Posted on March 21st, 2009 by admin
Using Xbox 360’s connection to Windows Media Player, people can use their Xbox 360 to surf the web and watch online videos from places like NBC.com or YouTube.Required:
- Computer with Windows Media Player 11 installed
- Xbox 360 on the same network as the computer
- Xbox Live subscription
- MCE Browser
The process is simple:
- Install the MCE Browser on a computer running Windows Media Player 11.
- Connect your Xbox 360 to the Windows Media Player.
- Get on your Xbox 360 and select the Media Center
- Surf the web and watch videos from the Xbox 360 (screenshots)
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Posted on March 11th, 2009 by admin
Move over Wordpress MU. WP-Hive is poised to take center stage. WP-Hive is quickly becoming the best way to run multiple Wordpress websites with one installation of Wordpress.
What is Wordpress MU?
Wordpress MU (also known as WPMU) allows webmasters to use one Wordpress MU installation to host multiple Wordpress websites/blogs. Those blogs could be on one domain or many domains. However, Wordpress MU is based on an old version of Wordpress and has not kept up with changes in plugins or other technology.
What Makes WP-Hive Better?
In my view, the main advantage that WP-Hive offers is that it is compatible with the latest version of Wordpress because it was developed as a plugin for Wordpress. This means that it has the latest security hole fixes and is compatible with most new plugins.
The author of WP-Hive noted these advantages:
What are the advantages of WP Hive over WordPress MU? Among others, here is a short list:
- WP Hive is built for simplicity. It is just plug and play - you are not required to know or write PHP or SQL code.
- WP Hive can be used on an existing blog. Once you install WP Hive, you can just add as many new blogs (theoretically an infinite number) as you would like.
- WP Hive is built as a plugin which adds the functionality to main Wordpress release, whereas Wordpress MU is a release in itself. This means that WP Hive will theoretically always be compatible with the latest versions of WordPress. In contrast, Wordpress MU is usually a few versions back.
One drawback to WP-Hive for some webmasters is that the current edition is intended to be used in a multi-blog, single administrator environment. That means there is one admin for all the blogs. However, this may change with the next release.
I am excited about WP-Hive. I’ve been forced to use Wordpress MU because despite its flaws, it was the best option available (there are other options). That is no longer the case. With WP-Hive, you get all the benefits of the latest Wordpress version with one installation served on multiple blogs.
WP-Hive will soon have a new edition which promises to add more features. Follow the latest news at the WP Hive blog.
Filed under: All Posts, Blogging | 1 Comment »
Posted on February 2nd, 2009 by admin
Here are a couple good free phone conference services:
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Posted on January 23rd, 2009 by admin
You can use Camstudio, an open source free audio-video application, to ‘record’ PowerPoints and add audio. The result is a video of your PowerPoint slides along with the background music or oral presentation you added.
Another option is PPT to DVD, which can be purchased.
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Posted on November 24th, 2008 by admin
The question is, which smartphone is best when you need to have it synchronize with Microsoft Outlook and notetaking software like OneNote or Evernote?
The smartphone options are the iPhone, Google’s G1, Blackberry, or a Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphone.
Here is the scenario. You have a PC, and you want the smartphone to share information with Outlook. It must also be able to share data with Microsoft OneNote or Evernote, which are both excellent for taking notes and storing random information. You might also want it to share information with Gmail.
Here are the results of my research in November 2008. Read more »
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Posted on November 3rd, 2008 by admin
I wanted a PHP script that could identify the keywords someone used when searching for my site on a search engine, and then display those keywords on my webpage. For example, my page would say this:
If you were searching for keyword1 keyword2, you’ve come to the right place.
The code shouldn’t be too difficult, unless you want it to work for all search engines. Fortunately, a few programmers have written complex PHP scripts to handle many search engines. Check out the discussion, some code, and links to some code here: Pulling Keywords from referrer url
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Posted on October 22nd, 2008 by admin
Posted on October 14th, 2008 by admin
Use a CSS layout builder tool to start a website:
Use CSS layouts to create a layout skeleton:
CSS templates include images and colors:
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Posted on October 13th, 2008 by admin
Want to compare the traffic on your competitor’s websites to yours? Try Statsaholic, which gives you the information offered by Compete and Quantcast.
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Posted on September 26th, 2008 by admin
If selling a website, use SitePoint. If selling just a domain, use Domainers. ShoeMoney has a good domain name and website valuation article.
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Posted on September 26th, 2008 by admin
If you have a video that you want posted to video sharing sites. Consider these sites that will do it easily for you:
Or read these reviews comparing them: 1, 2, or video review.
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Posted on September 26th, 2008 by admin
In addition to Google Analytics, here are a couple other cool, free analytics options:
- Clicktale will allow you to watch the screen of your website visitors. You can see them move the mouse, click buttons, etc. It’s amazing. The videos are not real-time, so they are saved for you to watch after the visitors have left.
- Crazy Egg will show you where your website visitors are clicking and where they are not by displaying a heatmap.
Filed under: All Posts, Blogging, PPC, SEO | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 23rd, 2008 by admin
UberCamp has some nice free training for those interested in affiliate marketing promoted by a PPC campaign.
