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How to Write an Ebook that Sells in 2009

Urdu MAG — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:55:34 +0000

Most sites are disappointed by the nickels and dimes that come in from advertising. If your site gets massive amounts of traffic, it can work, but if not, you’ll want to find a much more profitable source of revenue.

But most of us find that it’s not all that easy to translate high-quality content from your blog into a high-quality product for sale.

Four or five years ago, you could have slammed together an ebook over the weekend and created a decent income with it. But in the current environment, buyers are more careful with their money, and you’ve got an awful lot of competition.

The good news is, most of your competitors still think it’s 2003, and most of their products are astoundingly lame. And there are still lots of buyers who need to solve their most pressing problems.

So there are still plenty of opportunities to monetize with an ebook. But it has to be terrific.

So what makes a terrific ebook?

For an ebook to work in this climate, it needs to:

Solidly address the problems, concerns, or desires of a well-defined target market. Vague, fluffy or irrelevant junk isn’t going to cut it.
Be a meaningful extension of the relationship you’ve already created with your audience.
Stake out a compelling position in the marketplace.
Reflect the confidence of top-notch content.
Provide an exceptional return on investment for buyers.
Be supported by an intelligent marketing system that fuels your customers’ need to buy.

The enemy of the successful ebook

So to create an ebook that works today, you’ve got a few more steps to take.

First you’ve got to research your market. Then you need to build a list and drive buying readers to your blog. (There can be a big difference between fans and customers.) Then research, outline, and actually write the book. And then you’ve got to figure out the whole launch thing: creating buzz, recruiting and managing affiliates, writing a sales page.

We bloggers are pretty good at taking action. We can do any of these things individually. And to tell you the truth, none of them is all that hard.

But take them all together and we find ourselves overwhelmed.

Before we know it, it’s been six months or a year, and we’re still trying to make it happen. Not because it’s beyond our abilities, but because without a detailed map, it’s easy to get lost in the process.

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How To Find A Good Web Host?

Urdu MAG — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:15:50 +0000

Usually when someone contacts me online, one of the most frequent questions I get asked is this: “How do I find a good web host?” or “Which web host do you use?”

This is one of those essential things you will need in order to earn that online income. You will need a web site and you will need a web host – somewhere to place that web site.

Sure there are countless marketers who work without a site but most have at least one main site which acts as their online calling card; where people can find them on the web. Of course, you can always use the social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter… but that’s like operating your office out of Starbucks!

Instead, a well designed site is just more professional and business like. It also means you’re serious about your online business.

Picking a good web host is not easy. I have had numerous different web hosts over the years. Most of them have been very good and served their purpose, but I have had some bad experiences too – what long term webmaster or marketer hasn’t? Something always goes wrong eventually, especially if you have a lot of sites and many different web hosts.

Sometimes having a web host can be downright scary. Several years ago, the web host that I had my main site on was first sold and then went bankrupt. One day your site is running fine and the next day the web host is completely gone. Shut down. Your site and all your files completely gone. Vanished. Your host can’t be reached. Total blackout!

Fortunately, I had my site backed up on several systems and since that experience I always back my sites up on several computers and I go even further by copying them onto DVDs should those computers crash. If you have a site, I always suggest you back up your site files and make it redundant. The very worst can happen to you.

You need to check exactly what features your web host is offering and for what price:

- How much storage space?
- Daily traffic limit or transfer?
- Email system? How many accounts…
- What type of server Linux or Windows?
- How many other sites will be sharing your IP address?
- Do You need SSL or a secure site?
- Are sites/files backed up? How often?
- What are the support hours?
- And of course the Price?

But don’t always try to get the cheapest price hosting, keep in mind, you always get what you pay for. A cheap web host won’t save you money if it’s a poor service and your site is always going down. So don’t always pick the cheapest web host.

Match up your hosting service with the type of site you will be running; a simple HTML site will have or make simple demands on your hosting service. So a shared hosting service may be quite adequate to meet your hosting needs. For SEO reasons, you should always check the location of your site, I have found which country your site is hosted in, plays a role in your rankings, especially in Google.

However, if you have a site that’s extremely interactive with forums, discussion groups, get large bursts of traffic or you’re running a lot of server-side scripts and programs – then you may need a more robust hosting service to meet your needs.

In this case, you might need a dedicated server to handle just your site. Many web hosts offer this service and it’s worth looking into if you have a site with extreme amounts of traffic or if you’re running forums, affiliate programs, email services… from your site. Most of my own sites are very simple and I have them on many different web hosts. Mainly because of my own experiences, I just don’t want to have all my sites on one host… the old “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” reasoning.

At the moment I am quite pleased with all my web hosts… many of my sites are on GoDaddy and I find them OK for simple sites like mine. I also find it convenient because they are also a domain registry so I can easily use them to buy my domains. Although many experts suggest you should always keep your domain registration separate from your hosting service because if your host should suddenly vanish, it is only a simple matter of moving your site to a different host. If your host controls your domain, this can be a major problem. Always keep control of your domain in your own hands, but you probably already knew that.

