Our Monmouth Blog

One of the most important things you can do you for website to improve your search engine ranking is to add quality inbound links. A quality inbound link is a link into your website from another website that has similar content and shares keywords with your site. Sites with a higher page rank (sometimes called Google PR) are preferred. I only recommend linking from known sources so that you stay clear of link farms and spam sites.

Here is a list of 11 sites where you can get a free quality inbound link:

1. Alexa.com - uses DMOZ database.
2. BizHwy.com
3. B2B Guide
4. ComFind.com
5. DMOZ
6. Infowebworld
7. Jayde B2B
8. Google Business Center
9. StartupNation
10. Verizon SuperPages
11. YellowPages

What other sites do you recommend?

Regards,

Howard

In the age of identity theft there are a few precautions we should take as Internet users and business owners to safe guard our personal information. Most of us are aware of how viruses are passed via email and generally know how to stay clear of most problems. There are other pitfalls, but even worse there is a common misconception that email is private. This may be a surprise to some but your email is absolutely not private.
Emails can be picked off on the open Internet, retrieved from junked computers, unknowingly or accidentally forwarded to the wrong party, open to system administrator review; the list goes on and on. Small business owners are extremely vulnerable because they often use their POP3 business email as a primary email account. Are you comfortable with your web host protecting your emails?
I recommend that everyone open a third party account like a gmail or yahoo email account and make that your primary email. This email should be guarded carefully and only given to only trusted associates and family. Unfortunately, if dad loves sending the (bad joke) chain email you received 6 months ago don’t give him your primary email address. It’s a tough judgment call but security and privacy take priority. Guard this email carefully but remember that it too is not private.
What precautions do you use to keep your email and personal information safe? Share your tips!

Regards,
Howard

One of the most important aspects to properly manage your website is to understand user behavior. If you do not have a good tool to extract this data from your website you are missing out on opportunities to improve your website traffic. There are many good free tools available that can be easily installed with minimum work.

Google Analytics is an excellent tool that I use and really like. The dashboard provides a concise view of your sites traffic, where your visitors came from, and your most highly visited pages. The dashboard provides a simple and easy way to drill down into the data to get more information with over 80 reports. For example, Google Analytics breaks down your sites traffic sources into three useful categories: direct traffic, referring sites, and search engines. The graphical format is easy to use and identify trends.

AWStats is another valuable tool. While AWStats does not have all of the graphical elements that Google Analytics does all the data is there. The 1 page format is simple and easy to use and also provides drill down to details. I like the fact that AWStats provides details about Robots and Spiders visits which is a data point that Google Analytics does not offer.

Overall these are two robust statistics packages with lots of features and useful information. If you do not have statistics on your website today I would urge you to get one of these packages on your website. This is an important tool to enhance your online marketing capabilities.

Regards,

Howard

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is a process for increasing natural search engine results. There are no magic elixirs to get you top rankings over night. SEO is never completed it is something that needs to be tweaked and watched on a regular basis. But if you are committed, success is possible even with competitive keywords. Since PPC (Pay Per Click) has gotten extremely expensive search engine optimization becomes even more important for all businesses from smallest one person operations to the largest corporations. It is not uncommon for businesses to bid over $5 per click on competitive keywords. There are a few things to keep in mind when you commit to SEO either by doing it yourself or having it done by a professional.

Content is king when it comes to site engine optimization and drawing visitors to your website. Choice of language and descriptive terms are very important because ultimately this is how a search engine will categorize your site. There is a great tool called SEOQuake which has a key word density tool. This tool provides a quick and accurate picture of what your site keywords are. It is important that the keyword density of your content align with your meta keywords. Wayne Hurlbert in a great post on webpronews.com said “No more than 2% of a web page’s words should be the targeted keywords. Any more will be considered spamming.” He also reminds us that “Poorly written copy might draw some extra visitor traffic, but is unlikely to convert that traffic into sales.” We must resist all attempts to needless stuff pages with keywords, it will not help your efforts.