The two major affiliate networks are
Popular CPA (cost per action) networks are
A good lead generation site is the Primary Ad Network. (Thanks, Robb.) However, this site has high-volume requirements and is looking for affiliates that participate in PPC, Email marketing, or Incentivized traffic. This is not a traditional affiliate program in which SEO plays a heavy part. But its sister site, www.kolimbo.com, is a traditional affiliate network with access to hundreds of merchants.
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Posted on September 18th, 2008 by admin
Posted on August 25th, 2008 by admin
I have been dabbling with SMF (Simple Machines Forum). SMF is a good, free forum. However, SMF is not SEO ready. It requires some tweaking for search engines. Here are a few good sites with SMF SEO advice:
SMF is a good free forum. vBulletin is by far the best forum, but it must be purchased.
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Posted on August 20th, 2008 by admin
This will be a growing list of Drupal modules that I use or like:
- Alinks changes any word or phrase, specified by the owner, into a link. It might also work for inserting code, but I’m not sure.
- Drupal Advanced Forum is the forum that Drupal should have had.
- Pathauto makes the URL for a page based on the title of the page. Wordpress and most CMS do this without a module, so it’s surprising this has not yet been integrated into the Drupal core.
Read what others have to say are best Drupal modules: highest rated, most downloaded, top 10, and essential.
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Posted on August 20th, 2008 by admin
This is a list of web marketing tools that SEO friends have recommended. I haven’t tried most of them yet, but wanted to store the list here so I can check them out when the need arises.
SEO Tools
Arelis IBP (Internet Business Promoter) - A great tool for competitor back link and on-page analysis. It automates the tracking of keyword rankings in search engines.
Web Position - I use this for tracking all my website keyword positions. You can track numerous websites - I was tracking 50+ at one point - and you can set up the SERP reports on a scheduler. It shows SERP position change over time … I was tracking years of SERP positions for individual keywords. I’d buy this for the reporting only …. the SEO advice/tips it gives is pretty useless…
PPC Tools
Efficient PPC - I prefer this tool over Speed PPC and own both. This software helps with the rapid deployment of pay per click campaigns and landing page creation. EfficientPPC allows you to use more tokens during your ppc campaign creation. It’s definitely worth every penny 10x…
Speed PPC - The original quick ppc campaign creation tool. You can’t go wrong although I prefer Efficient PPC because it’s easier to use and allows for more tokens.
PPC Rockstar’s tools. Here are more PPC tools.
Video Upload Tools
If you want to upload your video to YouTube and many other video sites, use one of these options:
- Tube Mogul - Free and works great - TubeMogul is a free service that provides a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed.
- Traffic Geyser - Most popular, works great, but not free
- HeySpread - Fee seems to be 10 cents per video
- Download software like videouploadpro and uploadvideopro
Article Submission Services
Submit Comfort offers web directory and article submission services for a fee. The submissions are done manually by people in India. I hear the services are good quality and value.
Article Marketer does not have the same quality as Submit Comfort, and I think their submissions are automated. Still, the fees are reasonable and can help quickly get your site listed.
Blog Reviews and Advertising Links
You can buy links to your site on blogs. These come in a variety of formats, but are often reviews
If you just want a link to your site, you might consider Text Link Ads. All of these services are the subject of scrutiny by Google, because they often involve links that pass pagerank to the advertiser. Thus, they can be viewed as services that sell pagerank.
Adsense Tool
If you have adsense or other advertising on your website, you can benefit from the valuable analytics and control offered by a tool like Open X, which used to be called PHP Ads New.
Filed under: All Posts, PPC, SEM, SEO | No Comments »
Posted on August 11th, 2008 by admin
When you are dealing with text files or Excel spreadsheets, you sometimes have a long list of words that you want de-duplicated. Here is a free online de-duplication tool that quickly does the trick.
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Posted on July 17th, 2008 by admin
There may be times where you want a blog to create new posts from an RSS feed. This could be done directly from one RSS feed, or done by compiling multiple RSS feeds using a tool like Yahoo Pipes.
Keep copyright laws in mind to ensure you have permission to repost an RSS feed on your website. If you are the victim of copyright infringement, consider your rights under copyright laws or the DMCA (how to use the DMCA).
There are a number of Wordpress pluggins that can convert an RSS feed into posts. Some of the top rated pluggins include
Others that are less known, but may be good, include
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Posted on July 14th, 2008 by admin
Google’s duplicate content penalty has received much attention from webmasters and those concerned about SEO. Most SEO advisers understand the basics of the duplicate content penalty. But how does the duplicate content algorithm really work? And what exactly constitutes duplicate content?
For example, will the duplicate content penalty be triggered if the text on a page is rearranged but the word count for each word remains the same?
While the actual Google duplicate content algorithm remains a secret, SEO practitioners can assume Google is using advanced methods for duplicate content filtering. What are these advanced duplicate content detection methods—this article explains duplicate content filtering detection methods with great complexity.
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Posted on July 11th, 2008 by admin
Want to make a logo, sign, button, or background using a free online tool? Check out this list of 25 free logo and image maker tools.
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Posted on June 24th, 2008 by admin
The Magento Commerce shopping cart now works with Wordpress blogs: Magento: Wordpress Integration Extension Available.
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Posted on May 1st, 2008 by admin
For a while, OnlyWire was the best way to bookmark pages to multiple social bookmark sites. Unfortunately, OnlyWire seems to have been neglected lately, and a number of the social bookmark services listed in OnlyWire have become obsolete.
