Sid - Blogging for Newbie Webmasters’

Former Google employees prepare rival search engine.

Read the full story here!

Hi! Back to my blog after a long days of interval. I did really miss you all a lot, but I was absolutely occupied with my new project! I’ll tell a lot about that later on but for the time being let me tell you some fabulous new feature of Google Toolbar! It appears that this is going to be the saviour for all of us - the webmasters! when your site returns “404  - Not Found” errors.

You must appreciate it is difficult to get traffic among the forest of websites, so you need to dig hard to get some real visitors. Now if  your visitors see “404 - MESSAGE BOARD” not only that is a frustrating experience for them, it must be a great disappointment for you as well.

As said in their Offical blog: “The latest release of Google Toolbar, however, helps users by detecting site issues and providing alternatives”. Interested? - Read full details here!

Also I’ll let you know about my latest project shortly. I would like to hear your feedback thereon.

Relax! Bye!

Hi! The search engine giant seems to be facing difficulties in keeping up to its promise - sites supported with paid links are still finding decent position in search results. I read about this news, sorry, can’t share the links - but it was in the comments section, where some traces of concrete evidence.

Fact is that it may be hard for the bot to detect paid links - irrespective of how much clever can it be. Or, the bot will penalize sites telling - ‘Your link here for $1′! It may be for advertisement purpose as well, and a claim like that does not guarantee that the owner has managed to earn a single paid link for that site. Getting paid link is not that easy!

So, it will be more like feedback or man-monitored algorithm? I need some serious in sight into this issue.

On the other hand partnership deeds are just going great for Google - with its new tie-up with Swiss Sunrise , the second largest telecommunications company in Switzerland is offering its customers a new e-mail service based on Google Mail.

It looks like Google is also being used as a password cracker read this story.

So the internet is full of Google activity!  More  Google stuff will follow. Stay tuned.

Google - Mighty search engine giant is always in look up to provide new service. Starting with providing relevant information for the surfers, it has always been able to get hold of control key in terms on Internet industry. Besides, being able to keep upgrading and updating search results algorithm very efficiently, Google has done great work in extending its service sector. You can blog, manage webmails, photos, browse internet using a great toolbar, even host websites (100MB google space!) for free.

With goDaddy!

When it comes to Google, their no-compromise attitude has always been set at focal point of any development work. I got to learn recent tie-up of Google with goDaddy. Now it is possible to access Googles’ Webmaster tools, presumably with some restrictions - for goDadday users. The perfect tie-up say I must, as I am a big fond of both Google, and GoDaddy, for providing cheapest domain names and hosting services over the years supported with great care for their customers!

Android SDK!

Anyway, now Google has decided to serve more people by entering into Mobile industry armed with their open source software projects - Android! for mobile. Much needed SDK for it has already been released, and interestingly well ahead of release of the phone itself. This will provide developers to get accustomed with the new framework.

Fragmentation issue!

There is an alarm bell already ringing in the market of mobile industry, the new framework will fragment the market further for compatibility issues. The market is already multi-parted, making it hard for developers to write codes compatible with all sorts of handsets, in direct contradiction to Java tagline - “write once, run anywhere”!

Finally!

After all it is Google! After all we’ll get to see that never-compromise-with-quality promise, and after all lots of brain twisting challenges for developers! So let us welcome it.

After the recent Google PR update, I was rather shocked to note that sites like statcount.com has suffered a PR drop! The reasons thereof I have mentioned already. However, the importance of StatCount.com may not be denied and a PR of merely six is just not befitting to its status. Anyway what to do when the great “G” rates sites as reputed as this one in that way – a rather shocking approach of Google to judge importance of the web page. But I’m happy to see PR soon reverts back to ten, the green bar spanning through the entire length of the container box – so, it was just a temporary issue. Since Google has earned reputation for implementing algorithm based updates, and not manual updates – and the toolbar PR changes take quite some time as well, and it does not have past records of selectively changing the PR of particular websites – so what does it indicate in this case? Does not it look like someone behind the screen manually monitoring the effects of algorithm update, and taking emergency action when something is wrong?

Only Google can answer this query, but I’m personally delighted to see PR of StatCounter.com is back to ten!

Stay tuned, as I will continue to update this blog more often than ever before with new strategies of affiliate marketing.

Significance of Inbound links are no more new to the web publishers. Inbound links help your site to get stable position in most of the modern search engines. Webmasters, therefore, like to check the number of inbound links pointing to a page.

I would spend hours each day earlier to check for link: operator updates, but over the past one year or more, it does not appear to generate accurate results. Webmasters tool seems to do better a job in reporting inbound links. There are some updates as well in those statistics, might have taken place within past few days.

As I was tremendously busy with customization of a Joomla Template, so, I could not manage time to check out the updates! Anyway, thanks to the news feeds, which keep me updated.

Please check out this.

Since we have published our websites, or blogs - now what we can expect at the initial phase but for traffic! The major source of traffic is still the generic search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and ASK.com to a little extent. So you need to optimize your pages for getting search engine traffic. You can use these fantastic list of tools to do it even better!
Search Engine Optimization: Top20 SEO Tools

However, search engines often return more than what you actually need and you may need to invest more time to get even a small piece of information. I can recollect that I had to search for hours to get a simple Joomla hack. There were more results than I would need but most of them were useless.

That is why importance of social bookmarking sites are on the rise.  I personally like human edited niche web directories to meet up my quest for information in a specific subject. For extensive search I have to revert to traditional searches though.

As a matter of fact there is a drift in search patterns with more people tending to use sites like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, PRweb, StumbleUpon, Technorati, YouTube, del.icio.us or Digg.com to get relevant information. So, you must not exclude these options while framing traffic strategies. Also despite recent Google PR Update, niche web directories will continue to give you some traffic.

