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Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts

Monday, October 1, 2007

Who Else Wants To Make Money With Adsense?

Fact number 1: Kids in high school are making thousands of dollars every month with Adsense.

Fact number 2: Housewives, retirees, mom and dads, who are just staying at home and have never made a dime on the internet have created full-time incomes by simply placing Adsense ads on their web site or blog.
These are just some of the “super Adsense earners”. You may have already heard about their story for they are among the few who are on their way to making millions worth of cash just by promoting Adsense sites.


Anyone, any age and gender can become money generating Adsense publishers as long as they what it takes. How does one go about this Internet advertising?
Writing articles for Adsense is the way to do it. Using the right keywords in your articles and having Google ads on a certain site has become the most profitable way of marketing that anybody can get into. No experience and level of education needed. If you are not using this strategy, or may not be aware of it in the first place, chances are you may be losing thousands of dollars worth of extra income and still do not know it yet.


This is one of the many reasons why writing original quality content articles is now the latest in marketing buzz. Content and links. When combined together becomes a really powerful tool to a successful web site and richer individuals. Many internet marketing professionals are already aware of the value of an original quality content and how using keywords can drive targeted traffic into their sites from the search engines.


So why don’t all these web site owners write and submit their own articles if that is what is important?
The simple and understandable answer is that it takes time to write articles, submit them and get targeted traffic to their websites. That is why they get the services of those who can spares sometime to write the articles that would cater to their site purpose but still turn out as a good quality and unique piece of work.


To get into the Adsense marketing business and start earning some good cash, ask yourself. Did you enjoy writing when you were in school? If you answer yes to this question, you already have an initial advantage over most internet marketing business owners that wants to make money online and doing it at home.


With the boom in the Adsense market comes the need for sites to want fresh, quality and original keyword rich content. This way, web site owners can have a steady supply of articles with the proper keywords that they relate to their site contents. The result of this is seen in the sites page rank when indexed by the search engines. Which, in turn, gets moreAdsense ads to show above, below or next to the article on their website with targeted traffic.
What do people have to do?


Write quality and original content, keyword or phrase rich articles with links to your website in the resource box. Then build a website or web page with targeted keyword or phrase rich original content for the targeted traffic that originates from the articles you wrote. Finally, you will have a Google Adsense ads that are targeted to your keyword or phrase rich original content site where visitors will get to visit when they come looking for information.


A win-win situation if you think more about it. A favor for persons looking for quality content and information. For the persons writing the original content articles. And the person with the quality original content rich website. Of course, the search engines and its advertisers are getting targeted traffic and sales but so what? As long as you are getting something in your favor, it does not really matter what the others are getting for themselves.


So who else wants to start earning money with Adsense. You. Everyone. Anybody. Internet marketing has many opportunities wide open for this people. Writing articles and using Adsense for your kind of internet marketing strategy is one sure way of getting a

piece of that action and cash.
Better not be left behind the many making millions already.

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Saturday, September 1, 2007

11 Techniques to Increase Page Views on Your Blog

 

Of course more page views may or may not be what you want from your blog. At least one commenter on the previous post noted that they are happy with a low page view count because it could mean people are leaving their blog by clicking on an advertisement and thereby earning them money. While there could be some truth in this observation and I’m not adverse to this happening on my blogs - I’m also interested in building blogs that people find interesting and useful and one of the many measures of this can be page views. Of course to get back to the money thing again - those of you running impression based ads will be interested in increased page views also.

Having said that - IF you’re interested in increasing the number of pages that your average reader reads, here are a few suggestions that might help:

1. Highlight Related Posts - one of the more common practices of bloggers to encourage readers to read multiple pages on their blogs is to to highlight related posts at the end of your article. You’ll notice that i presently have a list of 5 posts at the end of each individual page that suggests other posts that readers might find useful This list is generated by a WordPress PlugIn. Those of you using other blog platforms might find similar plugins for your own system or might like to manually suggest related articles at the end of your posts.

2. Interlink within Posts - a similar but perhaps more effective technique is to highlight relevant posts within the content of your posts. If you’re writing a post that mentions something similar to what you’ve written before simply link to your previous post from within your article. For example I’ve written about this technique previously in a post on increasing the longevity of key posts.

3. Highlight Key Posts and Categories in your Blog’s Hotspots - I’ve often mentioned that the hottest posts on this blog are those highlighted in my top three menus. Specifically it is those in the top left hand box at the top of this page that are always at the top of my most read post statistics. Depending upon the goals of your blog - you may wish to fill your blog’s hotspots with ads or affiliate programs - or you may want to highlight key posts that are central to your blog and which will hook readers into what your blog is about (thereby increasing page views). Highlighting your category pages is also another similarly useful technique to encourage your readers to find more posts on the same topic. To explicitly name what your category is can also be useful. ie rather than just having the category name at the end of the post - try something like ‘read more posts like this in our ((insert category name)) category’ or ‘filed under ((insert category name))’ etc.

4. Compilation Pages - Extending the previous idea about highlighting key posts you may wish to use posts in these positions that sneeze readers not just to one post on your blog but many. The best example of this on ProBlogger is my Top 20 Posts at ProBlogger post which is in my top left hand menu. This post, as the name suggests, suggests 20 posts on my blog that readers might like to read. I know that this is a post with immense power on this blog and that many first time readers use it to bounce into all corners of my blog. One or two new readers have fed back to me that this page and the pages that it linked to was the reason that they became hooked on ProBlogger. Every post they read added to the chances that they would become loyal readers.

