Archive for December, 2008

Helping You To Make Money Online

Twitter has come a long way in such a short space of time. Why one program becomes a huge success compared to others, who knows, however, what we do know is that Twitter, it’s followers and Apps developers have contributed largely to it’s success.

There are literally 100’s of worthy Twitter applications and we have only named a dozen here and in no particular order.

Tweetwasters – As the name suggests, it shows you how much time you have wasted / invested in Twitter.

Twittervision – A visual look of tweets around the world.

Twitter Search – See what’s happening right now.

Tweetscan – Tweet for a particular subject or heading for example: SEO, Golf, Dancing etc. A great way to focus on a particular group of Twitters.

Mr Tweet – Mr. Tweet looks through your extended network to assist you in building effective relationships on Twitter. Read the rest of this entry »

Free SEO Tools to assist you in improving your website

Congratulations, you took the first step, in building your website and promoting your products and services. Where are your website visitors and more importantly, where are the sales. It has often been said that first
impressions are the most important, so it is best to make the best impression that you can, because there won’t be a second one.

It is estimated that you have approximately 45 seconds to make a good first impression. Your website visitors will judge your site in that short space of time. They will judge it on colour, load time, layout and professionalism.

Prior to unleashing your website onto the unsuspecting masses, ask for unbiased, brutally honest opinions from family, friends and business associates. Listen to their feedback, step aside and look at it from a customers point of view.

Does it pass the test of professionalism? Does it truly represent you, your business, your products and services in a professional light. Are your graphics of a high quality ? Is the information written in such a way that is easy to understand. Read the rest of this entry »

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Free SEO Tools to assist you in improving your website

Free SEO Tools to assist you in improving your website

According to Wikipedia,  Backlinks (or back-links (UK)) are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page. 

In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node (Björneborn and Ingwersen, 2004). Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.

Although Search Engines may not place as much weight on the relevance of backlinks as they once did, does not mean that you shouldn’t ask for them. On the contrary, attempt to receive backlinks from high ranking and specific websites that compliment your website or niche area.

For example, if you own a landscaping / Gardening business and website, attempt to receive backlinks from highly sought after gardening experts, leading landscaping suppliers or even consider the major golf courses. Why the Golf Courses, I hear the masses screaming ? Simply because the greens of a golf course require expert gardening techniques, care and maintenance, so it follows that the search engines recognise or shold recognise this fact and reward you accordingly. In the event that they don’t, so what, you still have a backlink from St. Andrews Golf Course  Royal Melbourne Golf Club or The Golf Club

Hosting Impact has a free Backlink Checking Tool that enables you to ascertain who is linking to your website. Once you have this information, you can then create links to them, should you so desire.

http://www.hostingimpact.com/free_tools_backlink_checker.htm

We trust you have found this post of benefit and more importantly receive good use from the Backlink Checking Tool. 

Hosting Impact has a range of other Free Quality SEO Tools available and you can access them here

http://www.hostingimpact.com/free_tools.htm

Until Net Time…
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – Quality SEO Tools

Free SEO Tools to assist you in improving your website

Spoke with a customer this morning and it was during this conversation that the question was asked, what does SEO mean ? What is a backlink ? What is a Blog ? and what the hell is Twitter ?

It is so easy to believe that everybody knows and understands what seo is, or a backlink and not to mention Twitter and more importantly what it can do for you. But alas poor Yorick, that is not always the case and with that in mind, we now pressent a brief Glossary of SEO Common Words.

This Glossary is by no means complete and final and is given purely as a guide.

AdSense – is an effective way for publishers, regardless of size or experience, to display relevant Google Ads within their website’s content pages. The ads are related to your website content and as such, appeal to your website visitors. This helps in monetizing your website. 

AdWords –
Google’s advertising service for displaying Ads of your website as paid inclusion.
More details can be found at http://adwords.google.com/

Algorithm – is an operational program rule that determines how a particular search engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN, indexes content and then displays it accordingly.

Alt Tag -
A tag that provides alternative text for visually impaired users.
Search engines may pick this text instead of graphical images.Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink.
Search engines may pick this up for ranking, although this in itself is no guarantee of a higher search ranking.

Backlink
– As the name suggests are inbound links from another web page, pointing to your website.
 

Blog -
Blogs are also known as weblogs. An online Diary with the owner posting random comments, promoting products, services, or information. Posts are made on a regular basis and are increasing in value to both the users and the search engines.

Crawl
– When a search engine visits your website and extracts your content for search results.

External links
– A link that forwards to a website outside the home domain name (third party).

Flash Intro – An animated short introduction. The website sits behind the Flash Intro and visitors can skip them as a general rule.