Another web host I use is Bluehost which is very good, can’t remember the last time my site was down. They are very popular with around a million sites and my only concern is that they may become too popular and their services will be spread too thin. However, I have had very few problems with them and you can always reach their support.

I also have a site with Ken Evoy’s SBI (Site Build It), but I created that one mainly to get access to the enormous resources connected with SBI. It is slightly more expensive than some of the ones listed above, but SBI is an overall online marketing system that in my opinion can’t be equaled on the web. Well, perhaps the Warriors group could give them a run for their money, but it’s the community of like-minded webmasters with SBI which makes it special. They are always ready and willing to help you out, doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced pro or a complete newcomer. Several years ago, I took a very close first-hand look at the hosting service provided by SBI. You can find my opinions/review on SBI located in the resource box below.

There are countless webhosts you can choose from when picking a web host. But do your homework, check around to the different forums and see how everyone is rating the web hosts they are using. First-hand experiences are the best judge of whether or not a web host is good and reliable.

Although moving a site from one web host to another can be a real pain, especially if you have a large scale site, but if you’re not totally satisfied with a web host and are having serious problems – simply change your hosting. Just make sure you’re not going from bad to worst.

Still, finding a good quality web host will be a major chore, no matter how you look at it.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, nothing beats checking with your friends and fellow webmasters you trust. Ask them which hosts they’re using and if they’re satisfied with it. Nothing beats first-hand experiences when it comes to choosing a web host. Just make sure you’re comparing oranges to oranges, that is: make sure you have similar site requirements as your webmaster friends. If you both have similar type sites, then finding a good quality web host can be as easy as having a friendly chat over a cup of coffee.

Author: Titus Hoskins

World’s Largest Commercial Telecom Satellite Launched Into Orbit

Urdu MAG — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:47:13 +0000

The world’s largest telecom satellite will help fill in cell phone dead zones

An Ariane 5 rocket carried the world’s largest commercial telecommunications satellite into orbit from the European Space Agency (ESA)’s French Guinea launch center.

The TerreStar Networks’ TerreStar-1 satellite, which weighs 6.9 tons and has a 60-ft. antenna, will be used to offer high-speed internet and wireless voice services. The satellite will float in orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface and cost $300 million to build and launch.

TerreStar hopes emergency responders, the U.S. military, and rural customers with currently spotty service will have more reliable telecom services. Satellite internet service is too slow and unreliable to receive large amounts of government funding, but the TerreStar satellite will help change that — satellite coverage will be able to cover a larger area and will fix any cell phone “dead zones” that are still found across the United States.

Customers will be able to use a small device about the same size as a Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry Curve that is a full-mode terrestrial/satellite handset. The device operates on the AT&T terrestrial network while in range, and switches to satellite when service begins to drop off.

When trying to connect to the satellite, the handset must have a clear line of sight with the southern sky. It should be interesting to see what kind of handsets will be used, as current satellite phones are bulky and thick, but the satellite will help shrink the size and design of future satellite phones.

In the future, SkyTerra is expected to launch two larger satellites, but didn’t say when they’ll be launched. Ariane rockets will carry satellites and other payloads into orbit four more times into 2009, and has already had three successful launches so far.

100 SEO Tips and Tricks for Powerful Search Engine Optimization

Urdu MAG — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:23:22 +0000

100 Hundred SEO tips and tricks you should and should not be doing on your Web pages to make them rank higher in search engines. This list looks at more than just meta tags and the basics of SEO, so even if you’ve got some of the factors, you may not have everything. Scroll to the end of the list to look at the things you should never be doing, as well as the things you should always do at the beginning.

Write great content (HIGH PRIORITY)

Great content is where it all starts. You can have all the keywords in the world, but if your content is no good, people won’t stick around on your site and search engines won’t find your site valuable.

Write unique content (HIGH PRIORITY)

Unique content is important too. You need to provide content that has different information than what is on other sites and other Web pages.

Add new content all the time (HIGH PRIORITY)

Sites that have new content added on a regular basis are seen as more reliable than sites that rarely do. This also helps you to increase the amount of relevant content on your site, which also improves your rankings.

Create a great keyword phrase (HIGH PRIORITY)

The first thing you should do when working on search engine optimization is find a great keyword phrase for that page. You shouldn’t try to optimize your entire site to one keyword phrase – instead focus on writing pages for specific keywords and phrases.

Choose a phrase that is popular, but not too popular (HIGH PRIORITY)

When trying to decide on a keyword phrase, you want to find one that is popular but not extremely popular. This may seem counter-intuitive, but the reality is that extremely popular keywords are very desirable and so very competitive. It’s better to try to optimize for keywords that you can rank higher. You’ll get more pageviews from a less popular keyword when you’re on the first or second page of the search engines, than from a super popular keyword that you only make it to page 50 of search engines.

Write an accessible site (HIGH PRIORITY)

Accessible HTML is accessible to both search engine spiders and screen readers. The more accessible you make your pages, the easier it will be for search engines to read and rank your pages.

Use the keyword phrase in your title tag (HIGH PRIORITY)

The title tag is one of the most important tags on your Web page. And placing your keyword phrase in the title tag, preferably at the beginning, is very important to get that phrase into the search engines. Plus, that puts your keyword phrase as the link in the search engine index.

