So, what is your take on spam ?

We all hate splogs, don't we ? Sadly, as I venture deeper and deeper into the World Wide Web, I see more of splogs and less of blogs. The sad thing is that many of these splogs make money too, despite simply being content leechers.

Was Adsense a factor in the increase of splogs ? In a way, yes. When people started to read Adsense success stories, they felt that they could be the next Joel Comm or the next Jeremy Schoemaker. And this was to be achieved without an iota of work. So there you go-

Cannot write content- leech it off. Do not give credit to the original site owner either. The sad part is that because the web is so large, not everybody has the patience to contact the leecher's host or file a DMCA complaint.

Cheap domain names- infos. Infos are extremely cheap for the first year, you could get them for ninety nine cents at Godaddy. Therefore infos were the choice for such spam domains, and unfortunately, the extension got tagged with the labels spam and MFA. When you see penis-enlargement-dick-enlargement-boost-sex-power-cock-xxxxxxx-xxx.info or some other similar domain, you can be rest assured that it is a site that should ideally not exist on the internet.

And last but not the least, the content spammers. Despite viagra not really being spam, yours truly and many others associate it with spam. Ask any webmaster the first two niches that come to his mind when you say the word spam- the answers will be pharmacy and sex. These two niches keep my Akismet on wordpress run sites extremely busy.

I hate idiotic comments like this too

Hi, I liked this site very much.

(SEO Services mynation ), (Web Design mycity), xanax, tramadol, shemales............

The list could go on and on.

And sadly, splogs won't stop....infact more and more of them are going to flood the market in the future.

Bangladesh SEO meet

SEO meets are quite common in the USA, but you do not see too many of them in the sub continent. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see a thread on Digital Point which announced an SEO meet in Bangladesh on February 1, 2008.

The meet is sponsored by Hutbazar.com, and as per the thread, does not demand any registration fee.

Check out the thread for further information.

Indian SEO conference

The folks in India are holding an SEO conference in New Delhi on the 31st of March 2007.

Experts like Andy Hagans, Rich McIver and Brian Thibault are expected to come down to India to attend the meet.

The charges for the meet is USD 50 ( includes lunch and dinner) Check out the official site of the meet here

Threadwatch.org SEO contest

Threadwatch recently had an SEO contest. The term needed to rank for was " Dave Pasternack"

The winners can be found here
Contest Results

How to find the number of supplemental pages in Google for your website

This is courtesy an article by Aaron Wall

To know the total number of supplemental pages that your site has in Google, simply type in this code.

site:www.yoursite.com *** -view

The normal site:www.domain.com query gives you an idea of all your pages that are in the Google index, which includes supp and non supp pages.

The code I mentioned above will specifically tell you how many pages are in the supp index. If you find that most of your pages are in the supplemental index, it is probably time for you to revamp your site, change its structure so that there are no orphaned pages ( pages which look like they are standing alone without any links to em) and point some good links to your site.

Painting Franchises- a brief outlook

Lots of webmasters, apart from doing biz online, have businesses in the offline world too. Both require hard work and dedication to suceed. Setting up a new startup in a particular field can be difficult. To make it an established player can be an even more difficult job. This is where franchising comes into place.

Franchising is basically a system where one pays a recurring sum to the franchisor in order to use his trademarks and products. The marketing and training costs of the franchisee are borne by the franchisor, and the franchisee can make use of the various facilities offered to cut costs. The earliest example of an attempt at franchising would be Isaac Singer- the man behind the Singer brand of sewing machines. In the 1800's , when Singer employed this model, it wasn't so common. Today, however we have franchises every where- in all fields possible. Let us take an example of paint franchises.

Getting your house painted properly is one of the biggest headaches for a house owner.People who do the job well are in great demand, and are often rewarded with multiple projects. In such a situation,a painting franchise opportunity is something most people would jump to take. You invest a certain amount ( every business requires an investment to set up, doesn't it ?), wait for them to set up everything, do a little spade work yourself, and sit and relax. Both residences and commercial properties are in need of painting, so there is quite a good market out there waiting to be tapped.

Some people manage to break even at the end of the first month itself. I stress on the word some, because it doesn't happen to all. But, if you are somebody who puts in decent effort, there is no reason why you shouldn't be among the ''some''.