5. Series - While you need to be a bit careful with writing series of posts over periods of time, they are a great way to keep readers coming back and once they are complete to have them surf through multiple pages on your blog. The most popular series on this blog is my Adsense for Bloggers series which leads readers through 8 posts. I know many readers progress through this series because I occasionally get a series of comments from a reader who is obviously progressing through it - 8 comments over 30 minutes or so as they comment on each post. Don’t just do a series for the sake of increasing page views of course - this can really frustrate readers but use them on longer posts or when you’re genuinely wanting to interact with a larger topic over time.

6. Excerpts on Front Pages - I know there are a segment of ProBlogger readers that detest seeing excerpts (extended entry feature) on blog front pages and are very cynical that it’s just a ploy to get more page views. While I personally like using excerpts on front pages it is not about page views for me (although I guess it is a side benefit of it). Personally using excerpts in this way is more about keeping my front page manageable and highlighting multiple posts on the front page. ie if a reader can come to my blog and see not only the last post but the title of the second and maybe even the third post then they are more likely to explore more than just the last thing you’ve written. I tend to only use the extended entry feature on longer articles and allow shorter ones of a paragraph or two go up on the main page - unless I either forget or see the post as an important one.

7. Excerpts in RSS - Once again there is always debate over this topic of full or partial RSS feeds. I know some bloggers main purpose in partial feeds is to get bloggers directly onto their blog - thereby increasing their impression/page view count. While this is certainly a benefit of partial feeds it is not my own reason for using them. Rather I use them for copyright protection and to stop people scraping my full content onto their site’s via RSS. Whatever reason you choose to use partial/excerpt feeds - you should also realize that doing so will cause some readers to unsubscribe to your blog completely. I know in going only with partial feeds that there are some other bloggers who refuse to visit my blog - this is a cost/benefit scenario that individual bloggers need to weigh up.

8. Enable links in RSS Feeds - Another way that I know a couple of bloggers use to get RSS readers to actually surf to their blogs is to enable the ability to post html/links in their RSS and then using links to previous posts in their blog, especially in the first paragraph or two of their posts. This is not a technique I’ve tried but I know of one blogger who swears by it and says it significantly impacted the number of visitors to his blog from RSS as well as the number of pages that they viewed.

9. Search Function - most blog blog platforms have the ability to use a search feature on your blog which enables users to search your blog for keywords. This feature obviously helps your readers to locate other posts on your site and as a result increases the potential for a multiple page view visit.

10. Build an Interactive Blog - one way to get readers coming back to your blog many times over a day is to have a blog that people want to interact with. I know some ProBlogger readers visit this site at least 10 times per day just so that they can engage in the conversation that happens in comments. Since I added the ’subscribe to comments’ feature on this blog I’ve noticed some readers coming even more than normal - this can only be increasing page view levels as people return throughout the day.

11. Quality Content -This should go without saying but needs to be reinforced. Obviously if you write quality content your readers will want more of the same. Useful, original and interesting content should leave your readers hungering for more. Work on the quality of your blog and you’ll find that things like traffic levels and the numbers of pages being read should look after themselves and be on the rise.

There are no doubt other techniques for increasing page views. I’ve heard bloggers who swear by writing loads of posts per day to encourage readers to come back numerous times per day as one such technique - but I’d love to hear your experiences in comments below.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Go4Expert - 10 ways for getting links to ur site