Get a domain with your keyword phrase (HIGH PRIORITY)

Putting your keyword phrase in your domain name is a great way to optimize for that phrase.

Use the keyword phrase in your URL (HIGH PRIORITY)

Even if you can’t get your keywords into your domain name, you can put them into your URLs. Search engines read the URLs and assign value to the text they find there.

Use your keyword phrase a lot, but not too much (HIGH PRIORITY)

The ratio of your keywords to the rest of the text on your page is called the keyword density. It’s important to repeat your keywords in your document, but not too much. Keyword density should be between 3 and 7% for your primary keyword phrase and 1-2% for any secondary keywords or keyword phrases.

Use your keyword phrase in headlines (HIGH PRIORITY)

Headline tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.) are a great place to use your keyword phrase and secondary keywords. Search engines recognize that headlines are more important than the surrounding text, and so assign greater value to keywords found there.

Use your keyword phrase in anchor text of links (HIGH PRIORITY)

Link text is another great place to put your keyword phrase. Links stand out on most Web pages, and so are given higher priority than surrounding text.

Ask other people for links to your page (HIGH PRIORITY)

A great way to get inbound links is to simply ask for them. But remember that excessive cross-linking can be viewed as spammy, so be careful about trading links or otherwise buying links on external sites.

Try to get your keyword phrase inside incoming links (HIGH PRIORITY)

Inbound links are a great way to improve your page rank. But you can’t really control how people link to your pages. Chances are they won’t use a phrase that has anything even remotely close to your keyword phrase. Remember that they are doing you a favor by linking to you. If it makes sense, you can ask them to change the text of the link, but be careful, as people can be very touchy, and you might just get your link removed.

Another way to get your keyword phrase in inbound links is to provide your customers with the link text ready-made. For example:

Please link to this page: SEO Tips and Tricks

Try to get links from reputable sites (HIGH PRIORITY)

Reputable sites that link to you will increase your reputation. After all, if a reputable site feels that your site is valuable enough to link to, that means that your page has more value. You can tell if a site is considered reputable both by how high it appears in search engines and it’s Google PageRank. Also, .edu sites have a higher reputation because they represent schools and universities.

Try to get links from similar sites (HIGH PRIORITY)

Inbound links from sites similar to your own are important as well. This indicates that your site does have content related to that topic. Plus, it indicates that your competition finds your site valuable, and that gives your site more credibility.

Try to get links from .edu, and .gov sites (HIGH PRIORITY)

Sites that are on .edu and .gov top-level domains have a large amount of credibility because they are very difficult to get. So if you can get the designers of those sites to link to you, that gives your site more credibility as well.

Create as much content as you can (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Content is king. The more content you have on your site, the more there is to be indexed and appear in search engines.

Keep your site content inside one theme (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

The theme or topic of your entire site is important as well. If you have a lot of pages all around one basic theme, that will lend more credibility to each page that follows that same theme.

Keep your site live as long as possible (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Older pages (at the same domain) will rank higher than newer ones.

Create a sitemap (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Search engines love sitemaps – not necessarily for ranking, but for finding links on your site. It’s not critical that you create an XML sitemap or Google sitemap, plain HTML sitemaps work just as well.

Create an XML sitemap or Google sitemap (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Use 301 redirects for permanent redirects (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

When you redirect your pages, you should always use a 301 http server redirect. This tells the search engines that the redirect is permanent and that they should change their index to use the new URL. Spammers use other types of redirects (HTTP 302 redirects and meta refresh), so they are not a good idea to use.

Use 302 redirects only for long or ugly URLs (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

HTTP 302 redirects are for temporary redirects. The only time you should use them is for redirecting ugly URLs to more user-friendly ones. This tells the search engine that the ugly URL should not be removed from the index, because the user-friendly URL is just to make the URL palatable. Keep in mind that many spammers use 302 redirects to fool search engines. So be judicious in your use of them.

Get as many inbound links as you can (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Links are important, especially from sites other than your own. These are called inbound links. And if you get a lot of inbound links, that will help your page ranking. Remember that 1-2 links from high-reputation sites are better than 10 links from link farms.

Put your keyword phrase in the first paragraph (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Repetition of your keyword phrase is important in your content. But it’s especially important in the first one or two paragraphs of text. And if you can repeat it once in the first paragraph that will help up it’s priority.

Put your keyword phrase at the top of the HTML (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

More than just the first paragraph, you should try to move your content towards the top of the HTML document. And that includes your keyword phrase.

Put your keyword phrase in alternative text (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Images are a great place to put your keyword phrase – in the alternate text. This is a way to add your keyword phrase into your document without being repetitive to your readers. But be careful not to overdo it – as you don’t want to appear to be keyword stuffing. That could get your site banned.

Increase the font size of your keyword phrase (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Search engines understand that fonts that are larger than the standard font size on the page indicate text that is more important. Use CSS or the font tag. Apply font size changes to headline tags as well.

Format your keyword phrases to stand out (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Use and where appropriate to make your keyword phrases stand out. Search engines can read those tags, and will recognize that text that is emphasized is often more important than the surrounding text.

