Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by GwangSoo

Personalized Photobook (40-page Hardcover)

GwangSoo — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:48:24 +0800

Howdy all,

I was wondering if you all do usually print out photobooks? If you do, then this is a great deal. Just for sharing though...

Photobooks are usually priced at RM100+ cheapest maybe RM80+-??? Currently easyVoucher is having this photobook deal at only RM50!!

Deal Information

Choose one of the following Package :
- 8" x 11" 40-page classic portrait photo book
- 8" x 8" 40-page classic square photo book
- 8" x 6" up to 54-page pocket landscape photo book

Specifications:

Printed on high quality raster white papers.
Customisable cover, background designs and page layouts.
RM100 cash voucher for hardcover photo books of all sizes valid during subsequent purchase.

Features:

8" x 11" 40-page classic portrait imagewrap hardcover photo book:
- Size: 8” x 11” (portrait)
- Number of pages: 40 pages
- Cover: 118gsm art paper
- Paper: 170gsm Symbol Freelife Raster white paper
- Binding: Matte laminated finish wrapped around picture on hardcover

8" x 8" 40-page classic square imagewrap hardcover photo book:
- Size: 8” x 8” (portrait)
- Number of pages: 40 pages
- Cover: 118gsm art paper
- Paper: 170gsm Symbol Freelife Raster white paper
- Binding: Matte laminated finish wrapped around picture on hardcover

8" x 6" up to 54-page pocket landscape imagewrap hardcover photo book:
- Size: 8” x 6” (landscape)
- Number of pages: up to 54 pages
- Cover: 118gsm art paper
- Paper: 170gsm Symbol Freelife Raster white paper
- Binding: Matte laminated finish wrapped around picture on hardcover

More pictures and information at : Personalized 40-page Hardcover Photobook at RM50 only.

[WTA] Kaffa Kafe in Penang

GwangSoo — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 10:04:21 +0800

Anyone tried Kaffa Kafe? I'm not sure if it is available in other states but I'm from Penang. I heard they have catering services also. The reason I ask is because I'm thinking of buying like 20pcs of this RM18 for RM40 cash voucher for some event.

Anyone tried Kaffa before? I heard they have a few branches. How was the food and drinks? Price range?

FREE eCommerce Training

GwangSoo — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 10:01:44 +0800

Wish to kick start your own Online Business? Wanna sell on your Websites as well as on Facebook & Mobile Devices but don’t know HOW or WHERE to start?

No Worries! Besides registering an absolutely FREE Easy.my account to have a try as a starter, we will be conducting training sessions as listed below to equip you with all the necessary skills to build your own Online Store, tap into the benefits of selling on Facebook & Mobile Devices which can make you sell online like a PRO!

Even if you’ve already grasped the skills of building an Online Store through your Easy.my Free Account, you can still benefit from this training which gives you the opportunity to raise your questions and doubts in our Q&A session.

Register yourself to the below training session NOW to learn more on how to jumpstart your own Online Store TODAY!

More info at http://start.easy.my/training/

Enroll yourself now!

eCommerce Conference For Online Sellers

GwangSoo — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:30:47 +0800

[center]Commerce Conference For Online Sellers
The Premier eCommerce Conference That Gives You Face To Face Discussion With More Than 20 Gurus

[/center]

Join us at eCommerce Conference 2012, the premier conference for online sellers. The experienced Gurus from more than 20 industries will be there to share with you:

- the tips and tricks to get your eCommerce website on track
- the local and international eCommerce trend,
- the branding via social media
- the business copyright issues
- ways to bring traffic to your eCommerce websites, and more!

Seize the valuable opportunity to meet and interact with the Gurus and network with your potential business partners in an educational and joyful environment.

WHY SHOULD YOU ATTEND?

- Learn how to start your online business from successful online business practitioners
- Learn to maintain your website from the professionals
- Learn to manage your online business and ensure it is on track
- Learn to take/choose photos that best describe your products/services
- Learn to brand your online business using social media
- Learn about website copyright and trademark
- Learn about how registration of you online business with SSM can greatly increase customer confidence
- ALL UNDER ONE ROOF!

Read More...

Making $100/Day Recurring Income With Online

GwangSoo — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:27:25 +0800

Online coupons are a great way to make a lot of recurring income online. There is always a demand for them as any normal person, when faced on a checkout page with "Enter Coupon" will have a quick search for a coupon giving them a discount.

There are basically two types of coupons that you can profit from.

Generic Coupons

These are coupons that are the same for everyone. For example, Namecheap issue a new coupon every month to give discounts on new domain registrations.

You may have found such a coupon on a site yourself. So how does the person promoting that coupon profit from it?

First, they get traffic and traffic is no bad thing, generally speaking. A person may get introduced to a site for the first time, return later and buy something that gives an affiliate commission to the site owner.

The only way to profit directly from the program for which the coupon applies is to force an affiliate link click at some stage of the process. For example, you can try asking the surfer to "click to activate" the coupon. Whether they believe you or not is another matter.

Custom Coupons

Custom coupons are rarer but offer you many more possibilities.

A custom coupon is where an affiliate program is so flexible that it allows you to create your own coupon codes (subject to availability).

With one of these coupon codes, you don't need to get any affiliate links clicked. All you need to make sure is that the person uses your code, which they will do if they want the discount.

Promoting Your Coupons

There are various ways to promote your coupons. For generic coupons where you need to force a click, you are best sticking to your own site.

For custom coupons you have many other options. However, you should remember that wherever you go out to promote, you may encounter competition.

3 Common Internet Work At Home Scams

GwangSoo — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:46:50 +0800

Want to know which system I use to earn not just 1 income stream but 5? Click here to see it!

For a lot of people, especially now in the financial crises around the world, there is a need and dream to be their own boss and working at home without having to worry about layoffs from their current jobs. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who are taking advantage of this situation and want to take advantage of people like you who are desiring to find the right work at home based business opportunity.