Directory Contest ends

The Directory contest, organised by Mr Michael Damann, has drawn to a close. Mike is still checking out the results, so that the participants who used unfair means to get the top will be disqualified.

Here are the results as Mike saw them at his end.

Results

For now, Ask Directory looks to be the winner. Congratulations to them.

Google introduces new Webmaster tools

Google has introduced another nifty addition to its webmaster tools. Previously, the link: query which was used to find the number of links to a site in G used to display only selected backlinks, and not the full number. Hence, Yahoo or MSN were considered better indicators of backlinks.

Now, Google's Webmaster Central enables you to see the total number of links to your site. You can't see others' statistics.

Check it out today.

New badge from Yahoo !

Many of you webmasters might already be using Yahoo to check the number of incoming links to your website as Google doesn't show all the links.

Here is one more feature newly introduced by Yahoo- a badge which queries Yahoo's Site Explorer to get real time stats of how many sites link to you. Therefore you can show your visitors how popular your website it.

Yahoo Site Explorer Badge

The Directory Contest Update

The Directory Contest will draw to an end in a few days from now- 6th February 2007, 10 AM PST to be precise.

At this moment, I see ASK directory, Ewebpages.org , Gii.in and Links Arena at the top when I search for directorycontest.com in Google.

Note that you may not see the same results from where you are, as different data centers give out different information.

I'll give you guys an update on the 6th too .

Wikipedia to enforce no follows

Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia, arguably the most popular of its genre today.
If you might have noticed, the first page of any search term on google throws up wikipedia, thus showing that it is an authority site.It is also a high PR site, if you check its PR using any page rank tool.

Because of the fact that it allows users to edit articles, many webmasters have been guilty of spamming wikipedia with their sites which aren't really useful to the community.Its editors remove the links, but it often turns to be a time consuming exercise.

Enforcing the no follow link will surely reducing in the amount of spamming that this valuable resource is currently being subjected to.

Kudos to them.

Happy birthday Jim

Today also happens to be the birthday to be one of the best SEO's of our generation.You can wish him at his site or one of the many webmaster forums of which he is a member.

Jim Westergren

Happy birthday, Jim.

Recent musings

I am sometimes astounded at the number of directories which I come across while prowling the internet. Ok, make that '' crawl'' instead of prowl :P

Coming back to the topic, there are hundreds of directories - you want them topic wise like blogs, or country wise- like Indian Web Directory . And of course, there are the good old general ones too :)

Speaking about Indian web directories, somebody asked me yesterday for Web Hosting India.I first thought he was cracking funny jokes, for why would somebody specifically ask for Indian hosting.A quick search on Google didn't reveal many quality hosts though.One of the facts some Indian entrepeneur must keep in mind if he wants to creat some thing great from scratch.

Directory Contest

Many of you webmasters would have tried your hand out at SEO contests. Here is a contest with a difference. It is the directory contest and it is being organised by Mike Dammann. All you need to do is rank first in Google for the term directorycontest.com

Just remember that you cannot do onsite optimization to win this contest. There is some serious cash on offer too- the first prize is a whopping $2,000.

Let us see which directory kicks butt. Visit directorycontest.com for more details.

Add your link today

This site kinda caught my attention today, and I think that it is well worth a blurb or two.

Add Link Online is basically a site where you can get your site listed for a minimum fee of $1. The higher you pay, the higher your site appears on the list.If somebody buys a spot for a price greater than what you have bought it for, their link goes ahead of yours. And if you think you need to pay a lumpsum to top, think again.You can upgrade by paying extra $$ at a later time, and your new position will be determined by the sum total of what you paid before and what you have paid now.

Many webmasters spend a considerable amount of their time advertising and buying links for their site. Value for money is therefore what they look for. This one certainly offers that.And there is a cool stats figure which tells how many links have been bought, how much has been spent on advertising, etc. And the owner appears to be promoting it quite well.

Buy $1 link here.

Avatar advertising- new way of brand promotion

Signatures at webmaster and other forums were always used for creating awareness about your site. Avatar advertising is another effective way of brand promotion.

Just check out Digital Point. This is a hugely popular webmaster forum, incase you weren't aware. Just check out the profiles of some members with greater than 500 posts. Most of them will either sport a site-sift or sevenseek avatar.Some of the generous souls did it for free, while the others were lured with $$. Cool way of advertising, IMO.