Link to your page from within your site (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Links are important, and linking from one page to another on your own site is a very easy way to get links. They aren’t as important in search engine ranking as links from external sites, but they do help. If nothing else, they help the search engine spider find all the pages on your site.

Put up links that flow within the text (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Links that make sense within the context of the document (whether from external or your own site) will rank higher than lists of links or other forms of artificial links. This is because search engines value content and links that make sense within the context of the content are more definitely related to that content than links that are inside lists.

Keep asking for inbound links (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

The older the links are the better. If you get 100 links added all at once, it appears to the search engines that you are buying link placement, and that can be construed as spamming.

Get linked in DMOZ and Yahoo! (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

DMOZ and Yahoo! and other directories show that your page is related to the contentin that section of the directory.

Periodically check your outbound links for pagerank (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Whenever you add an external link on your site, you run the risk that it changes from the site you linked to into a link farm or “bad neighborhood”. By periodically checking the PageRank of the external sites you link to, you can remove links that have gotten bad. This will help you make sure that your page’s credibility is not reduced by who you are linking to.

Link all major images (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

It’s important to always link images because people click on images. And search engines value content that has been linked. The key is to always include alternative text, so that the search engine has text to rank. Any image that your customer can see on the page should be linked.

Keep your pages up-to-date (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Pages that are regularly updated are given priority over pages that are older and ignored. But you should do more than simply fix typos or make small changes, regular, extensive updates are more effective than minor updates.

If you must use frames, always use the noframes tag (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Frames and search engines don’t mix well. But if you must use frames, then you should always include an extensive noframes version of your site. And by extensive, the best way to get your site indexed in search engines is to completely rewrite it in your noframes version.

If you must use Flash, always include alternative text (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Flash and search engines don’t mix well, but if you must use flash you should include alternate text that describes exactly what the Flash element includes. And if you use Flash for your entire site, you should always do an alternate version of the complete site in HTML so that search engines and non-Flash browsers can view it as well.

Keep your pages close to the root directory (LOW PRIORITY)

The higher your pages are in your sub-directories, the better they will rank in search engines. This is because pages that are listed right off the root directory are typically more important than pages that are found four or five levels deep in the site.

Use the meta keywords tag and include your keyword phrase (LOW PRIORITY)

Meta tags are a very popular way to improve search engine results, but the fact of the matter is that some major search engines don’t use them at all, and others only use them a little. It won’t hurt to include your keyword phrase and any secondary keywords in the meta keywords tag, but don’t expect it to work wonders.

Keep your kewords together (LOW PRIORITY)

Search engines rank keywords in pages regardless of where they are found. But if you’re trying to rank well for a specific keyword phrase, keeping the keywords together will insure that the search engines recognize that they are related.

Use your keyword phrase in your meta description (LOW PRIORITY)

Most search engines use the meta description field as the description in their search results. So it’s important to have a good description. Including your keyword phrase in the meta description tag is one more place that the search engines can see your keywords. This isn’t a magic bullet, but it is a good idea.

Set your language meta keyword (LOW PRIORITY)

If your page is in a language other than English, you should set the language meta tag so that search engines (and other user agents) know what language it’s in. Most search engines have other ways of telling what language the page is written in, but they do use that tag, and it could help you rank higher in searches in that language.

Optimize for a few secondary keywords (LOW PRIORITY)

Once you have a keyword phrase, you can choose one or two other keywords to optimize for as well. But be careful with these – make sure that the density of your secondary keywords is no more than 1-2%. Any higher and you risk confusing the search engine and diluting the power of your primary keyword phrase.

Use your keyword phrase in named anchors (LOW PRIORITY)

A named anchor (also called a bookmark) is a useful tool for creating navigation within a Web page. But for search engines, it also indicates that the text defined by and following the anchor has more significance. If you use your keyword phrase in some of your named anchors, that will give that text more prominence.

Use different forms of words for your keyword phrase (LOW PRIORITY)

This is also called stemming. Most search engines recognize that one word stemmed from another is really the same word. For example, plural versions of nouns (dog and dogs), gerunds and active verbs (dig and digging), and so on. By using different forms of your keywords, you can make your page more interesting for your readers, while still optimizing for search engines.

Use synonyms for your keywords (LOW PRIORITY)

Synonyms, like keyword stemming is another way to mix up your text for your readers while still optimizing for search. Most modern search engines have a powerful synonym library and so recognize that words like “dog” and “canine” mean the same thing. Be careful using this technique on non-English pages, however. Most search engines were developed in English-speaking countries, and have more extensive English vocabularies than other languages. Also, you should remember that tools like keyword density readers often don’t recognize synonyms, so your page may be denser in keywords than they report if you use a lot of synonyms.

Register a separate domain instead of a sub-domain (LOW PRIORITY)

Subdomains are a nice way to create new websites without needing to register a new domain. This site is a subdomain of About.com – webdesign.about.com. But subdomains are not as recognized by search engines (or customers for that matter) as separate sites. For example, most people who link to my site link to it with a title of “About.com.” But if you were to go to www.about.com, you’d get a very different impression of my site than the true URL of webdesign.about.com. The other problem with subdomains is that most people think that URLs should start with “www”. Sometimes www.subdomain.domain.com will work, but sometimes it won’t.