Getting the right information is critical for you in order to learn how to avoid these scams and to be able to find the right business for you at home.

Here is a small yet effective list of some of the scams that are out there and are the ones that you do want to avoid.

Stuffing Envelopes for pay - This particular scheme has been around for a while and doesn't want to go away. The advertisement will tell you that you can earn between $5-$15 per envelope that you will stuff. They will also tell you that you can earn a nice full time income from home. What ever you do, don't fall for this scheme.

Pyramid Schemes - The idea behind an illegal pyramid scheme is that the people at the top of the list will get your money and then you will bring people under you and they will give you their money too. The more people you bring in, the better. A Pyramid Schemes is not like MLM. In MLM there are REAL products moving around and MLM is a legitimate business recognized in well over 100+ countries around the world. In Pyramid Schemes, there are no products what so ever and it is illegal.

Assembly Jobs - If you come across an ad that promises you to earn money for assembling parts then it is a scam because you are not going to get these parts unless you order them and pay for them. This is another scam that is out there so be careful.

So you will need to avoid these scams. Also, be careful when you go online. There are thousands upon thousands of people and websites who are waiting for desperate people like you who are looking to get out of the rat race. They will scam you, take your money, and run away.

Pro and Cons for Paid Traffic and SEO

GwangSoo — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:57:10 +0800

Should you pay for traffic or should you use organic search engine optimization to bring people to your websites? Both strategies are extremely effective for many people and there are many affiliates making five figure commissions monthly using both strategies.

Below I have listed the advantages and drawbacks of each strategy. Basically, it's a matter of weighing the pros and cons of each and deciding which one works best for your business.

The Pros and Cons of Paid Traffic

The biggest advantage of paid traffic is the quick feedback cycle.

If you come up with a aweome idea, you can whip up a campaign in a day and within just a few days know whether or not your idea is succesful.

It's instant - no waiting for authority, for backlinks, for pagerank or anything like that.

You can also make tons of money very quickly. If crate a success campaign or a winning strategy and rev it up, you can quickly go from zero income to several thousand a month in just a few weeks.

The bottom line, paid traffic is just much, much faster than SEO.

The downside however is that the traffic often doesn't last as long as SEO. Other marketers can outbid you, or Google can out of the blue change their policies and completely shut down your campaign. Over 30,000 Adwords affiliates were banned in 2009, in the course of 4 months due to a change of policy.

The other downside is that the chances of losing money in the beginning is extremely high. So if you choose paid traffic, you should have at least $500 to $1,000 that you'd don't mind losing. That'll allow you to test various products, ads and tactics without worrying about dipping into paying-the-bills money.

The Pros and Cons of SEO

SEO is a completely different strategy than search traffic.

First, it won't happen overnight, it takes a long time. A successful site could take between a month to six months to rank for significant keywords.

The feedback on your strategies are slow. You could come up with an idea that you think is fantastic and test it out - But you won't know the results for 3 months .

To do well in SEO, you have to have a very long attention span. You need to be able to start projects and see them through to completion over several months.

However, the major advantage to SEO is the consistency of the traffic. After you're ranked, assuming you're doing whitehat SEO, you'll likely have an income source for many years.

You've built a real asset. Your site or blog won't disappear overnight, and neither will your traffic.

SEO is very similar to or as close as you can get to passive income online. And PPC is very fast but very active income.

So it depends on you, your available income for advertising and your personality to determine which strategy is best for your business. The two types of traffic will appeal to two very different kinds of people.

How to Get People to Read Your Blog

GwangSoo — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:50:22 +0800

Ever feel frustrated that people don’t seem to be swarming to your blog or website? Wonder why they’re not?

I’ve been blogging for awhile now and I’ve learned a few things about how to get people to visit your blog or website.

Check Your Keywords – Keywords work. Keywords are what REAL people type into REAL computers to find your website. Use ‘em ok?

Please don’t think I’m being patronizing here because I’m not! I ignored keywords in my own business for a long time but I think it’s really important if you want to build something that continues to work for you even when you’re not there – targeted keywords can do that.

Know Your Readers – Sometimes we get into the mindset that whatever we want to write about is what we want to blog about. But that’s not always the case. Get to know your readers, understand their problems and find out their questions and then start giving them the answers.

Be Approachable – People want to know you are a real person and not someone spewing out content to get them to buy. I do things like add video posts to my blog, put my email in a handy spot, and I even added a nifty little chat box on the right side.

Be Human – We all make mistakes and nobody wants to read a bragging blog for any sustained period of time. Be human.

If you make mistakes, admit them and tell people what you learned from it. I always say I love to learn the hard way, and boy when I mess up I like to make it big. Sometimes I don’t even learn from those big mistakes so I have to do them a few more times. But I’m pretty good at letting my readers know that I’ve messed up and what I think I’ve learned from it.
I like Carrie Wilkerson’s little quote about this: “Turn a mess into a message”

Bring Value – You know value. I know value. Let’s just bring it.

Know Your Purpose – WHY are you blogging, really? Is it just for money? Is it to share a goal? Is it to share as much info as you can?

Speak From The Heart – People know fakeness. They can smell it even over the internet. You won’t do yourself any good to being fake. You and I both know that. But let’s go even further and speak from the heart. Speak from your feelings. Write what you really feel.

People will dive into that and love it, they’ll come back and read your blog and be anticipating your next post.

So there you have a few good tips to get people reading your blog more often and coming back to your website for more.

Google Algorithm Changes Announced

GwangSoo — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:00:50 +0800

As you may know, Google has been putting out a monthly list of algorithm changes it has been making, as part of the company’s initiative to be “more transparent”. Google will never put out the entire secret sauce of its algorithm (without a court order, at least), so webmasters can at least be thankful that they’re being thrown a handful of bones in the form of a monthly list.

Have you seen effects from Google’s most recent algorithm changes? Let us know in the comments.