Internal links
– An Internal link is a link that points to another page within the same website or Domain. Interal Links can also be utilised for navigation purposes.

Javascript
– A script language that can be embedded into the HTML of a webpage to add functionality.

Link Farm
– A set of interlinked web pages or websites that have been built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a web site, thereby with the aim of increasing link popularity and search engine rankings. TO BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS.

Meta Tag -
A special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page.
Generally used for search engines to describe your website. Please read more about Meta Tags and their Hidden Advantage

PageRank (PR) –
Google’s method to determine a webpage’s relevance, popularity and importance through the quality of sites linking to it.

Referring Page – A Website visitor clicks a link from another website and is directed to your website. The originating website is called the referring page.

SEO –
An abbreviation for Search Engine Optimisation (Optimization). Involves strategies to optimize and promote your website in a proven technique, all with the aim of improving your search engines ranking.

Spam -
Excessive manipulation to influence search engine rankings.  TO BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS.

The above is by no means complete and there are numerous good sources for more detailed explanations.

We trust you have found the above of some benefit.

Until Net Time …
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – “Helping You To Make Money Online” 

Free SEO Tools to assist you in improving your website

Hosting Impact normally holds a Business Groupie meeting, every month or so, to discuss where we are going, where we have been and where we would like to be in due course.

I was proud to stand up before the assembled mass and let it be known that I had taken their words of wisdom, from the last pow wow we had and had developed a “Blog” and had joined “Twitter” and was enjoying it. So much so, that if I don’t add a new Post every day or two, I start to get withdrawals. I have actually met fellow Twitts in person and I have liked it.  There must be something to this internet thing.

Anyway, back to the matters at hand…I finished singing the praises of both the Blog and Twitter and how comfortable I now was with my two newest bestest buddies and that I intend to continue “Blogging” and “Twitting”  and then it happened…..

One of the Groupies then innocently asked if we had done anything with Face Book, Squidoo, or another dozen Social Media Networks that she rattled off.

Simple answer…No, of course not, I’m doing two that’s enough, isn’t it.  Needless to say, that we spent the next hour + discussing the various Social Networks and what they do and don’t do.

Here’s a few that they ran past me and suggested that I look at and join.

Squidoo
Facebook
12seconds
30boxes.com
Bebo
Delicious
Digg
Flickr
Furl
Kwippy
Linkedin
My Blog Log
My Space
Stumble Upon
Technorati
Tumblr 

and of course You Tube…

Yea, No problem, I will put my life on hold and sit in front of the computer all day, every day, to regularly add a comment, post or blog to each and every single social media network going. If you will excuse the profanities, I will become a Social Media Whore.

Where does it stop… and is there anybody out there that can provide any suggestions to me and I am sure there are 1 000’s of others like me, who want to know, how do you find the time and secondly, how do you do it.

Is there a one post that fits all and if it does, how does that go towards duplication content penalty.

Any suggestions, assistance or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Until Net Time …
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – Social Media Network Apprentice

Helping You To Make Money Online

Writing code is one thing, however, writing good code is the best way to ensure your web pages look the same within the browsers. To assist you in this instance, ensure that you use a “validator”. What is a “Validator” ? Good Question, we will break that down in upcoming blogs and post.

Validation is or should be an important aspect for all concerned, however it is a must for anybody who only uses a WYSIWYG HTML editor. 

 
There are a number of good validators around, both for download and for use online, however, there are free online validators at W3C.org. W3C set the HTML standards so you would like to believe that their validators would provide you with the right answers.

Please click on the folowing links to check your webpages, blogs and feeds. 

 
HTML Validator http://validator.w3.org/detailed.html  

CSS Validator http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator  

Find Broken Links http://validator.w3.org/checklink  

RSS Validator http://validator.w3.org/feed

We trust that you find them of benefit and should you require additional information or assistance please do not hesitate to contact us in due course.

Until Net Time …
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – “Helping You To Make Money Online”

Free SEO Tools to assist you in improving your website

A Business Associate and myself were discussing various things last night, as we do and it never ceases to amaze me, the amount of subjects we touch upon nor the solutions to some of these problems. Although, to be honest with you, I can not see some of our suggestions being accepted and approved by the wider population…hee hee

One of the more heated subjects was “How To Make Money Online” and to cut a very long story short, we finally nutted it down to the following:

1. Create Your Website, Product or Something

2. Generating Income – Affiliate Programs, Google Adsense, Your Own Product

3. Marketing / Promotion – If people don’t know where you are, you ain’t selling squat.

4. Profit – It must be profitable

Simple isn’t it.

It took us approximately 4 hours to agree on this simplified list, however at the end of the day,  this is it, there ain’t no more. Four Simple Steps to Generate Profit and to be successful. If that is your goal and it is your definition of success. Here I go again, this was a large part of the discussion last night, My Goals and definition of success will be quite different from yours or the next person.

