Webmaster

Link Exchange

Let talk about link exchange ...

Let's use an example ... janedoherty.com has a Google page rank of 4 out of 10. 4 is good, but it needs to eventually get a 6/7.

So what this means, is that when you are considering whom you wish to trade links with ... they must have a page rank of 4 or better. Anything less pulls your ranking down.

I get requests daily from a lot of people who want to do link exchange. If their rank is too low, I won't do it.

The other thing to consider ... their website must be a similar topic to your own. If a colon cleasing site wants to swap links with you, don't do it. Relevant links are a must for a good Google page rank.

Why does page rank matter? The better your page rank, the more relevant Google thinks you are and the better you placement will be.

The last thing is that you can get as many websites to link to you only as you like. That's all good no matter what topics their website is about. Those are called backlinks and you want a ton of them ... that's how you will get into difficult keywords like "psychic" ...  as in Jane Doherty's case.

Right now, only Jane's index/home page show any ranking. All the others are 0/10. So, when you start having others link to you ... or you leave you link around the internet ... leave some to those other pages so they will begin to gain rank too. The more relevant the whole site is, the better your placement in Google will be.

Not Your Momma’s Super Affiliate Anymore

by Bobbie Grennier

I’m asking myself what does it mean to truly be a “super affiliate?” To wear the mantel of honor as one of the proud, the few, the Arelisians.

What’s an Arelisian you ask? Wow, I might have to set down my coffee cup to answer that one for you.

It’s story hour boys and girls, and so we begin … once upon a time … a time long, long ago … before Google domination, there was a little software company called Axandra. Axandra/Voget Selbach Enterprises to be exact.

Axandra set out to make quality software, become debt-free and help small and medium sized businesses to make their websites as successful as possible. I know, because I read it on their website.

In their quest to champion the little-guy Internet businesses, Axandra created a website promotion tool and called it Arelis.

A bright star shown over Arelis that day, for this little tool would grow up to do great things … for a while anyhow. Many marketers and web designers became devoted Arelisians.

Then one day, along came the world’s most powerful search engine, Google … their words, not mine.

Google punished all small and medium sized businesses that were using the miracle tool that was Arelis, crushing websites just for existing. Some of those websites were never seen again. To this day we don’t know where Google flung them.

The era of Arelis was over or so they thought. This was not end of Arelis.

Arelis is still a very powerful tool for web marketers and SEO professionals to use. We have to acknowledge that the ground rules for playing the search engine game have changed a lot since the inception of Arelis.

For those of you who haven’t used Arelis, here’s what it does in a nutshell. Give Arelis the URL of your website and a few keywords. It actually goes out onto the Internet and searches for relevant links for your website to do a link exchange with.

The links that Arelis brings back to you are about 50% not a match, but the other 50% is pure gold … well, it used to be anyhow.

Arelis allows you to label each of those potential reciprocal URLs, so you’ll know where you are with each one as you move through a list of hundreds of URLs. That’s a great feature because you want to make sure that sites that want you to link to them, have already linked to you. Arelis helps you keep a record of what’s going on in your reciprocal link exchange.

The next cool feature Arelis does, is that with the click of a button Arelis will create and upload an entire reciprocal links directory to your website for you. In addition to repeat performances as you add more links. Yeah, that was a cool feature … was being the keyword.

Arelis directories are distinct and once Google got a whiff of them, it was like a fight scene in the movie The Highlander … in the end there can be only one.

So I’ve got bad news and I’ve got good news. Bad news first, it always travels faster. Google will most likely punish you for using Arelis to create your links directory.

The good news is that you can still Arelis as a tool to find potential links partners and keep a record of where you are in the process with each partner. I however avoid the beating that Google would inflict on my websites, and I inflict my own version of pain on myself. I actually pull the links data and URLs of the partners who do link back to build my own links directory by hand … yes, the old fashioned way. Someday I’ll get around to explaining how I build a links directory that makes Google drool like a teething infant.

SEO Text Links

I don't know about you, but I must get at least ten or more requests everyday from other websites who want to link to one of my websites. I actually wouldn't mind being contacted except for a couple of things ....

If you're using those automated tools, and especially if you're not,...  before sending out that email requesting a link up, you really should make sure that the webmaster hasn't already built in a directory that you could just ad your link to yourself. Hello people!