Some have apparently already been feeling the effects of Google’s algorithmic early this year. Webmasters were quick to point the finger at the old panda, but Google assures us that this is not the case. A spokesperson for the company told WebProNews there have been no Panda updates in 2012 so far (though I’d expect one to launch before too long).

By the way, now that 2011 is over, do you think Panda has done a good job at cleaning up search results?

In the latest edition of the series, on the company’s Inside Search Blog, they highlight 21 changes made in the month of December. The list goes as follows:

READ MORE... SOS...

Siri Spire Proxy Hosting List

GwangSoo — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:31:45 +0800

Anyone have the list yet?

Otherwise we'll have to wait for http://www.iphone-my.com/featured/iphonemy...y-hosting-list/ to release one at the moment.

[GIVEAWAY] Comic Life 2 for Mac

GwangSoo — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:11:37 +0800

Guys, iPhone.MY is doing a giveaway... Giving away Comic Life 2 for Mac in this 3 days.

For those who wants to get one free, you can join it here ---> http://www.iphone-my.com/featured/comic-li...c-app-giveaway/

Just for sharing. Have fun and good luck!

FX Photo Studio Pro Giveaway

GwangSoo — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 10:39:12 +0800

Guys, check this giveaway out!

It says...

"‎[GIVEAWAY] We're giving away FX Studio Photo Pro (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fx-photo-studio-pro/id432888949) for Mac worth $39.99 today. Here's how you can win:

1. Tag yourself in this photo.
2. Contest ends when we have 50 tags in this photo.
3. 1 random winner will be selected out of the 50.

Enjoy and start tagging! "SHARE" with your friends!"

iPhone 6. You won’t believe it. Even when you see

GwangSoo — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:39:11 +0800

Hi,
[center][/center]
Just sharing one of my site which talks about mainly Apple related news. Daily updated and it's the biggest Apple news portal in Malaysia. Site is currently hosted with Exabyte's Cloud Hosting. You don't have to go a lot of sites gathering or reading news from a lot of other different sites anymore, right now... you just need to go to one website. Which is iPhone.MY

Latest Article(s):

On top of that, remember to join us in Facebook and follow us in Twitter, Google+ & Pinterest.

Battle of the Apps

GwangSoo — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:46:57 +0800

Austin based APPSPIRE.me has released an infographic which pairs up iPhone gaming app heroes against each other to see which one would win in a one-on-one battle. The infographic, called App Hero vs. App Hero, judges the apps by four categories: speed, skill, strength, and smarts. iPhone apps that are featured in the App Hero vs. App Hero infographic include Defen-G, Battleground, Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Gun Bros, Warmen, Zombie Highway, Zombieville USA 2, Jet Pack Joyride, and Rocket Riot.

Check out the full infographic here... SOS

SEO - Frequently Asked Questions

GwangSoo — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:37:42 +0800

This FAQ is the result of a brain storming session between a couple of Warrior SEOs. It's a way of giving something back to warrior forum and sharing some of the useful stuff I've learned.

Please note: It's incomplete. I'd never intentionally leave anything out but I'm bound to have missed stuff. Please ask away in the thread and as well as posting to answer your questions I'll update the main FAQ sections as we go. Furthermore, I take no credits for all the post below. I just took some initiative to post these FAQ here. Credit goes all to Andy Fletcher from WarriorForum.

So without further ado ...

Contents -

Introduction (SEO 101)

What is SEO?
What's the difference between SEO and SEM?
What's the difference between paid and organic search listings?
What's on-page SEO?
What's off-page SEO?
How quickly will I see results?
Should I rank my own content or articles on other sites?

Other factors ("Advanced" SEO)

What other factors affect rankings besides backlinks?
Does domain age help?
Why would I want to 301 redirect an aged domain?
What is rel="canonical"?
What's the truth about duplicate content?
What is a doorway page/cloaking?
What are meta tags?
What is the "freshness" factor?
What is a C-class IP and why should I care?
What is LSI?
Should I build links for human beings or the search engines?
What is an XML Sitemap?
What's the sandbox?
What is robots.txt for?
What's a spamblog?
What's an autoblog?
What's an "authority" site?
What are "supplemental" results?

Google and Page Rank

What is Page Rank?
How often does Google update Page Rank?
Does PR matter?
What is the "Google Dance"?
How does Google personalize my results?

Link Building Basics

What is a backlink?
What is anchor text?
What is a do-follow/no-follow link?
Types of backlinks?
Can paid links harm my ranking?
Are reciprocal links bad?
What is a one-way link?
What is three-way linking?
What is a site wide link?
What is pinging?

Advanced Link Building

What is link velocity?
Can I build links too fast?
What is page rank sculpting?
What is a link wheel?
What is a mininet?
What makes a good site for a link wheel?
What is link bait?
What is a link farm?
What is a footprint?
How do I search for footprints?
What is a proxy?

Indexation

How do I get my site indexed?
How do I get my backlinks indexed?
How can I tell if my site has been visited by a spider/bot?

Statistics and monitoring

What percentage of people click on the first listing in Google?
How do I use Google alerts to monitor the SERPs?
How can I track the number of backlinks I have?

Keyword Research

What makes a good keyword?
How many people are searching for my keyword?
What is the "true" competition for a keyword?
What are long tail keywords?

Official Stuff

What is the official Google/Yahoo/Bing policy on SEO?
Why doesn't Google tell me how many links I have?
Who is Matt Cutts?
Google webmaster tools

Automation, outsourcing and 3rd party stuff

Can anyone guarantee a 1st place ranking?
What is a backlink packet?
I bought a packet of "high pr links" but all my links are PR0, what happened?
What automation tools are there?
What SEO service should I use?
What does an SEO host give me that a regular one doesn't?

Glossary

SEO
SERP
Spider/Crawler
Backlink
Anchor Text
LSI

Major Contributors

bgmacaw from WarriorForum

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Introduction (SEO 101)

What is SEO?