10 ways for getting links to ur site

To this day, the best way to build links is still doing it by hand. Here are the steps you should follow when building links:
1.
Set a goal. Link building takes a lot of time, but it is very effective and easy to do, so you want to keep at it. Set a goal for the number of links you want as a way to stay motivated through the process.
Depending on the sites you ask and your approach, your results will vary. But a general rule of thumb is to set your linking goal at four-to-six times higher than the number of links you actually want to receive. You need to set your goal higher because most sites will not want to trade links, for various reasons.
2.
Make sure your site is worth a link. This means your site must offer something of value to entice other sites to link to yours.
If all your site does is sell products or services, you need to get busy creating some additional linkable content. Examples of linkable content include how-to articles, product reviews, tools, tips and so on. Creating content can be tough, but if you don't have some on your site already, you've got to do it. Adding linkable content not only will encourage others to link to your site, but it will improve the overall quality of your site for your visitors.
Make it easy on yourself by writing about something you know that relates to your site. This column is a perfect example. It teaches without trying to sell something. The best part of creating linkable content is that if you do it well enough, you will find that people will link to your site without you even asking, and that's the easiest way to build links.
You're not a writer? You can always add free tools or free downloads. Also, consider creating a links page prior to requesting a link trade with a site. You can usually expect a better reception from a potential link partner if they can see where you will place the link to their site.
3.
Determine the type of sites you want to trade links with. This takes some thought. You need to figure out all of the different types of sites that could potentially trade links with you. Focus on sites that are related to your target market.
Here's a good example:
I worked on a site that sold sunglasses, so I approached sites that sold swimsuits and tanning lotions, but not sunglasses. Once we accumulated links from those sites, we then developed a section of our site on eye protection and asked for links from all of the sites we could find that addressed eye protection. In the end, we significantly increased the number of links to our site from other sites in our target market. Plus, we added about 10 additional pages of content to our site that our visitors enjoyed and we continue to link to. This helps significantly in search-engine placements.
4.
Get equipped to evaluate your link partners. To make the most of your efforts, you don't want to spend too much time going after links from sites that the search engines don't think are valuable. While it isn't perfect, the Google Toolbar can help you decide which sites are quality link partners and which aren't. The toolbar integrates with your Web browser. It helps you by displaying the "page rank" of each site you visit. Put simply, page rank is a rough indicator of what Google thinks of a site. You can rest assured that if Google thinks it is a good site, it probably is. The higher a page ranks the better. One strategy is to try to link up with sites that have pages ranked as high as or higher than your own.
5.
Locate quality link partners. There are many ways to find link partners, but the easiest way to find quality link partners quickly is to start at Open Directory and Yahoo!. Open Directory and Yahoo! are good places to start for three reasons:
These directories are both so difficult to get listed in that each potential link partner you find there is likely to be of a higher quality than those you would find elsewhere.
Yahoo! and Open Directory greatly boost a site's link popularity when they list a site. Your site will receive a little bit of that boost each time someone from one of those directories links to you.
The links you build don't help your link popularity in the search engines unless the engines know about the link. The search engines crawl the sites listed in Yahoo! and Open Directory on a regular basis, so by starting your linking campaign here you can be sure the search engines will find you new links quickly.
To find partners, simply start searching for terms that are related to the types of link partners you decided are best (step No. 3 above). While surfing your potential partner's Web site, keep your eye on their page rank (step No. 4).
6.
Organize your findings. Again, there are many ways to do this, but it's always a good idea to keep it simple. Use a spreadsheet to keep track of the following:
• Full name of site owner or Webmaster.
• E-mail address of the site owner or Webmaster.
• Home page URL of link partner.
• URL of the page where you think your link belongs and why you think it belongs there.
• Page rank of the page where you think your link belongs.
• Something unique that you liked about the site.
• Date of initial link request.
For many sites, much of this information will not be available, but you should try to find as much of it as you can.
7.
Prepare for contact. Now that you have a list of potential link partners, go through the list and send a custom e-mail to each one requesting that you trade links. Do not send a generic e-mail requesting a link; it will not get a response. Your link request should mention the following, most of which comes from your spreadsheet (step No. 4):
• Something you liked about their site; compliments go a long way.
• Why you think your link belongs on their site.
• The URL to exactly where you think your link fits on their site.
• The URL of where you'll be placing their link on your site.
• How you would like them to link to you. Provide a sample link and description. The easier you make it, the more likely they will post it.
8.
Check for links. When building links, you are dealing with real people, so it can take some time. You may need to wait a month or longer before checking to see if anyone has linked to your site from your new partner. Usually it is best to do this step by hand, but you can use a link popularity tool if you have a lot to check.
9.
Follow up with the cream of the crop. Once a month has passed, follow up with each site that hasn't linked to you yet. Save time and only follow up with the cream of the crop — those in your spreadsheet with the highest page ranks.
10.
Set a schedule. You will find it easier to keep building links if you put yourself on some sort of link-building schedule. Consider doing a certain small amount (30 to 60 minutes) of link building each day. It will help prevent burnout, which is inevitable if you try to do your entire campaign in a couple of days.

Go4Expert - 10 ways for getting links to ur site

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Using e-Books for Viral Marketing Campaigns - The Answer

Ideal links should link to various selected pages on your site, and you should also be able to determine the anchor text, because this could be a very important factor in determining the exact words for which your site is ranked on the search engines. But unfortunately in linking you do not get to determine your anchor texts ALL the time. But with an e-book you could determine quite a number of your anchor texts.

You provide an e-book, and offer the people who download it rights to redistribute it for free. This gives web masters a free resource to offer their users. They immediately pull your e-book from your site (of course there is still the problem of getting webmasters to see your valuable resource). You then offer the web masters the option of selling your e book, even allowing them to call it what they like as long as they leave links back to your site.

Most web masters won't sell it, and the few that do won't get many sales. Most web masters will simply put the resource on their servers and let their users download. Note that the e-book must be in PDF format.

Some Models

An excellent model for this technique is http://www.seoelite.com/, which holds the top ranking for "SEO software." The entire site's publicity is based on the viral spread of his e-book or e-lessons in SEO. The book contains links back to "Brad Callen's" site seoelite.com with SEO software as anchor text.

I have personally run across the e-book at least three times on different sites; the fellow even ran full banner ads for the e-book on SEO Chat. This book has free re-distribution rights and even has a "deal sweetener" that helps satisfy a webmaster's need for revenue. The whole e-book can either be offered as a single course or as a series of twelve courses via email (with a very strong sell message laced into every chapter).

The Clincher for Seoelite

Really, this deserves a whole chapter. Apart from giving redistribution rights, seoelite.com now offers webmasters PDF re-brander software which they can use to replace standard links and place unique affiliate links back to the landing page. Now note this technique -- they give a free resource, then tell you that if you change the links to affiliate links (they give you the free software to do this) you get paid a certain amount every time someone who clicks on that link buys seoelite software.

