages are guaranteed to be included in search engine’s index in exchange for payment.

Paid Listings - Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion.

Paid Placement - Advertising program where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to a particular search term with high ranking, typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. This is most often done in an auction or bidding environment.

Pay Per Click - A program where an affiliate receives a commission for each click (visitor) they refer to a merchant’s website. Pay-per-click programs generally offer some of the lowest commissions (from 1 cent to 25 cents per click), and a very high conversion ratio since visitors need only click on a link to earn the affiliate a commission.

Pay Per Lead - A program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sales lead that they generate for a merchant website. Examples would include completed surveys, contest or sweepstakes entries, downloaded software demos, or free trials. Pay-per-lead generally offers midrange commissions and midrange to high conversion ratios.

Pay Per Sale - A program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sale of a product or service that they refer to a merchant’s website. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the highest commissions and the lowest conversion ratio.

Payment Threshold - The minimum accumulated commission an affiliate must earn to trigger payment from an affiliate program.

PFI - Pay For Inclusion. Payment paid to a search engine company for inclusion in search results.

Podcasting - A form of audio broadcasting using the Internet. Podcasting, which does not require the use of an Apple iPod, involves making one or more audio files available as “enclosures” in an RSS feed, which can be played back by the RSS subscriber at their convenience on an MP3 device.

Pop-Up Ad - An advertisement that displays in a new browser window.

Portal - A website that typically includes a catalog of websites, a search engine or both. A portal site may also offer email and other services to entice people to use that site as their main point of entry to the Web.

Position - How well a particular Web page or website is listed in a search engine’s results. Positions 1 through 10 are the most visible and the most desirable.

PPCSE - Pay Per Click Search Engine.

PR / PageRank™ - A ranking used by Google that is meant to act as indication of the quality of a site and its authority status.

PR 0 / PageRank Zero - Another term relating to Google PageRank. It can indicate that a page has been spidered but appearing in general results as yet, or could also possibly indicate a penalty.

Query - The word (or words) a searcher enters into a search engine’s search box.

Rank - How well a particular Web page or website is listed in a search engine’s results.

Reciprocal link - An agreement between two sites to exchange links between them. Sites exchanging links can risk a penalty or ban if they are not related topic with each other.

Residual Earnings - The programs that pay affiliates not just for the first sale made by a shopper from their sites, but all additional sales made at the merchant’s site over the life of the customer.

ROAD / ROI - Return on Advertising Dollar, or Return on Investment. The measure of effective of expenditure vs. the number of visitors received or sales.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed - A data format for syndicating news and other content. People can subscribe to RSS feeds so they will be notified every time content is updated on a particular site.

SE - Search engine

Search Engine Optimization - The act of altering a website so that it does well in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines. The process usually involves choosing targeted and relevant keywords and phrases that will drive traffic to the site.

SEM - Search Engine Marketer/Marketing

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

SEOP - Search Engine Optimization Professional. Someone who claims to have the skills to increase a clients’ search engine rankings.

SEP - Seach Engine Placement (or Positioning/Promotion)

SERPs - Search Engine Results Pages. The pages that display after a query is submitted.

Server - A computer, or a software package, that provides a specific kind of service to client software running on other computers. The term can refer to a particular piece of software, such as a WWW server, or to the machine on which the software is running. For example, “Our mail server is down today, that’s why email isn’t getting out.” A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network.

Spam (or Spamming) - The electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings, generally email advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup.

Spamming the index - Related to black hat optimization techniques. Pages that have high ranking but are non-relevant or exist purely to redirect traffic to other sites.

Spider - A software program used by search engine companies to visit web sites and return information about pages.

Spyware - A somewhat vague term generally referring to deceitful software that is secretly installed on a user’s computer and that monitors use of the computer in some way without the user’s knowledge or consent. Most spyware tries to get the user to view advertising and/or particular Web pages. Some spyware also sends information about the user to another machine over the Internet.

Stop words - Common non-query specific words that are ignored by a search engine when a query is made. These can include words such as “I”, “and”, “if” depending on how the query is constructed.

Storefront - A prefabricated HTML page for affiliates that displays new or specialized products with integrated affiliate links.

Submission - The process by which a search engine is manually notified of a new site or page.

Super Affiliates - The top 1 percent of affiliates, based on performance and earnings, that generate the lion’s share of the revenue for your program. They are born marketers and are very successful with the affiliate program they promote from their sites.

Targeted Marketing - The act of making the right offers to the right customers at the right time.