SEO = Search Engine Optimization, ie getting your site ranked higher so more people show up at your doorstep.

In theory we’re interested in all search engines. In practice SEO = Google.

What's the difference between SEO and SEM?

While some people use SEO and SEM interchangeably, SEO (search engine optimization) is actually a part of SEM (search engine marketing).

SEO refers to the process of using on and off page factors (typically free) to get your web pages ranked for your chosen keywords in order to get more search engine traffic to your sites. SEM takes it a step farther to include using paid search engine listings and paid inclusion to get more traffic to your websites.

What's the difference between paid and organic search listings?

Organic search engine listings are the main results users see when they do a Google search. The websites appearing in the organic listings appear because those sites are most relevant to the user’s keywords. Indeed, most of these sites appear in the top of the search engine results because the webmasters of these sites have used SEO tactics to ensure top rankings.

The paid (or “sponsored”) listings usually appear on the top, bottom and to the right of the regular organic listings. Usually these are pay per click (PPC) ads, which means the website owner only pays when someone clicks on his ad (as opposed to paying for impressions).

This isn’t an either/or game. Just because you do SEO doesn’t mean you can’t/shouldn’t use PPC and vice versa.

SEO is not free traffic, it takes time and/or money to get good organic rankings but in the long run it’s usually cheaper than PPC.

What's on-page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to the things you do on your own site to enhance it’s ranking in the search engines. This includes but is not limited to:

Creating content around specific keywords.
Formatting/designing your site so that the most important keywords are emphasized and appear near the top of the page.
Including the chosen keywords in meta tags.
Including the keywords in the navigation menu and other links.
Using your keywords in other parts of your site, such as the title of the page, the file name, etc.
Using related keywords on the site (see the question on LSI for more information).

What's off-page SEO?

Off page SEO refers to those things you do outside of your own web pages to enhance their rankings in the search engines.

This is a glorified way of saying, “get links” and did I mention, “more links”.

How quickly will I see results?

If you target long tail keywords you can see results pretty quickly but always remember SEO is a long term strategy not a set and forget thing.

If you’re after more competitive keywords prepare to commit to it for at least three months of consistent effort.

Should I rank my own content or articles on other sites?

Yes – but let’s qualify that.

Because you can’t control what third-party sites do, you should focus the vast majority of your efforts on ranking content on your own sites.

However, you can leverage high-ranking third-party sites by posting SEO’ed content on them and then you including a link back to your own site. Not only do you get the SEO benefits of the backlinks, you’ll also get indirect search engine traffic from people clicking through to your main site.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Other Factors ("Advanced" SEO)

What other factors affect rankings besides backlinks?

Where you’re getting your links, the quality of these links, the relevancy of these links, how many links you have and what keywords you’re using as the anchor text all affect your rankings. But there are other factors that affect your ranking, including but not limited to:

On page optimization factors – this is how well you’ve optimized your tags, content, formatting, keyword proximity, site map, and links on your web page. This also includes whether you use your keywords at the top of your page and in your “alt” tags (both good things).
Having a lot outgoing or reciprocal links pointing to “bad” sites (like link farms) – can negatively impact rankings.
Whether you have unique content (which the SE’s like).
How frequently you update your site. Faster isn't necessarily better. Check what ranks well for your niche and aim to match it.
Whether your domain includes your primary keywords.
Your domain’s age, reputation, IP address and whether it’s a top level domain (e.g., a .com is better than a .info although probably not by much).
Shady practices such as keyword stuffing or using text that’s the same color as the background can negatively affect your rankings. Only an issue if your site gets manually inspected and you don't have a legitimate reason for it.
Showing one page to the search engines and other page to visitors negatively affects your rankings. (Cloaking and doorway pages.)
Frames negatively affect your rankings.
Using content that the search engines can’t read, like audios, flash, videos, graphics (without alt tags), etc.
Whether you have a robots.txt file that tells the search engine bots to stop crawling or indexing your site.

Does domain age help?

Yes – search engines view older domains as more trustworthy, which means older domains may have a slight advantage. But this is only true if the older domain has a good reputation (e.g., it hasn’t been blacklisted, penalized or banned from the search engines).

Why would I want to 301 redirect an aged domain?

Google passes link juice/authority/age/ranking strength (call it what you like) from one domain to another if you do a 301 redirect on it.

For the less tech savvy out there the 301 code means “permanently moved” and is a way to announce that your site that was once “here” is now “there”.

The upshot of this is that you can buy an aged domain and “301” it to the site you’re trying to rank instantly passing on all that lovely ranking power that it’s acquired just by sitting in some domain squatters account for 10 years.

Just make sure they do a domain push at the same registrar it was originally registered at or all these effects are lost.

Also, you have to wait up to 2 weeks to see the benefits. They are not instant!

What is rel="canonical"?

If you have two or more pages with similar content, you can tell Google which is your preferred page to show in the search engine results. This is referred to as your “canonical” page. If Google agrees this designated page is the best version, it will show this preferred page in its index.

To tell Google which page you want listed as the canonical page, add the following bit of code into the head section of the similar (non-canonical) pages:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/filename.html"/>

Naturally, you should replace the example.com/filename.html with your actual domain name and file name.

For example…

Example.com/file1.html is your preferred canonical page, the one you want displayed in the search engine results. You don’t have to add any tags to this site.

Example.com/file2.html and Example.com/file3.html have similar content to example.com/file1.html. As such, you’d place the canonical code within the <head> tag of these two sites to tell Google that example.com/file1.html is the most important page.

The most common reason to do this is to tell Google that these pages are all the same –

Example.com
www.example.com
www.example.com/index.html
Example.com/index.html

Don’t go overboard with this and certainly don’t use it on stuff like paginated comment pages because they are “similar” but contain the same post. They contain enough unique content to be treated as unique and Google will start to ignore your legitimate canonicals if it finds too many instances of you misusing it.