A number of new services provide the same service as OnlyWire. That is, you can save a web page to a social bookmarking service without having to bookmark each one at a time. These new OnlyWire alternatives include
If you have experience with these new alternatives to OnlyWire, please leave a comment and tell me what you think.
UPDATE: Another great option is the FireFox Plugin called http://www.shareaholic.com
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Posted on April 18th, 2008 by admin
Magento Commerce is a terrific new open source shopping cart. Of course, everyone wants to customize their cart with a new theme/template. Magento themes aren’t easy to find yet. At some point, the Magento developers are going to launch a repository for Magento themes at Magento Connect.
I will be listing the Magento Commerce shopping cart themes that I find online here. So far, I’ve only found these:
Filed under: All Posts, Magento, eCommerce | 2 Comments »
Posted on April 15th, 2008 by admin
There are many SEO tools online. There are many backlink checker tools online. But this backlink checker tool works better than any I have seen: Backlink Watch.
What is a backlink checker tool you ask? It’s a website where you can enter the URL for any website and the page will list all the websites that link to that URL. You can use thisbacklink checker tool to see who is linking to your own site or see who is linking to your competitor.
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Posted on April 9th, 2008 by admin
If you are thinking about making a website that will be monetized by Adsense, here are a few steps to find lucrative niches using some free tools:
- Identify the most lucrative terms related to your subject by using Read more »
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Posted on April 8th, 2008 by admin
Is Magento Commerce the right shopping cart for you? This post presents what I’ve found and asks others to add to this knowledge to provide a helpful resource for those who are considering using the Magento shopping cart.
What is Magento Commerce Shopping Cart?
Magento is the newest shopping cart in the “open source shopping cart” category. This category had been dominated by OS Commerce and Zen Cart (and Virtumart for existing Joomla sites). Magento’s release has created quite a buzz, and I understand that many developers are creating plugins for this new platform.
The “buzz” before Magento was released in May of 2008 was that Magento would provide a high-end, professional shopping cart to the masses for free. So far, people continue to be amazed by Magento.
Magento Shopping Cart Example
You can see an example of a Magento shopping cart at Mobile Edge. I found this by the link from a post by Simple Helix here. The Magento screencasts also show many of the Magento shopping cart features.
Magento Problems: Slow Performance
Magento is rich with features only found in the best shopping cart scripts. But these features appear to come at a cost to performance. The main criticism of Magento are focused on Magento’s slow performance when stores offer thousands of products on a shared hosting plan. That is, Magento appears to requires a lot of server resources to run, which in turn, adds additional expense to using Magento.
Example. For example, they tag cloud feature has been reported to take over a minute to load, since it is pulling keywords from all the products. Similarly, the searches have taken over a minute for large catalogs of products. I presume this will be fixed soon as Magento improves its indexing. Waiting over a minute for visitors to search will cause most vistors to cancel the search and move on. That is not tolerable for any etailer.
Small Merchants. Performance issues shouldn’t be a problem for very small online merchants, since these etailers aren’t offering many products.
Performance Fixes. The Magento community has been discussing Magento performance issues. Magento is working on its performance issues and has made improvements with Magento’s recent release. Magento’s website says that performance is a key focus for future releases.
If you host your own server, there are a number of tips to get Magento to run faster.
Magento Installation
To install Magento, you may find this Magento installation tutorial useful.
Other Magento Commerce Reviews
I will be posting Magento Commerce reviews that I find here:
Your Review or Opinion of Magento
What do you think of Magento Commerce shopping cart? If you have experience with it, please add your impressions, feedback, or advice in a comment here.
Filed under: All Posts, eCommerce | 3 Comments »
Posted on April 2nd, 2008 by admin
Today I ran across a great list of ways to obtain backlinks to your website. Backlinks are sometimes called “inbound links.” Backlinks give your website credibility with search enginges. To read the list, go here: The Best known ways to build links, and traffic 2008.
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Posted on April 1st, 2008 by admin
On April 1, 2008, Google launched its 2008 April Fools joke by offering a link to Gmail Custom Time to users logged into Gmail. Initially, the link appeared to be a broken link, because it led users to a 404 error page. But at midnight CST, as April Fools Day began, users saw this page:
The first tip that the “new Gmail feature” was a hoax was this text: “How does it work? Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality (see Grandfather Paradox).”
Second, Google’s language on the page was piqued with humor. For example, Google wrote, “Our researchers have concluded that allowing each person more than ten pre-dated emails per year would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless.”
Finally, Google itself confirmed that Gmail Custom Time was an April Fools Joke by its “Privacy Policy” and “Program Policies” links.
Gmail Custom Time is the latest in a long list of Google April Fools stunts.
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Posted on March 19th, 2008 by admin
To manage your PPC campaings, Google announced a new tool: Google Ad Manager, which will compete with OpenX. The folks at OpenX responded. One site criticized Google Ad Manager.
On a different note, Going up appears to be a great, free analytics service to compete with Google Analytics.
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Posted on January 18th, 2008 by admin
I found this handy tool that converts a CSV file to a MySQL format so you can import the table using PHP MySQL. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks good.
Unfortunately, the free version of ImpSQL is limited to 50 entries. I’m surprised the author is trying to make money off this, because the tool is handy, but this type of tool seems simple to create. Either way, it may come in useful.