And finally, do everything possible to ensure return visits. I have heard of it a lot but really see the difference in CTR when I get to manage return visitors in some of my websites, blogs.

Enjoy!

I was getting rather impatient as it took more than four months to see a change in that Green bar, and once again, this PageRank update has offered me much reason for satisfaction. Let’s try to analyze it starting with my blog.
I have spent good enough time to add values to my blog; to the best of my knowledge I have made attempts to update contents based on latest happenings in the web world, which are particularly useful for webmasters; and Google did not seem to do any injustice by updating PR from pale gray (most probably as an offshoot of my childish act before last PR Update) to gorgeous green. It is now PR3, and I suppose fair enough!

One thing must I share with you regarding latest moves of Google in appraising a web page in terms of its PR. There is no need to make extraordinary efforts to earn in bound links. I did not make a blatant attempt to win a PR hike at least with this blog. Rather, I focused on the basics - content, quality content for my readers, and it did the trick.

The green bar is also hanging over hostingnote.com, but considering the amount of efforts I made to get inbound links by submitting that site in over hundreds of free directories, the result in just not rewarding, which shows Google does not count the quantity anymore, and it is the quality of inbound links that should be given top priority. Anyway, anything is better than that gray-bar, which simply absorbs your every inspiration.

With another website which is still under test-bed, I did not get any good news for the home page, but an internal page dedicated to celebrate a very special occasion with some useful content has gained PR (Getting some good Google traffic as well), which shows the perfection of Google’s PR evaluation Algorithm.

This moment must be very disappointing for those who have been experiencing PR drops, particularly for the Newbie webmasters. But just do not get disheartened, neither get hot. My humble advice would be to spend more time in adding values to your website content (Wish I could have done that for hostingnote.com as well, atleast some more informative articles would help), there is no need to go on for hunting IBLs ( poor quality IBL may rather damage your overall PR), and be sure to witness a wider green bar after the next PR Update.

Let’s try to stay cool, please!

Hold on to watch out the after effect of another Google PR Update. PageRank of some of the most renowned blogs or websites with blog have dropped. StatCounter.com (From 8 to 6 ), Engadget.com (From 7 to 5), Problogger.net (From 6 to 4) - the list, so far been prepared by different sources (Crenk.com , Dailyblogtips.com, News.com) clearly indicates a pattern - either the websites selling text link Ads or associated with big blog network have selectively been placed at the gun-point.

First of all, it does not look like an overall PR Update but a filter applied on existing PR Algorithm.

Secondly, it was rather inevitable for sites selling text link ads as nearly one month ago Google Officially declared to penalize sites displaying ‘Text Link Ads’.

Thirdly, Blogging is one of the over used method exercised nowadays to get inbound links and thereby increasing PR. Participation in blog network has been obviously helping a lot to get much sought-after inbound links over the past few years.
Let’s take a look at Google Webmaster Guideline:

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.

So it appears that Google is once again moving towards the right direction by applying this new filter. However, since high PR has somehow helped some bloggers, or websites to sell paid links, therefore, it will be once again a tough challenge for many of them to survive.

It is now a over exposed secret that you need to get quality IBLs in order to get steady search engine rankings for highly competitive keywords. I admit there is a lot of doubt/debate about the role Google PR plays in ranking as you can see Low PR sites ranking higher for a specific search term that its High PR counterpart but nobody has denied the significance of PR. PR actually measures the overall importance of a web page and not its relevance with respect to a specific search term and for highly competitive keywords - it seems to be still a good yardstick.

Earlier attempts were made to get more IBLs by exchanging links, trading links or even paying for a link to be included in paid directories or other sites offering paid link inclusion services. This would help you getting huge quantity of IBLs overnight. But such strategy may not see any more success because of some changes in Google Algo. Now all you need is to get few quality inbound links from relevant sites (better high PR) and you are definitely going to see a PR hike. So, quantity no more matters, it is the quality you have to focus on. Thus, as Google has suggested -’You need to look for editorially given link’.

It is not that easy to get links editorially awarded unless you have a website with unique, high quality content providing useful information. So the latest strategy would be to:

• Spend more time with your website or blog - update it with quality content frequently.
• If you want to spend money for IBLs, pay that to professional authors instead who have the capability to write great contents.
• Announce your site in forums, social networking sites and social book marking sites to get the attention of more people.
• Take part in forums - your keyword juicy forum signature will act as a good guide for Google BOT.
• Do not waste your time submitting sites to directories, who ask for a reciprocal link in return.
• Do not waste much time to submit links to different directories. If you are just getting crazy to submit links, submit only to high PR directories.
• Articles are still a great weapon both in terms of traffic and IBLs. So write and submit articles to different article submission directories as frequently as you can. If you spend few hours to create a page with real value for the visitors of your website, spend some more time to write an abstract of the page and submit that to different article directories.
• Submit your newly added pages to social bookmarking sites without spamming.
• You can also start your own blog with keyword rich links pointing to your website. But just do not make it a clone of your website or vice-versa. Both of them must have uniqueness and individual significance.
• Create you profiles to as many social networking sites as possible that allow adding feeds to your blog/website.
• Spend some time visiting other relevant blogs/websites and take part in discussions.
• Consider posting comments in relevant blogs - you will get some traffic as well as PR, if there is no ‘no follow’ attribute set.
• Submit sites to classified directories of high repute, not too many there though.

So the latest Google updates are definitely offering an incentive for webmasters who spend more time, devotion and commitment to develop high quality website and it is heading towards the right direction. You need not be a spammer under compulsion to such links.

Just going out to attend my day job, if I find some more methods, I’ll update it in the evening.

Good day.