Yes, Google thinks it’s smarter than you, deal with it and move on.

What's the truth about duplicate content?

There is no duplicate content penalty when it comes to multiple sites. Otherwise, your shady competitors could just create near-clones of your site to make your site disappear. But that doesn’t happen. Indeed, run a search for a PLR article and you’ll likely see many SE results for that same article.

TIP: Nonetheless, it’s better if you have unique content, rather than competing with others for the same keywords using similar content.

What about duplicate content on your OWN site? In other words, what happens if you have two web pages with the same content but different file names? In that case, refer to the question on rel-canonical for instructions on how to deal with this.

What is a doorway page/cloaking?

Cloaking refers to showing one page to a search engine and a different page to your human visitors. Doorway pages are optimized pages that pull in SE traffic, but this traffic is immediately redirected (either manually or automatically) to a different page.

Google and other search engines do NOT like these practices.

What are meta tags?

Meta tags are information that you put between the <head> tag of your web page’s source code. These meta tags primarily tell search engines and other user agents about your site’s content (description), keywords, formatting, title and whether you want the search engines to crawl (and index) the page.

There are also some tags that are shown to the user, such as the title tag (which is the title that appears at the top of your browser).

Note that the big search engines no longer take these tags into consideration when ranking your web pages (with the exception of the title tags). Some smaller and more specialized search engines still utilize the keywords and description tags when ranking and displaying your site.

What is the "freshness" factor?

Search engines such as Google prefer “fresh” (newly updated) web pages and content over stale content. That’s why when you first add content to your site – such as a new blog post – this page may sit high in the rankings for a while. Eventually it may sink to a more realistic ranking.

It’s this “freshness factor” that allows your pages to get those higher rankings, even if the ranking is temporary. Thus updating your pages frequently can help push them to the top of the rankings.

This is one of the primary reasons why you hear people talking about how “Google loves blogs”. Google doesn’t love blogs, Google loves regularly updated sites.

What is a C-class IP and why should I care?

A computer’s IP address is it’s address on the Internet. A C-Class block of IPs are ones which are next to each other. Links from the same IP have very limited value. Links from the same C-Class IP block have a little more value but still not much. Links from different C-Class IPs are worth the most.

Not as important as it once was, especially when it comes to sites hosted on huge shared server clusters like those at HostGator/ThePlanet, BlueHost and others. The shortage of available IP addresses is driving this.

Most importantly tons of domains all on the same IP or C-Class that all interlink are the fastest way to announce to Google that you’re trying to cheat the system. This may have worked a couple of years ago, now it’s just a flashing neon sign telling Google to deindex you.

What is LSI?

LSI is short for latent semantic indexing. This refers to different words that have the same or similar meanings (or words that are otherwise related). For example, “housebreaking a dog” and “housetraining a puppy” are two entirely different phrases, but they mean about the same thing.

The reason this is important is because Google analyzes webpages using LSI to help it return the most relevant results to the user.

For example, a page that has the keyword “housebreaking a dog” but NO other similar words (like housetraining, paper training, potty training, puppy, dogs, puppies, etc) probably really isn’t about housebreaking. End result: Google won’t rank it as high as a web page that does include a lot of relevant, related terms.

What does this mean to you? When you create a web page around a keyword, be sure to also include the keyword’s synonyms and other related words.

Pure LSI analysis isn't scalable enough to handle the volumes of data that Google processes. Instead they use more streamlined and scalable content analysis algorithms that have some basis in LSI and other related technologies. It also appears that this analysis is ongoing and not just a one time run through the system.

Cliff Notes: Don’t write content that a drunk 4th grader would be ashamed of. Spend the extra couple of minutes to write decent stuff and you’ll be fine.

Should I build links for human beings or the search engines?

Both but make sure you know which one you’re going for at any point.

If you want human beings to click the link then make sure your content high quality and worth that click.

If it’s never going to be seen by a human then don’t spend a week writing a beautifully crafted piece of prose use automation or anything you can lay your hands on to get links fast.

What is an XML Sitemap?

This is a listing of all the pages on a website, along with important information about those pages (such as when they were last updated, how important they are to the site, etc). The reason to create a sitemap is so that the search engines can easily find and crawl all your web pages.

This is really only important if you have a large and complex site that won't be crawled easily. A 10-20 page HTML mini-niche site doesn't really need one while a 20,000 page product catalog might benefit from one. Also avoid automating this on WordPress autoblogs since sitemap generation is a processor hog and can get you kicked off of shared hosting.

What's the sandbox?

The disappointment webmasters feel when Google's stupid algorithms don't appreciate their site. It can't be them so it must be Google's fault.

What is robots.txt for?

This is a file some include in some or all of their website directories. Search engine robots (bots) look at this file to see if they should crawl and index pages on your site, certain file types or even the entire site. An absence of this file gives them the green light to crawl and index your site.

If you don’t want search engine bots to crawl your site, then create a robots.txt file in your root directory that includes this bit of code:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

You can also create a meta tag that keeps the search engines from indexing your site:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

Important: Only “well behaved” bots read robots.txt so don’t use it to “protect” content on your site just to keep Google from indexing stuff. Most importantly be aware that malicious bots will look for pages you’re asking not to be indexed and go to them with priority to see why.

What's a spamblog?

A spamblog (or splog) is a blog used primarily to create backlinks to another site. Splogs tend to be populated with fake articles, commercial links and other garbage content.

In other words, they provide little or no value to a human reader. As such, the search engines tend to de-index these sites once they discover them.

What's an autoblog?

An autoblog uses an automation tool to pull in content from other sources and post it on the blog. In other words, it’s an easy way to automatically and frequently update a blog.

They are a great way to build foundation sites to provide link juice to your higher ranking, more competitive sites but a good way to get sites banned if you don’t know what you are doing.