Walking with the Tigers

Many of you might be wandering what I am talking about. If you have some money to spare, then definitely consider this cause.

You might have heard of the Tiger Temple in Western Thailand. It keeps various animals, including the tigers. The animals are quite tame, and tourists are allowed to pat the tigers. Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno Forest Monastery is a support site for the Tiger temple.Donors are gratefully acknowledged on the main page with a link. The higher you donate, the higher your link is placed. And the site isn't a fraud, all donations do go to the Tiger Temple.

Visit the site today

Do your bit today for a good cause.

CPayscom2 Online Casino

I am sure that some of you might be taking part in the CPayscom2 Online Casino contest.

It is an seo contest, and to win the moolah you need to get your site to the top of the SE's. I'll be writing an article on why SEO contests are so popular a little while later.

Times Magazine names Youtube as " Invention of the Year"

The company founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim has added another feather in its cap. After being taken over by internet giant Google this year, Youtube has been declared as Times invention of the year.

Video sharing wasn't new, but the phenomenon these guys created surely was.

Reddit has been acquired

Reddit, the online news aggregator and social bookmarking site, has been acquired by Conde Nast publications, the owner of " Wired Digital" magazine.

The sum is undisclosed but various rumours estimate it to be around the 65 million $ mark. Reddit's 4 founders cum employees will relocate to San Francisco, Wired's headquarters- Steve Huffman, Alexis Ohanian, Aaron Swartz and Chris Slowe.

Another acquisition after G bought Youtube not too long ago.

Looks like the acquisitions are flying thick and fast

Links Arena- SEO friendly web directory

Links Arena

Links Arena is an SEO friendly, human edited, spam free and family friendly web directory. It is organised via a good category structure. You can go for the regular links ( w/wo reciprocal) or buy a featured listing. The featured listing currently costs $ 20.

It also contains a collection of the best web directories across the net and is definitely worth taking a look

Submit your site today !!!

Seo and Stuff

Our site for today is Seo and Stuff

The site is a relatively new one. As the name suggests, it primarily focuses on SEO . It offers various SEO services i.e :-

1.) Directory Submission -- Various packages are available to suit individual tastes. You can choose between 100, 200, 300 and 400 submissions to various PR 3-7 directories. There is a tracking system in place for your orders, and 10 day money back guarantee is present, in the rare case that you might not be too happy with what you get.

2.)SEO Consulting

3.) Link Building

4.) Link Baiting

5.) Copywriting

The script/ tools section is under development and apart from the normal tools, will contain " Skype Reception" and " Stuff Directory".

The blog contains some interesting blurbs about China and the owner's personal life too . Also check out the interview of the owner of the Epitrope directory when you are there. It makes for interesting reading.

The benefits of submitting your sites to directories

To begin with, lets know what a web directory is. A web directory is , as the name suggests, a directory of websites. It categorizes web sites and contains links to them.

Directories help new sites to take their first few steps in the vast world that is the internet. As you might know, search engines rank sites on basis on the number of back links, or inbound links. The greater the number of links from authority sites, the higher you move up in the results pages. The higher you move, the greater is the chance that you will start receiving visitors from the SE's for your chosen keywords. Submitting your sites to directories is thus a great way of gaining precious links.

Link Submissions to directories are of various types:
a.) Free submission
b.) Reciprocal Links
c.) Featured link
d.) Featured Home page link.

From looking at this, you might be tempted to say that free directories are the way to go. But a paid submission in a reputed directory can be of much greater weightage than say 100 free directories. Free directories do sometimes tend to look like link farms, and do not really have much credibility in the SE's. If the directory is free, there isn't much of a chance the owner would have gone that extra yard to promote his directory because of the spam that comes with it too. There are certain directories which use the no follow tag, submitting to whom won't be of any real use.

Most directories are human edited. Therefore a listing in a reputed directory would mean that your site is really worth visiting, which would therefore again increase traffic . Getting into directories like DMOZ and Yahoo therefore means a lot for the site owner.

So what are you waiting for?? Get ready, get submitting and reap the benefits.

My first post

Hello folks. This is my first post here. The World Wide Web as you might know, is one hell of a large place, and it will continue to expand as time progresses.

I intend to check out some of the best sites and directories on the web and blog about em. Plus you will also see some articles from time to time regarding SEO and Internet marketing from me.

Keeping checking out this space for more.

Cheeers