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December 11, 2008 | 
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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
Posted in SEO Tools | 
Tags: back-link, backlink checking tool, backlinks, Citing Wikipedia, inbound links, incoming links, inlinks, inward links, quality free seo tools, Royal Melbourne Golf Club, Search Engine Optimisation, St. Andrews Golf Course, The Golf Club, wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia | 
Comments
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"
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | Tags: Algorithm, alt tags, Australian Search Engine Optimisation Specialists, backlinks, Blogs, Crawl, External Links, Flash Intros, google adsense, google adwords, hosting impact, internal links, Javascript, Link Farms, meta tags, Page Rank, Referring Page, seo, Spam, twitter | Comments
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
Posted in Website Traffic | Tags: 12seconds, bebo, business meeting, delicious.com, digg.com, facebook, facebook.com, flickr, furl, kwippy.com, mybloglog.com, myspace.com, Social Media, social media networks, stumbleupon.com, technorati.com, twitter, youtube.com | Comments
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"
Posted in SEO Tools | Tags: checklink, html standards, make money online, Validating Tools, W3C, w3c.org, wysiwig html editors | Comments
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
Posted in SEO Tools | Tags: backlink checking tool, free seo tool, google, google adsense calculator, google banned checker, html code optimizer, index checking tool, keyword density tool, keyword suggestion tool, link shortener, list cleaning tool, msn, search engine position tool, search listings preview tool, SEO Tools, spider view tool, yahoo | Comments
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
Australian Domain Names
There are countless ways of generating traffic to your website, unfortunately, a lot of people fail to capitalise on this, simply because they don't follow through. They give up after trying 1 thing once. They don't make a sale so they give it up and say it doesn't work.
You must test, test and retest your efforts and then compare the results to the previous month. Compare unique visitors form one month to the next. Compare enquiry emails received from 1 month to the next.
The only true way of generating traffic, quality traffic, is by testing and by being proactive.
Run weekly or monthly polls on your website. People love to give their opinions on any number of subjects. So give them the subjects to talk about. If you select topics that have a wide appeal, your website visitors will return and return often. From there, ask them to sign up with your newsletter, so you can them advised of new polls and information.
Consider starting a niche forum, as this has also proven to be an excellent source of traffic. Granted, it is and can be a lot of work to get off the ground, however, if you select your niche area carefully, it doesn't take long until word of mouth advertising kicks in.
Consider donating to a local Charity and then distribute a press release proudly advertising that fact. Select your Charity carefully, but donate accordingly and be proud of your donation and give the press release to media and business connections. Ask them to become involved and get 3 or 4 business, working together for a particular charity event.
End of the day, always ask your visitors how they found your website. Was it a referral, a keyword, keywords, if so, what were they...but always test and measure your results.
We trust you have found this blog of benefit.
Until Net Time...
Happy Blogging
SEO Steve
Hosting Impact - Australian SEO Services
Posted in Website Traffic | Tags: keyword phrases, keywords, local charity, long tail keywords, Website Traffic, weekly polls | Comments
Quality Free SEO Tools
What is website content and how do we create good quality content ? Opinions vary, however, the basic concensus is that by regularly updating your website with unique fresh content and making it more interactive, you will be targeting your niche market.
Testimonials.
Not this one again. Yes, this one again. This allows your satisfied customers to voice their opinions about the quality of your product or service. An online Testimony has the added advantage of having links to and from your customer and this in itself is a good thing.
Forums and Blogs.
Forums and Blogs provide instant interactive appeal to your website customers and visitors. Apart from the fact that they are by themself an essential element, they also add fresh relevant content to your particular website.
Calendar of Events.
Calendar of Events allows you to promote a particular product, service or launch. The calendar allowS your visitors to bookmark, add to their own, share it plus other features that would take a blog of it's own to write about. If you have upcoming events related to your website's products, services, or Business then include it in your calendar of events.
Product Reviews.
Consider writing a Product Review. Be mindful that your review must be fair and just and include both the advantages and disadvantages of your particular product. By writing an honest review of your product, will also give you credibility to your website visitors.
Geographical Maps.
If you have a brick and mortar business, then consider using maps to pinpoint your location. If you are writing about a golf course or hotel, then use Google Maps to show it's location. It helps the website visitors as they look for specific locations and they will come to rely upon your website as a valuable resource.
All of the above mentioned tips are designed to assist you in creating valuable relevant content, which is aimed at delivering quality traffic to your website. After all isn't that the goal and aim of all of us.
Until Net Time ...
Happy Blogging
Australian Domain Names
Your Domain Name or Names are a vital component of your Business identity. They are not only an integral part of your online business but they are also an effective and efficient marketing tool.
The majority of businesses, register their business name/s as their preferred Domain. Where possible and depending upon which Country you live, it may be prudent to secure the .com and .com.au version of your Domain name.
In our case, we secured www.hostingimpact.com www.hostingimpact.com.au www.hostingimpact.net and www.hostingimpact.net.au
Why ? Simply to protect our brand. We have heard horror stories whereby an Australian Business has secured their .com.au domain and have left their .com domain name available. Their opposition have come through and registered the .com version and then built a site along the same lines and yes you guessed it, customers would forget to type the .au extension and go to the opposition. Let's be honest, for the sake of around $15.00, why would you not secure it.
If you're not ready to design and develop your website just now, thats ok, however, registering your domain name is still an important step to consider. The added advantage of securing your domain name, is the fact that you can then create personalised email addresses, e.g. support@hostingimpact.com instead of yourbusinessname@hotmail.com
Congratulations, you have secured your Domain Name, now what....Please ensure that your Domain details and registrant contact email address remains valid and up to date.
For additional information regarding Australian Domain Names please visit www.auda.org.au
Search for your preferred Domain Name here.
We trust you have found this post of benefit and should you require additional information please do not hesitate to contact us accordingly.
Until Next Time ...
Happy Blogging
SEO Steve
Hosting Impact - Australian Domain Names