Google Blacklist

Most likely a highly debateable topic is the mysterious 'Google Blacklist'. For the less familiar Google's Blacklist is a list of websites who have either violated Google's Terms of Service or have manipulated the system to get high rankings on their search engine. In short, Google's goal is to have the most relevant search results for its users and ad buyers. They do this by analyzing the links in and out of a website as well as the content on the website. The more relevant the content and the links in and out of the website the higher in the ranks your site will sit.

The blacklist is for websites that cheat or try to manipulate the system. There is a good article that goes in depth about one specific website that was ranked 1st, but is now blacklisted and finds itself on the seventh page of Google's search results. To read the full article go to BMighty.com.

I will later post how you can protect yourself from angering the Google gods so to speak and find your site on the black list.

Chris

HowTo: How to promote your blog?

Hearing stories of professional bloggers making a living through their blog, reminds me of the Ebay seller turning a hobby into a million dollar company. Blogging is becoming a trendy activity. But like all things, your are not going to be able to quit your day job with out rolling up your sleeves.

So here we are, you have a blog and your goal is to walk into work one day and tell your boss you don't need his money anymore? This article will give you the knowledge and skills to accomplish that dream.

1. Make sure that whatever blogging software you are using, that it is pinging major blog search engines updates to your blog. For Blogger, this feature is under Settings --> Publishing and is called "Send Pings".
2. Make sure that you visit 5-10 blogs a week that are similar in topic to yours. Find a post that interests you and leave a comment. Leave a comment that will spark a reply from the author, not just spam. If the author feels appreciative of the comment you left, in most cases they will respond to your comment and visit your blog. Not to mention, the authors readers may visit your blog.
3. Carry your blog's url around as if it was your wallet / purse. On every one of your email addresses, add this url to your signature. In every social networking website that you are a member, include this url in your profile. On business cards, letterhead, forum posts, and comments on other blogs.
4. Visit forums that revolve around your topic. Genuinely engage the users of this forum. Chances are if they find your information useful or valuable they will visit your blog.
5. Travel over to feedburner.com, a service that was recently purchased by Google, begin to monitor and promote your blog. Feedburner has quite a few really neat gadgets and tools to help you promote your blog.
6. Submit your site to places like Open Directory Project, MSN and Altavista. There are many more than just these three, be creative and do some research.
7. Submit your blog to individual blog directories. Blog Connection has an excellent list here.
8. Find subjects within your topic that are trendy. For example, if your topic is mobile communications, then talk about the iPhone or Google's entry into the wireless industry. By writing about subjects that are trendy, there will be more users searching for information regarding those subjects.
9. No matter what the post is about, make sure that you use your keywords repeatedly within the post. Now lets be responsible and not keyword spam, but we do want to repeatedly use the keywords that users will use to find your blog. For example, when discussing the new iPhone, you should reuse the word iPhone and Apple probably 1-3 times per paragraph. This will bump you up in the results because Google will think that your post is more relavant than others.
10. Claim your blog / site on Technorati and Alexa.

If you follow these steps, you will see steady growth in the number of visitors and subscribers to your blog. Work hard, and you may have that opportunity to tell your boss, "go to hell!".

Chris

Don't Use Ajax for Your Website

As web 2.0 becomes the craze that is taking over the internet. More and more companies are developing websites and applications using AJAX. If you look at job postings on Monster or Dice, one of the most common web developer requirements is that the candidate of experience with AJAX.

Find a website that uses Ajax, right click and select view source. What do you see... html, head, and body tags. Thats about it, there is no source code to be read. Here is the issue, what you see when you click "view source", is the same thing that Google's web site crawler sees. Which means that Google sees a blank page equaling no text or information for Google to cache and index.

If Google (and the others) cannot read your websites content, then your website will not show up in search results. In order to have an Ajax website that is compatible with search engines, you have extra work to do.

IMHO: Leave Ajax for intranet and extranet websites, websites that are private and not indexed or searched by search engine crawlers. It is not worth the time or money to program extra code so that a search engine can index your site.

Chris