Why You Need a Virtual Assistant

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/TJ5ZM)

Running a business can be overwhelming especially to inexperienced individuals. Most business owners think that working for eight hours a day is not enough to ensure business growth. Since you need to handle many administrative tasks and at the same time attend to other aspects of your business, you should have a virtual assistant. That way, you can generate profits for your business.

A very important factor to consider is ‘time’. You should know the value of time so that you can generate income. Doing administrative chores can help in maintaining an organized business but if you opt for a sensible solution like your own virtual assistant, you can focus your time on more important things. Hiring another person to do the admin tasks can be costly since you will need to provide certain benefits, additional office space or room, and other necessary equipments.

Business owners usually tend to cut down on their expenses to gain higher profits but since you can’t do all the tasks on your own, you need some form of assistance. Here’s good news for you – you don’t need to hire employees to entrust tasks. By having a virtual assistant, you will have someone who is always willing to work whenever you need help. Small businesspersons can benefit from VA or virtual assistant. If you have VA, you will have an invaluable work force. It is definitely a convenient solution for those who want to concentrate more in making money for the business.

With your very own VA, you won’t need additional office space since you can simply communicate through post or fax, email telephones, and other web-based tools. With the use of online planners and calendars, you and your VA can keep in touch.

Virtual assistants are considered self employed and they usually rely on referrals to get steady work flows. VAs invoices you for only the actual number of hours worked and by completed tasks so they are the ideal solution. With your own VA, you don’t need to handle benefit and tax issues, employer liabilities is no longer a problem, and most of all, you can expect steadiness and loyalty from your VA.

Some of the tasks that Vas can handle are returning phone calls, making draft letters, and answering emails. Aside from that, Vas can also answer phone calls, book for appointments, deal with posts, and remind you on important events or occasions. You can find VAs who specializes in certain areas like designing web pages or those that can perform traditional office tasks and administrative support. If you conduct a more thorough search online, you can benefit greatly from VAs that can aid in client development or marketing support.

Potential clients will surely be impressed with your performance and that of your VA. Now, you can focus on more important things while your VA handles the urgent admin tasks. Staffing issues today are already handled by VAs since most businesses are now moving their communications and marketing to the web. With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can already get affordable professional assistance.

How a Virtual Assistant Can Help

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/how-virtual-assistant-can-help)

The business world online is very much different from the traditional business industry. One of its secrets is the use of virtual assistants. The number of virtual assistants is increasing every year since more and more businesses are now realizing their importance. VAs can help in many ways to ensure success and great profits.

Business owners have various reasons for using virtual assistants. Virtual assistants are practical and sensible solutions since they can work in various kinds of industry. Clients will simply need to implement the proper selection process so that they can get a suitable VA.

Businesses in the small to medium scales are now getting virtual assistants. New business owners online usually resort to VAs for creative writing, website promotions, blogging, database management, and forum posting. These tasks can be easily delegated by the business owner to VAs so that he or she can concentrate in running the business. Medium sized businesses require more assistance, support, and file management. You can consult Agents of Value and other outsourcing companies so that you can obtain competent and reliable virtual assistants. With more business matters to handle, you will need to spend most of your time working. This can be very exhausting and you might not be able to focus in maintaining your business. If you decide to opt for a virtual assistant, you need to choose the best in the industry and one that is related to your business.

With the advent of the internet, more and more individuals are now into home-based jobs or businesses. To meet your creative and promotional needs, you can hire VAs. The virtual assistant can take charge of writing, blogging, brochure designing, and other relevant tasks so that you can now focus on specialized tasks to gain more profit.

Accountants, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals also make use of virtual assistants. With their own VAs, these professionals don’t need to sort out data, files, and schedules. Your personal VA can also help in maintaining your own website for recognition and promotion. By having an account online that shows your credentials and portfolio, you can access the global market and get more clients.

VA’s are not only limited to small and medium businesses. In fact, even large companies today are benefiting a lot from outsourcing. Big companies outsource skilled individuals for special jobs and projects. Most large businesses resort to outsourcing because it is cost effective. They simply need to find qualified virtual assistants for a particular project and when the project is done, the business will no longer pay for the services of the VAs.

Starting out form scratch involves numerous tasks and you will soon be stressed out. You can ensure the success of your business by opting for the perfect solution – personal VAs. It’s not easy to focus your time and energy to the business if there are lots of things to do like writing, blogging, web designing, etc. These tasks are best handled by specialized virtual assistants. Find your VA now and enjoy the same benefits.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/hiring-a-virtual-assistant)

When you’re a solo businessperson, you can’t rely on others to do the various tasks on your behalf. Oftentimes, new entrepreneurs find it hard to do things on their own and so they decide to hire an assistant but in the long run, it can be quite costly. There is a cost efficient alternative for you and with the popularity of the internet, it will be much easier to hire your own virtual assistant. By hiring a VA, you can enjoy many benefits.

Doing all the work involved in your business will soon leave you burn out and stressed. Your business will suffer if you don’t do something about it. You need to effectively manage your time in order to ensure success especially if you’re a solo businessman. Isolation and overworking can contribute to further stress. This is the perfect time to get a VA. Onsite staff is really costly but if you outsource your extra tasks to virtual assistants, you can focus on your business.

What is a virtual assistant? VA’s are independent contractors who are dedicated to provide certain services to businesses from a distant office. A VA uses his/her own software and equipments. Like the solo businessman, a VA is self employed and can handle administrative tasks and other special jobs. When looking for a virtual assistant, it is vital that you look into the credentials and work experience. Since VA’s have different specializations, you should choose the one who possess the right qualifications and skills; that way, you can ensure great productivity. It is up to you whether you will use the VA’s services extensively or for a limited time only. In any case, you can still save valuable time, money, and effort.

Certain benefits come with virtual assistants and you can save on the equipments, office space, holiday pays, and taxes. There are additional advantages for opting for VAs like:

1. More time in running the business. With a VA, your business will not be able to control you. With a valuable assistant, you can take run the business fully and concentrate on important matters to ensure future success.

2. Cut costs. On-site staff is very expensive bit if you hire a VA, you will simply pay for the accomplished tasks or for the consumed time. You won’t need to spend on taxes, vacation, and lunch breaks.

3. With a VA, you don’t need to purchase additional equipment or provide extra work space since VAs work elsewhere.

4. Virtual assistants are perfect solutions that can provide the needed support. You will have an invisible partner who will handle tasks like developing ad campaigns, managing certain operations, and public relations.

5. VA’s are very good in using social media and the internet for marketing strategies. Your VA can help you in maintaining your business site.

6. Most VA’s are executive and administrative assistants and so they can be considered professionals. Increased productivity is usually guaranteed if you make use of virtual assistants.

