ruki spot

My blog as of last two weeks have been attacked by spammers trying to promote their websites. I for one do not mind links and think they have their place within blog comments, as long as they contribute to the topic and are related.

I’ve got numerous cheeky comments along the lines of “Wow great site, keep up the good work” followed by a link to a website that has nothing what so ever to do with the topic or this blog at all.

The idea of these comments by spammers is to build inbound links to their websites. A good way of getting the spammer’s website PR up. However, it is a complete waste of time targetting WordPress blogs and other popular blogs and forums, as they now support the “rel=nofollow” attribute. WordPress will automatically add this attribute to the anchor tag of any link embedded within comments. You can verify this yourself. Look for a link within a comment, view the source of that page, and you will see the magical attribute telling search engines not to follow the link.

The nofollow tag was Google’s invention for controlling blog/forum spam links where spammers try to manipulate the search engines results. Google will completely ignore those links marked with the nofollow attribute and the PR of the website the link is on will not contribute towards the spammer’s website. So really, spammers are wasting their time.

The only benefit I can see posting a link within a comment is that if the link is related to the topic, this will entice viewers to click on the link bringing in free traffic.

 My blog is also setup so that all comments need to be approved by me, this is simply to combat spam comments littering my blog.

 Having said that, I completely encourage my readers to leave their two cents on the topics I write about.

Most web programmers are unfortunate when it comes to web design skills, and most web designers are unfortunate when it comes to programming skills. I consider myself a programmer, I can try and get creative with web design, but the result still looks amatuer and hasn’t got that wow feeling I try and aim for. I now prefer to write my scripts and then hire out a web designer to give my script that wow feeling.

Recently, I have had to write an online web quotation system for my fulltime job. I quickly decided that I will have to seperate the HTML code from the PHP code. This seperation will make the solution very flexible. I can hire out a web designer who can redesign my basic sample HTML templates to something that looks professional and they can even do this without access to the code, so I can protect my asset. By also seperating the HTML code from the PHP code, I can also create different theme skins for my system and even let the user decide which skin they prefer.

XTemplate is an example of a PHP template system. This PHP class allows you to seperate your HTML from your code. It is an open source project and has been around for a while. The class itself is well optimized and efficient and there are lots of large projects making use of it. Some of you may have heard of Smarty, which is another templating system. However, as far as I can tell this system still requires some code within the HTML and hence I prefer to use XTemplate instead.

The class itself is very simple to use. You can find examples in the XTemplate homepage. However, I believe the best way to learn to use it, is to take a look at other projects that make use of it. The Cube cart shopping script makes use of it, and this is how I discovered this templating class and now use it whenever I need to write any PHP scripts.

Templating systems have been around for a long time and if your writing your script in another language other than PHP, hunt the web for a templating system that will work in that language. By having your script’s processing seperate to its output generation, it will make creating spicy looking scripts a breeze.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. What is that, you may ask? Well, if you are looking to increase your website presence on the Internet, the knowledge about SEO is vitally important. In this age, getting a site online is only half the challenge. A more important question to address is how to channel the visitors to your site! We all dream of having visitors by the thousands or perhaps millions eagerly rushing to our website in the shortest time possible. And yet we fall into the dilemma plaguing millions of webmasters around the world. How do we get to the top of Google Search Engine?

To answer this vital question, we have to know and understand the basic of how Search Engines operate. If you think that merely submitting your link to the search engines will get you listed, you are in for a disaster. The most important issue to handle is the page rank issue. Having a high page rank means that you gain a better positioning on the search engine’s placing.

However, search engine optimization is more than simply making your site rank well in the major search engines. It goes much deeper than that. Being able to integrate it seamlessly with your page design until its presence is virtually unnoticeable by your visitors, is a skill that webmasters must possess. It is an on going task that all webmasters need to do to keep reasonable positioning within search engines. The rewards will be worth the efforts, you will gain the much desired traffic. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that your site can be optimized once and then hold its rank forever. This is almost impossible in the era where so much information is floating around and there is always someone who will challenge your site’s rankings.

Search engines use complex algorithms to calculate your website’s importance. Therefore you cannot rely on one method to keep ahead of the game. You need to gain an in depth view into the world of search engine positioning. The most important thing is to keep your website in the eyes and attention of the surfers. It is an ongoing effort but if you are selling a product or service on the Internet, this is absolutely necessary.