Most importantly there is a lot of discussion about how legal they are due to reproducing content. I’m definitely not going to get involved in that discussion and I ask you not to turn this thread into a flame fest discussing it.

What's an "authority" site?

An authority site is one that is seen as influential and trustworthy by search engines, and thus it tends to rank well. Authority sites tend to be well-established sites that have a lot of high-quality, relevant content as well as links from other authority sites,

Obviously, getting your own website recognized as an “authority site” will boost your rankings. However, it’s also beneficial to get backlinks from these authority sites.

What are "supplemental" results?

These are results that are displayed in Google’s index after the main results – especially if Google’s trusted websites didn’t return many results. These supplemental results are no longer labeled as “supplemental” results. However, this secondary database still exists to index pages that have less importance, such as duplicate content on your site or orphaned pages.

For example, if you have multiple pages on your site with the exact same content, then Google will index your most important page in the main index, and place the duplicate page in the supplemental index.
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Google and Page Rank

What is Page Rank?

Page Rank (PR) is a numeric value from 0-10 that Google assigns to your individual web pages, and it’s a measure of how important that page is.

Google determines this importance by looking at how many other high quality, relevant pages link to a particular page. The more links – and the better quality those links are – the more “votes” a page gets in terms of importance. And the more “votes” a site gets, generally the higher the PR.

How often does Google update Page Rank?

It used to be every 3 months but it’s becoming more and more erratic.

Does PR matter?

Yes and no.

Originally PR was all that mattered in the search rankings but today that’s just not true since there are a myriad of other factors that Google considers when weighting who should appear where.

That said, high PR is always worth having just don’t obsess over it.

What is the "Google Dance"?

When “stuff” changes the SERPs fluctuate, sometimes wildly. One day your site could be number 1 and the next nowhere to be seen. One of the main contributing factors to that is how Google sees your backlinks (which you’re consistently building, right?).

Don’t obsess over it, just keep building and you’ll be fine.

How does Google personalize my results?

If you’re signed into Google, then Google keeps track of what search engine results you’ve clicked on. And even if you’re not signed in, Google keeps track of what results people who use your computer click on.

Over time, Google starts to detect a pattern. For example, if you seem to always click on Wikipedia results, then Google will start showing you more Wikipedia results. If you always click on health results from webmd.com, then you’ll get more webmd.com results when you run a health-related search.
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Link Building Basics

What is a backlink?

This is when a third-party website links to your website. For example, if you write and submit an article to an article directory, then you’ll have an incoming link – a backlink -- from the directory.

The search engines prefer one-way incoming backlinks from high-quality, relevant websites.

What is anchor text?

When you create a link, the anchor text is the clickbable part of the link. For example, in the phrase, “go to Google,” Google is the anchor text.

The reason this is important is because you want to use your keywords as your anchor text on incoming links. So if you’re trying to rank for “gardening secrets,” then those two words should make up the anchor text for several of your backlinks.

What is a do-follow/no-follow link?

There are two types of “nofollow” attribute. The robots meta tag version –

<meta name="robots" content="nofollow" />

Which tells (well behaved) bots/crawlers/spiders not to follow links on the page

And the link attribute

<a href=”http://www.google.com” rel=”nofollow”>

Which tells search engines not to count the link in terms of ranking pages.

In theory these links are worthless for boosting your search engine rankings. In practice you’ll often see some benefit, especially when mixed in with a load of dofollow links.

Links are automatically “dofollow” in the absence of the rel=”nofollow” attribute. There is no rel=”dofollow” attribute.

Types of backlinks?

To Be Determined

Can paid links harm my ranking?

Google’s official stance is that buying links is an attempt to manipulate rankings – and Google frowns on this practice.

In reality, however, it’s very hard for Google to penalize you for buying links (and they wouldn’t be able to tell for sure anyway). Indeed, if there was a penalty, then you could destroy a competitor simply by purchasing links to their site and then reporting them to Google. Poof, competition gone.

Of course it doesn’t work that way. As such, if there’s any “penalty,” it may just be that Google doesn’t “count” links from paid sources.

TIP: Google does penalize the sites that are selling these backlinks – so if you buy backlinks, be sure that the backlinks aren’t coming directly from the penalized sites.

Are reciprocal links bad?

They’re not bad, per se, especially if they’re coming from relevant, high quality websites. However, one-way incoming links tend to be more valuable in terms of SEO.

What is a one-way link?

This is a non-reciprocal link. That means that Site A links to Site B, but Site B does NOT link back to Site A.

The search engines prefer to see one-way links from relevant, quality sites.

What is three-way linking?

Three-way linking is a way for two webmasters to exchange links so that each person’s website gets a one-way link (rather than a reciprocal link).

In order to make this work, at least one of the webmasters has to have a second site in the same niche. Here’s how it works:

Webmaster 1 links his Site A to Webmaster 2’s Site B. Then Webmaster 2 links his Site C to Webmaster 1’s Site A.

Thus Sites A, B and C all have one-way incoming links, like this:

Site A -> Site B -> Site C -> Site A

What is a site wide link?

These are links that are found on every page of a website. For example, many people have a link to their “home” page (the index page) on every other page of their web site. That’s a site wide link.

What is pinging?

Pinging is informing web-crawling bots (such as search engines or directories) that you’ve updated the content on your web page. The goal is to get these bots to crawl and index your new content immediately.

For example, if you post a new article on your blog, you can use pingomatic.com or pingler.com to inform multiple bots about this change.
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Advanced Link Building

What is link velocity?

This refers to how quickly you gain backlinks. For best results, maintain a consistent link velocity.

Most importantly don’t build a load of backlinks (especially with fast indexation techniques) and then stop. Google sees this as a news article that was interesting for a short period of time but no longer relevant so stops ranking it. “Too many links” or “links built too fast” are rarely a problem but inconsistency is.

Can I build links too fast?

