Since the beginning of the understanding of Search Engine Optimization – SEO – there have been tons of different theories developed about how to do it “right”.  The truth is, however, that there is no one single method that is one hundred percent known to be better than the rest.  Since the large search engines such as Google and Yahoo! don’t release the details of their ranking elements – in addition to the fact that they are constantly changing what these elements are, and how they are weighted in the grand scheme of things – we can only apply the efforts that have been tested and have worked for a given online marketing effort.

The following are the SEO techniques that have been known to work for marketing strategies used by experienced web designers and webmasters. Keep in mind that SEO is an ever-changing experience, and that while these techniques will work for you today, they may not be the same when tomorrow arrives.

1. Google AdWords – this is an SEO technique specifically offered by Google to make certain that you are indeed getting use out of the keywords you want to use.  This technique is considered to be quite cost-effective for achieving good search results for your website.  It works by allowing you to state the maximum amount that you are willing to spend on a daily basis on your chosen keywords. This can be changed monthly as you witness the results that the Google AdWords SEO technique brings you.

2. Overture Keywords – similar to Google’s AdWords, you can choose the keywords you want, however, you cannot limit your daily spending, so this may be an issue if you’re on a tight budget.  However, it has been found to be quite cost effective when balanced against the number of new visitors and active customers created.

3. Yahoo! Regional Directories – when you have your site indexed by Yahoo! Regional Directories – a place where submission is free – then you will always be in their list. Many new clients are found through this reliable process.

4. Keywords, Site Descriptions, Alt-Tags, Title Tags, and Page Content – these are the main focus of SEO experts and SEO businesses today.  These are the five elements that take the most amount of effort when optimizing websites. It all has to do with what is contained within the coding of your website.  Unless you are truly confident that you know what you’re doing, it is very beneficial to hire a professional SEO company to ensure that you’re including all of the right elements, and doing it properly.  Have this done before you submit your site to the different search engines, or re-submit your site after you’ve done your SEO for your website.  SEO is well worth paying for to ensure that it is done properly.  Professionals will know which keywords to use, how to use them, and how to make sure that they are properly laid out for search engine spiders to crawl the site.  Furthermore “illegal” tactics will never be used, which can result in having your website permanently banned from search engines.

5. Online Directories – by submitting your website to any number of different free online directories, you will have an excellent new path for prospective customers to follow to find you.  Many are free, others include a nominal charge.  If there is a fee involved, do some investigation into the directory first, to make sure that it is worth the money.

6. The Open Directory Project – this is one of the primary resources utilized by the big search engines such as Google for sending their spiders out to crawl new sites.  The directory is entirely maintained by humans – that is, every site submitted is reviewed and indexed by a person, not a spider.  This does mean that it takes additional time to have your site indexed, but it is well worth the wait.

7. A Blog – adding a blog to your website is a fantastic method for continuing to attract new and repeat visitors to your website. They are drawn to the fresh new content that is constantly being added.

8. Make It Great – Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) is only as good as the website it supports.  If you bring lots of visitors to your website, and it has nothing to offer them, or the content is terrible, all of your efforts will be in vain.

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Mark Nenadic is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com/, where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

 

Have you ever tried to control other people? Who gets stressed out? Have you ever tried to control things or events over which you had no control? Do you find that stressful?

There are different typed of stressful situations. Some, like people interrupting you all the time, you can control. You can let the interrupters know you are busy and don’t have time to talk.  Other stresses, like rush hour traffic, are usually beyond your control. But there are some things about rush hour traffic that you can personally change which may help; taking a different route, for example, or traveling at a different time. Of course, these changes are not always possible. In that case, you have to change your attitude about the situation, in order to lessen the stress. You can listen to music or educational tapes or books-on-tape. Rush hour traffic won’t seem as frustrating because you’ll be doing something to help keep your mind off the traffic and other drivers. In order to let go of commute stress, you have to accept the situation. You must accept that you cannot control the traffic, no matter how much you yell and gesture at other drivers to speed up.

On Tuesday I received 423 emails from an unknown spammer attacking my site.

On Wednesday I received 789 emails from the same spammer.

Action had to be taken.

The emails were copies of posts to my discussion forum - the typical spammers posts - keyword stuffing, numerous hyperlinks to junk sites crammed with even more keywords.

It was clear I was being hit by one spammer, with an automated script, for a number of telltale reasons:

1) Nobody could post 789 posts to a forum in 24 hours manually

2) All posts were from random .co.za email addresses (South African domains, but likely false)

3) All posts pointed to very similar spammy sites obviously made with the same auto-generation software

4) Checking various domains promoted within these posts in WHOIS showed they were all owned by a certain guy in Paris

I carefully combed my forum for these junk posts but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. So I checked for posts by .co.za email addresses, or French IPs but couldn’t see a problem anywhere.

Where were they coming from, and where were the posts?

To help me in my quest I did a search on Google for the text that began every email which read:

“The following was posted in the on “

But couldn’t find any links that were any help.

So next I investigated the content of the emails for common factors and found the following Javascript snippet began every message body:

“var defDoor”… before launching into other Javascript elements, followed by the keywords and links.

I wonder…

A quick search on Google and two factors astonished me…

1) Google showed up 92,600 pages with this code on, of which every one I checked matched the exact spam posts I was seeing in style and content. So we were dealing with a professional of some magnitude.

2) They were all on forums, but not the one I used, but WWWBoard as available from http://www.scriptarchive.com/wwwboard.html

A quick search with my FTP software through the bowels of my admittedly large site that has been online for 5 years or so and has seen more reworkings than Pamela Anderson showed I *had* got WWWBoard installed on my site but had stopped using it years ago in place of my current forum software.

I had completely forgotten about it, and there were the hundreds of spam posts sitting there on my server!

Obviously I don’t use the script so instantly deleted it and the spamming stopped dead overnight but if I’m one of over 90,000 victims this guy has duped then a little advice is necessary:

1) Appreciate that there are security flaws to WWWBoard and you either need to watch your forum very carefully or consider switching to another script.

2) Don’t leave old scripts sitting around on your server waiting for spammers to abuse them. Use them, or delete them.

3) Try to avoid using obvious folders for scripts. Whilst I didn’t link to my old forum from anywhere on the site, it was in an obvious folder so a spammer (or a script) could easily have guessed it.

4) Realise that security threats are very real if you get reasonable traffic and take steps *in advance* to minimize the risk to your own site.

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Richard Adams is the founder of http://www.merchantaccountforum.com/, one of the net’s most popular merchant account advice sites.