I always reply to these email requests to be added with the URL of my website's directory with a nice little "go for it" note attached. To date, not one of them has gone back and signed up ... what does that tell you?!

Well, that is to say that they get that note if they bothered to tell me which domain they're requesting to be hooked up to. SEO guys ... yeah, you ... give the domain name you're seeking a link on. Never assume that the webmaster only has one domain. If I can't tell what domain you intended, I hit the delete key.

Some of my domains do have free directories where you can link up if you want, but I'm rapidly moving into the "if you want a link, pay for it" realm because I'm tired of doing all the linking work and getting nothing back for it. The vast majority of requests for links are coming from new websites with no Page Rank (PR) and that does nothing for me.

It's like a double whammy, in that they want me to do all the work linking them up and they offer me no advantage for my efforts. Hmmm, you do the math.

I've been doing some research, looking at various link brokers and checking to see who's real and who's questionable. I've found some real companies and a bunch of fakers ... so, let me share.

Getting high scores for Text Link sales is Linkworth.com ... mostly because they pay their sellers what they owe them and on time. I was looking at LinkSmile.com until I read their forum postings ... you should probably read that for yourself.  I was considering LinkAdage.com until I interacted with them. I didn't have such a good time. Your's might go better. I decided to use the services of Linkworth.com, and I'm still test driving a few others too.  One that I gave a run to was LinkVault.com as an open link exchange service, but what I got for my trouble was lots of nothing. They didn't help PR at all, the sites they linked up to me have no PR and when I went to the places I was supposed to be linked up to ... I was unable to find the links. So, you might do more research on them before jumping in there.

You might also add PublishHub.com to that list of questionable resources. The site was advertising a new SEO that was going to revolutionize SEO ... blah, blah, blah, and they said if you linked to them they would give you one free month of their services ... blah, blah, blah. I linked them up to my blog here and never heard a peek back ... it's been well over three months. I've gone to the website to check on things, and the offer is now gone ... site's blah, blah, blah is gone ... looks like they're pulling back. And, you probably should too.

One more word of caution with regards to using link brokers. If you care what search engine zars like Google think of you for hooking up to these services, you might want to reconsider your position. There are rumblings that Google will punish you for using other brokers. That's understandable since Google wants to rule the world. I'll be testing to see what Google thinks about Yahoo and MSN ads, but so far my other links haven't caused problems.

Oh and a parting word about Google. I no longer put Google Ads on all my web pages. Word is that Gooogle will rip their ad network away from you without so much as a warning or contact of any kind other than to say bye-bye. One day you have it and the next you don't. I can't afford to invest that much time with Google especially since the ads provided zero PR or link rank benefit. You don't have to advertise or post ads with Google to get rankings, and that's a fact.

About the Author: Bobbie Grennier is an SEO copywriter and web site copywriter. She publishes several blogs, but you're most likely to be interested in her Writer Blog and Webmaster Blog. She can be contacted by email at webmaster @ wildwolf.ws. Visit her web sites http://www.wild-wolf.com or http://www.wildwolf.ws for more SEO information or more FREE reprint articles.

Google SiteMaps and You

Last week, we looked (http://www.cafeid.com/art-rss.shtml) at the recent news that Microsoft had decided to embrace RSS in a big way in its upcoming releases of Internet Explorer and Windows “Longhorn” and determined that this was a Good Thing. This week, we’re taking a look at implementing Google Sitemaps, a similar technology developed by Google in order to help you define your site more effectively to the search-engine behemoth.

This is not a ticket to a higher Google ranking (at least not that we know about); but it is a useful tool that lets you apply RSS-like control to your website’s interactions with the Googlebot.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the current heavyweight of so-called “disruptive technologies” (loosely defined as those that have the effect, if not developed with the intention, of changing the way we use technology in general) and its use is skyrocketing among content providers looking for a way to get their content in front of more eyes and ears. But RSS originally stood for Rich Site Summary, a standard way of cataloging your site’s content for third-party aggregators.

Google Sitemaps have a similar function, in that they are an XML-based way to describe website content in a standard, predictable way; but they differ in that Sitemaps are intended for the Googlebot’s eyes only, rather than for any third-party. Think of them as an automated way to make sure Google knows about your site’s content (please note, however, that Google does not guarantee inclusion of your content based solely on the presence of a Sitemap file).