When you’re just starting a business or you’re already running one, it is very a good decision to have a virtual assistant.

Increased Market Share for Microsoft, Thanks to Bing

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/increased-market-share-microsoft)
Based on comScore’s latest data, Bing ranked second a few days ago, beating Yahoo for a day. The internet audience has agreed that Bing, the new decision engine, has truly helped in boosting the market share of Microsoft on its initial week of release. The preliminary numbers were quite impressing especially since it’s just been a week since the decision engine was launched.

The Microsoft websites took 9% of the total search results from May 26-30 and Bing’s debut just started last May 28. Following the initial week of Bing, the numbers climbed from last week’s 2% to 11.1% this week.

As compared to Live Search, Bing is able to reach a larger internet audience; no wonder Bing has improved the penetration number of Microsoft websites from 13.8% (a week before Bing’s debut) to 15.5% last week. To most internet users, a week-long period is not enough to draw conclusions for the long term. However, the buzz on Bing is continuously increasing and only time can tell whether the site can make it to the top once more.

According to the vice president of comScore Mike Hurt, the initial data on Bing suggested that it ranked high and showed considerable improvements for Microsoft’s market share due to the early interest generated. It resulted to increased search engagement and immediate improvement on the position of Microsoft. Throughout the week, searcher engagement and penetration have been relatively steady.

Microsoft will now have to face the vital question asked by the online community – can Bing gain even higher market share in the long run? The advertising blitz launched by Microsoft was quite huge which reached over $80M. Such ads stressed on the weakness of search overloads and mocked the jumbled responses returned by major search queries. The ads can create a niche for Bing like shopping and traveling. The massive marketing campaign cost Microsoft a lot but because of the high rankings obtained by Bing, it was worth cost. To analysts, the surge in rankings of Microsoft was primarily because of its marketing campaigns. Will the numbers prove to be sustainable over the long term? Google occupies the top rank and it doesn’t need to spend anything to advertise its search capabilities unlike Microsoft.

The early numbers were promising for Microsoft. The point is, users tried Bing and if most of them were satisfied, they will surely come back. The strong debut of Bing has affected the internet community somehow. The steady engagement of users and penetration over the week revealed that it got repeat visitors; repeat visitors are very important for new websites.

The extensive launch campaign was able to attract lots of trial users. Bing’s ultimate performance can be proven if it is able to sustain the numbers months or years from now when the people have already gotten over the campaigns.

Still, the initial week’s performance can’t be forgotten. It’s rare for a new website to obtain a very high rank and Bing was able to create a buzz among internet users. Microsoft will simply need to ensure that it stays that way.

Increased Market Share for Microsoft, Thanks to Bing

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/increased-market-share-microsoft)
Based on comScore’s latest data, Bing ranked second a few days ago, beating Yahoo for a day. The internet audience has agreed that Bing, the new decision engine, has truly helped in boosting the market share of Microsoft on its initial week of release. The preliminary numbers were quite impressing especially since it’s just been a week since the decision engine was launched.

The Microsoft websites took 9% of the total search results from May 26-30 and Bing’s debut just started last May 28. Following the initial week of Bing, the numbers climbed from last week’s 2% to 11.1% this week.

As compared to Live Search, Bing is able to reach a larger internet audience; no wonder Bing has improved the penetration number of Microsoft websites from 13.8% (a week before Bing’s debut) to 15.5% last week. To most internet users, a week-long period is not enough to draw conclusions for the long term. However, the buzz on Bing is continuously increasing and only time can tell whether the site can make it to the top once more.

According to the vice president of comScore Mike Hurt, the initial data on Bing suggested that it ranked high and showed considerable improvements for Microsoft’s market share due to the early interest generated. It resulted to increased search engagement and immediate improvement on the position of Microsoft. Throughout the week, searcher engagement and penetration have been relatively steady.

Microsoft will now have to face the vital question asked by the online community – can Bing gain even higher market share in the long run? The advertising blitz launched by Microsoft was quite huge which reached over $80M. Such ads stressed on the weakness of search overloads and mocked the jumbled responses returned by major search queries. The ads can create a niche for Bing like shopping and traveling. The massive marketing campaign cost Microsoft a lot but because of the high rankings obtained by Bing, it was worth cost. To analysts, the surge in rankings of Microsoft was primarily because of its marketing campaigns. Will the numbers prove to be sustainable over the long term? Google occupies the top rank and it doesn’t need to spend anything to advertise its search capabilities unlike Microsoft.

The early numbers were promising for Microsoft. The point is, users tried Bing and if most of them were satisfied, they will surely come back. The strong debut of Bing has affected the internet community somehow. The steady engagement of users and penetration over the week revealed that it got repeat visitors; repeat visitors are very important for new websites.

The extensive launch campaign was able to attract lots of trial users. Bing’s ultimate performance can be proven if it is able to sustain the numbers months or years from now when the people have already gotten over the campaigns.

Still, the initial week’s performance can’t be forgotten. It’s rare for a new website to obtain a very high rank and Bing was able to create a buzz among internet users. Microsoft will simply need to ensure that it stays that way.

Classified Ads and Social Networking

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/n5VOk)
Social networking is well-liked by many individuals. It is a very effective tool for making new friends, staying connected, and in marketing any form of business. Business owners are now invading the web to promote their business. Having a physical office for the business is not enough to ensure a steady flow of income but by using social network sites and their classified ads features, your business will succeed.

There is extreme competition among social network sites. Perhaps you’re already familiar with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. Different users have different needs and since the creators of these social network sites want to keep their subscribers satisfied, most of them included a ‘classified ads’ feature.

Having a list of classified ads on the social network site is a great advantage. The users will no longer go to another website just to check out the latest classified ads. The social network sites were able to hit two birds with one stone – they were able to help their subscribers with their needs and they were able to keep the users within the website for a considerable time. Since traffic generation is a major concern for the social sites, putting classified ads as one of their features can attract their high school and college users. Now, you can conduct your internet business with ease within the social network websites.

By providing tools like the classified ads, social network sites will be more useful for the users. The users can easily create their own classified listings for jobs, housing, anything for sale, concert tickets, used bikes, and any other listing.

The users can also select their networks so that the classified ads will reflect on their chosen friends or subscribers. When other users log to the social network site, they will see your updates. Ever since the launching of MySpace, classified ads are already included in its features. On the other hand, Facebook launched such feature in 2007 as well as Friendster.

There is an advantage in using the classified ads in the social network sites. Other users will instantly know who the seller is. Once other users view your listings, they will automatically know how you’re connected with each other. Conducting a business online will be much easier if you make use of social network sites and their classified ads feature.

Advertising often involves huge expenses especially if you don’t know some alternative options. If you’re starting a new business, it would be best to stick with free yet highly effective tools in advertising. Effective advertising can generate traffic to your business site. Sign up in any of the popular social network sites and enjoy their cool classified ads features.