If you can, you should move all sites that are on a subdomain onto a real domain name of their own.

Register a .com domain over a .biz or .us domain (LOW PRIORITY)

Trying to find a good domain name can be challenging, especially on the .com top-level domain (TLD). But finding a good .com domain will rank higher than a similar domain on the .biz or .us TLDs. And if you can get a .edu domain (because you’re a school or university) your site will have more credibility instantly. Some SEO services feel that a .org TLD is better than a .com, but they aren’t any more difficult (in general) to get than a .com domain, and while search engines might give them some priority now, they will probably lessen that as .org domains become more common.

Use hyphens to separate words in domains (LOW PRIORITY)

When you’re putting keywords in your domain and URLs, you should consider separating them with hyphens (-) rather than mashing them all together or using underscores (_). Search engine spiders can’t tell where a word ends and begins without cues like hyphens, and most computers recognize hyphens as the end of a word, but see underscores as part of the word.

Use hyphens or underscores to separate words in URLs (LOW PRIORITY)

Just like your domains, you should separate words in your URLs with hyphens (-) or underscores (_). Hyphens are better, but outside of the domain, underscores can work. Hyphens work better because many search engine spiders recognize hyphens as the end of a word, but see underscores as part of the word. Also, underscores can be seen as a space by your customers (because the underline of the link and the underscore merge together), and they will then get frustrated if they try to type the URL with a space and can’t get to the page.

Write short pages (LOW PRIORITY)

The shorter your page is, the fewer times you need to repeat your keyword phrase and keep the density just right. Plus, short pages load more quickly, and so your readers will appreciate it. Keep pages under 30KB in size. Split long pages into multiple pages and optimize each page.

Use JavaScript with care (LOW PRIORITY)

As long as your scripts are valid and don’t break your HTML, most search engines will ignore them. But don’t rely on JavaScript to improve your rankings – most search engines ignore content inside JavaScript.

Include text transcripts of podcasts and sound files (LOW PRIORITY)

Like images and Flash, search engines can’t index the content of sound files including podcasts. By including a transcript of your sound files and podcasts, you give search engines more text to index.

Don’t host your site with a host that allows spammers (AVOID)

This means any type of spammers, but especially search engine spammers. If you don’t know what your host’s policy is towards spammers, find out. There should be something in their terms and conditions about malicious activity. If your IP is blacklisted, you’ll be blacklisted right along with it, even if your site is completely innocent.

Don’t host your site with a host that is down a lot (AVOID)

While search engines won’t deliberately discriminate against a site that is down, if they can’t get to your URL because it’s down, they can’t index it. And if your site is down several times when the spider tries to access it, it could be flagged as gone, and then the spider won’t come at all. Find out from your hosting provider what their uptime rates are and what they guarantee. Less than 97-98% uptime is bad.

Don’t omit alt text for images especially images inside the text (AVOID)

Images inline with your text can dress up your Web page, but if you leave off the alternative text (alt text) search engines won’t pick up the content relevance. Also keep in mind that the heavier your page is with images, the less likely that search engines will rank it highly. Text is what gets ranked in most search engines, and alt text is a poor alternative.

Don’t use images instead of text links (AVOID)

Search engine optimization is all about text, and if you use images instead of text, even if you have good alt text, search engines will have a harder time ranking your site. This is especially true for navigation. Search engine spiders crawl through your site by following links, and links on images can be more difficult for them to follow or rank than text links. Using images instead of text makes your pages slower for your customers too. You’re better off styling your text with CSS, than using images.

Don’t misspell your keywords in your content (AVOID)

It can be very tempting to try to optimize your site for misspellings. And while it won’t hurt your site in the search engine rankings – especially if you decide to use the misspelled version as your keyword phrase to optimize on. It will hurt your credibility with your customers. For every one person who misspells the word, there are at least two to three who know the correct spelling. And if they end up on your page for some reason, they will just think you are unprofessional. Plus, many browsers and search engines have spell checkers built into the forms, so the popularity of misspellings will continue to lessen as time goes on.

Don’t try to optimize for more than 2-3 keywords and phrases (AVOID)

This is called keyword dillution. If you have too many topics on a given page, it will be hard for both search engines and your customers to determine what you’re talking about. If you have a lot to say on several topics, it’s better to write multiple short pages on each topic, than to try to cram them all into one long page.

Don’t use your keyword phrase too much (AVOID)

Keyword stuffing is the practice of repeating your keywords or keyword phrases over and over in a page until there is nearly no other text than the keyword phrase. Check your keyword density to determine if you have used it too much. 10% or higher is too much.

If you are too blatant about stuffing keywords, you could get your site banned from search engines.

Don’t rely on links from domains on the same IP (AVOID)

While Google doesn’t discriminate against domains that have the same IP (for example, domains that use virtual hosts), other search engines may. So it’s best to avoid trying to increase your inbound links with links from other domains that you own. The same is true for domains hosted on the same hosting provider (coming from the same C-level IP address). Google doesn’t penalize sites like this, but other engines might.