So what happens? Discerning webmasters put the resource on their very best pages and do everything in their power to presell the SEO software. That's why despite all the bad press saying "seoelite is obsolete" (it even rhymes), seoelite is still a top (automated and DIY) competitor for many of the very best SEO (manual and outsourcing) companies.

Using e-Books for Viral Marketing Campaigns - The Need

I am a web developer who works with teams that build and market web sites, so I always have a few sites at hand which I am optimizing for the search engines, or just looking to drive traffic towards. And always we face the need, the absolute need for content. Always we start with this need: where will we get the content that the traffic will read?

Web editors, webmasters and generally every one that owns a web site needs content. Without content, your traffic is guaranteed to dry up. Take it to the bank, "no new content, your traffic will dry up." I have seen it happen countless times; we reach a few thousand hits a day, then our webmaster puts his/her feet up, quits creating new content, and few months later s/he screams "where did they all go?"

There are different forms of content. There is text content, there are downloadables, graphics and software downloads, online applications that do fun stuff (like give you search results), and more. Most webmasters simply stick with text because of bandwidth considerations, At the danger of sounding melodramatic, webmasters are pretty desperate for content.

The Other Need

Webmasters need revenue. What's the point of paying an SEOs exorbitant fees and then not getting enough money from the site to cover bandwidth costs? Everybody wants to make a little extra green to justify all that time spent in front of the computer screen. So content and revenue are the two primary needs webmasters have. Search rankings are just a way to get traffic (but before traffic must be content).

Your Need

You need rankings; if you didn't you would not be here. You want high rankings on the SERPs. If you could get them without doing anything you probably would go for it, but that would be bad for everybody.

To get rankings the search engines ask for two things: links and content, in that order. Hopefully you have content, but even after content you need links, and sometimes you may not get links as rapidly as you would like. Links are delicate and sensitive things; they flee from ardent pursuers and come towards gentle "link baiters." As an individual you want to create the ultimate link bait, and get free one way links from a large number of sites with varying page rank. And how will you do it?

Using e-Books for Viral Marketing Campaigns

Now I am sure you have heard what I am about to say before. You probably heard it from some one page "sell" web page which touted their new, easy and probably very expensive product as the panacea to all your problems. Well this method isn’t new, it definitely is not easy, but it could be free -- if you don’t count man hours.

I believe in it so much I currently am compiling a series of programming articles into e-book form, and hopefully in two months time I will start my own viral marketing campaign for a scripts site using an e-book. What am I trying to say is, this could very well be the single best way you can use to continuously get permanent one way links back to your site (yes, I actually believe what I am saying).

This technique has two other points to recommend it: it works without any major marketing on your part, or at least with very little marketing. Additionally, you just have to create your product once, though you might have to update further editions for relevancy.

The Question

In this article we will look at the needs of people on the net, the need of your SEO adept, and then the win win situation that an e-book provides to all the parties. We will also look at major sites that offer free e-books and have shot to the tops of their categories/keywords on the SERPs.

It was actually when I was studying these top sites and asking myself "how" that the idea occurred to me. How does one site go to the top of the lists for "SEO software" and stay there, and how does another site go to the top for "web design" and stay there? I discovered two major ways; right now I am still studying the first one. This is a bit like revealing state secrets so follow closely, do your own research and find a way to create your own e-book.

Netvibes Puts Web Surfers in Control - Letting Users Slice and Dice

As I said earlier, we’ve seen customizable web portals before. There’s even Yahoo Widgets, with literally thousands of widgets you can place on your desktop. The lack of ads is an important difference, but there are other points a good company looking for an opportunity to reach users will keep in mind.

If you want to use Netvibes as a means to reach potential customers, you need to be prepared for the idea that users are going to want to be able to use your content their way, not yours. If eBay built an auction tracker, Netvibers would balk at using it if it significantly limited the auctions available for searching. That’s doubly true if you have a Universe; while it looks like you’d still have your logo on your module, there is nothing stopping someone from copying one or a whole bunch of the modules in your Universe and putting them on their private page – possibly even alongside modules from a competitor.

It does open up a lot of possibilities. Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li notes that “Netvibes provides open access to the world of web 2.0 content. Traditionally, you had to ask each company permission to do this on any Web site. Now you can read Gmail alongside Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.”

For many companies, this may take some getting used to, but in the long run it should do a much better job of getting you the publicity you’re looking for. “With Web 2.0, no one can own the whole space,” Krim noted. “In the past you wanted everyone to come to your site. Right now you need to figure out how to distribute your content to the widest number of platforms.”

The nice thing about this approach is that it doesn’t depend so much on scoring high in Google; it depends on making yourself useful to your customers so that they’ll remember you. It may involve repackaging your content (or at least some of it) so that users can choose to interact with the parts in which they’re most interested. As Krim so charmingly puts it, “People can decompose their newspapers and take the pieces for themselves.” That may sound a little morbid, perhaps, but branching out so that your heart rate doesn’t automatically rise and fall with your position in the SERPs just might help make your rest a little more peaceful.

Netvibes Puts Web Surfers in Control - Developers Take Note

Netvibes has its own Developers’ Network. Just a glance at the page tells you they’re committed to “write once, run everywhere.” Using the Universal Widget API, developers can create widgets for users that will run on a wide range of widget platforms and blog systems. The company specifically lists Google IG and Apple Dashboard, and implies they’ll work with many more.