Let’s look at the 4 easy steps in a general sense.

1. Create a website, product or information. A website can be anything you want, from a basic website to a targeted niche website specialising in left handed golf putters for people over 6 feet tall. Whatever your chosen area of expertise is, stick with it. Specialise in it and become an expert regarding it.

2. Generating an Income from your website. Affiliate programs provide an option of promoting a product, in our case, left handed putters for people over 6ft tall. Something to consider though, is to write a review based upon your experience with it. Their customer support, their postage, their delivery, their follow up. This review, based upon your experience, lends more credence to you and the product. Affiliate programs make it easy for you to make money.  Another option to generate income is by placing Google Adsense ads within your website.

3. Marketing /Promotion. It doesn’t matter what you are selling or if you habve the best looking website in the entire world, if people do not know you where you are or if the search engines don’t index you, you ain’t selling squat. Simple as that. Promote your website at every opportunity, give your customers a reason to return and return often. 

4. Profit – Don’t expect to retire overnight or to be a millionaire. But think about it, if you can generate $100 from your website in a week, how great is that. All you need to do is increase that accordingly and repeat your efforts on a regular basis. 

We trust you have found this of benefit and if you would like to expand upon it, please contact us accoridngly.

Until Net Time …
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact

Free SEO Tools to assist you in improving your website

As with anything and everything with the internet, there are a range of SEO Tools available, the good, the not so good and the down right nasty.

We have included here a range for your consideration and yes we have tested and tried them and at the time of application, they worked and worked well. In the event that you find that they didn’t work, please contact us so we can rectify them for you.

Oh yes, they are all free for you to use as many times as your heart desires.

Backlink Checker – Find a list of backlinks to a specifc website.

Google Banned Checker – Discover if a website is banned on Google.

Index Checker – Ascertain how many pages are present on a search engines index.

Keyword Density Tool – Views the optimum keyword distribution of a particular website

Keyword Suggestion Tool – This will display up to 10 popular keywords on your selected keyword.

Search Engine Position – Check your Search Engine positions on Google Search Engine.

Search Listings Preview – Preview how your website will appear on Google, Yahoo and MSN search.

Spider View – View a website from a search engine spider’s perspective.

Google Adsense Calculator – Calculate your Adsense earnings based on page impressions.

Link Shortener - Makes a long website address short and easy to remember.

List Cleaner – Cleans and removes duplicates from a list in seconds.

HTML Optimiser – Removes the white spacing in your HTML Website. Faster load speeds.

There are many many more free SEO Tools available.

We trust you have found this post of use and please feel free to use the above mentioned SEO Tools. In the event that you do find them useful, please let us know, as we do appreciate your feedback.

Until Net Time
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – FREE SEO Tools

Free SEO Tools to assist you in improving your website

Ask as many people as you can find, the following question … what is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ? and you will receive different answers.

For simplicity, let’s agree to use the following as a starting point. SEO can be defined as the process of making changes to the content, code and structure of your website to make it more accessible to search engines by providing clearly defined keywords and or keyword phrases of your niche.

Search engine optimization is not and never has been about tricking or scamming the search engines.

Granted, in the “Early Days” you only had to place a keyword here or there and you were basically given the number 1 spot. That proved to be both good and bad, however, as search engines evolved and they do and will continue to do so, you will need to ensure that your website is correctly optimised.

Optimisation is about understanding what elements search engines look for on a webpage to help in determining the relevance of that webpage for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. By understanding these elements and making the relevant adjustments to your webpage, you can improve your rank for a search term.

As we all know, Search engines use “spiders” or “crawlers” to visit your Web site and index the information accordingly. This information includes the content, as well as some coding aspects used to construct your webpage or website.

When designing or building your website, there are two simple things to take into consideration. Firstly, your website visitors and Secondly the Search Engines. Told you it was simple. Get those two aspects correct and you are grining. Don’t however, rely on building it once and then leaving it there, to be ranked highly for your keywords, both long tail and short tail, you must constantly work it. Look at it like exercise, if you don’t exercise your body and muscles, they waste away, same with your website, if you don’t consistently add new information, promote it and work it, it to will waste away and join the other forgotten websites languishing at the bottom of the internet pit.

Please feel free to read more on Saerch Engine Optimisation by visiting this link http://www.hostingimpact.com/search_engine_optimisation.htm

and use Our Free SEO Tools here

http://www.hostingimpact.com/free_tools.htm

In the next couple of posts we will talk more about Search Engine Optimisation.

Until Net Time …
Happy Blogging

SEO Steve
Hosting Impact – FREE SEO Tools