This is another situation where if it becomes apparent that you’re doing it, you could get all your sites banned from search engines.

Don’t have more than 10 words in your URL (AVOID)

While you want to have keywords in your URL (and domain if possible), longer URLs tend to look more spammy to both customers and search engines. However, this isn’t a serious issue, and if you need to have 11 or 15 words in your URL, it shouldn’t be a problem, as long as you aren’t doing it all the time.

Don’t use URL parameters if you can avoid it (AVOID)

Parameters on URLs make them long and hard for anyone to read. And search engines can get confused by them, especially if the parameters are meant to hold customer information, and not indicate a separate Web page. Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, search engines don’t always rank dynamic pages as high as static pages, and most dynamic pages use parameters on the URL to indicate the correct page. If you must use parameters, you might want to consider doing a URL rewrite to static URLs, at least for your most important pages.

Don’t use dynamic URLs (AVOID)

In general, spiders tend to prefer static URLs to dynamic ones. It is possible to rank high with a dynamic URL, but it’s easier if you redirect dynamic URLs to shorter, static URLs.

Don’t rely on AdSense to boost your rankings (AVOID)

AdSense is a way to earn money on your website. But contrary to popular believe, having AdSense ads won’t improve your ranking in search engines, even Google. They won’t hurt your rankings either. It’s perfectly fine to use them, but don’t expect them to improve your search rankings.

Don’t rely on AdWords to boost your rankings (AVOID)

AdWords is a way to advertise your sites on Google. While you can pay to get high rankings in advertising venues, having an AdWords account won’t help your rankings in natural (non-paid) search, even in Google. It won’t hurt your rankings either. You can use AdWords to get more clicks to your website, but they will appear only in paid search locations, not in the natural search.

Try to get your site off link farms (AVOID)

You should never link to a link farm. And while search engines state that they don’t discriminate against sites that are linked to from link farms, it’s a good idea to try to keep your site off of them, if only to avoid contamination by association.

Don’t link to link farms (AVOID)

Google refers to spamming sites as “bad neighborhoods” and if you link to them, you will end up with a lower PageRank. If you suspect that a site you want to link to is a “bad neighborhood”, check their PageRank and see if they commit any obvious SEO no nos. If they do, or you think they might, then you shouldn’t link to them.

Don’t create pages of links (AVOID)

Pages of links are boring both for your customers and for search engines. Most search engines value links that are in context and appear related to the page as a whole. Note, however, that many social networking sites (like Digg and del.icio.us) tend to favor pages that are lists of links, so sometimes it can be advantageous to write them anyway, just don’t expect them to rank high in search engines.

Don’t link to and from the same site repeatedly (AVOID)

This is also called link spamming. At best, search engines will look at the links you have on your page, and only count the first one or two towards optimization. And at worst, your site might appear to be a spammer, even if you’re not linking to a “bad neighborhood” or are in a cross-linking scheme. You want to avoid looking like you are paying for links.

Don’t get into link circles (cross-linking) (AVOID)

When several sites have links set up in a circular (or more complex) pattern (site A links to site B links to site C links to site A), it can look like you’re paying for links. Don’t assume that because your average customer won’t notice the pattern, the search engine won’t either. Since search engines give some priority for links, they want to reward “honest” links, or links that are not paid for. If it looks like you might have paid for the links (even if you haven’t) your ranking could be penalized slightly.

Don’t have broken links on your site (AVOID)

Broken links make your site look bad, and they imply that you don’t manage your site very much. Search engines want to have only the highest quality results, so they may penalize sites with lots of broken links. Use a link checker periodically to make sure that your links are still valid.

Don’t use the meta refresh tag to redirect users (AVOID)

It can be very tempting to set up redirects on your site with the meta refresh tag, but this can be a bad idea. Many spammers use them to try and fool search engines into thinking that a page is about one thing, and then refreshing to something completely different. Meta refresh also doesn’t give information to the search engine about why the redirect is occurring. It’s much better to set up a permanent HTTP 301 redirect when you need to redirect your customers to a new URL.

Don’t make constant minor changes to content (AVOID)

While you want search engines to see that you update your content, making minor changes (like correcting spelling errors, or changing 10 or 20 characters) implies that you’re just trying to get the updated date changed. This looks like you’re trying to fool the search engines into thinking that you update your pages more than you actually do.

Do spend time updating your pages, but make the updates substantive.

Don’t separate content artificially (AVOID)

Don’t display different content based on IP, browser type or version, operating system or whatever. This is very tempting for most Web designers, as it’s a way to show you know how to write JavaScript or another programming language. But it can look like you’re trying to trick the search engine – showing it something other than you show your readers.

If you really must display alternate content based on some artificial measure, create separate Web pages for each, rather than using the same URL for all the content. Or, keep the content that is different as minimal as possible, don’t build an entire new site for each IP or browser type.

Don’t violate copyright or other laws (AVOID)

Most search engines have terms of service that ban sites that break the law. Copyright infringement is the easiest way to break the law on the Web. Don’t assume that because something was posted to the Web it is legal for you to reprint it, get permission or link to the article instead of copying it. Search engines will ban your site if you regularly steal content or break other laws.

