This is a little marketing as well, that is true, but in saying that it is probably the cheapest and reputable domain name resellers and hosting providers I have come accross. I use to register my domains with www.netcollateral.com (to be honest probably over force of habit), but I recently found MBV Domains - www.mbvdomains.com a much cheaper alternative and they have many extra web services including hosting, secure certs etc. They are also part of GoDaddy so you don't have to worry about them going out of business!
Check it out - www.MBVDomains.com
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Google, Google wherefore art thou Google?
Google is obviously the biggest, best and certainly most popular search engine. But...herein lies the problem too...
Say you have a new business or website, how do you get Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Live to index your site?? Let alone give it a high ranking?
Well, I have compiled a list of things that every webmaster/site owner or internet enthusiast could and in some instances should to make sure your web site gets indexed in as little as a day or two.
10 Steps to get your site indexed in a day by Google...
1. Create at least 3 to 7 pages of content.
Hey, a "Coming Soon", or "Under Construction" page with a construction worker type animated gif was great in the 90's but nowadays it won't get you very far... Create a few pages of decent readable, useful content - remember text on images can't be crawled!!
2. Create a template/menu structure
Make sure all the pages link to each other by using a templated menu structure. Ideally the links/href's should be text based and be descriptive, so that they can be easily crawled.
3. Make sure HTML pages are well formed
Go to http://www.totalvalidator.com or use the W3C validator - http://validator.w3.org to ensure your pages are well formed. Search engines will give you a lower ranking or even ignore you if your pages are that badly written and don't include enough information.
4. Create a Sitemap.
Sitemaps have evolved over the years and there are still various forms out there (HTML, RSS and graphical sitemaps). Google and the other major search engines have adopted a common standard though, that will list all pages in your website and help identify the most important pages. You can find out more about the Sitemap protocol here and/or a free automated sitemap generator here.
5. Create Google Webmaster tools account and Submit / Ping Sitemap.
After you have created your sitemap and uploaded it to the root of your website you must submit the sitemap to the various search engines. Google has a cool Webmaster tools collection which allows you to view extra information that is helpful to all webmasters.
*Updated - Microsoft's Live search engine's webmaster tools (http://webmaster.live.com/) is also a helpful SEO tool addition and worth subscribing to.
Search Engine Sitemap Ping / Submit URL's:
Say you have a new business or website, how do you get Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Live to index your site?? Let alone give it a high ranking?
Well, I have compiled a list of things that every webmaster/site owner or internet enthusiast could and in some instances should to make sure your web site gets indexed in as little as a day or two.
10 Steps to get your site indexed in a day by Google...
1. Create at least 3 to 7 pages of content.
Hey, a "Coming Soon", or "Under Construction" page with a construction worker type animated gif was great in the 90's but nowadays it won't get you very far... Create a few pages of decent readable, useful content - remember text on images can't be crawled!!
2. Create a template/menu structure
Make sure all the pages link to each other by using a templated menu structure. Ideally the links/href's should be text based and be descriptive, so that they can be easily crawled.
3. Make sure HTML pages are well formed
Go to http://www.totalvalidator.com or use the W3C validator - http://validator.w3.org to ensure your pages are well formed. Search engines will give you a lower ranking or even ignore you if your pages are that badly written and don't include enough information.
4. Create a Sitemap.
Sitemaps have evolved over the years and there are still various forms out there (HTML, RSS and graphical sitemaps). Google and the other major search engines have adopted a common standard though, that will list all pages in your website and help identify the most important pages. You can find out more about the Sitemap protocol here and/or a free automated sitemap generator here.
5. Create Google Webmaster tools account and Submit / Ping Sitemap.
After you have created your sitemap and uploaded it to the root of your website you must submit the sitemap to the various search engines. Google has a cool Webmaster tools collection which allows you to view extra information that is helpful to all webmasters.
*Updated - Microsoft's Live search engine's webmaster tools (http://webmaster.live.com/) is also a helpful SEO tool addition and worth subscribing to.
Search Engine Sitemap Ping / Submit URL's:
- Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=[complete sitemap address] e.g. http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www._httpvalidator.com/sitemap.xml
- Yahoo: http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=[Complete sitemap web address] e.g. http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=http://www._httpvalidator.com/sitemap.xml
- Ask: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=[your sitemap web address] e.g. http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www._httpvalidator.com/_sitemap.xml
- MSN Live: http://webmaster.live.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=[your sitemap web address] e.g. http://webmaster.live.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://www._httpvalidator.com/_sitemap.xml
Note: Google requires you to submit your sitemap to them first via the Webmaster's tools interface. Only then can you ping them using the above URL. Yahoo and Ask.com allow the ping to act as a submission as well.
5. Link from highly trafficed bookmarking sites
These sites are visited regularly by search engine crawlers so if there is a link to your website it will be indexed quite quickly. You'll have to create an account with these sites, to enable you to link to your site. Some of the bookmarking sites that you can use include Del.icio.us, BlinkList, StumbleUpon.com. Social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace will also help. Make sure you link using some of the popular phrases like the list at the bottom of BlinkList page.
6. Create/comment on a blog.
Create a blog on blogger.com or another blogging provider (there are many different blogging options these days) and start blogging about your area of expertise and how it relates to your website. Feel free to promote your site, as long as it contributes to an open discussion and is not just another fake blog/marketing scheme. The alternative is to mention your website in a comment on a related blog of someone else, but again it has to be as part of a discussion where you make a contribution to that person's blog!