Text Link - A link that is not accompanied by a graphical image.

Tracking Method - The way that a program tracks referred sales, leads or clicks. The most common are by using a unique Web address (URL) for each affiliate, or by embedding an affiliate ID number into the link that is processed by the merchant’s software. Some programs also use cookies for tracking.

Two-tier - An affiliate marketing model that allows affiliates to sign up additional affiliates below themselves, so that when the second-tier affiliates earn a commission, the affiliate above them also receives a commission. Two-tier affiliate marketing is also known as multilevel marketing, or MLM.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator. The web address of a site or page.

Viral Marketing - The rapid adoption of a product or passing on of an offer to friends and family through word-of-mouth (or word-of-email) networks. Any advertising that propagates itself the way viruses do.

Visitor Segmentation - Differentiating users to a site by categories such as age, sex, etc.

White hat - legitimate optimization techniques employed that are agreeable to search engine companies, such as the proper use of meta-tags, an adequate keyword saturation and spider friendly page design.

The Internet is now built for Adsense

If the Internet were composed of truths buildings of brick and mortar there a pole of construction would be continuing in this moment like the world forever considering. The Internet is not in a recession or on the road with a depression, rather it tests an economic and social explosion of activity.

Reason. Google Adsense.

The majority of the people think at Google Adsense as being a play-switch for the publicity, but which Google Adsense also has fact is to create an enormous incentive to build sites around the matters to place Google Adwords above. Where this seems to better function is with instruments. There is no intact matter left by the manufacturers content with Adsense, but the instruments are in the middle of this new pole of construction of Internet.

The Gadget Content Explosion…

On November 5th, 2007 Google announced the name of its Google phone project … Android.Name announcements are where it all starts because domaining is at the heart of SEO which is important to getting free traffic which is critical to new Internet projects getting Adsense funding. Literally, hundreds of domains have been registered since this announcement with the Android name and other variations that mean the same.

A few examples ….

helloandroid.com
justanotherandroidblog.com
phandroid.com

All of those domains now rank in the top ten results when searching for “android blog” in Google!

Infringement of registered trademark? Nope!

A person more educated of businesses could wonder about all this infringement of registered trademark and to think cease and give up of the letters will fly on all these new sites. Still think my friend of old school! The legal community cannot realize, but trademarking is not imposed any more by an large army of the companies on the Internet. The reason is because the companies finally appeared outside that the contents of Internet concentrated on their marks are rather GOOD for their marks!

The majority of the contents that I speak is good kind where these lately built Web sites become the hub for the discussion, commenting on, reviewing, supporting and in general going down to the nitty-gritty from each new instrument (or each new something) presented to the world.? Google and the other search engines crawl these contents then and indeed help to transform these new building sites of Web into places of prosperous visits of vicinity where the thousands of true people really go.

These people become the first drivers of the products and are the first adopteurs who will wait in the line to buy. An example of this is the storm recently launched of Blackberry available for customers of Verizon. The lines were outside the door with the stores of Verizon and the majority of the places were sold outside. The word of mount on this product generated thousands of Web sites, much of which were created to concentrate exclusively on the storm of Blackberry.

Google research of forum storm of blackberry (without quotations) and will see you these sites in the higher lists:

blackberrystormforum.com
everythingberry.com
storm-blackberry.com (with advertisements of Yahoo)

These sites were produced to establish a community of the advertisements of this Adwords of clicks. They were created because of the program of Adsense, but they are always used larger good for my opinion, which is to be a source independent of information and Q&a.

The two most common types of sites created for Adsense are blogs and forum. Others include remote loadings of software, directories of place and the news puts the type in the high-speed motorboat sites. With time, the fields with the name of product followed generic words which are typically required like. the forum, forum, blog, videos and the news tend to rise to the top of the results of a search. The manufacturers of Web site around the world know this and build consequently.

Are the contents of bad quality?

Yes and number. There are naturally many sites spammy of scraper which steal the contents of others and then update the sites automatically. However, those are not those which usually appear in the higher results of research. The site gaining the result of a search fights for blog andro?de , for example, is the googleandroidblog. blogspot.com which is the result of the number one. The site seems to be a truth hub for the contents andro?de of Google and the reader comments on and contains also a column of the advertisements of Google Adwords!

The popular search for all instrument and you will see blogs of quality, forum and sites of news in the higher results which were created to box inside of Google Asense:

>> The Amazon lights the blog - amazonkindleblog.com
>> new of iPhone - iphonestalk.com, iphonealley.com, iphone-ipod.org
>> Blog de Wii - wiiblog.net, wiispin.com (both created for Adsense)

How-WITH.

