Some interesting stuffs in Co-op network:

You know anyone can create a custom search engine with Google. I just came across this interesting page where a guy gives out a search engine that can actually find do follow blogs.
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=010363265520675485990:xjmxcyokkls. . . SO what is the use of do-follow blogs these blogs allow people to comment on their blogs without a no follow . Without a no follow means you can Spam the hell out of that Blog. But most do-follow blogs have effective Spam prevention systems they have pre-moderation enabled in most cases. SO I don’t think there is any special benefit finding do-follow blogs. But being in an era of no follow its good to find some do-follow blogs.
When you create a custom search engine you can
# include one website, multiple websites, or specific web pages.
# Host the search box and results on your own website.
# Customize the colors and branding to match your existing web pages.

This custom search engine as it claims doesn’t show all do-follow blogs. Some of the blogs coming up are actually no-follow. If you want to find do-follow blogs I recommend doing a search by your own and checking source code rather than counting on these search engines.

2 sites on same server using same database:

I saw this question asked in one of the forums where I am a frequent reader. So what happens when a product sites use same database. We had a similar problem with one of our client. He has his own dedicated server where he hosts his websites. He is in clothing industry and its difficult to move his whole database that too he is on a dedicated server paying around 200$ a month. So if he decides to move to a different server for one site he needs to shed out huge amount of money. So he dedicated to use same database for 2 sites and we are suppose to optimize both sites and rank them.

One site started doing well and continued to stay on top position for a long time but the other website never came up. We tried all the tactics in SEO but still can’t get the other website to rank. One year passed and 2 years passed still we are unable to rank that website. This is a clear indication Google doesn’t like 2 sites using same database and hosted on same IP. We even modified 1000s of product descriptions but still we cannot make the site look unique for Google.
So I recommend in case you want to use same database for 2 sites don’t host them together. Better move the database to a different hosting write unique product descriptions I am sure you can make the site rank and can gain traffic.

Removing advertising or not advertising will show credibility:

Advertising on a new site is self-defeating. Shouldn’t you be highlighting the quality of the content to show why your site is linkworthy? Removing ads shifts the focus to your content and why someone should link to the site.

In my experience it helps the link building process to remove advertising from a new site because webmasters like to link to quality information that is free. A lack of advertising presents a more positive face because some people tend to overlook the high quality of the content because of the ads, not even give the content a chance. Leaving out the ads puts your content front and center, there’s nothing to distract from it. Even Google didn’t have advertising when it first started.

New sites with advertising are a turnoff

I receive many requests to link to new sites. Number one reason I’ll decline is advertising. It’s poison. Advertising sends the message that the reason this person wants my link is so they can make a buck off my traffic. Why should I link to that?

What is the point of trying to monetize a new site with a trickle of traffic? Advertising revenue depends on traffic. Shouldn’t you focus on building traffic first then monetizing the site after it’s acquired?

Works for older sites with low traffic

Sites that have been around awhile but aren’t performing well should be considered candidates for removal of advertising. What you have to gain long term may outweigh what little earnings you’ll lose while you focus on building traffic to the site.
Works on established sites, too

Even established sites can benefit from temporarily removing advertising. If a sub-section is not performing well because of a lack of links/traffic, you may want to consider temporarily removing advertising in order to boost the success rate of your link building effort.

Personally I like sites which are ad-free, if you want to have a site link worthy don’t show your visitors that you are madly money minded. Looking to always make money through advertising will spoil the trend to attract backlinks to your website. If you want quality links you need to back off on strong advertising on your website.

Wikipedia wins on the death of Microsoft Encarta:

Encarta encyclopedia the largest and most used before Wikipedia came into existence is now laid to rest. Microsoft had decided to put Encarta to rest after a long and exhausting battle with Wikipedia.

We can call this the death of one monster and the rise of another. According to MSN Encarta website:

“Encarta Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009. We understand that Encarta users may have questions regarding this announcement so we have prepared this list of questions and answers below. Please keep reading if you would like more information about these changes to Encarta.

Why are these Encarta Web sites and software products being discontinued?
Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft’s goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today’s consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business.

Microsoft’s vision is that everyone around the world needs to have access to quality education, and we believe that we can use what we’ve learned and assets we’ve accrued with offerings like Encarta to develop future technology solutions. In doing so, we feel strongly that we are making the right investments that will help make our vision a reality.

http://encarta.msn.com/guide_page_FAQ/FAQ.html

I remember my school days when I used to run around to get a copy of Encarta, my cousin gifted an encyclopedia book to me and I still have it. We never had a great resource like Wikipedia. Today Wikipedia is the most dominant resource on the website. Its one of the most used website today and the content quality is great. Also big difference between Encarta and Wikipedia is the commercial option. Wikipedia is totally free but you need to subscribe for Encarta encyclopedia. I am happy that encyclopedia is laid to rest. There is no way it’s going to compete with Wikipedia and win the race.

Keywords in URls and domains – is it still useful?

I think most would agree that a keyword friendly domain can be a major help for SEO in various ways. Domains and URL paths are a bit of a different consideration.

The URL itself is less of a signal these days, and so thinking too much about where in the URL keywords appear is probably too finicky.

However, as with any question that affects URLs, you need to make sure your URLs serve their major purpose as a user route into your site. If you have meaningful but short URLs, that should help SEO.