Try it here: MySQL Data Import tool
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Posted on January 16th, 2008 by admin
SEOposition.com used, reviewed, and analyzed many of the free seo tools online and put together a short list of the top 15 free seo tools online. The Best 15 Free SEO Tools Online
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Posted on January 16th, 2008 by admin
After installing Drupal 5.6 on 1&1 and loading my new Drupal website in my browser, I received this error:
Incompatible environment
The following error must be resolved before you can continue the installation process:
register_globals is enabled. Drupal requires this configuration directive to be disabled. Your site may not be secure when register_globals is enabled. The PHP manual has instructions for how to change configuration settings. (Currently using PHP 4.4.7)
I overcame the problem by adding the line, AddType x-mapp-php5 .php, to the .htaccess file in Drupal’s root directory. This trick applies to all sub-directories.
This information is extracted from a conversation here: CubeCart > Register Globals = on
and Register_Globals Off. Read these links for more info on why this works.
Filed under: All Posts, Scripts | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 14th, 2008 by admin
Someone recently asked me how he could make money with his blog. In addition to advice from great sites like Pro Blogger, use affiliate and advertising programs like there:
- Azoogleads (link: http://www.azoogleads.com/)
- Neverblueads (link: http://www.neverblueads.com)
- Clickbank (link: www.clickbank.com)
- Copeac (link: http://affiliates.copeac.com/)
- Adsense (link: http://adsense.google.com)
- Yahoo Publisher Network (link: http://publisher.yahoo.com)
- Direct.Rightmedia (link: http://direct.rightmedia.com)
- Adversal (link: http://www.adversal.com)
- Text-link-ads (link: http://www.text-link-ads.com/)
- Other Misc Affiliates that are not in the formentioned affiliate networks.
- Joint Ventures
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, All Posts, Blogging | No Comments »
Posted on December 27th, 2007 by admin
Smarter Wordpress Designing explains how to put DOMtab on your wordpress blog. The DOMtab script adds uses blog real estate well and adds a cool effect for visitors.
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Posted on December 14th, 2007 by admin
The following are services you can use to manage an email list and send bulk emails. Aweber Prices: Up to 10.000 contacts: Paid Monthly: $19.95 (discounts available) Constant Contact (most people like this the most because of the easy templates):
| Your Email List Size |
 |
Your Low Monthly Fee |
| Email Marketing* |
|
Survey** |
|
Bundle** |
| 0-500 |
$15 |
$15 |
$30 $22.50 |
| 2,501-5,000 |
$50 |
$50 |
$100 $75.00 |
| 10,001-25,000 |
$150 |
$150 |
$300 $225.00 |
iContact prices:
| Contacts |
Monthly |
Annual |
500 |
$9.95 |
$107.46 |
1,000 |
$14.00 |
$151.20 |
2,500 |
$29.00 |
$313.20 |
| 5,000 |
$47.00 |
$507.60 |
| 10,000 |
$74.00 |
$799.20 |
| 15,000 |
$109.00 |
$1,177.20 |
| 25,000 |
$149.00 |
$1,609.20 |
| 35,000 |
$239.00 |
$2,581.20 |
| 50,000 |
$379.00 |
$4,093.20 |
| 75,000 |
$529.00 |
$5,713.20 |
| 100,000 |
$699.00 |
$7,549.20 |
Basic plans include sending up to six times your subscriber limit.
Vertical Response: Pricing is based upon the number of emails that you send—there is no contract for a subscription. If you plan on mailing weekly or monthly, save by “buying in bulk.”
| 1 - 1,000 |
$.015 per email |
$15.00 per 1000 |
Lyris is another option, but their prices weren’t listed online when I checked.
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Posted on December 12th, 2007 by admin
Besides Google Analytics, there are a number of free stat counters you can use to analyze your traffic.
- Clicky is very similar to Google Analytics. The free version only works for under 1000 visitors per day. If you get more traffic than that, you will have to upgrade to a paid version.
- StatCounter is great but the appearance is a bit “old school.” It doesn’t have the fancy ajax of Google Analytics. The free version only works for under 1000 visitors per day. If you get more traffic than that, you will have to upgrade to a paid version.
- 103 Bees is unique. It’s great for bloggers. It provides less info than some of the other stat counters here, but it provides information in a way that allows bloggers to come up with new ideas for blogging.
- FeedBurner is great for RSS feeds.
- Mint is a site I haven’t tried.
NEW: A terrific new program is called Piwik. It’s an open source, free alternative to Google Analytics. Try the demo. This software is self-hosted. Another free self-hosted option is AW Stats.
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Posted on December 12th, 2007 by admin
Tools that spin articles:
Tools that check the similarity of spun articles:
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Posted on December 11th, 2007 by admin
I’ve done more research on the big three affiliate companies:
Commission Junction appears to be the most popular, but Linkshare is not far behind. Linkshare seems to have more major retailers than Commission Junction, but that could be because Commission Junction has so many retailers, small and large. Both Linkshare and Commission Junction feature companies offering a wide range of products.
Click Bank is different. Clickbank focuses on ebooks and other intellectual property products, not physical products. Still, ClickBank features many useful products. Affiliates like the products on Clickbank because the commission percentages are very high (often 50%).