1. Follow the advertisements on the sites of instrument of news of technology and seize the fields as soon as names are announced.

2. Build a blog or a forum As soon as possible on the matter. It is important to build initially so that Google crawls you initially.

3. Create the contents of quality written by you or the experts (your friends:). It is important not to plagiarize the other contents on the Internet. Be distinct with your voice by employing mood or the technical savvyness. Do not employ the paid authors who write $20 articles unless you know that they write quality. Quality is king, even when building for Adsense!

4. Take part in the forum relative and comment on the blogs and the articles of news which refers to your matter. Be true however, are not a inondator of comment. This will obtain your dependent site so that Google crawls it.

5. Update your site of times of a couple per day and make your contents single.

Microsoft Office more like Michael Phelps
Microsoft may be down compared to Google in terms of search - some of the most conservative estimates suggest Google’s market share is five times bigger - but the Redmond-based corporation still has little to fear as far as productivity software goes.  Google Docs and Spreadsheets is growing at a gastropod’s pace.

Consider the market share of Microsoft Office, long estimated to be around 90 percent.  Since that’s not firm and not everyone has a computer, we won’t try any math at this point, but the world’s population is in the neighborhood of 6.7 billion people.

Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets sites, in contrast, saw about 3.5 million and 2.6 million American visitors last month, respectively.  A Compete article on Seeking Alpha also states, “Unique Visitors to Docs visited an average of 3.01 days in September, 2008, while UVs to Spreadsheets visited an average 3.11 days,” and, “To add some additional context we see that on average visitors to Google Docs & Spreadsheets spend about 5 minutes per month on the site.”

So we’re not exactly seeing a free software revolution.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets is becoming more popular, though, with 156 percent year-over-year growth taking place.  And with so many people both avoiding Vista and trying to save money, things may accelerate even more over the next year or so.

Good ROI for advertisers
Microsoft says that its Live Search cashback program, launched in May to attract more users has done well in three key areas.

Its cashback program has had a positive return on investment for advertisers (ROI), percentage of search queries for commercial purposes, and the number of advertising offers on the system.

“We are pleased to report a 30 percent increase in the number of product offers available in Microsoft Live Search cashback, indicative of the strong advertiser interest in the program and early results on its ROI,” said Brad Goldberg, general manager of Microsoft Live Search.

“We have seen an average of 4.5 million unique users per month visiting cashback who have conducted more than 68 million commercial queries.”

Microsoft says that 20 of the top 50 online retailers in the U.S. and 140 of Internet Retailer’s Top 500 are now participating in the program, including new advertisers AT&T, Drugstore.com, FTD, Gap, Kmart, RedEnvelope and Saks Fifth Avenue.

eBay says the Microsoft Live Search cashback program has improved its ROI on paid search by 50 percent and the company says it is planning on increasing its search marketing spend with Microsoft by threefold.

According to comScore, in the second quarter of 2008, Microsoft Live Search referred almost 12 percent of total U.S. commercial online transactions and about 13 percent of total U.S. online spending in key retail categories.

While all this is good news for Microsoft it still lags way behind Google in terms of search share.  Also it’s not certain if its cashback program is a good long-term strategy.

Still Microsoft thinks it’s working well for now. “We believe this early traction speaks to the differentiated and unique value proposition of Microsoft Live Search cashback for both consumers and advertisers, especially in these tough economic times,” said Goldberg.

Courtesy of 3 Mobiles and INQ
3 Mobiles has unveiled the first “Facebook phone,” though in all fairness, it is more of a “Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, Last.fm, Skype Phone.” The phone comes from a new manufacturer called INQ, and is made exclusivley for the UK-based provider3 Mobiles.

The phone called simply the INQ¹, is being touted as the world’s most advanced social networking phone. It provides one-click access to Facebook features and integrates the other aforementioned services into the heart of the phone.

It offers:

- integrated RSS Feeds
- free Skype-to-Skype calling
- Unlimited Free instant messenger capabilities
- the ability to directly upload pics to Facebook via the phone’s 3.2 megapixel camera

“We are really happy to be working with INQ to bring its customers a deeply-integrated Facebook experience on the new INQ¹ handsets,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook: “More than 15 million Facebook users currently access the site through their mobile devices. This number has doubled over the past six months, and we expect it to continue to grow as people become even more familiar with handsets like the INQ¹.”

I suspect that we will start seeing a great many more social network-enabled phones as time goes on. It only makes sense as the next logical step in the industry. For more details about the INQ¹, read this.