If you want to be successful your pages must be correctly coded. Your site should validate properly according to W3C coding standards. W3C Markup Validation Service, is a free service that checks Web documents (pages) in formats like HTML for conformance to W3C recommendations and other standards. Once you have properly coded pages <Title> tags, meta “keyword” and “description” tags, and <h1> tags can have a great influence on your search results. I would like to dig deeper into successful coding of pages in a future post but I would like to point out a simple check without looking at any code. What do your page titles say about your website to its users and search engines?

Site age plays a large role in how well a site ranks particularly in Google. Jim Boykins Internet marketing specialist has said “… a huge majority of sites will not get into the top 30 of Google for competitive phrases without having been online for at least 2 years.” in his Feb 2007 blog post. Jim Westergren and randfish of SEOmoz.org have discussed in detail about Google sandbox and the credibility/time delay it puts on sites. Unfortunately there are no short cuts here with a good amount of patience you will see results.

Without being technically savvy there are several things you can do to see the SEO health of your site. The bottom line is that if any of the basic principles I have discussed here are not correct on your site than there are things you can do to improve your natural search engine rankings.

Regards,

Howard

I StumbledUpon a great website today. It reminded me how important protecting yourself on the Internet is from a privacy and information security perspective. Everyone should be aware of what information trails you leave on the Internet when you browse, shop, download, etc.

The below URL does a great job of help making us aware:

IP ANDROID

Tell me what you think, I look forward to hearing your comments.

Regards,

Howard

This is a great tip for those of you that are looking for a quick and easy inbound link. A inbound link is a transferring link from a external website (different domain) that links to your website. It is a great benefit to your search engine rank to increase the number of inbound links your website site has. The number of inbound links has a direct impact on your Google pagerank (PR). The Firefox Google toolbar includes a pagerank checker which I recommend getting. The higher your pagerank the better your visibility on Google. Pagerank works on a 0 -10 scale with only the most popular site getting a 10. For example, apple.com is ranked a 10 at the time of this post.

Now for the free link. Goto www.superpages.com. On the bottom of the page is a link called “Add or Edit a business”. Enter your business number in the field and follow the instructions. If you are not listed in the directory this another opportunity for some free local exposure. If you are already listed make sure your website URL is included.

This is a great freebie. Do you have a great Internet tip? We would love to hear it!

Regards,

Howard

Social bookmarking is a way for a person to find, track, and follow websites that they enjoy. Relevancy of sites is determined by the web community. If you haven’t used one before I suggest it is worth your time to get familiar with one. Think about the way you use Google today. Most people use Google search to find a site based on information you provide (search terms) and if you like the site then bookmark it in your browser. With a social bookmarking site the idea is very similar. You now have the ability to easily create your own personal website portal (portal: a website that functions as a starting point with links to other sites and content) that you can share with the web community.

There are many social bookmarking websites that are very popular today. Sites like Technorati, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, BUMPzee are just a few of the popular choices. Many of these sites have plugins that you can use with Firefox, a popular alternative browser. Plugins make the job of marking and organizing your favorites much easier. All of these sites are based on the same premise but have different features and strengths.

Technorati: is an Internet search engine for blogs. Visitors index websites by “tagging” them and find desired information by category and searches which include the latest news, popular books and music. Once you tag a site all recent postings on are aggregated and displayed on your home page.

del.icio.us: web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. One of the nice features of “delicious” is the ability to use your bookmarks on any computer anywhere. The delicious home page has a hotlist and a “popular” list which can be a great resource. You can also share you bookmark list (if you opt to) with the community as well as look at other members bookmarks as another way to explore.

StumbleUpon: is a plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. A new site recommendation is displayed when the user clicks the Stumble button on the browser’s toolbar. What a great way to discover new websites. StumbleUpon uses a recommendation system that selects which new web page to display based on the user’s preferences and ratings, ratings by friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. You rate sites by a simple thumbs up or thumbs down selection.

BUMPzee: BUMPzee is a niche blog aggregator with a active community. The site is organized into bite-sized communities which pulls the latest relevant blog entries. I recommend this site if you plan on setting up a blog of your own in the future.

There are many other sites and tools out there. What other sites do you use?

Regards,

Howard