This sounds like a very specific undertaking, but the importance of Google to getting your site’s content noticed can simply not be overstated. And with Google’s expanding reach into more and more areas of Web content presentation, chances are that you can be assured that the information your Sitemap provides will eventually find some use you haven’t yet thought about. That’s what disruptive technology is all about, and Google has become one of the more innovative champions of such technological advances.

Where To Start:

The first thing you should do as a website developer is create a Google Account for yourself or your company. This will allow you to do other things besides access the Sitemaps infrastructure; but we’ll leave that for another day. Create the account here
(https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount) and then proceed to the Sitemaps area at (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login).
Once you’ve logged in, you’ll see the sparse Sitemaps interface. Don’t be fooled, however, because like the simple interface to its search engine, this one hides quite a bit of information regarding the creation and use of Sitemaps, presenting it in digestible bites as you walk through the process.

There’s probably more there than you need to know at this point, provided you don’t have a huge site with a need for multiple Sitemaps and so on. But if you do have such a site, the information is there for creating truly complex Sitemaps and Sitemap Indices referencing many Sitemaps and you can familiarize yourself with that as needed. For now, we’ll concentrate on what’s required to establish a Sitemap for our site at Cafe ID (http://www.cafeid.com).

Like creating RSS feeds, creating a Google Sitemap is as simple as putting together an XML file at the root level of your site that describes the site according to the instructions that Google has laid out. You can use any text editor for this purpose, but some editors do a better job of helping you create properly formatted XML files. We heartily recommend two that cost money, BBEdit on Mac OS X
(http://www.barebones.com) and Macromedia’s Homesite on Windows (http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite/), but there are excellent free alternatives out there and when it comes to text editors, personal preferences take on an almost religious importance, so we won’t proselytize about that here.

The Googlebot recognizes several Sitemap formats, ranging from a simple list of URLs to Sitemaps already created using something called the “Open Archive Initiative protocol for metadata harvesting”, a format apparently popular with library collections. The OAI protocol is an advanced XML specification that you don’t need to worry about if you don’t already understand. An intermediate XML format is what we recommend, over the simple URL list, because of the additional information you can associate with each constituent URL of your site.

If you do want to just get started quickly, simply create a text file that looks like this:

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=1
http://www.example.com/catalog?item=11

making sure that the file in question does not include embedded newline characters and uses the UTF-8 text encoding (check your text editor settings). Also, your sitemap may not contain more than 50,000 URLs and all URLs must me fully-formed since they will be used directly during the Googlebot’s crawl.

Getting Fancy:

The more advanced format isn’t much more difficult to create and lets you specify additional information about each URL. The protocol is described fully here (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html) and is too detailed to explain here. Your finished file will look something like this, except (hopefully) with more URLs specified:

http://www.cafeid.com/
2005-01-01
monthly
0.8

http://www.cafeid.com/art-over.shtml
weekly

Your Sitemap’s location dictates what URLs can be included in it. A Sitemap placed at the root level of your site can specify any URLs on that site, while a Sitemap placed at www.yoursite.com/images can not include URLs under www.yoursite.com/banners, for example.

You can take as full or as little advantage of the availability of the various additional XML tags available in this format. Each needs to include at least the specification, but need not include the other three, and all URLs in a Sitemap file must be encapsulated within the tag. We recommend using at least the tag and the flag to let the Googlebot know how often it should check your site for updated content. Be sure to change the date, and maybe even the time, specified in the tag any time you actually update your site.

One more caveat is that your URL specifications must be XML-encoded, similarly to the way they’re encoded under RSS. What this means is spelled out in detail here (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html), but essentially, what you’re doing is converting a URL like http://www.yoursite.com/view?widget=3&count>2 to look like this: http://www.test.org/view?widget=3&count>2 (Note the substitution for the HTML entities & and > for the “&” and “>” symbols.)

Done. Now What Do I Do With It?:

You’re almost home. Upload the Sitemap file you create to your server and then add the URL to the file itself using your Google Sitemaps account. You don’t need to use the account, but doing so will allow you to keep track of what you’ve uploaded.