Who Would Have Thought?
You would think that the growth of broadband usage would take away from AOL’s business. That and the fact that they’ve been closing down services like mad.  Despite these things, AOL has managed to hit an all time high when it comes to traffic numbers, and has experienced year-over-year growth for unique visitors for the 21st month in a row.

The following AOL sites reached all-time high page view numbers in October:

- AOL Webmail (.com and AIM Mail)
- AOL Tech Network
- Latino
- Lemondrop
- Television
- TheBoot
- TMZ

On top of that, when it comes to unique visitors, 12 AOL properties rank in the top three in their categories for unique visitors:

- #1 Men: Asylum
- #1 African American: BlackVoices
- #1 Maps: MapQuest
- #1 Music: Music
- #1 Style: StyleList
- #1 Television: Television
- #2 Horoscopes: Horoscopes
- #2 Latino: Latino
- #2 Business- News/Research: Money & Finance
- #2 Celebrity: TMZ
- #3 Health: Health
- #3 Movies: Moviefone

Perhaps AOL doesn’t get enough credit as it deserves sometimes, considering that it is still managing to top Google in some categories (like Maps).

“AOL has completely rebuilt each of our vertical websites as well as launched over 30 new sites over the past 24 months, and we’re seeing the results in the unprecedented growth of our audience and engagement,” said Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President, AOL Programming. “We’re making our sites more relevant to today’s online users and advertisers, both by opening them up to third-party applications content and by creating sites that target people’s passion points. As the first big portal to allow access to third-party social networks, e-mail, RSS feeds and more, we are leaning into the fragmentation of the Web and reaching and growing key audiences by creating original content and engaging online experiences.”

Well, most of them
Recently, during a live chat Q&A, Googlers Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye, among others, faced the burning questions of webmasters around the world. Together, they put to rest some fears and myths, and confirmed some speculations.

Below are the meatier results, with the straightest answers given first, followed by responses that were a bit on the ambiguous side, which we took the liberty of translating. Did you know there are about 200 factors that go into determining a site’s ranking in the search results? How about that Google made 450 tweaks to its algorithm last year?

Only one question during that session received conflicting answers from Googlers and wasn’t reconciled: Does the age of a website/domain affect its ranking?

Ohye answered this way: a site’s reputation can be a indicator to search engines, but of course, it’s not everything. Having a site for a long period of time can establish credibility with users, and as a search engine we also want to reflect this type of credibility. Of course, newer domains can also gain users and credibility. It seems like running a good site is a bit like running a reputable business. So yes, if your domain has been credible for years it can help. If you buy an old domain and put all your content on it in hopes of getting instant rankings, that’s not the best idea.

But, when the question was rephrased from another webmaster, Cutts answered: In the majority of cases, it actually doesn’t matter–we want to return the best information, not just the oldest information. Especially if you’re a mom/pop site, we try to find ways to rank your site even if your site is newer or doesn’t have many links. I think it is fair for Google to use that as a signal in some circumstances, and I try never to rule a signal out completely, but I wouldn’t obsess about it.

Official translation: Sometimes, when we say it does.

GOOGLE STRAIGHT TALK

Do 301 redirects carry over PageRank?

Where appropriate, ranking signals will be transferred across 301 redirects (if the same page has moved from one URL to another). This may take some time, so you should probably leave the redirect in place as long as you have control over the URL.

How many 301 redirects are acceptable?

It’s ok to chain a few together. The HTTP 1.0 standard allows for a maximum of 5 redirects for a URL, so keep it minimal.

Why do pages translated into different languages each have different rankings in their respective engines?

Google looks at content on a URL-by-URL basis, so even if you have translated top content from one language to another, Google might not treat it the same way as they would treat the original content. It’s also possible that the translated content is not as relevant as other original content in that language. Generally speaking, making sure that your content is as unique and compelling as possible for the users in that target market is the best thing to do.

Do backlinks from bad sites negatively affect my PageRank?

Those links might be positively affecting your PageRank (PageRank does not go down from “bad” links like those from adult sites). In general, you don’t have to worry about bad links like that which point to your site that aren’t under your control.

How often does your search algorithm change?

We change the algorithms all the time - last year we had over 450 changes.

Could sharing an IP address with a bad site get my site penalized?

The situations where it would matter are when the server is overloaded (can’t respond to your visitors) and when it’s incorrectly configured (not returning your site to your visitors). But otherwise that is no longer a concern.

Does Google have a problem with rank-checking software?