Don’t duplicate content on your site (AVOID)

One trick that spammers like to use is to create one page and then post it in numerous locations, both on one domain and on others. The idea is that if there are enough copies of the page, it will get seen by more people. But search engines don’t like duplicate content as it’s a waste of space on their servers and does not provide good information to their customers. If a search engine suspects your site is spamming them with multiple copies, your site could be banned.

Don’t use robots.txt to ban large portions of your site (AVOID)

In general, using a robots.txt file to keep certain areas of your site off-limits to spiders can be a good idea. But if you ban significant portions of your site (more than half), search engine spiders may mark your site as “forbidden” in general and simply stop spidering your site as often. And if your site is spidered less often, fewer pages will be added to the directory and updated in rank.

Don’t write bad or incorrect HTML (AVOID)

Most search engines don’t deliberately discriminate against badly coded pages, but if the spider can’t read the page because the HTML is bad, then it won’t get indexed. Make sure that you validate your HTML regularly and that any issues there are don’t affect the page being viewed by a simple user-agent or screen reader.

Don’t use frames (AVOID)

Frames and search engines are not a good combination. While search engines are getting much better at reading framed websites, they still don’t tend to rank as well as non-framed sites. And even if you get decent ranking, you might not get the clicks because the search engine doesn’t know what to display as a title or description of your page.

Don’t create Flash splash pages (AVOID)

Search engines can’t read images, and they see Flash as a giant image. Flash and search engines don’t mix well. If you don’t have extensive alternative HTML that displays when Flash is not enabled, then your site won’t rank well in search engines. Be sure to test your site with a browser with Flash disabled to find out what the search engine sees. You might be unpleasantly surprised.

Don’t write Flash-only sites (AVOID)

If you’re going to use Flash on your site, you must have an HTML version that displays when Flash is enabled. It can be tempting to put in just a single line or two of HTML as your non-Flash alternative, after all, you’ve done so much work on the Flash site. But since the search engines only see the HTML, that’s what they’ll rank, and you won’t rank high with just a tiny version of your site in HTML.

If you must use Flash as your site, and you want to rank well in search engines, you need to be prepared to write your site twice – once in Flash and once in HTML.

Never link invisible images (AVOID OR GET BANNED)

Invisible images are images that are 1×1 pixels in size and cannot be seen by the naked eye on a Web page. Since links are given some priority in ranking a Web page, linking images that cannot be seen by your customers appears to be aimed only at search engine spiders.

Don’t Link Single Pixel Images – Your Site Will Be Banned

This is similar to hiding text or displaying different content to search engines than to your customers. And don’t assume that search engines can’t read CSS or HTML tags that resize full-sized images. If you do this to optimize your pages, your site will be banned.

Never include invisible text on your pages (AVOID OR GET BANNED)

Hiding text by making it the same color as the background color may fool your customers, but it won’t fool search engines. Another variation of this is where you make the font size so small that it’s unreadable by the naked eye.

Don’t Hide Text – Your Site Will Be Banned

Search engines understand CSS and font and background colors. They also recognize that a font-size of 1px is not going to be readable. Text that is hidden from your readers but visible to search engines is considered spam and will get your site banned.

Never create doorway pages (AVOID OR GET BANNED)

Doorway pages are very simple HTML pages that are written to optimize heavily on one or two keywords or keyword phrases. And they are programmed so that search engines spiders see them, but regular readers are taken to the real site.

Don’t Use Doorway Pages – Your Site Will Be Banned

Doorway pages are designed to trick search engines into thinking that the site has a specific keyword relevance that it may or may not have and they are pages meant to be seen only by the search engine. So, most search engines will ban sites from their directory when they discover you use them.

Never display different content to a spider than customers (AVOID OR GET BANNED)

This is often called cloaking because it is an effort to cloak what your site delivers in something that might be seen as more palatable to search engines. It can be very tempting to use cloaking, but while it might give you better results at first, search engines don’t like it.

Don’t Cloak Websites – Your Site Will Be Banned

Search engines want to provide a resource of information that is real, not something that has been doctored to give artificial results. When they discover that your site is cloaking, it will be removed from the search directory.

Source: About.com

Facebook App for iPhone 3.0 Announced

Urdu MAG — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:18:22 +0000

Facebook for iPhone app is one of the most downloaded and popular app in the App Store. Why? Because Facebook users with iPhone or iPod Touch can do almost everything from their handsets with this Facebook app for iPhone.

Today, a Facebook employee posted a note on Facebook announcing the new Facebook app for iPhone 3.0. It’s been a long time since the Facebook app got a major upgrade another than language updates.

Read Full Story…

Google Blog Search Takes Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Urdu MAG — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:28:06 +0000

Last fall Google launched a revamped version of its Blog Search, converting the site’s frontpage into a automated news portal similar to sites like Techmeme. It has its fair share of issues (for one, it’s subject to the same problems of automated grouping as Google News is), but it was a step in the right direction for the site.

That said, it has been missing some key features. For one, there hasn’t been a good way to track breaking news stories as they happen — generally stories only pop up as they gain momentum and are written about by multiple sites, which can take quite a while (relatively speaking). There also hasn’t been a way to subscribe to a feed of the latest stories via RSS, which nearly every other similar site offers.