Yes and no. If you’ve got a brand new domain name and you fire up some of the more powerful link spamming automation software you’ll get you domain flagged quicker than you can say, “help me my site is gone”.

If you’re building links manually or controlling your usage of serious spam software you’ll be hard pushed to build links too fast on any domain that’s already been aged a bit. Just be consistent.

If you think you can build links too fast on any site here’s an experiment for you next time you’re having a slow weekend. Go out and buy the fastest, spammiest link building software you can lay your hands on and pick a Wikipedia article that currently ranks quite well. Go nuts. All you will do is strengthen its position.

What is page rank sculpting?

There are various techniques available to channel link juice through the links you actually want to receive it and thus rank them higher. In theory Google has corrected this but several experiments have shown this isn’t the case, although the actual PR passed through the links no longer gets affected.

What is a link wheel?

A link wheel refers to setting up multiple pages on multiple third-party websites (usually at least five) as a means of getting backlinks to your main site.

You link these properties to each other, but not reciprocally. For example, you link your EzineArticles article to your Squidoo page, then link your Squidoo page to HubPages… and so on. Finally, you link each of these third-party pages to your main site.

By using sites with a ton of content (and other SEOs backlinking them) you’re naturally tapping a bigger seem of link juice. Take advantage of this by writing high quality content for them so human beings follow the links as well since they will rank alongside your money site.

What is a mininet?

This is like a link wheel, except that you own all the sites that you’re linking together. You may link together a series of smaller niche sites, with each smaller site linking to your main site.

For example, you might link your dog housetraining site to your dog obedience site, and then link your dog obedience site to a site about training dogs to do tricks. All of these smaller niche sites would then link to your main dog training site.

What makes a good site for a link wheel?

Web 2.0 properties and other websites that have a high Page Rank. The best ones are sites which you get a page that will be automatically linked to from all over the site. Article directories like EzineArticles are perfect for this since you get tons of internal links to kick things off with.

What is link bait?

This means “baiting” others into linking to your site. Typically, this means posting unique, controversial, extremely useful or otherwise entertaining content or tools so that others naturally link to your web page.

In other words, you create and post viral content.

What is a link farm?

Link farms consist of large networks of sites whose sole purpose is to generate pages that can be used to link out to other sites that are actually worth something.

They are pretty much essential to rank for more highly competitive keywords but don’t attempt this unless you really know what you are doing. Google is smarter than you!

What is a footprint?

To Be Determined

How do I search for footprints?

To Be Determined

What is a proxy?

A proxy server is one that sits between your computer and the Internet, and using one allows you to go online somewhat anonymously. If you get online using a Proxy, no one can trace your IP address back to you and your computer.

For example, you can use a proxy to set up multiple EzineArticles.com accounts.
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Indexation

How do I get my site indexed?

Don’t bother submitting your site through the traditional methods. The fastest way to get a site to appear in Google’s index is to create backlinks to it. Use social bookmarking sites to create lots of easy win links from sites that are spidered regularly and submit any RSS feeds you’ve got to directories.

If you’re really keen to get indexed as fast as humanly possible –

Stick Adsense on your pages (even if you remove it later) as this forces Google to spider you.
Setup an Adwords campaign to your domain (Google has to spider you to determine your quality score).
Search for your domain name.
Perform site: and link: searches on your domain.
Visit your site using accounts with some of the most widespread ISPs (eg AOL) since their logs are used to find new content.
Email links to your site to and from a Gmail account.

How do I get my backlinks indexed?

The slow way is to wait for the search engines to naturally find them. The faster way is to ping the page after you leave a backlink. For truly fast backlinking social bookmark them or create RSS feeds with links in.

How can I tell if my site has been visited by a spider/bot?

By checking your traffic logs and statistics. Most traffic analyzing software will recognize and label the bots and spiders that crawl your site. You can also recognize these visitors manually, as the “user agent” is usually labeled something obvious, such as “Google Bot.”
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Statistics and Monitoring

What percentage of people click on the first listing in Google?

Only Google knows for sure, but estimates range from about 40% to 50%. AOL once released their data, which suggested that 42% click on the first listing. “Heat map” studies tend to lean more towards 50% or more.

How do I use Google alerts to monitor the SERPs?

All you have to do is get a Google account and then go to Google Alerts. There you enter the keywords you want the tool to monitor the SERPs for, choose “comprehensive,” choose the frequency you want to receive the alerts and then enter your email address where you want to receive the alerts.

Once you’ve completed those simple steps, you’ll get alerted when new pages that use your keywords appear in the search engines.

You can also use this tool to monitor your backlinks as they appear in Google. Just enter this search term into the alerts field:

link:www.yourdomain.com/filename.html

Replace the above URL with your actual link, of course.

How can I track the number of backlinks I have?

There are a variety of tools available to you, such as using the Yahoo! Site Explorer, Google Webmaster tools (check the links report) and SEO Quake.

Using these tools is preferable to searching directly in Google. That’s because searching manually generally yields only a sample of the sites that are linking to your site.

Ultimately they’re all wrong! Don’t obsess about tracking these things just focus on building more.
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Keyword Research

What makes a good keyword?

A good keyword is one that your target market is searching for regularly. An even better keyword is one that’s not only searched for regularly, there’s also very little competition in the search engines. That means you have a good chance of ranking well for that keyword.

How many people are searching for my keyword?

You’ll need to use a keyword tool to find out the answer. Example tools include the Google keyword tool, WordTracker.com, MarketSamurai.com and any number of other similar tools.

What is the "true" competition for a keyword?

Forget all that rubbish you see in just about everyone’s WSO “proof” about how they outranked a bajillion other sites for some phrase or other.

The only listings that matter are on page 1 so the only people you are competing with are on page 1. I would much rather compete with a billion PR0 unrelated sites than 10 PR9s that have been around over a decade and you should too!