Rank-checking software is against Google’s Terms of Service and could result in blocking your IP address, and it doesn’t really help, especially when it comes to personalized or geotargeted results.

CIRCUITOUS ROUTES AND TRANSLATIONS
Question: Is there PageRank boost from .edu or .gov links?

Google’s Answer: You don’t get any PageRank boost from having an .edu link or .gov link automatically. If you get an .edu link and no one is linking to that .edu page, you’re not going to get any PageRank at all because that .edu page doesn’t have any PageRank.

Translation: If the .edu or .gov page is linked to, then yes, because that webpage now has some authority, just like with any (non-.gov or .edu) page.

Question: Does a page load time play a crucial role in Google Page Ranking? If yes how important is it?

Google’s Answer: I think the more important issue here is user experience. If your site loads fast, your users will be happy; if it loads slow, users will be less happy. Make your users happy, right?

Translation: Yes, and as important as 200 other factors.

Question: Aaron D’Souza of the Search Quality team was reported as stating that publishing the same content on two separate geotargeted paths under your domain will not trigger the dupe content filters. Is this correct?

Google’s Answer: In general, in a case like that, we’d try to pick the best page based on various factors, including geotargeting and language choices. If that page is one which is also available for other geotargeting/language choices, we will generally try to pick the version that our algorithms feel makes the most sense.

Translation: Yes, we think.

Question: I have reported sites that clearly have paid links (e.g. the backlink page says “Advertising” above the link), but Google does not seem to take action. Why would that be the case? These are .orgs who are clearly selling their .org juice.

Google’s Answer: While paid links and spam reports are being taken very seriously by Google, the results may not be seen immediately for users or even not at all. This does not mean no action is being taken on the offending sites. Also, the TLD of the sites should not be a factor being taken into account. For this reason reporting both, web spam and PageRank passing link selling makes sense and contributes in an important way to the quality of Google’s index.

Translation, partly based on .gov/.edu response: Google treats all top level domains the same, so a .org would have no more juice than a .com or .info. Further, clearly marked paid links (ones on pages labeled “Advertising”) are not necessarily violations of Google’s guidelines. If the links you reported were found to be nofollow links, then no action would be necessary. But keep trying to sabotage the competition. Business is war.

Question: Is it true that the fewer the links FROM your website, the more influence they have on the sites receiving those links?

Google’s Answer: PageRank is split up over the links from a page, but I would recommend not concentrating on this (as you won’t be able to “measure” and act upon it anyway) and instead making your site as usable as possible for your visitors.

Translation: Yes, the more you link the more the link juice passed on is diluted, but don’t go trying to figure out the formula in order to game the system. We’ll figure you out. We’re Google.

Question: Does getting a lot of comments in a blog help in being well indexed/ranked by Google?

Google’s answer: Having a lot of enthusiastic users commenting on your posts and doing so generating content on your site, certainly does not harm your rankings Furthermore, a large fan base gives the webmaster a bit of independence from search engine traffic, which is the reason why generating original and compelling content in order to nurture a group of committed users is something I would highly recommend to any blogger

Translation: Yes.

Question: Recently, you removed this suggestion: “Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!” from your guidelines. Is there any chance that you will be discounting these kinds of links for ranking value in future?

Google’s Answer: There’s always the chance that we’ll discount directory links in the future. What we were seeing was quite a few novice people would see the “directory” recommendation and go out and just try to submit to a ton of directories, even if some of the directories were lower-quality or even fly-by-night directories that weren’t great for users. Right now we haven’t changed how we’re weighting directory links–we’ve only removed the directory suggestion from the webmaster guidelines.

Translation: Possibly.

Question: Until recentley (the last six months or so) a high ranking was achievable by submitting articles to article directories (providing they were 40%-60% unique),  it no longer seems to be the case.  Have links from article sites been de-valued at all?

Google’s Answer: In my experience, not every article directory site is high-quality. Sometimes you see a ton of articles copied all over the place, and it’s hard to even find original content on the site. The user experience for a lot of those article directory sites can be pretty bad too. So you’d see users landing on those sorts of pages have a bad experience. If you’re thinking of boosting your reputation and getting to be well-known, I might not start as the very first thing with an article directory. Sometimes it’s nice to get to be known a little better before jumping in and submitting a ton of articles as the first thing.

Translation: Yes.

About The Author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology.

We all like good skills. Here’s a list of 55 quick summaries of the SEO skills, it is network design and SEO knowledge of the people should have to learn applications.