Social networks are free and you don’t need to pay for advertising. However, you must know your limitations. You see, social sites are more into making friends, communications, and building relationships. You need t make friends and identify your targeted traffic. Once you’ve gained the trust of other users, you can now advertise and hopefully make use of classified ads.

Ways to Beat Your Competitors

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/g9VER)
Every business aims to gain more profit and withstand the current competition in the market. If you want your business to stay in the industry for a long time, you need to beat your existing competitors. You might be wondering how you can beat competitors. Well, if you sit down and spend a little time in reading this article, you’ll know what to do.

In internet marketing, the techniques used vary from time to time. You can never really tell that a successful marketing technique will still work tomorrow or after a week and several months. Here’s a very good idea – look for successful companies online and try to find out their secrets to success. After that, you will need to analyze your business’ competitiveness. You must be able to understand the competitive analysis; that way, you can act on it properly as soon as possible.

To do the competitive analysis, you must first identify your competitors. There are four stages that you need to follow to conduct the analysis. Here’s the general rule – if its impossible to beat your competitors, then you must make improvisations.

Positioning reporting is known as stage one. Take note of the major keywords and keyword phrases used by your competitors on their Meta tags. On the homepage of your competitor, go to ‘view’ in the IE and select the words ‘view source’. Search for the keywords/phrases on Google and other search engines. You can use Excel for documentation. See which keywords appear on the list of top 20s.

Search engine saturation is the next stage. Did the search engines index the websites of your competitors? Saturation is vital to the algorithm of Google. Your site can get higher ranking if more pages of your website is indexed by search engines.

Design critique is a technical stage. You need to examine your competitor’s site in terms of navigation, layout, and design. Most effective sites will have navigation menus, well-worded descriptions using the keyphrases, the use of Alt Tags that are linked to complex navigation and linked images, short titles with the keyphrase, import keyphrases within the text, and carefully optimized et very simple sitemap. Your competitor might be using a combination o these elements but not all of them.

How many links and pages does your competitor have? LP or link popularity is a vital factor that makes or breaks websites. Google loves websites that have links coming from other related and reputable sites. Just type this - “link: www.competitorswebsite.com” and you can instantly analyze your competitor’s LP. Backlinks and external links are both important for your website. If you request for a link from related websites, it is already expected that you provide reciprocal links as well.

By identifying the techniques used by your competitors to ensure their success, you can now plan certain actions. Review your website and determine your weak points. When you find any, you need to address them as soon as possible.

You can even get an advanced and professional competitor analysis if you like.

Building Links through Dofollow Forum Signature

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/1ap2I)
There are many ways to improve site visibility and one way to do that is by using the Dofollow Forum. If you’re in search of surefire tips online to aid you in building links, you’re in the right place. By the end of this article, you will know what to do so that you can start enhancing your site’s PR. Sign up in a forum now so that you can start posting and set up useful links.

Dofollow can definitely help you in getting useful links for your website. A quick search using the major search engines like Google will provide you with lots of information on the URLs of forums. SitePoint and DigitalPoint are very good examples of forums.

Raising page ranks is very easy these days with the use of Dofollow forums. Through proper link building, you can also improve your site’s SERP performance. Did you know that it’s possible to get PR 3 by using only form links? Yes, this is possible but there are some things that you need to know.

Here are helpful tips for you:

1. The homepage of the forum needs to have high page ranks – forums are not really special and like other sites, forum pages share out PR. If the homepage can get a high PR, your site can also get juicy links from your signatures and posts. SitePoint and DigitalPoint usually have 6-7 PRs. Other forums have less page ranks to share with forum posters. If you stumble on a forum site with a page rank of 2 and there are only a few posts, you can pick 2/1000 link-juice rather than if you stick with the forum sites having lots of posts.


2. Active community – a forum site becomes active if most of its members regularly make posts. If the posts are regularly updated, the posts or links will be indexed by Googlebot quickly. More posts also mean more topics and so you can make posts with ease.


3. Pick a forum site that is similar to your site – the two forum sites mentioned earlier are focused on SEO/webmasters. If your site is not related to webmaster forums, find another website that is suitable to your site’s theme.


4. Make sure that you’re interested in the topics being posted in the forum sites. If you’re not interested, you’ll find it hard to post regularly. A single post can’t improve your links. Try to write as many relevant and helpful posts as possible.


5. There are other ways to build links and you should not concentrate mainly in forum sites. It is possible to build links using forum sites but you can better enhance your site’s visibility if you make use of other tools. All your previous posts will plunge deeper into the pages as new topics are being discussed. The link-juice will soon fall away. You can track your backlinks using Google Webmasters and if nothing shows up, Google will not be able to count it for you PR.

Follow these tips and you’re sure to build links in no time.

Microsoft?s Search Engine Optimisation Advice for Bing

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/microsofts-search-engine-optimisation-advice-for-bing)
Incase you have not heard Microsoft have launched a new search engine, Bing, or as they have dubbed it a ‘Decision Engine’. Early signs are very promising and seems to be much more than a rebrand of MSN Live (the former Microsoft search engine brand).

Right after Microsoft launched Bing, we already saw some indications that users were quickly warming up to this new search engine. Just a few days after its launch, Bing had already passed Yahoo as the #2 search engine in the U.S. according to StatCounter. On StatCounter, Bing is now back in the #3 position, though with almost double the market share that Microsoft's Live Search ever had. According to the latest data from comScore, however, Bing's daily 'searcher penetration' has slowly moved up in the last three weeks since the launch and is now at 16.7%.

As Bing grows its market share, it will become increasingly important for small business owners to leverage this and begin optimising their site(s) so to gain maximum exposure.

Recently Microsoft released a PDF about Search Engine Optimisation called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. This is the second SEO-related offering in as many weeks. During SMX Advanced, Microsoft launched the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit.

The majority of the PDF describes the frontend of Bing, and how this may impact site owners, however it does touch on SEO for Bing also.

Google have provided site owners with SEO advice for quite a while now, through both their help center and in their Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, so do check those out if you are interested in hearing their stance on SEO. Google’s documentation is a lot more instructive, providing their top guidelines for site owners, in order to allow their site to be easily crawled and indexed by search engines.

So what can we learn from Bing’s advice for web owners?

The document starts by explaining the main differences in Bing & Live Search that impacts site owners. For example Bing no longer shows results 6 to 10 for the searcher’s query, rather the page includes “categorised” results after the list of 5 site that match the initial query. See the image below for an example.

Long tail opportunities

This document confirms that there are more than 300 factors are used in determining this categorisation and that what categories appear is entity-dependent. An example of this … if you search for lord of the rings, you may see a category for “wallpaper” as many people search for “Lord of the Rings Wallpaper”, or you might see “actors” or “characters” as Microsoft have identified this as a movie.