You’re welcome to compress your Sitemap file using gzip, found typically on Mac OS X, Linux and BSD (normal PC zipping won’t work, although you can certainly find a third-party gzip program for your Windows box). Click the “Add Your First Sitemap” link on the main Sitemaps page after you’ve logged into your Google Sitemaps account, and that’s all there is to it!

You can use your Sitemaps account to keep track of and receive diagnostic information about your Sitemap submissions. You don’t need to create a Sitemaps account, however, and if you already have a Google account for receiving Alerts, for accessing the Web Developer APIs and so on, your existing account will work as a Sitemaps account automatically.

Google has already played a significant role in shifting the paradigm of discovering the Web from doing so by following links to doing so by searching, and the company shows no signs of slowing down. Subscribing may well be the next paradigm, based on the flexibility of the protocols that put content syndication in the hands of mere mortals, and getting your content cataloged in these formats should be among your first priorities. The web browser and operating system is adjusting quickly to this new paradigm, and you should be too.

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About the Author: Trevor Bauknight is a web designer and writer with over 15 years of experience on the Internet. He specializes in the creation and maintenance of business and personal identity online and can be reached at trevor@tryid.com.

SEO How To Series

I've been working hard to add a huge section of search engine optimization information to the Wild Wolf Webmasters website. I'm happy to open up our SEO Knowledge Base to the public.

We're addressing topics like alt tags, cascading style sheets, meta tags, entry pages, repeating words, hidden text, url redirection, using cookies, using frames, much more. I'll be referencing the SEO Knowledge Base a lot because it's a great place to go for those wanting to learn the basic prinicples of SEO.

Alexa Listings

I'm playing with the Alexa search engine a little bit today. There are some nice features that Amazon has built into this search engine of theirs. For this post, I'm playing with the Site Stats Button feature.

Getting listed is a real buggar though ... as in very slow. They seem to spider slowly, if at all. I have websites I submitted to them years ago that still aren't listed. Well, as of today they are because I stumbled across a little something, something.

Here, I'm just going to copy and paste the Alexa info in here before I explain:

Site Information Links

Make money and enhance your site with "Site Info" links.

You can drive traffic to Amazon.com Site Information pages (see example) and make money as an Amazon.com Associate.

If you aren't an Amazon.com Associate, you can learn more about the program and join by visiting http://www.amazon.com/associates.

How to make a link to a Site Information Page:

Links should be formatted as follows:

http://partner.alexa.com/amzn/redirect_to_detail?amzn_id=yourID&url=examplesite.com

Replace "yourID" with your Amazon.com associate ID, and "examplesite.com" with any URL.

Okay, now you have the Alexa information. First thing is, you must have an associate ID or this won't work. Amazon loves their associates!

Basically what I discovered is that if you use the URL string: http://partner.alexa.com/amzn/redirect_to_detail?amzn_id=yourID&url=examplesite.com and enter your associate ID and the website you want listed where it says examplesite.com ... then, just drop that into your browsers address field and submit.  What might happen on the first submit is that you get a return page saying sorry we can't find that information. Submit it again. In fact, I kept submitting it until I got a listing page.

Okay, so the listing page had almost no infomation on it, although some were totally filled in, it's still a start and better than no listing at all ... which is what I've been getting trying to filling in all the info about the site and waiting for them to index it.

So now the experiment will be to see if they spider the sites or not to get current information and screen capture of the index page. Anyhow, you try it and let me know results you see.

Stealing Google

Danny Wall, you rock man! And, of course, I love the name of your company Wolf Data Systems ... mine ... Wild Wolf ... 'nough said. Danny has written three well formed articles on search engine optimization that are must read for most of us ... newbies and old timers a like.

The series is called How to Steal the Top of Google with part one giving a general review of how to properly put a website together with search engines in mind.

How to Steal the Top of Google part two was very informative with the bulk of information being how to correctly get Google to index your website without getting punished by Google. According to Danny ... never ever, ever use the Google add your site feature. Read his article to get a detailed list of what-to-do.

Finally, How to Steal the Top of Google part three we learn the lesson that I've been preaching for years ... content is king. We must get our clients to understand that to be in the top ten they must build authorative websites and they do it with content and the almighty RSS feed.