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Posted on December 11th, 2007 by admin
Want to learn more about SEO? Here are some good blogs to read. They include “white hat,” “grey hat,” and “black hat” methods, so use your own judgment to decide which tactics to use yourself. Search engines disapprove of methods that are not “white hat,” and if possible, search engines will seek to thwart those efforts and potentially punish the websites of those using them. However, many times there is little search engines can do about non-whitehat methods.
http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/
http://www.seobook.com/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
http://searchengineland.com/
http://www.wolf-howl.com/
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/
http://www.stuntdubl.com/
http://massa.techndu.com/
http://www.johnon.com/
http://seoblackhat.com/
http://tropicalseo.com/
http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog
http://www.seobythesea.com/
http://www.irishwonder.syndk8.co.uk/
http://www.seoataglance.com/
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, SEO | No Comments »
Posted on December 10th, 2007 by admin
Great advice:
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Posted on December 10th, 2007 by admin
Posted on December 10th, 2007 by admin
How to Have a High Adwords Quality Score: How I Do Quality Score
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Posted on December 10th, 2007 by admin
If you love the Firefox web browser, but are tired of repetitive tasks like visiting the same sites every days, filling out forms, and remembering passwords, then iMacros for Firefox is the solution you’ve been dreaming of! This isn’t just a Firefox form filler, it actually replays your actions, which can include actions over multiple sites. Get it here: iMacros for Firefox
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Posted on December 10th, 2007 by admin
Although the promise of this title rings of “get rich quick” schemes, the concept in this article seems very good even though it is still untested: Earn $100 a Day in 60 Days.
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, All Posts | No Comments »
Posted on December 10th, 2007 by admin
Here is an easy tool that makes a favicon from any photo: favikon
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Posted on December 6th, 2007 by admin
Create an annual marketing plan with these twelve ideas to drive qualified leads to your Web site over the year: Your 2008 Web Marketing Plan
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Posted on December 6th, 2007 by admin
Here is great advice about how to promote an event or class on Internet Marketing 101:
# Published the event on the Web Marketing Seminars page on my Web site. This is a no-brainer and the first, essential step.# Added the event information (including a link to the online registration) on Facebook, both on my page and as part of the Portland, ME network so that other local people could find it.
# Sent out an email alert to the people who have signed up for my Web Marketing Alerts email newsletter. (You can sign up for this when you sign up for flyte log, our free, monthly email newsletter.)
# Added it as an event on MaineToday.com, the online presence for the Blethen newspapers.
# Added it as a class through Craig’s list.
# Added it at MaineBiz’s event calendar.
# Submitted to Maine Public Broadcasting Network’s event calendar.
# Posted it to my Internet Marketing 101 blog at MaineToday.com (at least twice.)
# Posted it to my flyte blog: web marketing for small business blog (again, at least twice.)
# Posted to Eventful.com, which sends to several other sites including Podbot, Google Calendar, del.icio.us/events, Ping-o-Matic, Technorati, and Upcoming. Several of these sites extend that reach even further through their own network. (Found through Joan Stewart, the Publicity Hound, through Denise Wakeman tip.
# I also learned about EventCrazy.com that way.
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Posted on December 6th, 2007 by admin
I wanted online software for managing my newsletter. Paid options included ConstantContact and aWeber. Wordpress plugins offered a PHP option, but that option is susceptible to problems inherent to running PHP, such as timeouts.
Then I read about PHPlist and its Wordpress Plugin options at Email Mailing List Manager, which seemed to be the best option for me. Lorelle also reviewed some good mailing list and newsletter software.
I hear another good free option is Feedburner’s e-mail service, but this is very limited.
Filed under: All Posts, Newsletters | No Comments »
Posted on December 5th, 2007 by admin
Ustream.tv is a platform that provides free, live interactive video conferencing for everyone. Anyone with a camera and an Internet connection can use Ustream to broadcast to a global audience.
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Posted on December 5th, 2007 by admin
If you dislike tracking your expense reports, check out Xpenser, which makes it painless. Use your PDA, email, or web browser to quickly jot a note for each expense. It’s easy and free.
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Posted on December 4th, 2007 by admin
With online free seo tool Seodigger.com you can find out for which keywords your site ranks high enough to be in Google Top 20. You can analyze your own sites as well as sites of your competition. Check it out: Seodigger.com
Filed under: All Posts, SEO | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 4th, 2007 by admin
Add humor or a creative touch with these free online graphic and image making tools:
Custom Sign Generator Widgets - Thousands Of Web 2.0 Image Generators
Filed under: All Posts, Blogging | No Comments »
Posted on November 30th, 2007 by admin
Sometimes you link to a site and you want a NoFollow tag on that link. If you do, this page explains how to hack Wordpress so you have that option in your Blogroll: WordPress Blogroll SEO Nofollow Hack
Filed under: All Posts, Blogging | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 30th, 2007 by admin
This article will show you how to import a comma delimited (or delimited with another character like tab) text file into a MySql database using PHP: Reading a Delimited File using PHP.
On a similar note, here is a pre-made script that its author says will import a CSV file into MySql: PHP script to import csv data into mysql.
To learn more about PHP, there are great articles and resources at PHP.net.
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Posted on November 30th, 2007 by admin
Here are some useful tools for generating longtail keywords for your SEM or Adsense campaign.
Combine Keywords
This tool allows you to enter three lists of words and the tool will combine the lists into every possible phrase using those words.