Generally, I would read from right to left in a URL – going from most specific information to least specific. So, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRzMhlFZz9I is not great. www.youtube.com/entertainment/very-funny would tell a user (and a search engine) that you had something very funny, filed under entertainment, in a site named youtube.

A quick test that can help you evaluate the search engine impact of keywords in URLs is to compare results for a keyword to results for the same search without the keyword in the URL. But I would say instead of concentrating on these stuff if you can do what is best for your users I am sure you will do fine.

Best CMS for adapted copywriting and search engine performance:

A content management system is a software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don’t have to.

Joomla: Joomla is currently the best and leading content management system that will help you to build great content rich websites with ease. Joomla is an open source software means you get it totally for free from www.joomla.com , It is currently the best and most easy to use software it have got various awards for best performing CMS.

Drupal: Drupal is an other quality CMS that helps to easily publish , manage and organize variety of contents including blogs, content sites etc. You can use Drupal to build :

• Community web portals
• Discussion sites
• Corporate web sites
• Intranet applications
• Personal web sites or blogs
• Aficionado sites
• E-commerce applications
• Resource directories
• Social Networking sites

Umberco: If you use .net hosting you can go for Umberco a friendly CMS which again is easy to use and comes with a load of great features.

Quote for SEO criteria.

1. Competition: Competition is one of the most important factor when deciding a pricing for SEO. If the competition of the keywords is lesser then I am sure you can get ranking in a shorter period of time which will result in lesser price.

2. Keywords: Lots of sub factors are involved when it comes to keywords to determine the price for SEO service. Keywords can be global , regional , very much targeted, country wise and lot more. If you can get a clear picture of the keywords that will be targeted it will be easier to give a price.

3. Niche: You need to analyze the website thoroughly to know the niche the site targets its an important factor before deciding the price for SEO.

4. Time: SEO is a time consuming process it cannot be done in a day or week or month some sites take years to rank and some can be ranked in 2 months before quoting a price it’s important to know how much time its going to take to rank a website.

5. Website quality: Some clients will come to you with a low quality website and will want you to rank, its much easier to rank quality websites with quality unique crawl able content than sites which doesn’t have sufficient information pages. Make sure you set this as a criteria when you give a price quote.

Deciding the right price is very important you can scare away customers by quoting very high yet you can’t burn your hands by quoting less. Make sure you have sufficient experience in giving price quotes. I have been giving price quotes for more than 6 years and it hardly takes me 10mts to decide the price for SEO for a website but it cannot be the same for amateur people. Research more I am sure you will get more ideas.

Webmaster help videos : a must watch:

http://www.youtube.com/GoogleWebmasterHelp

Site: operator reporting lesser number of pages.

I am sure if you run a website and actively monitor it you will be aware that sometimes site: operator reports lesser number of results. Site: operator is used to find the number of pages indexed for a particular website for example: site:www.searchenginegenie.com will reveal all the pages that Google indexed for the website searchenginegenie.com .
Few of our clients and some of our external users have reported that site: operator sometimes report lesser number of pages than it usually used to show for their website. Some of the people who come to us with this question are also concerned that this could be another penalty. Ok, from our experience there is no reason to worry if site: operator reports lesser number of pages. This has always been the case Google has 1000s of clusters of computers spread throughout the world in different data centers they have, and not all the datacenters are update some of them have old data some have standard data and some have very fresh data. So when you make a query you tend to hit different datacenters and this will result in you hitting different results so if you see that your indexed pages are showing different don’t worry about that it should just be that you are seeing a different set of results.
But you should be worried in one case if you see consistent drop of your indexed pages over a period of time then there is something you definitely need to worry. See if there is something wrong with your site and in case your site disappears after consistent drop in indexed pages 90% it’s a penalty check for potential penalty in Google webmaster tools. If you find your site is penalized submit for reinclusion. Other than that there is nothing to worry about site: operator.

Is SEO dead?

When I was going through webmaster world I came across an interesting featured post where the author says SEO is dead and it has been completely replaced by PPC, Social Media Marketing and Link building. Well running an SEO company for more than 5 years I am well aware that SEO has slowed down a bit. But the truth SEO is never dead or no where near to be in death bed. I am sure it will go on for at least 10 more years to come.

Yes I agree that traditional SEO is not there anymore. Now people are more SEO savvy and they are more educated than before. But better education and understanding is actually good for ethical SEO companies like us. We don’t have to explain the whole process of SEO to them. Most client come to us by word of mouth referral and they are still coming because we did a good job for our current and past clients. Traditional SEO is dead for sure people don’t seek us to write meta, title tags or rewrite URLs etc we are doing work completely different from what we used to do before. We are more concentrating of setting up one way links which is the most difficult part of SEO. Its not easy to get free one way links these days so we need to invent new innovative ideas to get one way back links. Though this is a difficult part we are able to find some really quality ways. Especially we were able to get a lot of success for our clients by widget optimization, social media optimization etc. I want to remind the author of the thread that SMO, link building has always been part of SEO. In fact SEO is the mother of all new innovative tactics that come online now. SEO will never die at least for another 10 years but it will keep evolving like the way we see the world. Its not the same world that we saw 10 years back and it’s the same case with SEO 10 years down the road you will see stuff which you never had seen before.