BarcampSoutheast Computer Technology

Articles vs. Blog and Ping

I think it’s time for many Affiliate Marketers (AM) to reconsider their methods for building their web sites Search Engine position. I have been using Blog and Ping techniques for about a year now, but blog and ping is slowing loosing its effectiveness because so many AM’s are using the method.

If you’ve been living on the dark side of the moon, then you may not know what Blog and Ping is all about. Well, in a nutshell, blog and ping is a technique for increasing your websites position by creating blogs and using software that automatically posts to those blogs along with links back to your main website. The blogs then ping Blog services to notify them that some new content is available. The ping services then attract Search Engine spiders and before to long, you’re website is spidered.

This solution worked like wonders about a year ago (2005), but is loosing its effectiveness because all the blog and ping tools create mediocre content that is all based on Search Engine scrapes or RSS feeds. You end up getting a blog site full of useless information with links back to your web page. The Search Engines have caught on and they are able to filter out the bad content. In fact, it may actually be hurting your website. There’s no proof yet, but I would expect that all the SE’s will soon start penalizing websites that are trying to boost their position through blog and ping techniques.
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A sitemap is an aid used in making navigation through a website easier. It contains the structure of the website along with the included links to the major parts and subsections of the website.

A website’s sitemap has a practical and essential use. It makes it easier for visitors to visit through and navigate the website. The navigational help ensures that they do not get lost and that they will not have to look futilely for the information or page that they need. A visitor who immediately finds the information that he needs quickly in a website has a higher chance of coming back for another visit.

Many website administrators, designers and webmasters do not fully exploit the uses and benefits of having a good sitemap. For most of them, merely providing a list of links that do not really give a good service to visitors to the website is more than adequate. For them, as long as spiders can find the pages in their website then they are content. But wouldn’t it better if you can design a sitemap page that is not only big help to your visitors but also adds value to your website?

The characteristic of a good sitemap is that each link has an accompanying description about the target page for each link. This helps visitors who go to your site and would rely on it in navigating through your webpages.

Let’s look at two examples:
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Weather you know or not, if you are looking for some serious SEO (search engine optinization) you have to know about submitting articles to directories, blogs,  press releases, etc.

If you are familiar with writing articles and submitting it to the right place on the wold wide web, then you know how much time does it take to start doing it and building your own directory of website to submit to. And you know how much time you have to take in order to obtain a reasonable result. Needless to say it is not an easy and fast task to do.

Well there is good news for all of us here doing SEO. I just came across this impressive software wich :

Helps to improve your search ranking (because of hundreds of quality backlinks that quickly add-up over time),
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If you are a webmaster then you might have heard this bantered around quite often and you might have some idea of what it is. If you are not actively involved in your website or have had little exposure to the Internet then you probably have very little understanding of what SEO actually is. Your current knowledge level is not really an issue as SEO is something that very few people have chosen to learn and up skill themselves in. While it is not common knowledge and you are willing to learn there is a competitive edge that you can exploit.  It means with some small modifications to your website that you can achieve higher results in search engines than your lesser SEO savvy competitors.

In this article I explain what SEO is and I take you through some of the most important Search Engine Optimisation techniques to help improve your website search engine rankings.

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
SEO is search engine optimisation. Essentially Search Engine Optimisation is the art of creating or modifying a website to make it search engine friendly. Search engines are the gateway to gaining huge amounts of website traffic.  Imagine if you sold Blue Widgets, then placing as number 1 in a search for “Blue Widgets” would gain you far more traffic than placing number 100 - This should be obvious. To gain rankings and places in the search results your website needs to be better search optimised than the websites that are currently showing above yours in the search results. The more search engine friendly that your website is, then the greater the chance that the search engines will rank you more highly. By using certain SEO techniques you will increase your website in the rankings and hence increase your website traffic. This is why SEO is probably the most important thing about having a website - after all, you can have a very good website but what is the point if no one visits it and buys your product?
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If you haven’t heard the word ‘niche’ being batted around by Internet Marketers then you haven’t been listening. Finding a niche has become the antidote to competing in overly saturated online markets.
What is a niche?

According to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary a niche is described as “a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted… a specialized market”.

Have you noticed that despite the closing of many businesses in these harsh economic times, the local hobby train store is still around? That the ‘hole-in-the-wall’ eatery is thriving? Or that trends such as scrapbooking can start with a bang and still close within a year when four similar businesses start up in the same area?

The online business world reflects the same trends as experienced in the offline world - often with faster turnover and startup rates. Those who promote a product or site that targets a small, select audience can tap into a market that is otherwise not being served. Despite the limitations of the client base, the targeted nature of the business creates a devoted and active market - the aim of any business.