The documentation page seems to be very complete to my non-programmer eyes. Judging from the skeleton example shown, a Netvibes widget is written with XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS. It includes several parts: a header, a model, a controller, and view parts for structure and style. The sample is very clearly shown, in step-by-step fashion. If you’re used to coding for the web, you shouldn’t have significant difficulties creating a widget. You do have to be very careful about writing well-formed code.

There are plenty of how-to sections, including how to turn an RSS feed into a widget and how to test your new widget. There are at least four different example widgets, including one from Weather.com and one that shows an astronomy picture of the day. Of course you’ll find the specifications and a frequently asked questions page.

There’s a developers’ mailing list and an official UWA forum. When I checked it, there were less than 600 posts ranging over 160-some threads. Most of the threads centered on questions about the UWA, but there were also plenty of interesting posts in the Widget Wish List forum from those who had ideas for widgets and couldn’t code them. There is also a Widget Showcase section; apparently widgets that deliver the winning numbers for particular lotteries (after the event of course) are pretty popular, but there was also a virtual fireplace, a chat module, and a widget that let you search for Marmiton recipes.

Marmiton recipes? Well, why not? If there’s someone on the web who built it, there’s probably someone else on the web who wants to see it. In that sense, Netvibes is a middleman like eBay. But it’s not money that’s changing hands, it’s attention, and that’s a far more valuable coin.

Netvibes Puts Web Surfers in Control - A Boon for Publishers

If you have a blog or podcast, you’ll be interested in the Netvibes Ecosystem. This is where Netvibes is trying to build the most complete directory of feeds it can. Netvibes users can then grab your feed and add it to their own pages. If any Netvibes users come across your site while they’re surfing and want to add your content, Netvibes also has the Netvibes Button, which you can set up on your site to let them subscribe to your feed in one click.

Are you somewhat more ambitious? You can put together your own Universe. Krim describes a Netvibes Universe this way: “Imagine building your own rich media portal that anyone can visit, like your own personal Yahoo or MySpace. Imagine going beyond the blog, and unifying your digital life in on single place with podcasts, videos, feeds, games pictures – but unlike a blog, you don’t have to post to it every day; content gets updated automatically. Imagine launching your own media company in just minutes.”

If you’re a big company like CBS News, it can help you reach a Web savvy audience. Recording artists, publishers, companies offering online services, and even educational and not-for-profit companies have built their own Universes on Netvibes. While the Universes do have the feel of being built off of templates, it’s very clear even from the thumbnails you can view when you browse the directory of Universes that each builder has put their own stamp on their creation.

Of course it wouldn’t really be Web 2.0 if you couldn’t make comments about it. When you browse the list of Universes, you get to see the number of comments each Universe has received, and a click takes you to the comments themselves. So far, very few people have garnered any comments. (I was a little disappointed that Tariq Krim himself did not have a Universe; what, no personal glimpse of the founder?).

Not everyone can use Netvibes Universes just yet; they’re in beta. The intention, according to the Netvibes blog, is that eventually every Netvibes account will have two pages: “a private page, where you subscribe to all the content for your personal, everyday use, and a public page, where you can allow others to access your favorite content – everything that you love on the web.”

Netvibes Puts Web Surfers in Control

Most of us who work at desks all day like to have all of our useful tools in one place, both figuratively and literally. From actual desktops full of paper to virtual desktops full of icons to browsers bulging with bookmarks, we like everything where we can get to it easily. Enter Netvibes.

Netvibes offers its own version of an all-in-one-place solution, and if you’re an online business looking for a new way to reach potential customers, you just might want to pay attention. But first, let me give you a little background.

Netvibes was founded in September 2005 by Tariq Krim. The France-based company has been adding new features like there’s no tomorrow, as a glance at its blog would quickly reveal. The company has at least ten million users in more than 150 countries. They’re attracted by the possibility of simplifying much of their web life onto a single home page.

As the company explains, “Netvibes lets individuals assemble all in one place their favorite websites, blogs, email accounts, social networks, search engines, instant messengers, photos, videos, podcasts, widgets, and everything else they enjoy on the web.” Not only is it all in one place, but in true web 2.0 fashion, users can easily share it with their friends. Granted, this isn’t exactly new; web portals have been around forever, and users have been able to customize their views of Yahoo, Google, and other sites for years. So what makes Netvibes different?

You don’t realize it right away because the home page has so much stuff on it (just waiting for your custom touch), but then it hits you: no ads. Not even one. You may see corporate logos, but those are attached to items such as news feed widgets – and it would look a little strange if your news feed from Reuters didn’t have the Reuters logo on it, wouldn’t it?

Is that truly the company’s policy? “We break all the rules,” explains Krim in an interview with Wired. Firms that want to reach Netvibers have to give them something useful – no mere ad hyping the virtues of the company or its products will do. For instance, if eBay wanted to show Netvibers the extent of its auctions, it couldn’t simply put ads next to related items; it would have to build an auction-tracking module, and it just might find that someone else who found a need for such a module had gotten there first.

Some simple tips to Boost your Internet Speed

1. Remove 'Bandwidth Sucking" Applications
Many applications such as anything related to file sharing (KAZAA, eDonkey,etc)and even some things like AIM are filled with addons that will run in the background while sucking up the bandwidth. This then slows your connection.


2. Install Zone Alarm or some firewall on every PC in your house
First rule is not to just apply these things to one PC on your Internet connection. Make changes to all computers since all you need is one bad apple. I recommend ZoneAlarm which you can get at any computer store.


3. Avoid opening unknown attachments
Many spyware problems arise when people click on an attachment. My rule? If I cannot identify the sender, I delete it without opening. Maybe you should too!


4. Avoid Programs that speed up downloads or browsing
There are many programs that claim to speed up your connection such as Netsonic and GO!Zilla. But let's think about this. These programs download a ton of pages so that when you go to the website again it loads faster. Ok maybe so but what if they update that website? Now you have to again update the local pages so you are really not saving anything. Maybe good on sites that never change but where are these?


5. Change your browser start page to NOTHING

Many times people sit and wait for their browser to open since they have a favorite site setup. Best thing it to remove this unless you want to always go there. This is easily done under Tools-->Options in either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.



Plz comment here if u have any doubts about this post or have any suggestions . I'll try my best resolving ur doubts ..

Viral Marketing Offers Risks, Rewards - Viral Marketing Examples

Creating something artificial doesn’t always backfire. An Adweek story from June 2005 talks about a viral marketing campaign created for Volvo to promote the S60 in Europe. The campaign featured two web sites. One site showed a pseudo-documentary about a small town in Sweden where 32 people purchased the same car in one day. A second site, supposedly made by the director, disputed whether the documentary on the first site was authentic. Are you confused yet?

Confusing or not, the campaign, dubbed “The Mystery of Dalaro,” was a success. According to Tim Ellis, global advertising director for Volvo, the car “broke every sales record.” But it was a risky campaign, and Ellis admits it was hard to convince Volvo to go for the idea.

Wal-Mart learned just how risky viral marketing campaigns can be in late 2006. That’s when not just one but several blogs that showed the super discount retailer in a positive light were revealed to be fake, created by public relations firm Edelman for Wal-Mart. The one most people heard about, “Wal-Marting Across America,” supposedly featured a family traveling across America in an RV and staying in Wal-Mart parking lots; it spoke positively of the store and its employees. Another fake blog, Paid Critics, was devoted to “exposing” links between unions and other vested interests said to be “smearing Wal-Mart” through the media. Once the blogs were found out to be fake, Wal-Mart and Edelman received a tremendous amount of bad publicity.

Sony didn’t get it right either. About a month and a half after the Wal-Mart revelations, their attempt at a viral marketing campaign was revealed as fake. You may have seen the blog site and the YouTube videos with the theme “all I want for Xmas is a PSP.” Well, it surprised almost no one that these were made by a marketing company (Zipatron by name); for one thing, a number of bloggers remarked that the males featured in the videos looked too old to be trying to convince their parents to get them a PSP.

That doesn’t mean that these kinds of sites never work, you just need to get a handle on how to do it right. Take Norelco, for instance. Do I really need to mention ShaveAnywhere.com, the site for the Philips Bodygroom? The somewhat racy site (which might not be safe for work depending on where you work) racked up hundreds of thousands of visits for the company, surprising and delighting many with its humorous approach to hirsute hygiene. Alas, I don’t have any sales figures for the Bodygroom, but I would be very surprised if the campaign did not encourage sales.

Viral Marketing Offers Risks, Rewards - Foiled by Google

Greenberg wrote with a bit of a guilty conscience, since in one sense it was his story that killed the buzz campaign – and he thought it was a good one too. He’d written an item about an ad and web campaign for MTD Products Cadet Cub riding mowers. The web campaign talks about a fictional kudzu-like strain of grass “that has reportedly begun taking over several states. Per the story, this grass grows several inches per day and defies nearly every effort to cut it,” explains Greenberg.

There’s no one web site devoted to the ad campaign, as there is for the Subservient Chicken. People are supposed to stumble across news of the strain from several different sites: a blog by a scientist, a conspiracy theorist, and an enraged stump clearer. One could also Google the name of the grass strain to find the sites. And that’s where the trouble starts.

You see, Greenberg’s source told him the name of the fictional grass strain. He naturally mentioned it in his story, though not in his “Cautionary Tale.” So what happens when someone puts the name of the grass strain into Google? The search engine, in its infinite wisdom, returns Greenberg’s story as the number one result. “And right below my story, whose slug mentions the three fictional web sites, are those three fictional web sites. Therefore, the fiction is ruined by my story about the fiction. Yes, the company got buzz but not the kind it wanted,” Greenberg elaborated.

It’s a little tricky to find Greenberg’s original story; when you do, you see that he mentions the fictional grass -- Loogootee Strain – only once. Greenberg’s editor insisted that the story couldn’t be taken down, and the name of the grass couldn’t be eliminated from it. The lawn mower company is probably relieved that Greenberg’s story now appears in the fourth position rather than the first one, but that’s still fairly prominent for viral marketing purposes.

If I hadn’t found the original story, I would have been tempted to wonder if Greenberg’s warning was intended more as a tongue-in-cheek punning statement about the hazards of faking your grass roots in viral marketing campaigns. Still, the issue he points out is quite real: you don’t always know what’s going to rank, or how, for a particular viral campaign. This is why SEO often seems like it is as much an art as a science.

“What hits me over and over in my job about getting press for my various clients is all the places online that press shows up in,” Greenberg quotes the Cub Cadet media relations person as saying. “You can’t tell where a story is going to show up.”

Viral Marketing Offers Risks, Rewards

Viral marketing campaigns can be great fun for the consumer and deliver an excellent return for the company. But they can also backfire, sometimes in unforeseen ways. It never hurts to go over the possibilities one more time.

Burger King’s Subservient Chicken web site is still around. It was one of the first to combine advertising with user interaction in a way that was uniquely Web 2.0. It wasn’t the last. While many have been successful, many others have failed – in some cases spectacularly.

That’s one of the hazards of a viral marketing campaign. You’re setting it out in the wilds of the web, to be played with and judged by the people you’re trying to reach. You can do all the market research you want, and try to think of everything, but you’re still giving up a certain degree of control. If you want to test the viral waters, you not only have to be prepared for this; you must embrace it if you wish to be successful.

What brought all this to mind was a recent piece written by Karl Greenberg for Online Media Daily. Titled “A Cautionary Tale For Viral Wannabes,” it’s the first time I’ve heard of a buzz campaign being killed before it even had a chance to start. It’s also the first time I’d ever heard of a buzz campaign being killed in quite this way. Maybe that shows my inexperience in the field, but I thought it was interesting enough to share – and certainly anyone could have a marketing campaign go bad for them in exactly this manner, especially if they forget the old slogan “Loose lips sink ships.”

Most of the time, when you’re doing marketing, advertising, or public relations, you want to be in touch with the press. There’s a reason those things are called “press releases” after all. Speaking as someone who has read innumerable press releases (and even written one or two), they’re certainly appreciated, even if we have to wade through a huge assortment of superlatives to get to the meat of the matter. But sometimes you need to think carefully about those reporters, what they’re going to do with what you tell them, and where things will go from there.

Some White Listing Essentials - Procedures Followed

Armed with an IP address and a client request, the admin first checks the sender domain to see whether or not it is forged, since spammers like varying their return address domain names. This is done using SPF or Sender Policy Framework, and is an extension of SMTP which by default gives power to spammers who are sending from a forged address; note that Simple Mail Transfer Protocols allow anybody to forge a return address (the design is basically outdated and should be changed). With SPF the sender specifies which servers are authorized to send mail, so a web admin checks the sender policy of the domain from which the information is sent and if the sent email does not comply with the sender's policies the email is treated as being from a spammer and the “white list” request is rejected.

So if Messrs Spam sends an email claiming to be genius@Whois.com and asks to be white listed for all Jungle.com users, Jungle's admin checks Whois sender's policy (after verifying that whois is a real site), and if he notices that only so and so public domain is allowed to send emails but this comes from Spam and not public domain, s/he rejects the whitelist request, since it isn’t really from whois. The above method does not work if Whois.com has compromised machines or if the spammer is actually an account holder on whois.com (but this leaves a trail for the spammer to be tracked).

Other Procedures

Other means of authenticating include SenderID and DomainKeys. DomainKeys checks emails by verifying the digital signature on the email as opposed to SPF’s method of simply querying the sender’s server to check whether the sender ID is one of the servers tagged as mail servers.

Protect Your Turf

If you want to be sure that some spammer does not start using your server to start sending mail (and you have never bothered to separate your mail sending servers from the rest), it is best to block your non-mail-sending servers, if none of your servers send mail. Then simply say so in your DNS records. Note that this blocking is voluntary but once it is done, the only thing you should be watching out for is that there are no open ports in your mail server that a hacker can use to gain access to your mail server.

Third Party Senders

Some agencies forward emails from various IPs. This third party throws a cog into authentication procedures. Since only their IP addresses are contained in the message, this gives procedures such as SPF and Sender ID problems when dealing with them. Most third party senders are trusted by the ESPs to verify that the senders are not spammers before sending their mails. Forwarders will however have their mail bounced back to them (not the sender) if it is discovered that their mails are spam, and are in turn obligated to bounce it back to the sender. Email authentication is a big deal. It is a good idea not to take white listing for granted, and it will definitely get more important as time goes on.

Sending an email through a third party     Diagram Source: www.wikipedia.org

DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware.

Some White Listing Essentials - Reputation and Accreditation

The above is simply another name for white listing; it is rapidly going to become more important though as the big web mail providers are putting their weight behind it. It simply means the email service providers and also the big ISPs will not accept an email from senders which are not on a white list. Web sites like Yahoo and Microsoft (Hotmail) are throwing their support behind these email acceptance protocols. As time goes on, if it catches on, other web sites will definitely join the band wagon.

Who Decides What Gets Seen and What Doesn’t?

Right now, every site polices itself. Some use white lists, some use block lists. For small operators it is better to band together in groups and use block lists to screen emails sent to their web sites. Some individuals believe that this arbitrary banding up is unfair (who polices the police?). But if the ESPs have their way, it will definitely get worse, and it may be compulsory to be a member of one white list or another to get your emails delivered.

According to the book New Rules for the New Economy, there is also a numbers based system based on whether the email sender shares the subscriber's email address with other parties. This was in the late nineties and not many models seem to use this method, though it has to be said here that buying a list is a bad idea and may result in a lot of spam and/or unsubscribe requests.