Before you shell out your hard earned money for the next ebook, CD software and such that claims to raise your website’s rank in Search Engines, do read through this article. Although I may create some new unhappy adversaries here by the nature of the information in this article, this is already common knowledge. In fact, I recently created a new website just to prove that these theories worked. It is my sincere hope that you too can make use of this knowledge to your advantage.

We all have undoubtedly heard of the Page Rank phenomena. What are Page ranks? They are the way search engine measures your page’s importance in their search placements. And so we all want to rank higher. Higher rankings mean a lot of things.. To web masters it means pure, unadulterated achievement. It means that they have accomplished a move in the right direction. A high page rank to a website owner means money in the bank. It is an impressive accomplishment. And yet to other website owners your page rank may be a reasonable source of envy.

To Google Search Engine, higher page rank means quality, importance and relevancy. It means you are a viable resource and a valuable asset. How does Google use it? Google takes your Page Rank and combines it with their text-matching techniques. When combined with a page’s content and the content of the pages linking to it, shall determine if your site is a good match. Consequently, a higher Page Rank certainly helps you on Google.

Most surfers don’t care a hoot. Most of them could care less about your Page Rank. In fact, many of them don’t even know what it is. However, those that do use it as a way to unofficially gauge your credibility.

At this juncture, I am sure that you will be wondering if I am really going to let you into the secret how I do raise my page ranks from 0 to 5 in a single update. The good news is, I did not purchase any links from high ranking sites, or any sites for that matter. No, I did not launch a link exchange program either I exchanged links with about six five directories related to my site’s topic. And that was all there is to it. That was it. Now how did I raise it then?

No not link farms. That’s a sure way to get booted out of Search Engines faster than you can count to ten. Did I hire a engine expert? No way. What did I do?

You guessed it! Yes, content is king as always. I used content to help boost my ranking. But how you may ask?

I created articles. No not just any article. They are quality articles, just like the one you are reading now. These articles were not generated from any program either. They were manually and authored through my own expertise. And SEO happens to be a very popular topic and getting directories to post my articles is easy, along with my url(s). The ranks will inevitably transfer over to my site. Also, as time goes by, those articles will have a PR effect of their own which will transfer to my site(s) too.

Over time, other people may pick these articles up and use them on their site as well. And with these articles they carry my URL(s) too. You do the math. Now, if I do 100 sites a week times four articles a month, that’s at least 400 articles a month. If the last Google update was 86 days, the longest has been 111. That could easily lead to 1200 or more links between updates. Google will love it! They have these three factors:-content, quality and one way links. To spice things up, I also promoted my blogs and my website in some of my articles. Thus, they too have their own PR generating effect. These sites exchange links among each other too. This, in turn, increased the PR to them as well. And the most recent Google update, one of my blogs went from 0 to 4 and the other 0 to 5 all in the same update.

I hope these tips should help you increase your page rank as well. The challenge will be creating content related to your field and finding sites that will post them. You can always choose to hire writers and use article submission services. Good Luck in your journey.

Google Sandbox is applicable on new websites. Google Sandbox is used to determine the timing of site inclusion. It plays an important role too in determining your ranks in Google search engine results (SERPS). And yet, this painstakingly slow process could take up to 6-8 months, which could be against your plans thus causing frustration to webmasters. How do we address this issue?

We cannot control what is beyond our control. Being in the Google Sandbox is something that you will have to endure in order to get on Google. So what do you do when your website is ’hibernating” in the Google Sandbox?

Do not waste any more time checking your website listings in results page. Use this time to emphasize on SEO. Instead focus on adopting methods to accelerate your listings which will improve the status of your ranking results. Make an effort to appear on other major search engines such as MSN & Yahoo. They do not have a sandbox like Google, and this will help drive traffic to your website while waiting for Google.

Link building is another important step. Make sure that the links you exchange with are of high quality. It will improve ranking and helps Googlebot spider find your pages easier while it’s in the sandbox.

The main part of your website is to add new content on continuous basis. Most thing search engines are after is good quality websites with relevant content. Getting new fresh content daily is a sure way to win big with the search engine spiders.

Waiting endlessly for Googlebot to index your page is a sheer waste of your previous time. Instead use this time to develop your website with relevant content and adding inbound links is a smart way of making the wait more profitable.