HOW DO I FIND A NICHE?
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Consequences of Identity Fraud

In most parts of the world, identity fraud is the fastest growing offence. Yet, in the USA, a longitudinal 2005 study by Javelin Strategy & Research showed that the crime had decreased since a 2003 study from the Federal Trade Commission was released in 2003. The most current US Javelin data also showed that 9.3 million persons, being 4.25% of all adults, are victims of identity fraud on a yearly basis. In the United Kingdom in 2005 the consumer group Which issued a report stating that one in four people had been the victim of identity fraud, or knew someone who had been a victim.

Precautions against Identity Fraud

Rigorous research has shown that the following methods will be most effective at preventing identity theft or fraud:

Freeze your credit, if available in your state. With a credit freeze, no one can open any form of credit in your name.

Request your own credit report each year and check the reports for inaccuracies and new lines of credit issued that you did not request.

Minimize the use of mail for sending or receiving financial documents, checks, and have your name removed from junk mail lists (8% of identity fraud results from stolen mail).

Check your bank accounts each week online or at an ATM. 70% of identity fraud is detected by the victim, and victims who do so through electronic methods suffer losses of less than 1/8th that of those who rely on paper statements for monitoring account activity.

Use reliable ATM’s at reputable sites only. Watch your surroundings for anything suspicious. If the interior of a bank is closed but an indoor ATM is still accessible with a card, refuse helping any stranger to enter.

Watch your surrounding when entering sensitive codes of information at an ATM or on a telephone keypad.

Do not use wireless phones or cellular phones to talk about sensitive information.

Shred credit-card receipts, used (processed) cheques/checks, junk mail and other such documents, as they may contain private information.

Never give out personal information in response to telemarketers and delete all e-mails that claim to be from your bank (or other financial provider) and ask you to “log in” using a hyperlink embedded in the e-mail message. This type of scam is also named phishing.

When shopping online, make sure the company is reputable and displays an approved security symbol.

Watch your surroundings when using a credit card at any checkout counters or any similar places as some identity thieves use cell phones with cameras to steal others’ credit card numbers and expiration dates.

Limit the amount of personal information you publish on the web.

Do not allow anyone to copy your identification documents.

If someone calls you claiming to be from a financial institution you do business with asking for personal information - do not give it to them.

As a general rule, do not do business with people that come to you. If you want something, you find the business or company.

Don’t order checks preprinted with your driver’s license or social security number.

Don’t carry your social security card unless absolutely needed.

PDF is a Portable Document Format that allows a viewer to be able to see a document or compilation of documents within one convenient file. This format is used for e-books, reports, datasheets, and exchange of documents via the Internet. A PDF editor allows for the editing of the Portable Document Format. The user is able to edit text in both text and Rich Text Format documents. PDF’s are thought to be the most popular form for the exchange of documents over the Internet.

Simple PDF Editor

The Simple PDF Editor is less complex in nature, but it allows the user to place pictures, tables, and text all in a document whil also formatting fonts. Bullet and numbering are able to be placed with the RTF document as well. RTF documents can be edited easily through the PDF editor even though they are a less compliant document than text documents.
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You know what?  Helio has just announced a partnership with MySpace to provide ”MySpace on Helio” which will be offered on this mobile device and offer things like messaging, MySpace layouts for your personal profiles and photo galleries.

This is a smart move by MySpace.  Other social networking sites have faded away as they became less popular because they were not introducing new features in their offering.  More than 60 million teenagers have a cell phone today and that number is growing rapidly.  What better way to expand the community?

The key question is, will the MySpace community move to the new mobile device offering?  Helios parent company, a partnership between Earthlink and SK Telecom have invested over $400 million in launching this new carrier.  They project that they will need 3 million subscribers to recoup their investment.  Many believe offering MySpace on this new mobile device will be just the ticket they need to attract many new teenage subscribers.
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In this last year, I have found that  scams and spams are alive and well, and needless to say, in every form and make.  What types of scams or spams hit the Internet this year? Here only some of the ones that I encountered or heard about.

EMAIL SCAMS

You typical email scams – the sender trying to convince the recipient that there is something wrong with their Paypal, Banking (Yes, I said banking) account, and Ebay account and to please click the link to resolve this messy problem.  For those who do not know, please do not click the link, open a new session and manually type in your link information to get the results.

And for those in the US, and for many and most who have to pay taxes – be aware of an email scam that will suggest that you have a refund waiting for you—and to please give them your Social Security number, and of course, gives you a link in which you can connect with them.  DO NOT–delete–this is a scam.
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Many people often asked, “Why am I not getting sales, nobody is signing up, I am not making any money, what is going wrong?”

Something is actually wrong. You see, when you’ve developed a product, registered a domain name, hosted your site, and solved issues like payment processor, you have to wait for the money to start rolling in—only then you will know the value of traffic.

No matter how beautiful your site or how crazy your product, without traffic your online business will fail. Generating traffic is the most difficult part of running an online business. But why is getting traffic so difficult? There are two main reasons.

The first reason is that online is not like the real world where you can rely on mere shop display. If you don’t make any calculated sales drive, people cannot find your site. The second reason is that the Internet has changed.
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