Local Keywords List
This tool is similar to Combine Keywords except it only allows you to enter one list, which it combines with a list of city or state names. One cool feature is how it allows you to select cities: Once you enter a zip code and a distance (number of miles) from that zip code, the tool will generate a list of cities within that geographic area (circumference).
AdWords Wrapper
The Google AdWords Wrapper is a FREE time saving tool that wraps keyword phrases in “quotation marks” (phrase match) and [square brackets] (exact match) for use in Google AdWords campaigns.
For tools that generate keywords that are related to a single topic, among other things, check out the keyword tools here and here.
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Posted on November 28th, 2007 by admin
Here are some useful links for those wishing to learn about Sitemaps, which can be used in conjunction with Google Webmaster Tools to improve the speed that Google indexes your website pages:
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Posted on November 27th, 2007 by admin
This tool allows you to make your own blog theme, or template, for Wordpress or Moveable Type blog systems: Easy Blog Design Tool - CSSEZ
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Posted on November 27th, 2007 by admin
This Free Sitemap Generator stands above the rest because it will generate a sitemap of up to 5,000 pages. That is much higher than most free sitemap generators. The only problem is the sitemap is queued so it may take a few hours to generate your sitemap.
Also, check out this free sitemap generator, which also has a 5,000 limit.
If you have more than 5,000 pages, here are a couple options.
First, you could use a PHP script that you run on your server. I have used phpSitemapNG and it works great. This script crawls your website to add dynamic and static pages to your sitemap.xml file. It also supports gzip.
Second, you could download an application to your PC. I used A1 Sitemap Generator (also available at download.com) and it worked great. It has a lot of features, so it was a little tricky to get working right away, but it worked well. This application allows you to save the sitemap.xml file, which you then must FTP to your website’s directory on its server.
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Posted on November 21st, 2007 by admin
I like this keyword density analyzer because it will analyze text you paste into a text box or select the URL of a web page.
Also, I like this keyword density analyzer because you can choose to sort the results alphabetically or by the number of times a word appears in the text.
Try it here: Keyword density analyser
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Posted on November 21st, 2007 by admin
Is someone copying the content on your website? Find out with this tool: Copyscape
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Posted on November 21st, 2007 by admin
This tool asks for the name of your site and creates a report explaining what is good and bad about your site from an SEO perspective. The tool also allows you to compare your site with a competitor’s site.
The reports are very interesting. Most importantly, the reports offer recommendations to strengthen your site based on its SEO weaknesses.
Try it now: Rate the SEO of Your Site
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Posted on November 20th, 2007 by admin
This tool was created to find the perfect font online. It’s amazing. It also lets you pick colors based on the color’s number. I love this! Font Tester - Online Font Comparison Tool
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Posted on November 20th, 2007 by admin
This is a great JavaScript resource:
Free JavaScripts, tutorials and tools - Onlinetools.org
It includes a great page on DomTab.
This site also looks great for Web 2.0 javascripts: Mini Ajax
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Posted on November 20th, 2007 by admin
This example shows how to create an relatively positioned vertical dropdown menu with YADM. Vertical relative DHTML dropdown menu with YADM
Get the code here: Simple Customizable JavaScipt Menus
Or check out this other simple menu script: Simple Drop Down Menu
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Posted on November 19th, 2007 by admin
The following is a list of popular eCommerce channel submission services.
- http://marketworks.com (a Channel Advisor company)
- http://channeladvisor.com
- http://zoovy.com
- http://vendio.com
- http://andale.com (a Vendio company)
- http://sellcenter.net
- http://www.infopia.com
- http://www.auctiva.com (eBay only)
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Posted on November 18th, 2007 by admin
Here are some good webpage design tools for Dot Mobi websites:
Or check out other Dot Mobi tools
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Posted on November 16th, 2007 by admin
To select a good domain name, I suggest these steps:
1. Make a list of words that represent the theme of your blog. For example: mom, moms, mommy, mother, mothers, parent, parents, kids, children, child, daughter, daughters, family, mothering, parenting, training, raising, etc.
2. Try those words in Google Trends to find a term that is popular: http://www.google.com/trends. Compare your terms. For example, type this: “water filters, mom, moms, mommy, mother.” Combine terms if necessary—for example: “parent kids, mother daughter, parenting kids, mothering kids.”
3. See if there is an available domain name for popular terms at http://domain-suggestions.domaintools.com/ or http://www.godaddy.com (enter the term in the box at the top of the page). You can add a - between the words, so search for “momblog” and “mom-blog.”
It is more important for your domain name to be a popular term than it is to have a .com name, because most people will find your blog through Google; Google cares about the name, but does not care about the .com part of the name. Besides .com, other good top-level-domains are .net .info .org .biz .us and .tv, in that order.
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Posted on November 16th, 2007 by admin
VectorMagic is a handy online tool that will convert your bitmap images (most graphic images today) to a vector format, so you can enlarge the image without making the resolution grainy.
Quality. The process isn’t perfect, but works great for logos, text, and line art. With slightly lower quality results, it handles all sorts of other image types.
Details. VectorMagic uses vectorization technology, which is the process of tracing a raster image to convert it to a vector image. Raster images are pixel-based, whereas vector images are represented by geometric shapes such as lines, circles and curves.
Upload your own image to try it out: VectorMagic.
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Posted on November 13th, 2007 by admin
Color Scheme Generator 2 or the original Color Scheme Generator are simple ways to find a complimentary color pallet. Others:
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Posted on November 13th, 2007 by admin
Mini Ajax has a ton of useful and simple ajax codes you can use for free.