Microsoft suggests this new way of structuring their search results provides new long tail opportunities for site owners.

So as an example, if your site is about Laptops, then you could optimize for brands (Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, etc) or even target a specific user group like “laptops for students”.

Best match

Another new feature introduced is what they have called “best match”. So how this works is, when Bing is confident that the first result is what the searcher is looking for, then it will be tagged as the “best result”. What makes this “best result” feature different to traditional results is that it will contain additional details about the site, such as phone numbers, links and a box for searching within the site.

In some cases this will be the only result that appears on the page, which Microsoft says their teams chooses only when they have high confidence in  the result as well as the query volume being high.

But what about the poor site owner at position number 2?

If you don’t want your site to appear as the best match, don’t want the internal site search surfaced, want to correct the phone number that appears, or want to remove links, you can request that by emailing Microsoft.

Document preview

This feature provides users with additional content from the site in a hover window which allows searchers to find the content they want faster, without having to leave the SERP until they are ready.

I am not too sure about this feature, as I think it may help searchers find the content they want without ever leaving the SERP at all. Microsoft say this helps increase qualified traffic to the site, whilst this is true, when its free traffic any traffic is good traffic, so kudos to Microsoft for providing an opt out feature.

To opt out of ‘document preview’ just add the following to the head section of each page:

<meta name=“msnbot”, content=“nopreview”>

If you don’t want this feature used on any page of the site, it might be easier to return the directive in the server HTTP header as follows:

x-robots-tag: nopreview

In saying this not everything shown in the ‘document preview’ comes from the site. For example, a site might be built in flash Bing may have trouble extracting data from it, so will therefore turn to a third party. As well as this they may use local information such as an address or phone number from an external source. You can request that third-party data not be used for your listing by emailing Microsoft.

Flash extraction

Microsoft has stated that Flash built websites are responsible for 21% of all empty descriptions in their index. They are not saying they can do “limited data extractions” and are now able to generate descriptions for one third of those. Just like Google, they now also have the ability to use anchor text from incoming links as source data for missing titles.

Use of microformats

Microsoft is encouraging the use of microformats, but states they are not using this data for crawling, indexing, and ranking.  This is very much similar to that of Google and Yahoo.

Learn more about the Google microformats here (AKA Rich Snippets)

Instant answers

Instant answers, the “OneBox”-style results that provide data to answer the query, aren’t new to Bing, but may be gaining prevalence. For now, Microsoft tells me that you can request evaluation of your data for inclusion using their support forum.

Local listings

In Bing the local results are more prevalent, than its predecessor (Live). Make sure to add your site to their Local Listing Center to be featured in these results.

Internal Studies on Searcher Behaviour

Microsoft have released some interesting behavior, which they have stated are based on a number of internet studies taken from both their search logs and toolbar logs.

They found that 50% of the time searchers refine their query, bounce back or abandon the search all together. (perhaps they go to google? Would be interesting to see the difference in abandoned searches between the two)

The breakdown of that 50% is below.

In addition to this they found that 24% of searchers repeated the same search query during a single session.

All in all, this document doesn’t provide a lot of new information about SEO. But I applaud Microsoft for understanding things like removing results 6 through 10 and replacing them with categorized results and adding a hover with additional content from the site could impact search traffic and for providing information about these features.

It is hard to comment on just how much these new features will effect search traffic, but if Bing can continue to increase Microsoft’s search share than we will all have to start paying more attention.

Google Launched its Newest Webmaster Tools Feature

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/mCp8i)
‘Change of Address’ is the newest feature of Google Webmaster Tools as announced by Google. Since the internet is a constantly changing community, some webmasters move their domain names. With the new feature, webmasters can instantly inform Google of the changes.

Once you use the feature of the Webmaster Tools, Google will automatically renew the index to show your latest URL. Such change will be seen within 180 days; by that time, Google has already crawled to the new URL and indexed the site’s pages. If you want to access the newest feature offered by Google, you need to log in to the Webmaster Tools and go to ‘site configuration’. You need to select the ‘change of address’ section. There you can find the detailed instructions for changing the address.

To set up your new site, you need to review the Webmaster Tools’ guidelines for moving a websites to new domains. After that, you should set up the contents on the new domain. All your existing internet links should point to the new address.

Since your site visitors are familiar with your old address, you need to redirect all the traffic to the new address. You can use ‘301 redirect’ so that you can permanently redirect all the pages of the old website to the new one. Users will instantly know that your website has moved. You also need to request webmasters to renew links respectively so that the links will now point to the latest address. Using 302 redirects, incoming links to the old website will also be automatically redirected to the new site.

You must not forget to add the new website to Google Webmasters Tools. You also need to verify the new domain and inform Google of your domain’s URL.

Once you’ve submitted the address change, you will need to check Webmaster Tools periodically so that you will know if Google has already crawled to your new website and indexed it. For those with sitemaps, you can check it by looking into the Sitemap details to determine the number of crawled pages and those that are indexed.

Check the ‘moving your name’ that Google posted. It is a help document that can aid you and other webmasters out there in completing the process. A lot of site owners have waited for this feature for several years now and finally, it was launched by Google.

Nothing is permanent on the web. Some webmasters are hesitant to move their websites to a different domain because they fear that their rankings will be greatly affected. There are ways to make the transition much easier for you and the users. If you’re simply redesigning or rebranding, you can move your site first and then launch the redesign. As mentioned earlier, you can use ‘301 redirect’ so that all your site’s pages are permanently redirected to the new one. Don’t leave off your old website and instead, try to control it for another 180 days.

Changing to a new address is no longer a problem. Just follow the instructions on the Google Webmaster Tools.

Translator Toolkit by Google

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/QnR8q)
How do you translate the word ‘I love you’ to Spanish? Well, you will no longer find it hard to translate words from now on because Google has already launched its Translator Toolkit today. Translators can now organize their works through the shared translations, translation memories, and glossaries. The news came out through the reports on Google China Blog.

The service was already being conceptualized since August 2008 when the Google Translation Center references appeared on the robots.txt file of Google. Trusted testers were already able to access the service at that time but most of the screenshots and pages were hurriedly taken offline. With the screenshots, the tool has undergone a great deal of changes.

Most internet users are not familiar with the standard processes involved in translation. Professional translators use a CAT or computer-aided translation tool in order to identify and take out text snippets used for translation of various types of files.

The toolkit allows the upload of Microsoft Word, HTML, Rich Text, Plain Text, and OpenDocument Text but it should not exceed 1MB for translation. You can also enter the file’s URL for translation like Knol or Wikipedia files.