1. If you must use the pull-down menus, image maps or image link on the page must have a text link to the spider can crawl.

2. Wang says, to ensure the provision of keywords or keywords on the quality of the unique content.

3. If the content is king, then the link is the queen. Key words used to establish high-quality anti-link network. Remember, you do not need those bad unreasonable links.

4. Should not be too infatuated with PageRank ranking, it is only ranking algorithms in a small part. PR sites may actually be lower to higher living in the PR on the site.

5. To ensure that your site the title of each page has a unique keyword tags. If you must use the names of the companies to label, put it in the final. Unless you are well-known brands or very few people will search for your company name.

6. Fresh content to enhance your position. Add a new regular useful content. Constantly update to enhance the search engine to your site attention.

7. Keywords ensure that links to your site. In other word, if your goal is “blue widgets”, the link to “blue widgets”, rather than “Click here”.

8. Concerns search for the phrase, rather than a single keyword, and you specify the text of the location (for example, “our Palm Springs store” rather than “our store”), in order to be search by region.

9. The design of the site to consider SEO. To ensure that your site designer understand your SEO expectations. Innovation with Flash site. The spider can crawl text, but can not crawl Flash and images.

10. Appropriately in the text links, images and even domain names on the ALT attribute to add keywords and key words.

11. URL to a decision not to WWW. In other words, if you like http://www.domain.com from then should be redirected to http://yoursite.com http://www.yoursite.com.

12. If index.html is also Home, external links will be directed http://www.domain.com, and internal links will be directed http://www.domain.com/index.html.

Avoid index.html, default.php, or any other similar pages to ensure that the web site home page only links to your domain.

13. Pop-up window, Flash and AJAX have a common problem - can not link to a single page. Do not use pop-ups and less use of Flash and AJAX.

14. URL of the suffix is not important. You can use. Html,. Htm,. Asp,. Php, and so on do suffix, they have no impact on SEO.

15. If Google to submit a new site, which may take several weeks sites were not included. Web site search engine was recorded the fastest way is to get another high-quality links to other websites.

16. If your site is not frequently updated content, this site will need a blog, because the search spiders like new. To feed the small reptiles, the blog at least in a week to be updated three times, and to high-quality content. (On at least in a week to be update the number of surviving in the dispute)

17. Link is important that quality rather than quantity. A good authoritative links than a dozen low-quality links better; low quality of the link may actually be harmful to you.

18. Need natural language search engine. Do not spelled keywords in the article, useless. Search engines will check your article in the keyword frequency, if found unusually high frequency, will be detrimental to your judgment.

19. Not only need to use the link anchor text, links should also be near the text and keywords related. Also note that there should be links around the descriptive text.

20. If you use a shared server, it is necessary to check the blacklist to ensure that no garbage site and a site or are prohibited from using the same proxy server. The stigma of these sites may affect your position.

21. If the registration of domain names hidden domain ownership information, Google may be to your site as potential spam.

22. Optimize the blog article, to optimize the blog heading a separate label.

23. SEO is a summary of the text, links, popularity and prestige.

24. To ensure that your site easy to use, this will affect your link popularity and ranking.

25. Quality link building. Links to other sites will encourage others to link to your site.

26. Search engines like unique high-quality content, while unique and differentiated high-quality, but make sure that your content is both unique and high quality.

27. If you must run in the home or the Flash picture, the bottom of the page to add text and navigation link.

28. Some of the most valuable links may not appear on the website, but seen in the mail.

29. Apart from a few clicks, you will not get any benefits paid links, unless they have links and integrate your articles, and is not one that is on the sponsored links.

30. From. Edu domain name of the site search engine links will be given greater weight (this point yet to be verified - Jing Bo Note). Search for some of the non-profit sponsor’s. Edu sites, and to solicit links.

31. Provide some worthy of discussion, link bait on the good.

32. Each page of a keyword, not to optimize each page once more keywords.

33. If the call to action (Call for Action) weak or non-existent, SEO is of no use. Ensure that your call to action clearly directly.

34. SEO can not be done once and for all. Search results are changing every day, every day should be optimized.

35. Cater to the influential and authoritative blog site to solicit links (including images, video, blog, etc.), or reprint your content.

36. Published the boss or the CEO blog. This is priceless! CEO of the blog is a big influence because he or she represents the entire company. Owner of the message back to the readers will greatly enhance the credibility of the blog!

37. Optimization as articles and web, through the Title and Description add descriptive tags keywords, and optimize the RSS Feed.