Today, Blog Search is finally adding these features. Each feed now offers its own RSS/Atom feeds, as well as an iGoogle gadget that integrates new top stories into your Google homepage. Finally, the site has added sections for both ‘Hot Queries”, which shows the most popular search terms, and “Latest Posts”, an unfiltered view of the latest blog posts indexed by the search engine. These last two features could be quite useful for tracking breaking news, especially given how fast Blog Search is at finding new blog posts.

Unfortunately, they’re not quite there yet. My biggest gripe is that the ‘hot queries’ and ‘latest posts’ sections are not category-specific. In other words, when I’m browsing through the Technology section of Blog Search, I’m still being shown new posts about McDonalds, Exxon, and Asteroids. The Hot Queries section is equally irrelevant. This is especially strange given that Google is already categorizing the blog posts into different sections based on their topic, and I’m hoping that Google will at least offer a filtered view as an option. via

The New Facebook iPhone App Will Allow Video Uploads

Urdu MAG — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:19:57 +0000

Yesterday, we wrote about what Facebook was planning for the next major release of its iPhone app, version 3.0. The big update will contain 15 new features, probably none bigger than the addition of event management to the app, finally. But there was one thing Facebook developer Joe Hewitt didn’t mention yesterday, and it’s a big one: Video uploads from the iPhone 3GS.

Hewitt just started working on the feature yesterday, thinking it would be something that would come in the next release, after this one. But he was surprised at how quickly he was able to get it up and running and so he tweeted out today, “3GS video uploading for the Facebook iPhone app is a go — didn’t plan to include it in the 3.0 update, but it was really easy to code.”

This is excellent news as it gives iPhone 3GS owners another easy outlet to upload video to. We’ve already detailed how simple it is to upload to YouTube from the device, and how doing so from the new Kyte app gives you great video quality. The iPhone 3GS is simply awesome as a mobile video device, and Facebook is an excellent platform for sharing video amongst friends.

Additionally, we’ve heard talk the new iPhone 3.1 beta software which was just released to developers the other day, has some new functionality that should make video uploads even easier. Apparently, the device will be able to change the quality of the video getting uploaded based on your available bandwidth to optimize for the uploads. via

How to Revoke Access to Twitter Applications

Urdu MAG — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:11:01 +0000

There are like hundreds and thousands of Twitter applications right now, and new ones are popping up daily. There are many interesting ones, but not all are clean and legit.

Many Twitter apps which claim to get you followers quickly, actually spam using your accounts with links and to market their own products.

Incase you’ve signed up for such an application and want to get rid of it, Twitter has given the flexibility to block such apps from your account. You can easily revoke their access to your account.

How to Revoke Access to Twitter Applications

Before following the steps below, I’d recommend you to change your password first.

After logging in Twitter, Go to Settings.

Then go to the Connections page.

Now from there, revoke access to applications you don’t want.

Once you do this, the application that has been spamming using your account should stop doing it.

Firefox 3.5 Launched and Available to Download

Urdu MAG — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:30:23 +0000

Mozilla officially released the final version of Firefox 3.5 and it is available to download from here(approx 7.7 MB). Without any second thought, just grab your copy and install it.

Few users are reporting update notices, but I’ve not received any notice when Firefox is launched. I forced the upgrade by downloading the new version and installed it. Firefox 3.5 is awesome and more powerful than ever. Here is a quick walkthrough of new features and also the reasons why you should upgrade

Firefox 3.5 Available To Download Now – 5 Reasons Why You Should Install It

What is new in Firefox 3.5?

1. Private Browsing: The new browse has Private Mode browsing feature. Firefox is quite late in introducing the private mode future that allows to use the browse the web without leaving any traces of the session.

2. Tab Tearing: The skinny Google Chrome introduced this awesome feature that allows dragging a tab out to create a new browser window. Now Firefox also has this nice feature.

3. Forget this Site: This feature allows you to erase history of a specific website. This comes handy when you want to clear browsing history of a single website and retain the rest.

4. Recover Selected Page of a Crashed Session: The crash recovery of Firefox is smarter now. It allows you to choose the pages that you want to recover after a crash.

5. Faster JavaScript Engine: Firefox 3.5 has got a brand new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey. Mozilla says its 20 to 40 times faster than the Firefox 3.0 JavaScript engine. We have to wait for independent performance assessments to know the actually performance boost in Firefox 3.5. Nevertheless, JavaScript will run more faster in the new version.

Want to know more about all the things changed in Firefox 3.5? Then read the release notes

Download Firefox 3.5

Click here to download

Firefox 3.5 Launched and Available to Download

Urdu MAG — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:22:46 +0000

Mozilla officially released the final version of Firefox 3.5 and it is available to download from here(approx 7.7 MB). Without any second thought, just grab your copy and install it.

Few users are reporting update notices, but I’ve not received any notice when Firefox is launched. I forced the upgrade by downloading the new version and installed it. Firefox 3.5 is awesome and more powerful than ever. Here is a quick walkthrough of new features and also the reasons why you should upgrade

Download Firefox 3.5

Click here to download