You can translate uploaded through Workbench. It is an interface that shows the text’s source and the language targeted for translation. You can arrange the file above-below or side-side.

Sharing translations is good so that others can review it for style and consistency. Google even allows internet users to rate the translated segments to check for accuracy and style. Users can also add comments to the document which can be very beneficial during collaboration with other translators.

The translation memory serves as the database for stored human translations. Users can now search the database for future translations to check if certain segments, sentences, phrase, or words were previously translated. Even if the phrase you’re searching did not match the exact words on the database, a fuzzy match is suggested along with a percentage to determine its similarity to the text.

By default, all translations in Knols and Wikipedia are available to everyone and are stored in the global shared translation memory. You can save a lot of time by using the toolkit since previous translations automatically appear on the interface.

Different languages are used all over world and with the new Translation Toolkit by Google, the world’s information can now be universally useful and accessible. Translation is already integrated into most of Google services like the Gmail, YouTube, Google Reader, Google Tal, and Google Toolbar. For many years, Google has worked on translations systems to achieve their mission.

The translation offerings of Google are now improved with the launching of Translation Toolkit. Aligned translations are provided so that users will know the exact translation of every sentence. With the new Translation Toolkit by Google, end users can now enjoy an enhanced translation system that is accessible globally. As the translation memory grows, internet users can now translate their blogs, emails, tweets, and documents with ease. Why don’t you try the new toolkit now?

How to Promote your Business with Social Networking?

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/qmilY)
Online businesses now dominate the internet. It seems that a lot of business owners want to tap on the global market for increased sales figures. How can you generate traffic for your business site? Novices in internet marketing are wondering how they can effectively promote their business. Well, there are various ways to promote an online business and one is through social networking.

It is possible to promote your online business without spending any money. You see, you can obtain free tried and tested traffic techniques online. All it takes is a bit of research on the right places. Since you’re just starting out, it’s natural for you to cut down on your expenses so you don’t need to spend on the traffic techniques.

Using the free techniques, you can succeed in internet marketing. You can find lots of free tools online like social network sites. Just sign up in one of the popular social networking sites and try to make friends. Once you made enough number of friends, you can start sending promotional materials. Social network sites are like piggy banks and they are quite effective in generating traffic to websites. However, you must first identify your targeted traffic.

Facebook and MySpace are great for starters so that you can test the environment. Aside from these two social network sites, you should also join topical network sites but just make sure that most of the subscribers are active.

Setting up a profile is easy. Don’t forget to post the link that leads to your business site. You can also tell something about your business so that others will know about it. Try to create a table or a subscription box on your profile so that interested individuals can easily reach you.

Making friends is vital since social networks are basically all about connecting with people and developing good relationship. You can’t just bombard other users with promotional materials. You see, you will need to make friends so that you can get their attention, confidence, and trust. Put it this way – if you’re the consumer, you probably don’t want to purchase a product from someone you don’t trust.

The design of your profile should indicate the ones whom you want to meet and try to use appropriate keywords. You can make friend requests and don’t forget to post comments to show your appreciation. Communication is very important if you want to establish a good relationship. Even if you’re already friends, try to limit your promotions.

You also need to look for forums and groups that are related to your business. You must be active in forum discussions so that you can start healthy conversations. All your posts should bear your signature so that other people know that it’s from you. Just put a single link and use the appropriate keywords on your anchor text. Avoid making blatant sales pitches. All the information you provide should be real and valuable.

In using social network sites, try to avoid spamming and obtrusive sales talks because your friends and audience will surely get annoyed by it.

Tips on Working Remotely with Clients

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/C8etf)
Have you ever experienced working for someone whom you can’t see? This is quite ordinary nowadays with the advent of online work opportunities. Individuals can now work and collaborate with certain clients without meeting them personally. If you want to effectively work with your clients remotely, you will surely need helpful tips to get you started.

Web workers are used to this kind of set up and if this is new to you, you might find it hard to adjust. Still, many people prefer to work from home because of convenience and flexibility reasons. Working remotely is not for all individuals; it is for the self motivated and capable ones. Just follow these tips and you can easily work alone.

1. You must establish trust firsthand. If your client doesn’t trust you, the project will not succeed. How will you do this? Start by introducing yourself through some sort of kickoff meeting. Try video conferencing or you can also introduce yourself over the phone. Consider the time zones so that you can talk to your client at a reasonable time. You must dress up appropriately and when you’re already online, introduce yourself politely and highlight some of your best accomplishments. You can also ask the client certain probing questions so that he or she will feel involved and afterwards, propose your solutions.


2. Bulletproof contracts – a lot of freelancers accept work without providing a contract. Working distantly has its disadvantages and you must also protect yourself. Keep the contract as simple as possible. You must include the scope of your work or project, the listing if deliverables like wire frames, user manuals, or style guides. Make the list so that you can avoid miscommunications. Clients usually ask for revisions so you must set the limit. You can even ask for hourly rates for the extra revision tasks. Try to set guidelines on when payments should be made and of course, you need to arrange for the payment terms on the contract.


3. You must set deadlines. You and your client should agree on the deadlines. You can also ask for timely feedbacks so that the project can move forward. Short term deadlines are advisable. This is also an effective way to ask for respect.


4. You should always communicate with your client clearly. Limited interactions are very important. All your messages and emails must be crafted carefully; be straightforward. Never intimidate your client but just ensure regular communication.


5. Make use of the modern web applications so that communication is facilitated effectively. There are lots of online tools that can help you in facilitating conversations with your client. You must pick the appropriate tools and try to encourage your client to use the same tools. Ease of communication is vital for the project’s success.

You can also use project management tools like Basecamp. Basecamp is cheap and you can also set it up instantly with ease. You can also use tools like ConceptShare, Adobe ConnectNow, and BlinkSale.

If you want to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings with your client, follow these tips.

Mobile Web?s Future in Apps

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/cXyIz)
Perhaps you’ve heard about the new features of the iPhone 3G S since the announcement was made last Monday during the World Wide Developer Conference by Apple. What is the mobile web’s future in apps? Read on to find out.

The new Safari 4 has improved capabilities. Even though the features are not the sexiest, it still had great implications in mobile local searches. Your location will be reflected on the browser and so you can take advantage of the many opportunities for search sites available locally. The content and ads will depend on your precise location. Another cool thing about the Safari 4 is that you can launch a certain map within the window of the browser. In the previous browser, certain map links close up the browser and the Google Maps will open by default. Mobile sites instantly send away the users and most of them never return.

Such capabilities can have a huge impact on mobile searches. It can also affect web publishers who are planning to create mobile websites. Mobile products are now easily built without spending a lot of money and time on native application development. The new Safari 4 possesses features that were previously kept for native apps. Certain developers can now sidestep the native app development process in favor of web apps or the less resource-intensive mobile sites.