7. Comment on a popular forum/help pages.
Make sure you inlude your website URL as part of your forum profile and comment on a forum that you are part of, or help a newbie out on a subject that you are quite knowledagble of, in a related forum or help site.
8. Install and activate Google Analytics
Google analytics is probably one of the coolest freebies for any webmaster. Sign up for Google Analytics free here. You'll have to add a simple script to all your HTML pages to make sure it gets tracked proparly.
9. Run Google Adsense
If you are able to, then run some Google advertsing on your site. Although Adsense and Adwords are seperate from earch indexing, there have been many claims that sites that serve Adsense ads are indexed more quickly than those sites that don't (many would argue this point, but the way I see it, rather do it, if it might help).
10. Run Google Adwords
Again very similar to point 9, no real proof that advertising your website domain with Google Adwords would really benefit, but if you want cover all your bases and get indexed as soon as possible, its worth a try...
If you follow these 10 steps your site should be crawled by Google and other major search engines pretty quickly, obviously I can't guarantee your site being crawled in a day though...but there isn't much more than this that you can do.
I have been lucky enough to be involved with the development of a product that should help you do most of the above in a seemless way - httpvalidator is still in development, but from what I have seen this might be a good all in one webmasters tool that can certainly make things a little easier.
Monday, March 16, 2009
SEO the Web
So I have been involved with web related work for 14 years now. I have always found it fascinating and the pace of growth has been amazing. My biggest problem with the web though, has always been to try and find the information or the tools that is relevant to what I'd like to do.
I can remember when Altavista was the search engine of choice for me for general stuff, then there was Ananzi to search for South African sites and Astalavista to find the not-so-legal type of serial and/or registration numbers or software cracks....yes, I was one of those during my early web years....
Luckily Google came along and really took it up a notch. Let's face it, suddenly Google made it so simple, no more searching and paging through pages and pages of useless information over your high speed - faster than a cheetah - dial up line, before you eventually found what you were looking for. There was a year or three of absolute search bliss, where it was so much easier to find exactly what you were looking for, and you thought to yourself, damn this is so much fun!
But like all good things, it wasn't meant to last...."they" or "someone", call them the "middlemen" would figure out a way to manipulate the useful information. The "middelmen" worked out how Google indexed web sites and they started to essentially flood the search system. By creating confusing links and confusing web sites where similar information to the original web site would be available, but with some important changes that benefits them, like Google AdSense advertising, affiliate tracking and some other information that would help them make money and confuse you. That way you would still basically be lead to where you wanted to go anyway, but with a detour, forcing you to pass through their "middleman" links. Frustrating isn't it??
Well Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live search have certainly improved their indexing over the last couple of years, crawling and ranking mechanisms, trying to stay ahead of the "middlemen".
There is a catch though...there's always a catch....
As site owners/developers/webmasters and administrators, we have a lot more responsibilities to make sure our websites are ranked and displayed correctly in search engines, than was previously the case....no longer can you get away with a "build it, submit it and they will come". No, these days we have to build our site a certain way, to certain specifications, make sure people link to us, tell Google what the links and images are, have titles that is a certain length, meta tags that ....etc etc...the list goes on...
In my next entry I'll explain some of these specifications, how you can change your web site to accommodate the search engine specifications, tools that you can use to make SEO(search engine optimization) easier, so that in the end you can have a higher search engine ranking and hopefully be listed above the "middleman" sites that flood the search engines. If we all build our web sites to these specifications, we should all benefit by finding the relevant information faster....easier.
Who knows maybe we can have another few years of Internet search engine bliss....
I can remember when Altavista was the search engine of choice for me for general stuff, then there was Ananzi to search for South African sites and Astalavista to find the not-so-legal type of serial and/or registration numbers or software cracks....yes, I was one of those during my early web years....
Luckily Google came along and really took it up a notch. Let's face it, suddenly Google made it so simple, no more searching and paging through pages and pages of useless information over your high speed - faster than a cheetah - dial up line, before you eventually found what you were looking for. There was a year or three of absolute search bliss, where it was so much easier to find exactly what you were looking for, and you thought to yourself, damn this is so much fun!
But like all good things, it wasn't meant to last...."they" or "someone", call them the "middlemen" would figure out a way to manipulate the useful information. The "middelmen" worked out how Google indexed web sites and they started to essentially flood the search system. By creating confusing links and confusing web sites where similar information to the original web site would be available, but with some important changes that benefits them, like Google AdSense advertising, affiliate tracking and some other information that would help them make money and confuse you. That way you would still basically be lead to where you wanted to go anyway, but with a detour, forcing you to pass through their "middleman" links. Frustrating isn't it??
Well Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live search have certainly improved their indexing over the last couple of years, crawling and ranking mechanisms, trying to stay ahead of the "middlemen".
There is a catch though...there's always a catch....
As site owners/developers/webmasters and administrators, we have a lot more responsibilities to make sure our websites are ranked and displayed correctly in search engines, than was previously the case....no longer can you get away with a "build it, submit it and they will come". No, these days we have to build our site a certain way, to certain specifications, make sure people link to us, tell Google what the links and images are, have titles that is a certain length, meta tags that ....etc etc...the list goes on...
In my next entry I'll explain some of these specifications, how you can change your web site to accommodate the search engine specifications, tools that you can use to make SEO(search engine optimization) easier, so that in the end you can have a higher search engine ranking and hopefully be listed above the "middleman" sites that flood the search engines. If we all build our web sites to these specifications, we should all benefit by finding the relevant information faster....easier.
Who knows maybe we can have another few years of Internet search engine bliss....
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)