Search Engine Optimization 101

Monetizing a Forum

Admin — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:36:26 +0000

Forums are widely used to develop communities. For a website, they had a whole new source of traffic and the opportunity for getting more from the long tail search results. Forums cost money to run and there is considerable need for monetizing a forum.

Monetizing a forum can take many different forms:

Sell premium membership with additional benefit ad content
Pay-per-click advertising, such as Google Adsense
Sell advertising space
Affiliate marketing, such as eBay and Amazon. Specific products in the niche can also be used
Donations

How To Improve Your Alexa Ranking

Admin — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 08:47:08 +0000

{content hacked; needs to be rewritten}

Google’s ‘supplemental index’

Admin — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:01:38 +0000

There is now no such thing, so do not worry about it.

In Google’s words:

“In 2003, Google introduced a “supplemental index” as a way of showing more documents to users. Most webmasters will probably snicker about that statement, since supplemental docs were famous for refreshing less often and showing up in search results less often. But the supplemental index served an important purpose: it stored unusual documents that we would search in more depth for harder or more esoteric queries.”

Webmasters used to be concerned that there was a problem if their site or pages from their site and would look for ways to get out of the supplemental index.
However, Google got rid of the supplemental index it in 2007:

“Now we’re coming to the next major milestone in the elimination of the artificial difference between indices: rather than searching some part of our index in more depth for obscure queries, we’re now searching the whole index for every query.”

Unfortunately some wannabe SEO’s missed the memo and still think its exists leading to a lot of confusion.

The Google link: operator

Admin — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:21:25 +0000

The Google Link: operator causes a lot of angst among newbie webmasters. The purpose of the operator was to find all the links that link to a particular URL or web page, but more recently it only shows a small random sample of all the links that Google knows about and uses. Sometimes that small random sample contains no links. It is not a problem.

To use the operator, simply type link:http://www.yourdomain.com into the search box and you will get the sample that Google shows for that URL. Do not try to use this for any sort of analysis or interpretation or to compare with your competitors.

There should also be NO space between the ‘link:’ and the ‘http://www.yourdomain.com’ to use the operator. If you have a gap, you may actually find more actual links to the site, but with the gap, you are actually just searching for pages with the word ‘link’ and ‘http://www.yourdomain.com’ on them and not actually using the operator. Again, do not jump to any sorts of conclusions about what this may or may not show.

To get a better picture of your backlinks, sign into your Google Webmaster Account.

For more on the use of the different operators in Google, see this Google page. See this on the Google link: operator.

DMOZ or Open Directory Project

Admin — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:17:31 +0000

DMOZ is the Open Directory Project is a web directory owned by AOL, but run by volunteers. It is the largest web directory listing almost 5 million sites. DMOZ make the database of its directory available to other to create their own directory, hence the name ‘Open’ in the name. Google used to be one of those users, but they recently dropped the directory from their site. Webmasters are keen to get their site listed in DMOZ in the belief that a listing carries some weight in the search engines. There is certainly a lot of debate as to how much weight it carries.

To help build the directory DMOZ allows members of the public to suggest sites for editors to consider. Editors use many sources to find site to add to the directory, not just those submitted by website owners. In fact, you often see editors state that the submitted sites are the worse source of new sites for them to find good sites to add.

The problem with DMOZ, is that it adds only 3000-9000 new sites each month which is an awesome growth rate making it the fastest growing web directory by a substantial margin. The problem arises, that there are probably more than 3000-9000 good sites worthy of being listed created each month which means that DMOZ’s task is going to fall further behind each month. If a webmaster submits a site, it may be years before it actually gets reviewed.

Due to the expectation of webmasters of getting a listing, there are a lot of angst among webmasters about how long it takes (when they not actually giving DMOZ anything in return for the listing!). Because of this you will come across a lot of allegations about corruption and favoritism in DMOZ. A lot of that comes from webmasters whose sites are not usually good enough to meet DMOZ’s high standard or whose sites have not been listed as quick as they would like.

Most of that anger is misplaced; is not going to change anything; and it’s not a productive use of time. Its DMOZ’s website and they can run it how they like. Webmasters are not ‘customers’ of DMOZ and cannot really have an expectation of service from them. If you want a site listed in DMOZ, then just follow the guidelines, submit once to the one best category. Then move on. Don’t waste your time checking if listed (it won’t change anything); don’t resubmit (it will hurt your chances of a review by an editor); by all means vent your frustration in SEO forums about DMOZ, but keep in mind that this mental energy is probably better spent doing something else more productive. Consider being a volunteer editor to contribute to the project rather than take pot shots as the editors who have not listed your site.

For more, check these resources:
What is DMOZ? Understanding DMOZ
Why does Google use DMOZ?
How to get a forum listed in DMOZ