Apple now allows developers to use a ‘skin’ to make sure that web apps act like the native apps. The web app will reside on the standalone browser including the icon and the user’s ability to set it on the home screen. It will appear like native apps but in reality, it is an overvalued bookmark.

Mobile browsers will soon serve as the front door to mobile Web. Apps have taken over the ‘front door’ and this is all because of the commanding share of iPhone in the mobile internet traffic.

Apps are now the greatest access points to mobile content and it is continuously growing with the popularity of iPhones. Will such trend change in the future? Everything has downsides, including apps. The use of apps has declined over the years, said Pinch Media. App developers are also showing a declining interest in the jam-packed App Store.

The development of native apps can still be sustained by its benefits since they are highly functional as compared to web apps. This is very prominent in some high-end games and paid apps that depend on development muscles.

Mobile internet pages are now having desired functionality and a very good example is the enhancements of the Safari. Google has also developed most of the iPhone apps basically as web apps like Gmail, GTalk, and Latitude.

The facts mentioned above were mostly concerned with the iPhone. Perhaps in the near future, desktop browsers and mobile platforms will follow suit with broader HTML 5 capabilities and location-aware browsers.

Mobile gadgets are quite popular especially the iPhone. With more and more individuals taking interest in mobile gadgets to stay connected, developers of apps will surely want to create new features. Thanks to the modern technological advancements, it’s much easier to develop apps.

The New Ad by Microsoft on Bing

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/ad-microsoft-bing)
Microsoft is definitely going to continue the exposure and ads for Bing. In tonight’s episode of The Daily Show, watch out for the new advertisement of Bing. Microsoft is again launching a new campaign entitled ‘Fast Forward’. The ad will last for only 30 seconds but it may be enough to once again capture the attention of worldwide internet users.

The advertisement is hard to describe and Microsoft will still need to make a public copy of the said ad. Microsoft was able to purchase the 2.5 minutes blocks of ads/commercials. The blocks of commercials will move ‘fast forward’, much like the TiVo-like experience. The advertisement is quite interesting and many of Bing’s fans are looking forward to seeing it on air. The ad starts with the Snuggie commercial and in a couple of seconds, it’ll move fast forward with a background sound accompanying it. Then the audience will see the Snuggie spot, an ad on hair replacement, hanging tomatoes, together with other commercials. Suddenly, the audio goes out and in two slides, the message of Bing is shown:

“Getting You What You Want Faster, It’s What We’re All About”

The program resumes once the advertisement ends. The Daily Show will get 2 extra minutes and the fans of Jon Stewart will surely love it. The ad is also scheduled to appear in other networks from this day to June 17, 2009. The schedules for the ad’s appearance are as follows:

1. Top 20 Countdown on CMT, June 12


2. George Lopez Nick@Nite’s on June 14


3. Charm School with Ricki Lake at VH1 on June 15


4. Real World/Road Rules Challenges: The Duel 2 at MTV on June 17

Bing was able to achieve a very high rank several days ago, beating Yahoo on the second spot. The week’s performance of Bing also showed a considerable amount of site visitors and Microsoft just wants to ensure that their new site stays on the mainstream. The ads are going to cost Microsoft but the huge company is willing to spend any amount for the success of Bing.

The company also spent for the same kind of ad for the programs mentioned earlier. The campaigns will surely attract a lot of internet users but the true test is when the surveys for searcher penetration are released. So far, last week’s searcher penetration went up by 2.3%. Microsoft is expecting a much higher rating in the coming weeks especially after the ad is aired.

Google and Yahoo need not go to this extent just to attract site visitors. However, these two are already giants on the web. Bing is still new and with the prediction of its creators that Bing will rank second within five years, Microsoft will surely go through great lengths just to achieve that prediction. Well, Microsoft’s prediction became a reality a couple of days ago although it lasted for only a day. Still, Bing might still be able to make it to the top in the coming years; Microsoft will simply need to wait and see.

Tips on Working Remotely with Clients

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/7UrMp)
Have you ever experienced working for someone whom you can’t see? This is quite ordinary nowadays with the advent of online work opportunities. Individuals can now work and collaborate with certain clients without meeting them personally. If you want to effectively work with your clients remotely, you will surely need helpful tips to get you started.

Web workers are used to this kind of set up and if this is new to you, you might find it hard to adjust. Still, many people prefer to work from home because of convenience and flexibility reasons. Working remotely is not for all individuals; it is for the self motivated and capable ones. Just follow these tips and you can easily work alone.

1. You must establish trust firsthand. If your client doesn’t trust you, the project will not succeed. How will you do this? Start by introducing yourself through some sort of kickoff meeting. Try video conferencing or you can also introduce yourself over the phone. Consider the time zones so that you can talk to your client at a reasonable time. You must dress up appropriately and when you’re already online, introduce yourself politely and highlight some of your best accomplishments. You can also ask the client certain probing questions so that he or she will feel involved and afterwards, propose your solutions.


2. Bulletproof contracts – a lot of freelancers accept work without providing a contract. Working distantly has its disadvantages and you must also protect yourself. Keep the contract as simple as possible. You must include the scope of your work or project, the listing if deliverables like wire frames, user manuals, or style guides. Make the list so that you can avoid miscommunications. Clients usually ask for revisions so you must set the limit. You can even ask for hourly rates for the extra revision tasks. Try to set guidelines on when payments should be made and of course, you need to arrange for the payment terms on the contract.


3. You must set deadlines. You and your client should agree on the deadlines. You can also ask for timely feedbacks so that the project can move forward. Short term deadlines are advisable. This is also an effective way to ask for respect.


4. You should always communicate with your client clearly. Limited interactions are very important. All your messages and emails must be crafted carefully; be straightforward. Never intimidate your client but just ensure regular communication.


5. Make use of the modern web applications so that communication is facilitated effectively. There are lots of online tools that can help you in facilitating conversations with your client. You must pick the appropriate tools and try to encourage your client to use the same tools. Ease of communication is vital for the project’s success.

You can also use project management tools like Basecamp. Basecamp is cheap and you can also set it up instantly with ease. You can also use tools like ConceptShare, Adobe ConnectNow, and BlinkSale.

If you want to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings with your client, follow these tips.

Can Bing Meet with PPC Expectations?

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/DVkUF)
A search summit was held last week by Microsoft in Bellevue Washington. About eighty search experts attended the summit and they were all anxious to learn more about the search products of the huge company. The Search Summit was a combination of the Ad Champs and Search Champs. The goal is to enable SEMs to share and learn new knowledge; and biggest buzz during the summit is the new Bing.

Bing is the newest search engine offered by Microsoft and it is also called ‘decision engine’. As the big company claims, this decision engine can help users in making faster and smarter decisions. The features of Bing deliver the finest results and present them in an organized manner; thereby simplifying the key tasks.