38. To add a title picture (Caption). Just like the picture on the newspaper, adding the keyword to the picture’s title.

39. Attention to the context around the picture. Picture will be the basis of their position around the text. Therefore, attention should be paid to picture around the keyword, title, and so on.

40. The best course is to enable the reptile to crawl your website. Good global navigation and links than simply rely on better plug-in XML Sitemap.

41. Avoid Google personalized search results:

(1) sign out of Google account.

(2) In the search results after the URL add & pws = 0 code.

42. From high PageRank links to websites of bullion. PR high confidence that high, so the anti-link the greater weight.

43. The use of absolute link (address), this will not only reduce your links navigation problems (such as links to other web pages or from other http http page link), but when others invoke the contents of your time, you get an anti. (Quoted as long as there is no link to your deleted or modified)

44. When you need to go to the site of a new domain name, look at your virtual hosting service providers to whether or not to provide sticky. Viscous to allow the old domain to a new temporary domain name, and address bar displayed on the new domain name, so that the reader gradually the habits of the new URL.

45. Understanding of social marketing, it is part of SEO. On Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook and other social sites to know more, the more they can compete in the search.

46. To make your video makes it easy for reptiles crawl, to create a video site map listed in Google Webmaster Central.

47. Google search results pages is not only show the video from You Tube. To ensure that Metacafe, AOL, MSN, Yahoo and other high-quality video site to your video.

48. Video around the context of a keyword. Search engine by checking the content around the video to determine whether the search request.

49. ALT in the picture and description of the title on the use of “image (image)” or “picture (picture)” word. Many are keyword search with one of these two words.

50. In your Google webmaster tools “enhanced image search.” The new picture is mixed a large part of the search results, so allow Google search for your picture will help SEO.

51. For your site or blog to add the content of the virus - Looking back, sharing, rating, the reader reviews, and so on.

52. You expand the scope of services, including video, podcasts, news, social content, and so on.

53. Links to purchase or exchange links, first check the links page of the Google cache contents of the date. Search for “cache: URL”, which URL instead of the actual pages. The new date, the better. If the page does not exist or cache a month before the date, then this page will be of no value.

54. If your site has several pages of content is very similar to (you’re concerned about the issue of duplicate content), and you want to ensure that the right of the page was a search engine included, in the site map (Sitemap), add your choice of pages URL.

55. Check your server header. Search for “check server header” and find a suitable free online tool. You need to ensure that the URL of your report is “200 OK” or re-oriented “301 Moved permanently”. If the results show that any other case, check to ensure that your URL is set up correctly and consistent use throughout the site’s URL

Many people are afraid to write the meta tags for their websites, thinking that they would have to be search engine optimization specialists in order to do it properly. While you may not have any special expertise in the field of search engine optimization, you should be an expert in your own business’s area of activity, and, if you combine this knowledge with some simple guidelines, you can write accurate meta tags. Let us see how to write one of the most important meta tags, the description tag.

The description tag is one of the “big three” meta tags, which also include the title tag, and the keywords tag. These three meta tags along with other tags are located in the html code of your website between the sections marked and . While this information is not seen on your web page when someone views your site with a browser, the head section is read by the search engine “robots” and helps the search engines to “understand” what your web page is all about.

Writing the description tag is a good exercise because it will force you to become clear about what you are doing and what you are offering to your viewers. A description tag is in fact like a short mission statement, explaining your enterprise in a nutshell. If someone wakes you in the middle of the night and asks you what your website or your business is all about, you should be able to answer with a concise two or three sentence description without any hesitation.

Here is step-by-step guide to creating and using effective description tags:

1. Write like a journalist. Mention the important W’s, such as who, what, where, when, why. In a description tag, the “what” is the most important element. What do you do? What do you sell? Where do you do it? What is this page all about? Describe what you do in a simple sentence and be sure to incorporate the words and phrases which are most likely to be used when people search for your product or service.

Suppose your business is the Kenosha Wisconsin Window Cleaning Company. A description tag for your main page might start off like this: “The Kenosha Wisconsin Window Cleaning Company provides window cleaning services for residences and businesses in the greater Kenosha, Wisconsin area.”

2. Include your Unique Selling Proposition or USP: The USP is actually the “why” of the classic “who, what, where and why” formula. Why should someone use your service and not someone else’s? The USP is what sets you apart from the others.

Remember when someone makes a query in a search engine yours will not be the only site that comes up. Your competitors will also be there, and they will offer similar products or services. In many search engines the description tag or part of the description tag is displayed in the search results. If your description tag provides some distinctive information, conveying a unique benefit that you provide, then the likelihood that a searcher will click through to your site will increase.