PopBox is an image manipulation javascript that dynamically moves and resizes images on your web page.
Cool JavaScript Menus can create menus like the apple doc menu and more.
For the advanced java programmer, Scriptaculous is nearly and essential tool.
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Posted on November 8th, 2007 by admin
Wrap Text Around Adsense Ads
For the instructions on wrapping text around Adsense, go here Add AdSense to a Wordpress Blog and look for this text:
Add the AdSense code for a Square (250 x 250) ad block as follows (note the div with the float right styling, this is important)
Get Ads on Target Keywords
To limit the words used to determine which subjects should be used to display ads, see Adsense section targeting. In short, you use tags in the text as you see here:
<!– google_ad_section_start –>
Whatever text you want Google Adsense to consider would be here
<!– google_ad_section_end –>
Once you do that, Google Adsense will generally only use this text: “Whatever text you want Google Adsense to consider would be here.”
However, the change may not take effect immediately, so check back after a few hours or a day to see if the Adsense ads are more relevant to the text you selected.
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Posted on November 7th, 2007 by admin
This free service provides an RSS feed to any website. This is great for websites created by scripts. The service is free, but a link to the company is added to the feed. For more information, go here:
Add RSS News Feeds to Your Website, Free Website Content, Free RSS Feed Reader
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Posted on November 7th, 2007 by admin
Posted on November 6th, 2007 by admin
My favorite Wordpress theme designers are
Here are some individual themes that look great:
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Posted on November 6th, 2007 by admin
Need a free Country, State, City and Zip Code Database? Get it here: Country Name and ISO 3166 Code MySQL Import File.
More good databases that are free: http://mydatamaster.com/free-downloads/
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Posted on November 5th, 2007 by admin
Many people with new blogs or websites learn about Google’s Pagerank rating system and then wonder how they can get kinks to their new blog or site to increase their pagerank.
I came across this great guide to getting backlinks to your new blog or website. It answers the big question, “How do I build links to my site?”
Visit the guide: The Ultimate Guide to Link Building
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Posted on October 31st, 2007 by admin
Have you ever wondered if Text-Link-Ads would prevent you from adding a NoFollow tag to their links? I did, until I received the answer from Text-Link-Ads today.
I never expected that Text-Link-Ads would admit that its business model is centered on selling a site’s pagerank to link buyers.
That is, I presumed Text-Link-Ads would at least try to maintain the image that its service merely provides links. I didn’t think Text-Link-Ads would admit to selling pagerank.
But if Text-Link-Ads prohibits websites from using the NoFollow tag on its links, then Text-Link-Ads is admitting that at least part of what it sells to link buyers is pagerank.
Here is what happened. Last week, one of my websites changed from a pagerank 5 to pagerank 3. I wondered if my Text-Link-Ads plugin was the cause, since rumors indicate that Google has been decreasing pagerank on sites that sell links.
I thought about removing Text-Link-Ads from my site, but they earn about $100 per month.
Next, I thought about adding the NoFollow tag to links from Text-Link-Ads so Google would remove its penalty from my site.
But before I added NoFollow to the block used by Text-Link-Ads, I figured I should ask Text-Link-Ads about it. So using their online contact form, I sent them my question. Today I received a response from Text-Link-Ads:
From: Tech Support - Text Link Ads - techsupport@text-link-ads.com
Date: Oct 31, 2007 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: Text Link Ads Inc. Online Contact Form - Publisher Technical Support
To: (EMAIL OMITTED)
(NAME OMITTED),
Yes it is. You may not use nofollow.
Jonathan (LAST NAME OMITTED)
Product Manager
Text-Link-Ads
a MediaWhiz Holdings, Inc. Company
Tel: (PHONE OMITTED)
Fax: 646-417-5084
ad{net} | Coregistrations.com | Filinet.com | MediaWhiz Search | Monetizeit | Text-Link-Ads | WhiteDelivery
On Oct 30, 2007, at 5:41 PM, <(EMAIL OMITTED)> <(EMAIL OMITTED)> wrote:
>
> Text Link Ads Inc. Online Contact Form
> ——————————————
> Name: (NAME OMITTED)
> Email: (EMAIL OMITTED)
>
> Comments: Is it against my agreement with TextLinkAds to have a nofollow tag applied to the TextLinkAds on my site? Thank you.
So in case any of you were wondering whether you could us NoFollow on Text-Link-Ads, the answer is “no.”
Ethical Questions and Text-Link-Ads
The natural result of this is that if we continue to sell Text-Link-Ads on our site, we are admitting that we are selling pagerank. There is nothing morally wrong about selling pagerank.
However, Google certainly has a right to lower its pagerank level for our sites if we are going to profit by selling pagerank, because selling pagerank undermines Google’s effort to provide quality results in its search engine.
Update: Matt Cutts said that “Nofollow is recommended anywhere that links can’t be vouched for.”
Update: At least one other person has heard about NoFollow from Text-Links-Ads.
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Posted on October 30th, 2007 by admin
Replace your blog name with an image, without harming its ability to be crawled by Google: How to replace text with an image
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Posted on October 25th, 2007 by admin
Google is doing its pagerank update for all websites. See what your pagerank is using these pagerank tools.