Is it true that Bing can provide a different experience for online researchers or is it simply the rebrand of Live.com? If you try to look into the features of Bing, you can see the big difference. On the left navigation, you will see related searches, video search, and enhanced image. Average searchers will also benefit from the phone number included on the section organic listings. Now, you can easily call customer service when needed.

Microsoft spent $100M for the initial advertising campaigns and it is still paying for the ads to be aired on different programs, starting with The Daily Show.

Historically, the search engines of Microsoft obtained exceptional ROI on the PPC. However, most of the search engines generated low volumes of traffic. Advertisers are now asking if they can expect increased traffic on their PPC advertisements on Bing.

The question will still remain unanswered since Bing has only been on business for several days. Coincidentally, Microsoft also released upgrades to adCenter Desktop. The improvements were much needed for some time now and it’s a good thing that Microsoft has already launched the updates. You can now edit and add targeting settings like daypating, bid boosting, and geo-targeting. These are the same features that Google AdWords Editor lacks at present.

Important features were also launched by Microsoft like placement performance reporting, site exclusion, and site targeting. From the Content Network, advertisers can simple choose an image or text ads and they can also obtain the keyword monetization data through ‘ Ad Intelligence’ tool.

The PPC account’s ROI can be maximized if advertisers work closely with the adCenter account team. Account reps usually make use of internal tools to identify content sites and new keywords which helps in enhancing the account’s performance.

Bing is not the first re-brand of Microsoft. In the past, it has already re-branded its search engines. Many advertisers are skeptical that Bing is different from the rest. So far, Bing has impressed many people since it ranked second place several days ago. The increased traffic and improved features are impressive and some advertisers are already considering PPC placements.

Bing can’t please all internet users and this is also true with Google and Yahoo. PPC marketers will simply have to see if Bing can make considerable changes in terms of ROI.

Get High Rankings through Search Engine-Friendly Sites

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/HXfRd)

If you want to get high rankings, you need to know what internet users and search engines want to find in friendly sites. It includes the following:

1. A site that has a lot of appropriate content.

2. Unique content. You can make the content yourself or you can also pay someone else to do it.

3. The site must be organized and link-wise. Users must be able to navigate with ease within the site and the other pages.

4. Links from other relevant and popular sites should point to your site. Make sure that the relevant sites do not compete with yours.

5. The site should change regularly. It should not be static and the contents must grow frequently.

6. A site that is easy to read. It’s not a good idea to include javascript since the search engine robots can’t read them.

7. A site that is tightly themed. Check your contents regularly so that your site can be ranked properly.

Search engines are not complicated and it’s easy to tell what they want. The forums available online can be very useful but you might find it hard to understand complicated terms used. You need to know the difference between standard and basic optimization. Beginners are not advised to use the info on the forums since they are easily confused. If you’re already a bit experienced, you can start using the contents you find in the forums.

It’s also a good idea to stick to professional SEOs and other field experts rather than consulting forums all the time.

Don’t fall for dirty tricks online especially free offers. Oftentimes, the free stuffs are no longer effective and might even affect your site negatively. Work on the basics as a beginner. You can dig deeper into the advanced stuffs when you’ve gained experience. Advanced SEO sources usually provide information on how to achieve slightly higher rankings which means that you’ve already gained high rankings and you just want to make an improvement.

The content of your site is another important thing if you want to create a friendly site. Don’t include javascript and other complicated stuffs. Using HTML is the best. If you want, you can also use SHTML, PHP, etc.

The main keyword of your site should have good density to achieve high rankings. For instance, if the main keyword is ‘dog leashes’, you need to include it on the page’s title and the contents.

Take things slowly. If you know how to create friendly sites, it’ll be a lot easier to handle complicated stuffs that you will later on encounter as you maintain a website. Don’t mess with advanced stuffs unless you’ve learned the basics completely. Getting high rankings can cost you a lot of time.

YouTube Got the Highest Number of Viewers for April 2009

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/youtube-highest-number-viewers)

Online videos are quite familiar these days. According to the April 2009 data obtained by comScore Video Metrix service, 152 million users viewed 16.8 billion videos on the internet in the United States. It represented a 16% increase as compared to the March data. This means that among the US internet audience, 78.6% viewed online videos in the month of April alone. The average video viewer watched 6.4 hours or 385 minutes of videos.

Here are some facts for you:

· YouTube got 107.1 million spectators who viewed 6.8 billion videos equivalent to 63.5 videos for each viewer

· MySpace got 49 million viewers who viewed 387 million videos that is equivalent to 7.9 videos for each viewer

· Yahoo sites got 45.4 million spectators who watched 355.2 million videos; 7.8 vids/viewer; 2.1 percent increase

· Hulu got 40.1 million spectators who watched about 397 million videos; 9.9 vids/viewer; 2.4 percent increase

· Fox Interactive Media – 513 videos and a 3.1 percent increase

YouTube has definitely the largest number of viewers and their audience watches 6-8 times per month of online videos. A press release revealed that the April video viewing increase at YouTube contributed to its sizeable gains.

The online videos included progressive download and streaming videos. Indeed, YouTube and other companies will earn a lot from video viewing. Most internet users love to watch videos whenever they surf the internet. The facts gathered by comScore prove it all. With the increasing popularity of relevant websites, the number of individuals who view online videos will surely increase in the coming months.

Because of the extreme popularity of music/video sites like YouTube, even businesses are now realizing their great importance. Li Evans of Serengeti Communications said that many companies are now using YouTube to promote their brands. Li is also a panelist in the coming SES Toronto in the ‘Optimizing for Video Search: Virginia Territory?’ session together with Amanda Watlington (Searching for Profit) and Gregory Markel (Infuse Creative LLC). If you’re interested in using sites like YouTube to promote your business, why not join the session at the SES Toronto conference? There you can learn some valuable info so that you will know what to do.

Video sites are different from one another. For instance, YouTub is a place where individuals post amateur videos so that they can share it to the world. On the other hand, Hulu is more on professional content and commercial such as full-length movies and TV shows. The strategy of Yahoo is different wherein they weave videos into services and sites so that the vids are enriched into particular contexts. Other video sites make use of these approaches in combinations.

So far, Google and other popular sites are also struggling to generate revenue from advertising alongside amateur videos. The user base of Hulu is much smaller but some big advertisers are already using the site for promotion.

If you’re planning to use video sites for advertising and promotions, you need to choose the appropriate one. Watch videos now and see what other’s are viewing.

Google Mobile App Released Exclusively for Nokia S60 Series

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/google-mobile-app-released-exclusively)

Mobile phones today are becoming more of a necessity rather than luxury. Staying connected anytime anywhere is what most mobile phone users want. Here’s good news to all those who have Nokia S60 devices. Why? You can now enjoy the new application offered by Google Mobile. The S60 devices can now join the Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and iPhone.