Let’s go back to the example of the Kenosha Window Cleaning site and add the USP to the description. The first lines of the description read: “The Kenosha Wisconsin Window Cleaning Company provides window cleaning services for residences and businesses in the greater Kenosha, Wisconsin area.” Another sentence saying “We guarantee a great job every time at a price you can afford,” could be added to give more detail about the quality, guarantee and the affordability of the service.

3. Put this description in the meta tag section of the head and in the text of the page itself.

You’ve just taken some time to explain what your web page is all about, and have included some compelling reason why someone should buy your product or service. Don’t hide this information in a place where your readers cannot see it. If you only put the description in the meta tag section, then the search engine robots will see it, but many of your visitors will not.

Rather, use your description as part of your first paragraph or even as part of your opening headline. Your description contains your important key phrase and key words. If you place it in the opening paragraph or somewhere on your page, then the search engine optimization value of the description is doubled or even tripled. A big mistake in search engine optimization is to use meta tags, but then have no descriptive text on the page, relying on images to convey the message. Use the description tag to begin your text, and add some more to amplify it and expand on what you have written.

4. Write a distinct description tag for each of your pages, focusing on the unique content and purpose of that particular page.

Another big mistake on many websites is to use the same meta tags on all the pages. Each of your pages is different. Each page has or should have a special item of importance. Look at your pages and think of the special part that the page plays in your overall marketing effort, and make a unique description tag. As with the description tag for your main page, put this description within the text of the page itself.

Even if you get a professional search engine optimization service to write the main meta tags for your site, you can put this knowledge into practice whenever you add new pages to your site. Good description tags will help your site to be found in search engine queries, and when used as part of the main text of your pages will also help your web visitors to quickly understand your most important marketing messages.

About The Author
Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He has been working on the Internet since 1995 and is currently the director of A1-Optimization a firm providing affordable search engine optimization and other website promotion services.

This is part one of ten in this search engine positioning series. In part one we will outline how to choose the keyword phrases most likely to produce a high ROI for your search engine positioning efforts. Over this ten part series we will go through ten essential elements and steps to optimizing a site. Some steps take a few hours, some may take months depending on the competition, but in the end and, if done correctly, you will have a well optimized site that will place well and hold it’s positioning.

Of course, all websites fluctuate up and down. However, well optimized sites will spend more time on the upper end of the rankings than poorly optimized or spammy sites which may see high rankings but which will lose those rankings over time.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

• Keyword Selection
• Content
• Site Structure
• Optimization
• Internal Linking
• Human Testing
• Submissions
• Link Building
• Monitoring
• The Extras

Step One - Keyword Selection

Arguably, keyword selection is the single most important stage in the entire optimization process. If you do not choose the correct keyword phrases you will not maximize your ROI on this campaign. I mention ROI and use it as a reminder that keyword selection is not necessarily about looking for the most searched phrases. A profitable optimization is one which produces the greatest return on investment for the time and money that are available to put towards it.

Bigger Is Not Always Better
If you are a web designer in Seattle who has just started your own business, you could make “web design” the targeted keyword phrase for your site as it certainly has the highest number of searches with 707,962 in September 2004 according to the “Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool”. If you have thousands of dollars and many months to dedicated just to attaining those rankings it could be done. However, would that be the best use of your time? Alternatively you could target “seattle web site design” with 5,070 searches in September. A Google link check shows the number of links for the top three competitors for the Seattle search had 132, 21, and 47 respectively whereas for “web design” the top three had 18,700, 5,420, and 1,310 incoming links each.

With a good site you would get more work than you could handle with 5,070 searches on Overture alone if you were ranking well on the major search engines. This would clearly provide the highest return on investment for the small business owner who most certainly does not have the time and money available to target “web design” and who wouldn’t have the manpower to take advantage of the rankings even if they were attained.

This is an extreme example, but it clearly illustrates that sometimes the phrase with the highest number of searches is not necessarily the best target for your business.

Phrases That Sell
Another consideration you will want to make when choosing your keyword phrases is whether or not they are “buy phrases“. Phrases with a high number of searches that are not “buy phrases” will tend to bring a lot of traffic, however the conversion ratio will be far lower. Should you choose to target “buy phrases” you may not get the same number of visitors but your ratio of visitors to sales will be much higher.

In this example, let’s assume you are the marketing director for a well-known accounting company. There will be many choices you can make for your targeted keyword phrase. The top searched phrases in September 2004 that were accounting-related are: