Website analysis using Google advanced search

Thursday, March 30, 2006

As well as finding stuff, Google can be a useful website analysis tool:

Indexed pages in your site - site:www.yourdomain.com
Pages that refer to your site's URL - allinurl:www.yourdomain.com
Pages that link to your site - link:www.yourdomain.com
The current cache of your site - cache:www.yourdomain.com
Information Google has about your site - info:www.yourdomain.com
Pages that are similar to your site - related:www.yourdomain.com

What are status codes and what do they mean?

Monday, March 27, 2006

Put simplistically, an HTML status code is a three digit code sent to your browser from the server of the page you are trying to view. You will probably have seen "404 page not found" which is the most common example of a status code. The first digit of the code determines the group to which it belongs:

1xx - informational codes
2xx - success codes
3xx - redirection codes
4xx - client error codes e.g. errors originating from the user
5xx - server error codes

The most common ones you are likely to see are:

200 - ok
301 - moved permanently
302 - moved temporarily
400 - bad request e.g. the server did not understand what you asked for!
401 - unauthorised
403 - forbidden
404 - not found
500 - internal server error
503 - service unavailable - can be due to server overload

For a complete list of all error codes, see http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

Labels: internet

Where to submit your website to

Friday, March 24, 2006

Following up my post about how to generate and submit sitemaps to Google and Yahoo!, I was asked where to submit your sites in general. I wholeheartedly recommend the list below, and of course, there are many more places - just don't fall for the "Submit Your Site to 80,000 Search Engines". Firstly ask whether there really are that many search engines and secondly, if so, what sort of quality are they and finally, do you want to be associated with them?

Google
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Yahoo! (Registration required)
http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

MSN
http://search.msn.co.uk/docs/submit.aspx
http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

ExactSeek Family (E-mail address required)
http://www.exactseek.com/add.html

About.com
See http://a-zlist.about.com/ and contact the guide directly. Tends to be non-commercial sites only.

Labels: linking, searchengines, seo

A review of LiteCommerce

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

If you are looking for an e-commerce package, there are plenty of options available to you, but the one you choose depends on your level of expertise. OSCommerce, ZenCart, cpCommerce and CubeCart are all free solutions, but to make any changes requires a level of coding knowledge. If you are happy to have an 'out of the box' appearance and be restricted to the original functions, this could be your way forward.

LiteCommerce on the other hand is a commercial package, and a younger sibling of the hugely popular X-Cart. The basic package costs $95 (approximately £55) for the linux version and paid-for add-on modules cost from $8 (approximately £4.60). Free modules such as bestsellers, froogle integration and multi-currency are also available.

Litecommerce is incredibly easy to install, with both windows and manual install options. Once on your webspace, there is a Quick Start Wizard, guiding you through all the steps required to getting your shop up and running. This wizard is available at all times, so you can refer back to it when needed.

In the administration interface, there are options for all aspects of running the store - both the front end, including how the store appears - and the back end so you can keep track of orders, popular items etc...Everything is presented in a logical way, and you are not bamboozled by the sheer number of options available to you.

When using free e-commerce software, the support can be hit-and-miss e.g. you can post questions in the user forums but no-one is obliged to answer them or give you the correct information (this is not usually the case that I've experienced but it has happened).

LiteCommerce comes with 150 support points, which equates to quite a few queries to technical support. You can 'hot rush' your queries meaning that they'll be given priority, but do cost you double. Their technical support staff are second-to-none, both times I've had to use them - with information being both timely and accurate. In addition, you can join the LiteCommerce forums, and chat with other users of the software, for support information, how-to's and general stuff relating to your e-commerce site.

The appearance of your store can be controlled through the admin interface, or you can actually edit the store templates in FrontPage, DreamWeaver etc...The entire package is template driven which means you can alter almost anything you want. The version I have used is written in PHP, which means that if you do want to get your hands dirty, you can do! (But remember to always make a backup first...).

To extend the functionality of the store, there are different extension modules available. Installation of these literally takes seconds from the admin interface which is a huge time-saving on some of the free packages.

To summarise - as a user of the free e-commerce packages, I was pleasantly surprised by the cost, support and functionality of LiteCommerce, and would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to get their e-commerce website off the ground in a short space of time, whilst being able to expand the site as necessary through extension modules.

To see LiteCommerce in action, see their demo. A full feature list can be found here.

Labels: biz, internet

Free internet marketing video tutorials

Friday, March 17, 2006

Michael Cheney's been online since 1995, has been featured on NBC and makes thousands every week. Now he has developed a series of internet marketing video tutorials, that he is giving away for free.

After watching them, I can whole heartedly recommend them, whether you are a 'newbie' or need revision.

More information and the video tutorials...

Labels: biz

Internet Marketing and the Small Business

Thursday, March 16, 2006

The internet marketing landscape has changed quite a bit in the past 3 years and has further defined itself further in the past 12 months. With Google raising $4 Billion from new stock offerings in 2005 we will see more changes underway over the next 3 years. Unfortunately, I fear the small business is going to be left out in the cold in this process. Perhaps a better statement would be that the small business has already been left out in the cold.

This writing is certainly not designed to provide a solution to the growing problem. More so, it has been written to raise the awareness and acknowledge the difficulty small business has on the web. Certainly the small business does not receive any sympathy from the major search engines in their quest to provide quality information for those that are searching the web.

Let's review how the situation has been created. We have to make the assumption a small business does not have the financial resources for a proper advertising campaign on the web (even though it is less costly than offline advertising) and they do not have the man-power to devote time for the non-costly methods of marketing. Yes, I have distinguished between advertising and marketing.

Marketing is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service. Advertising is to make your product or service publicly known an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.

Can the small business market at no cost? Yes, absolutely, however, the issue at hand is not expenditure but time. Time they are already spending on their business and do not have more time to spend on non-costly marketing methods on the web. What are these non-costly but time-consuming marketing methods? This would include but not limited to writing articles, maintaining newsletters, maintaining email addresses with auto-responders, submitting their articles through a variety of methods and resources over the web. Let's not forget standard search engine optimization issues and HTML coding. Oh, the best one of all is 'natural' link exchanging as defined by Google. If you have not already been there, manual link exchanging is a time consuming process even if you do decide to spend money on lost cost services that can assist. You cannot use 'link farms' as that is against search engine policies and will cause your listing to be down graded.

In order to reach top ranking on the search engines it all boils down to links (or link exchanges, link popularity) and content. Inbound only links better than reciprocal inks. Writing content for your site, articles, news, newsletter is time consuming to properly write a 500 word article and the submission process is not easy either. Some services and software exists to help you in your submission of articles, but just like link exchange services they can only do so much. Could you create a blog and place your articles, certainly. However, you can see the 'things to do' list only keeps growing for the small business owner.

Could they engage in pay-per-click campaigns? Sure, however, you now are entering in a financial issue and one that does not necessarily provide a great return on investment. Pay-Per-Click campaigns are good as an overall marketing strategy and if you use it in combination with a variety of other internet and search engine marketing methods. On its own it cannot provide the returns the small business is seeking. Searching the key phrases (no longer key words) and understanding which ones to select is equally not an easy task. It requires due diligence, research and analysis to understand the information and make an informed decision. Assuming they can get past this part of the pay-per-click process, the next phase is writing the pay-per-click ad headline and content. Unfortunately we see many small businesses flocking to pay-per-click advertising in hopes of a quick return. They might as well go to a casino!

There is indeed another problem associated with Pay-Per-Click campaigns. The ratio of exposures to hits is equally a problem when you are supposed to keep a certain percentage ratio between the two. When search engines like Google are allowing your ad to be placed on other websites with their Google Adsense, your exposures are indeed going up, however, how many people actually click on the links? From Google's perspective probably a lot, but from the individual advertiser's perspective this is not necessarily a good situation. Google is now dictating what key phrases you 'should' bid on and ultimately consolidating the bidding war into small key phrase groups and larger number of advertisers.

Lastly, at least for this writing, but not necessarily on the subject, is time to see revenues. There is no doubt that it takes months for a website to propagate through the Internet. This is by no means a short-term situation and expectations need to be set accordingly. Just because you have a website does not mean that you will see rewards anytime soon. Once again we get into the dilemma of time resources to do the necessary internet marketing work in order to see benefits 6 - 9 months later.

Requirements set by the search engines as they seek to provide quality responses to those that are searching are making it increasingly difficult for small businesses to compete on the web. So, who will end up on the first page or in the top position of searches for key phrases? Unless something changes and the small business is given a chance, it will be the larger corporations that have the man power time and the money.

About the Author

Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing. A internet marketing firm specializing in turn key marketing solutions for businesses including research, analysis, planning an strategy. Please visit SmartFinds at http://www.hsfideas.com

Labels: biz, internet, ppc, searchengines

Google AdSense Alternatives

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Google AdSense seems to be the hot topic at the moment, topping the popularity list of contextual advertisers. However, there are alternatives - at least 39 of them!

The following list is taken from http://netprofitstoday.com/_resources/google-adsense-alternatives.html, where you'll also find more detailed information about each program and whether they're recommended as a viable AdSense alternative.

1. adagency1
2. AdBrite
3. Advertising.com
4. AffiliateSensor
5. AllFeeds
6. AzoogleAds
7. BidClix
8. Bidvertiser
9. Buds Media Network
10. Burst Media
11. Casale Media
12. Chitika eMiniMalls
13. Claxon
14. Clickcent
15. Clicksor
16. ContextCash
17. ContextClick
18. contextWeb ContextAd
19. DynamiContext (Kontera)
20. Enhance Interactive
21. Fastclick
22. Hurricane Digital Media
23. Kanoodle Bright Ads
24. Mamma Media Solutions
25. MIVA AdRevenue Xpress
26. Nixie
27. Quigo AdSonar
28. RealCast Media
29. RealTechNetwork
30. Revenue Pilot
31. Right Media
32. Searchfeed
33. TargetPoint
34. Traffic Marketplace
35. Tribal Fusion
36. ValueClick
37. Veoda
38. Vibrant Media IntelliTXT & SmartAds
39. Yahoo Publisher Network

Labels: adsense

SnippetMaster Pro - A review

Monday, March 13, 2006

As a web designer, I am always looking for ways to help my clients edit the content of their webpages. No-one really wants to have to pay a web designer for each and every tiny little change required, and from my perspective, it isn't really commercially viable in most instances. Software that enables my clients to edit their pages in a WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") screen, so they don't need to know any webcoding is an absolute godsend!

When looking for this solution recently, I came across SnippetMaster. It's free for the Lite Version and the Pro version costs only $24.95. Additionally, if you are a charity or other not-for-profit organisation, you can obtain the Pro version for free.

To use SnippetMaster, you need to get your web designer to install the software on a linux hosted server and insert a tiny amount of code into your existing files wherever you want to change the content. This takes approximately 5 minutes in total!

To use the software, all you need to do is log in over the internet, meaning that only authorised users can edit the website, and choose which file to edit. A handy preview function means that you can check any edits before hitting 'save' and making the changes live.

SnippetMaster rates 8/10 in my book - 1 mark deducted for only being able to use in Internet Explorer and not Firefox. A second mark is deducted as the code is not W3C (web standards) compliant. However, I do know both these issues will be addressed in the next software release, at which point it will rate 10/10!

See SnippetMaster including a live demo at www.snippetmaster.com.

Labels: internet

Reciprocal Linking

According to their website,

"Link Choices is an international link exchange that can help increase search engine rankings for your website. It's based on a comprehensive link directory and a nifty bit of software that allows you to manage your links once you've got them."

All links are manually approved by an editor at Link Choices, which reduces the number of 'spammy' sites and inappropriate content - a feature that many link exchange programs do not have. In addition, it's free to join.

Find Link Choices at www.link-choices.com and if you are one of the first 1000 people to join, get a free download of their software!

Labels: linking, seo

The highest priced domain name sales of the year

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

If you are interested in selling domain names for profit, you should have a look at the Domain Name Journal's reported sales charts for the year to date. As well as showing the overall top 50, there are separate charts for the top 40 global (net, org, info and biz), and top 40 country code extensions. With the top domain selling for $550 000, it shows just how important people perceive online marketing to be!

Labels: biz, domains

Will Duplicate Content Filters Destroy Article Marketing?

Monday, March 06, 2006

Rumors are circulating that recent search engine updates are threatening to penalize web sites carrying articles by niche industry experts due to wide distribution and use of those articles on multiple sites. Not so.

Duplicate content filtering confuses everyone. It is absolutely not new and has been in effect for years, but is constantly refined in search engine algorithms to filter out abuses. Any suggestion that article marketing is targeted by the search engines as duplicate content is an understandable misunderstanding. Duplicate content filters look for abuses, not legitimate multiple uses in appropriate forums.

What Are "Duplicate Content Filters"?
Duplicate content filters were first employed when people began setting up precisely mirrored domains without variation on multiple domain names to increase visibility. That ridiculous method worked to increase ranking until the search engines began de-listing one of the duplicate sites of those employing this technique. Usually it was the older domain that stayed in the index and the newer mirrored site was de-listed.

About the same time, unethical thieves began outright stealing entire sites and placing them on new domains to rank equally as well as the original owner for competitive phrases. Once the traffic was there, they sent them to their own product or affiliate pages. That worked for awhile, but the duplicate content filters nixed that as well and protected the orginal site in rankings.

Then sites began putting up "landing pages" and "doorway pages" for SEO purposes with minor keyword variations in headlines and body text on multiple pages on one site with very closely related text with minor keyword swaps to rank well for blue widgets, red widgets, purple widgets. No text varied but the color or brand or, in the case of travel sites, city and resort names. So search engines extended the duplicate content filter to include that ruse and filter it out.

Continually refining these duplicate content filters is an ongoing effort meant only to beat search engine spammers. Search engines don't set about penalizing legitimate uses of duplicate content - such as press releases distribution and reproduced articles by experts on specialized topics used widely on niche sites and blogs.

Legitimate Duplicate Content
There are dozens of legitimate reasons to have the same article on multiple specialty sites and even some good reasons within a single domain. Blogging software actually creates a duplicate page for every post which is deposited in an archive. That blog contains duplicate content until each post rolls off the bottom of the main page. AP and Reuters news stories run on hundreds of news sites. Experts, pundits and commentators within niche industries legitimately syndicate their content to appear widely across dozens of niche sites within their industry.

Many sites now put up duplicate "printer friendly" versions of pages without penalty, but it's always a good idea on the same domain name to post robots metatags telling them not to index duplicate pages. Printing pages or variations on landing pages used for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising should each be tagged by < name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> so you needn't worry about being penalized.

Will Article Marketing Still Work?
Articles distributed for use by other sites appear on many sites with surrounding themed content, varied site navigation and differing internal links. Articles rank well if they match the theme of the site they are used on. The best ranked sites usually rank better for that article. There is currently no penalty for using articles which appear on several sites. If this were the case, hundreds of major industry portals would be severely penalized.

If you search for article titles in quotes, you'll see them repeated everywhere across the web. Try a search for "Blogging Chocolate Purses" and see the extensive use of that article. I first posted it on my blog and my blog post ranks just below a major search engine portal for that article title. No penalty there, Pandia.com is just better ranked overall than my blog and they are legitimately using that article with my permission.

Why Article Marketing Is So Powerful
Article marketing is something I recommend to ALL SEO clients to gain valuable one-way inbound links. How much better is an article - with 700 to 1200 words displaying your expertise than a so-called "reciprocal link" gained by begging for it by spamming, er I mean, sending mass unsolicited emails to unrelated sites? (I'm stunned that anyone still uses that technique as it seems to me to be the equivalent of begging for links on street corners.)

It is inconceivable that experts writing on specialized topics will ever be penalized by search engines because many niche sites reproduce their expert advice & commentary in newsletters, web sites and blogs. Search engines would face an insurmountable problem in flitering legitimate expertise and commentary simply because it is popular and made available for use on multiple industry blogs and niche sites.

Your articles are no less valuable to the web community because they are syndicated and that appreciation is displayed clearly when they are used extensively across multiple web sites. "Write on", article marketers!

About the Author:Mike Banks Valentine blogs on Search Engine developments from http://RealitySEO.com and can be contacted for ethical SEO work at http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm He runs web content distribution site at: http://Publish101.com.

Labels: searchengines, webdesign

How to choose a pixel advertising site

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Since Alex Tew and his highly successful million dollar homepage, pixel advertising websites have appeared in abundance. The secret to finding which one to advertise on is fivefold:

Is it affordable?
Are the other ads suitable for your market e.g. are there adult ads?
Can you still get a good space i.e. when someone first view the page, will they see your ad without having to scroll down, and is it down one edge e.g. more likely to be noticed?
How long will the site be up for?
Finally, does the site have a pagerank? Whilst this isn't the only traffic-related factor to take into consideration, it is a good indicator of the site's popularity. If there is a pagerank value, the site owner has taken the time for promotion of the site, which can only work in your favour.

LittleFish recently decided that www.gbpixels.co.uk fitted all these criteria - see our ad in the top left corner!

Labels: internet, linking

How to get your site indexed in Google and Yahoo

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

When you've got a wonderful website, you want the world to see it! Submitting to Google, Yahoo and MSN means that your site will show up in the listings at some point, but how do you tell the search engines which pages to list?

Firstly, use robots.txt - this states which parts of your website you DO NOT want to share. You can also use the robots meta tag in your web pages, but not all engines use this yet. For more information, see www.robotstxt.org/ and www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm.

Secondly, create a sitemap, which links to all of your pages and link to this from your index page. You don't have to just list all the links - it is for your visitors benefit too. For an example, see our sitemap at www.littlefishwebdesign.com/sitemap.htm.

Finally, create a Google and Yahoo sitemap, for the search engines benefit. You will need to create a Google Sitemap account (http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/) and Yahoo account (http://edit.europe.yahoo.com/config/eval_register?.intl=uk&new=1) to be able to submit your sitemaps. To create a Google Sitemap, I thoroughly recommend SOFTplus GSiteCrawler found at http://johannesmueller.com/gs/. There is a settings wizard, which walks you through the whole process and you can even choose for your completed sitemap to be uploaded to your website, and Google to be alerted.

The "URL list for export" function of GSiteCrawler means that you can then generate a text-only list of all your site's pages, ready to upload to Yahoo. This is a slightly more manual task than the Google Sitemap, but still a fantastic time-saving tool, as you don't have to type out each of your pages into a list. To submit your sitemap to Yahoo, upload the file to your website and then go to http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request and fill in the location of your sitemap file.

Of course, there are no guarantees that Google and Yahoo will index all your pages, or rank your site as highly as you would like, but at least using the sitemap method, you are giving your hard work a fighting chance to get noticed.

Labels: linking, resources, searchengines, webdesign

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