Find out the page rank for the top ten listed pages and find the number of backlinks they have. That’s your competition.

What are long tail keywords?

Highly niche searches. For example, “dog training” is a short tail keyword, while “how to train a deaf dog” is a long tail keyword.

Long tail keywords tend to have less people searching for them than short tail words. On the other hand, they also tend to have less competition in the search engines, thus it can be easier for you to get top rankings for these words.
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Official Stuff

What is the official Google/Yahoo/Bing policy on SEO?

The search engines encourage you to design your site and organize your content in a search engine friendly way. This includes proper use of meta tags, creating information-rich sites, including words on your site that your users are searching for, using site maps and more.

However, they all strongly discourage any attempts to manipulate your search engine rankings, such as keyword stuffing, link spamming, cloaking and similar practices.

Why doesn't Google tell me how many links I have?

Google only shows a sample of backlinks, because generally it’s only webmasters who are seeking this information. As such, webmasters who know ALL of their competitor’s backlinks can just go and get links from the same sources (which may be viewed as manipulating the rankings). By only showing a sample, Google helps reduce this practice somewhat.

They also make some claim about the amount of resources required to list all this information which I guess would be true if they didn’t have to have it stored for a million other reasons. Bottom line, they don’t want you to have it, get over it.

Who is Matt Cutts?

Matt Cutts is a Google employee specializing in SEO issues, and thus he’s seen as the authority on all things Google. He frequently talks about SEO practices, Google’s policies, link strategies and other Google issues. You can find his personal blog here.

He’s an incredibly talented and influential individual but never forget that he has Google’s best interest at heart. Not everything he says can be taken as Gospel.

Google webmaster tools

Google offers webmasters a variety of free tools that allow you to do things like: submit your site map, get more info about how often the Google bot is crawling your site, get a report of any errors the bot found, see the internal and external links pointing to your site, determine how your URL is displayed in the SERPs, etc.

You can access the full set of Webmaster Tools here.
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Automation, Outsourcing and 3rd Party Stuff

Can anyone guarantee a 1st place ranking?

No. Because the search engines can and do change their algorithms, and because a third-party site may drop or change your links, no one can guarantee a first place ranking for a keyword.

However, SEO experts can create high rankings – even first place – for certain keywords. They just can’t guarantee those placements, as the algorithms and third-party links are not under their control.

What is a backlink packet?

Instead of searching for high-PR, .edu, .gov and authority sites to place your backlinks, you can save time by purchasing a “packet” that lists these types of sites for you. These packets typically include “do follow”:

Blogs where you can make comments.
Forums where you can set up profiles.
Directories where you can post content and backlinks

…and similar sites.

The bonus of these packets is that they save you time since you don’t have to seek out these sites yourself. The downside is that sometimes the webmasters change their policies once they get an onslaught of these links. For example, the owner of a high-PR blog may change to “no follow” links or disallow comments altogether.

I bought a packet of "high pr links" but all my links are PR0, what happened?

Usually this is because the main page of the website – such as the main page of the forum – has a high PR. However, the actual place where you put your link – such as your profile page – is PR0 because you basically just created the page when you created your profile.

What automation tools are there?

There are a variety of tools you can use to help automate the SEO process, including:

Tools to structure your content in a search engine friendly way. (Hint: Content management systems and blogs like WordPress do this naturally, but you can also use SEO plugins to make your blog content even more search-engine friendly.)
Keyword tools.
Tools to automatically submit or update content, such as tools that submit to directories or tools that automatically update your social media content (such as ping.fm).
Tools that automate social bookmarking.
Tools that help automate tasks like building link wheels.
Tools to create content, such as article spinners, scrapers and autoblog tools.
Pinging tools (like pingomatic.com or pingler.com).
Tools that automate link-building, such as blog and guest book commenting tools.

What SEO service should I use?

This question is far too contentious for a forum FAQ like this so I’m not going to name specific services. Instead here’s some general advice on selecting SEO services.

Don’t fall for hype about “ranking for the most competitive terms in the SEO industry”. SEO companies that do this are pouring their resources into this highly competitive game because of the PR boost its worth. Ultimately that cost has to go somewhere. Instead find SEO firms that focus on customer testimonials showing good results.

Don’t get involved in “my links are better than your links” battles. Nothing annoys me more than seeing arguments about how so-and-so’s link packet is more effective than such-and-such’s. Just focus on building a large variety of links and you’ll be fine.

What does an SEO host give me that a regular one doesn't?

Multiple C-class IP addresses. So even if you host multiple websites with one host, you get different addresses. And that means you can build a mininet more easily without being detected.
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Glossary

SEO: Refers to search engine optimization, which is the practice of using on-page and off-page factors to improve your search engine rankings.

SERP: Refers to search engine results page. When a user enters a query into a search engine, the results are called the SERPs. You can also refer to specific pages of the SERPs.

For example: “My website is on Page 3 of the SERPs for my keyword – how do I get it to Page 1 of the SERPs?”

Spider/Crawler: This is a robot (bot) or computer program that search engines and directories send out to find and index pages across the web. It can only find pages that are linked to other pages. You can check your traffic logs to discover when and how often various spiders / bots / crawlers visit your site.

Backlink: This is an incoming link pointing to your web page. Search engines prefer to see one-way backlinks (rather than reciprocal links) coming from high-quality, relevant websites.

Anchor Text: When you create a link, the anchor text is the clickable part of that link. For SEO purposes, you should use your chosen keywords as your anchor text.

LSI: Refers to latent semantic indexing, which is a way to analyze content to see if all content on a page is related. For example, if there is a page about swimming safety, you’d expect to see words like “water” and “swim.” Both of those words are different than the word “swimming,” but an LSI analysis will realize the content is related.

Google uses LSI to help it return the best results to searchers. As such, be sure to use related words on your own pages. For example, if your page is about cats, then use the words: cat, cats, kitten, kitty and feline.