The Google Mobile App offered to Nokia S60 devices can address three main immediacy issues including query formulation, location, and access.

Query formulation can now be done in an efficient and quick manner. Repeat queries are now possible since the app keeps track of the search history so you can instantly access the past keyword searches. Search suggestions are also available so that the user will no longer type a lot of words; thereby reducing the typing time. The search suggestions are according to what has been previously entered, thereby making the searches faster. Quick searches are possible with only one click.

Location awareness is also built within the Mobile App. ‘My Location’ is a very good feature and it helps the mobile app to return related local results. If you want, you can also opt in/out of this feature anytime you like. You will simply need to change the settings on the ‘Settings’ menu.

Many users encounter delay in navigating through various menus but with the Google Mobile App, they can make use of the quick key mechanism. With one click, they can conduct their searches.

You can launch the app from your phone’s home screen and you can find quick button links that you can use to search, Gmail, Google Maps, and the Google Mobile services. The Google Mobile App is not actually the first app for the smartphone. Way back in March just this year, YouTube was launched for smartphones.

What is the importance of this app anyway? Many mobile phone users are always looking for new apps and with the launching of the Google Mobile App for S60 devices, users can now get all the info they need quickly. Through the app, they can instantly access Google Search. Google mobile products like Gmail, news, maps, etc. can be quickly launched as well.

You don’t need to load the browser and navigate to the site of Google.

The Google Mobile App works exclusively for the S60 series and so the owners of N97 and Nokia 5800 will just have to wait. Who knows? Perhaps in the coming months, the same application will be possible for touch models. The application can be downloaded from your S60 phone browser; just go to m.google.com.

Immediacy is the trend today since people are always on the go. Most individuals want fast and instant services. Press the ‘C’ on your phone and the application will automatically pop up. If you want, you can also change the hotkey if you don’t like to press ‘C’. It is just the default setting and like the ‘My Location’ feature, you can turn it on/off as well.

If you don’t have the mobile app yet, get it now.

How to Evade SEO Over-Optimization

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/evade-seo-over-optimization)

A lot of websites are vying to get the top rankings in search engines plus they don’t know of any limits, whether technical or ethical. Because of this, many websites were blacklisted from the major search engines due to malpractice of SEO techniques. Some SEO experts tend to use a lot of cheats and tricks which can compromise the returned results provided by search engines.

SEO experts often resort to dubious practices such as keyword stuffing. In this practice, the keyword is used a lot of times throughout the text. When the keyword density reaches 10%, search engines instantly detect it. Once a site is caught, the pages containing keyword stuffing will be penalized. Keyword density should be reflected in the page’s title, heading, and first paragraph. These areas should never be stuffed with keywords. If you can’t avoid repetition of the keyword, you can use synonyms instead.

Today, doorway pages can be easily detected through the PageRank algorithm. Before, it used to be a common SEO practice. Humans can’t see the doorway pages since they are tricked into visiting certain sites. By using it, the site can get high rankings. This is an illegal practice and your site will be punished once you get caught. Another similar malpractice is the hidden text. Such texts are invisible to humans. For instance, the background and text are of the same color; the hidden text is still included on the page’s HTML source.

Content is king – you should always keep this in mind. A duplicate content can be considered a malpractice. This happens when the text of one page is similar as the text on a diverse page on a linked site, sister-site, or the same website. If you follow this practice, the site ranking will surely drop. There are cases of content theft and so you need to check your site as well as the pages regularly. You can make use of Similar Page Checker just to be sure.

Among the many SEO tools, links are one of the most important. Backlinks are vital if you want to get high rankings but if you get it from link farms or from blacklisted websites, you can be penalized. When the outbound links of a site exceeds the in-links, you’re simply wasting effort because it can’t improve the ranks. To determine the number of your site’s backlinks, you can use Domain Stats Tool. Outbound links can be determined using the Site Link Analyzer.

Using anchor texts, folders, files names, and domain names may help boost your rankings but if you over optimize, your site can be easily kicked off the top positions. If you use a very common keyword, you will find it hard to get high rankings because of the stringent competition.

Even if you’re a very good SEO or you hired an SEO professional, you need to check your site for over-optimization regularly. Search engines will not tolerate over-optimization whether you did it intentionally or you have good intentions. Make sure that you stick with reasonable practices to avoid any problems.

How to Optimize Flash Sites

(My Original Blog Post: http://remoteworkmate.com/how-to-optimize-flash-sites)

Web designers and SEO experts are divided because of Flash. SEO experts often see Flash as a nightmare because of its technology that usually includes picture and sounds. You see, search engines can’t easily index the Flash file’s contents. You need to feed the search engines with the Flash movie’s text; otherwise, the text will be lost and it will not help in boosting your site’s rankings.

Why is it that Flash sites are disliked by search engines? The artistic qualities of Flash sites are not the main reason why search engines do not like them. Spiders find it hard to understand Flash movies – it’s as simple as that. It can’t index Flash movies unlike plain text pages. Filenames can be indexed by spiders but not its contents.

Binary formats (.swf) are used by Flash files and the spiders can’t read them without any assistance. At times, the Flash contents are also not indexed even with some form of assistance.

Even if spiders don’t like Flash movies, there are times when it is also needed. Generally, SEO experts should limit Flash movies for these reasons - many users tend to skip ads, banners, and even Flash movies because they are distracted and flash movies consume lots of bandwidth.

Stories can be enhanced with the use of Flash but it is not good at telling. If you’re an SEO, you should not use Flash for the whole site because you can never achieve high rankings. Aside from that, you need to be aware that Flash should not be used for navigation because site navigation should be built using text links only.

There are some approaches that you can use in optimizing flash sites such as:

1. Input metadata – this approach is often misunderstood and underestimated. Make sure that you put something on the metadata fields.

2. Providing alternative pages – users should never be forced to watch Flash movies and so you need to provide HTML pages. This may require a bit of work but your efforts will surely pay off since users will love it as well as search engines.

3. Flash Search Engine SDK – a highly advanced tool that can be used to extract Flash movie text. You can use the swf2html tool. As the word suggests, this tool extracts links and texts from Flash files and converts it to HTML docs. The contents should be checked and if you find any mistakes, try to make the necessary corrections. There are times when the font’s color and that of the background is the same; this is an issue since you would run into the hidden text territory.

4. SE-Flash.com – by using this tool, you can determine the Flash files that are noticeable to search engines. You can use it together with the Flash Search Engine SDK to ensure accuracy of all the extracted texts.

Make use of these approaches so that you can start optimizing your Flash sites. You can find other approaches but just make sure that you stick with the ethical SEO practices.