Filters

Most ESPs filter viruses strictly (they screen ALL emails for viruses), but are more lax on the above trust level filters. Still, most ESPs check all not-rated IP addresses for spam and skip medium and high rated IP addresses; unless it is a major ISP/ESP they also skip checking black lists for all rated IP addresses. Obviously it is a good idea to run over to dnswl.org and get rated. Medium and Low trust level sites will get through an ISP, but if spam is reported by the clients, the sender is expected to purge his/her list of address that did not specifically request emails.

Note this difference between a white listed sender and a sender that is simply tagged as a “spammer” by a DNSBL. A white listed sender can send spam and will just get a note from the ESP asking for the error to be corrected; an unknown sender who does not respond to authentication requests and who sends spam is flagged as a spammer. Basically the listing is all about relationships.

If it is not known whether a sender is a spammer or not, the sender is grey listed by the ESP or ISP. A request may be sent to the sender asking for some form of authentication. This may be combined with some reverse DNS look up of the sender's connecting  IP address.

Administrators who have experience with spam in emails use certain rules when processing a white listing request. They follow these rules to make sure that a spammer does not get a white list rating. If you are registered with a basic web hosting package (since all the IP does is check the IP address) you should have no problems with passing a white list query from a client to a DNSWL. Note that if your site is not black listed, then it is white listed if it has been checked before. If it has not been checked before, it appears on the list after it has been checked. A site that has not been checked before is grey listed and may receive confirmation requests from the receiving ISP administrator.

Some White Listing Essentials - Trust Levels

Note the above phrase carefully; it is extremely important to white lists. It simply means the level of trust the white list can confer to you, given your past behavior and records. In certain cases, they even share your trust level with individuals who ask. According to www.dnswl.org there are four basic trust levels.

  • High Trust Level: Never sends spam.

  • Medium Trust Level: Extremely rare spam occurrences, corrected promptly.

  • Low Trust Level: Occasional spam occurrences, actively corrected but less promptly.

  • No Rating Whatsoever: Legitimate mail server, may also send spam.

The above model is based on input by a team of volunteers. There is no fixed protocol. It is basically based on past performance and the web site which sends email has little or no input in changing its trust level.

Sending an email    Diagram Source: www.wikipedia.org

Email Verification chart   Diagram Source: www.wikipedia.org

Some White Listing Essentials

If you have been white listed with a particular operator, it means that the email you send always gets through. No more getting caught in spam filters! But how do you accomplish this goal? Keep reading.

"Reputation is everything; guard it with your life."
-- Robert Greene

In a previous article I wrote about aligning yourself with block lists, specifically how to avoid being tagged a spammer. Since then I have discovered that most white lists have certain things they look for, and if you discover that most of your clients are with a small number of operators, then it is always better to be on their list of acceptable email senders. In the earlier article I talked about things to avoid so that you will not be considered a spammer; here I will talk about things to do so that if you apply to be on a white list (list of acceptable senders to a particular ESP/ISP) you will be accepted in an expedited fashion.

Email Techniques in Brief

Ideally, if you don’t out source your email creation and sending, you should have a single person responsible for your email campaign. Other individuals in your organization should act as members of your email team. But if you send a large number of emails you will have problems ranging from the technical (unsubscribe requests are not being obeyed) to the human (somebody blacklisting your IP address).

Not having a single person responsible for your email activities will cause conflict when difficult situations arise, and if a major mistake was made, there will be nobody accountable for correcting it and making sure it does not happen again. There are as many white lists as there are web mail providers, and in some cases some DNSBL also offer DNSWL services (WL for White list), for example MAPS (mail abuse prevention systems).

You want to be an accepted member of these various white lists. To do this you must be perceived in a certain way and pass certain requirements (some of them quite stringent). Let's take a look at some models I came across while researching this topic.

Designing Websites For Humans In A World Of Robots!! - Guidelines

Website Designing Guidelines :
Designing websites for humans is a far wider topic that can be covered in the scope of this brief article and will vary by website. That said, you might find these general guideline helpful:
1. Provide headers on each page so that your visitors can see clearly what the page they have loaded relates to. This header should be the largest text on the page.
2. Content text should be no more than 1/3 of the size of the header, this will ensure that the page is not too "monotone".
3. Navigation menus should be very clear and easy to use. This should be presented on every page, and the user should not have to rely on another source (such as a framed page) for navigation.
4 .Pages should be as light on the images as possible, as many people out these still use 56k, and loading images takes time on a 56k.
5. Pages should be no more than 40k in size (html coding size) unless they are papers e.g. technical studies / technical papers / specification sheets.

Designing Websites For Humans In A World Of Robots!! - Balance

When a user visits a web page, they have the full effect of layout and graphical interfacing, and this graphical interfacing is very important in how visitors will use our site, and ultimately, buy products, hence generating revenue. If one were to compromise too much in terms of what the visitors see, we might have a website that simply will not produce profit, even if it does rank in the top slot for competitive terms at some of these larger search engines. This is a condition that I refer to as "Over Robot Optimizing", and is a common practice with some websites on today's internet.
There is a balance between optimizing websites for robots and keeping a site convenient for users, although sometimes this balance is hard to achieve. With the correct balance, a website ranking at number 6 in search engines might easily out-perform a more highly ranked competitor in terms of revenue generation and conversion rates.. Furthermore, advertising cost will be lower in the long term, leading to higher profit margins.