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Posted on October 25th, 2007 by admin
Here is a cool little tool to see the pagerank and whether nofollow applies to every link on a page. Visual PageRank View
Here is a tool that shows the pagerank for one domain and some other useful information: smartpagerank.com
This tool tells you the pagerank of all sites that link to your site: linkvendor domain popularity tool. One nice aspect of this tool is you can sort the sites by pagerank.
This tool helps you figure out what your Pagerank will be after Google’s next reindexing: thinkbling. (Source: here and here)
Yahoo’s site explorer is great for opposition research. It allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page.
See also SEO Keyword Tools.
How to find the pagerank of a web page using thinkbling’s pagerank calculator
Use a backlinks checker tool to find out how many backlinks that particular page has.Some tools are cool enough to arrange the backlinks in the order of their pagerank. You can use the linkvendor domain popularity tool which has an option to let us arrange the backlinks in the order of their pagerank.
After you make out all the backlinks (except those having rel=nofollow or link nofollow or me nofollow or external nofollow) and their pageranks go to thinkbling’s page and type in th number of backlinks of each pagerank that your page has,press ENTER.
The calculator display an appropriate pagerank for a page with the number of links you have mentioned.
Read more about Google Pagerank
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Posted on October 22nd, 2007 by admin
Blogging leaders were asked how they go started.
“If you had 2-hours a day to devote to no-cost, off-blog (even off-line) marketing for your blog, what would you do?”
Read their answers here: Top bloggers reveal how to build traffic off-blog without spending a dime
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Posted on October 13th, 2007 by admin
Redirection - Manage 301 redirections without modifying Apache | Urban Giraffe
Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.
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Posted on October 12th, 2007 by admin
Here are some powerful new Wordpress plugins:
Text Sitemap Generator - create a great text sitemap
MiniManager - insert fields into your posts that can replaced by code. Great for affiliate links. For example, replace “If you want to buy toys, go to Amazon” to “If you want to buy toys, go to Amazon.”
Link Modder - replace any term or phrase with a specific link or other html
WordPress Plugin Competition Winners writes:
There were some truly amazing plugins submitted for this year’s WordPress Plugin Competition. PureBlogging was a proud sponsor of this year’s competition and I wanted to give the winners a little recognition by posting the results. * Grand Prize: OneClick by Anirudh Sanjeev
* Second Prize: MyDashboard by Barry
* Third Prize: WordPress Automatic Upgrade by Keith Dsouza
* Consolation Prize: Who Sees Ads by Ozh
Redirection - Manage 301 redirections without modifying Apache | Urban Giraffe writes:
Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.
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Posted on October 11th, 2007 by admin
Here is a great list of 10 Tips For Getting Backlinks:
1 - Find online forums related to your site and become part of the community (along with a suitable signature that links to your site).
2 - Add comments to blogs with a link to related content on your Website.
3 - Submit on-topic articles to article directories and include your link in the author bio.
4 - Submit your link to the many free online directory sites.
5 - Add your comments to a guestbook and include your url.
6 - Email the webmaster of a related site and ask to trade links.
7 - Offer to provide some content for another site in return for a link back.
8 - If you have an eBay account, create an “about me” page and include a link to your Website.
9 - Program a useful tool or script that Webmasters will happily add to their sites.
10 - Create compelling and perhaps even controversial content on your Website that people will want to link to.
Here are 65 more ways to get backlinks.
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Posted on October 11th, 2007 by admin
UPDATE: There is a free, open source analytics application that appears to rival Google Analytics: Piwik. Check out the demo or read a review with screenshots.
Here is a great list of free Analytics tools for your website from Alex Pooley’s Blog » The Problem With Website Analytics Software:
- 103bees - Much cleaner interface than Google’s Analytics. Emphasizes what people are searching to get to your site. Read more here and here.
- HitTail - They try to help you decide what to write about next by processing what people are searching to get to your site. It’s a cool idea, but the algorithms are closed with little hint of what’s going on, so I’m left not knowing how to interpret my “suggestions”. For all I know it could just be a trained monkey picking stuff for me to write. Read more here.
- Clicky - This is a neat little package that has more emphasis on following your readers around your blog. It provides details on sessions, and what sort of things were clicked. Definitely worth checking out.
- FeedBurner - I’m sure you know about FeedBurner. They recently increased the free services to include more metrics. FeedBurner has great detail on how people are reading your feeds. FeedBurner also tracks outgoing links which is handy to have. But I usually use the next package on the list for that information.
- MyBlogLog - You can see part of this service running on the right of my blog with the pictures of people passing through the blog. MyBlogLog is not really an analytics package, yet it forms part of my primary analytics tooling. This is probably saying something about the existing analytics packages! The thing I like about MyBlogLog’s statistics is that you can very quickly see how people are finding your pages, what they are landing on, and how they are leaving. I would like to see other “real” analytics packages take this viewport and allow me to drill down.
I use all of these except Clicky, which I intend to try soon.
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Posted on October 9th, 2007 by admin
Posted on October 9th, 2007 by admin
Posted on October 6th, 2007 by admin
This appears to be a good method to eliminating the duplicate content problem with Wordpress blogs: http://www.dnseo.net/prevent-duplicated-results-with-wordpress-the-hack/
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Posted on October 3rd, 2007 by admin
Today I came across a cool paintball blog called Paintball Guns. If you’re into paintball, check it out. It has some good information.
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