Webmaster Software, Scripts, and Tools Blog

Stop Comment and Forum Spamming

January 10th, 2012

Spam is a fact of life for those whose job description includes moderating comments. Just this morning I checked the comments for moderation for one of my blogs and was greeted with laughable attempts to get me to approve the obviously generic and spammy comments.

Here are just two examples of the daily spam I have to deal with:

“Thank you, I have just been looking for info approximately this subject for a while and yours is the best I have found out till now. However, what concerning the conclusion? Are you sure in regards to the supply?|What i do not realize is in fact how you’re now not really a lot more neatly-preferred than you may be now. You’re very intelligent.”

“You could certainly see your expertise in the paintings you write. The arena hopes for more passionate writers such as you who aren’t afraid to say how they believe. At all times go after your heart.”

While these silly comments gives me an opportunity to get my daily dose of laugh, it never fails to amaze me how people can get stuck in using strategies that just no longer work. While it is true that some old link strategies still can produce results, it is no longer the case for comment and forum spamming.

One of the reasons why comment and forum spamming just doesn’t work anymore is because of the much improved spam filters. Sure, spam can still get through automatic filters, but the filters still detect and catch more spam than they let pass. Once a spammy comment/forum post does get through the automated spam filters, there are the moderators that they still need to get past, and unless you have one truly naïve or stupid moderator, then the chances that spam comments will get through is almost none.

Now, assuming that you are smart enough not to put up a blatantly spammy comment, and so got your comment approved, you’ll still have to consider if the link you got from that comment is even truly worth it. First of all, if you are gunning for loads of inbound links and are using this method, then you should have realized by now that leaving comments that are meaty enough to pass moderators means at least skimming blog and forums posts to make your comment believable. This means spending way too much time to get the tons of link you need to make a significant impact in your link building efforts, especially if you are commenting on low ranking pages. You have to ask yourself if the time you spend is really worth the returns.

Last but not least, you should realize that SEO is evolving. While technical SEO is still valuable, the emphasis is clearly shifting from link building strategies to more organic methods, not least of which is social SEO. If you get stuck using old strategies that do not give substantial returns, you are wasting your time, not just now but also in the future, which is when you will again have to refocus and change your approach just to catch up with the rest of the world.

Now stop it!

Vic Carrara
MasterWebSoftware.com

Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Posted in SEO | No Comments »

Social Media and SEO

December 16th, 2011

Why Social Media Integration is A Must for SEO Campaigns

It used to be that SEO and social media campaigns were two separate things, but the line between the two is rapidly blurring with SEO campaigns just not truly complete with the social media aspect.

One of the most obvious reasons why SEO campaigns nowadays almost always tend to integrate at least some aspect of social media into their overall strategy is the sheer popularity of social media. There’s just no going around it. Social media is here to stay, and more than that, here to dominate. SEOs cannot afford to snub social media simply because clients will demand it, and even if some do not it will show a glaring lack on the SEO’s part as to his ability to follow trends and incorporate new strategies that will help out their clients achieve their end goals.

Another reason why SEO campaigns tap into social media marketing is that it is one of the best ways today to get more incoming links. We all know how hard link building has become, but thanks to social media sharing, we now have another very good source of links. What’s even better is that these links are organic, so that you don’t have to exert as much effort in getting like you would back in the days when options were limited to submitting your links to directories and other websites and blogs. While you still do need to have quality content, so that people will actually be interested in sharing your page, you don’t have to do much more, except perhaps share your own content to your own friends and followers.

In addition to getting incoming links that will help your SEO efforts (since search engines do index social content that are shared to the public), you get the added benefit of earning multiple alternate traffic sources each time someone shares your link. This means that your reliance on search engines as your traffic source is somehow decreased, which is especially important if your site does not rank well in results pages yet. This is also even more important if you do not have the resources to launch a full-scale online ad campaign, which otherwise could have been your major alternate traffic source.

Last but not least, SEOs should realize that search engines are also recognizing the ever growing importance of social media, and so are adapting their own algorithms to further personalize search results based on social media profiles. And though the most glaring example would be Google and their latest moves to further integrate their web search results with Google Plus, you can bet that Bing and Yahoo! are not taking the social aspect of search lightly. As SEOs, it is no dabbling with social media is no longer enough. It is imperative that you learn how to use social media as part of your SEO campaigns right now, and to be vigilant in watching the trends so that you don’t get left behind.

Vic Carrara
MasterWebSoftware.com

Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Tags: seo, seo plan, Social media
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

Sell What You Do

November 21st, 2011

Let’s face it, time are hard. People are spending less, in the high street and online. Sales on my web sites have gone down, with some niches dropping over 50% in sales.

For some people it’s not critical, the business can survive till we come out of the recession (though don’t hold your breath as it looks like another ten years of this).

For some of you reading this though, any loss of sales is critical. Just a few less sales, means that your business is no longer viable.

So what can you do? Sell your best assets, your know-how and time.

While we’ve been busy developing the know-how to build web sites to sell different products (affiliate or own) or services, one thing many of us have ignored is the skills and knowledge we’ve developed.

There are thousands of people right now looking at setting up their own business, and what do most businesses need today, a web site. Most folk look at one of the easy to learn options, but have no idea of SEO, optimization, developing traffic.

What do YOU do really well for your business? What one thing do you do for your own business that you know you do really well? So why don’t you sell that?

Though not critical, I’m always looking for new income streams, and at the same time ways to get new customers – especially important for the long term. Many times I will sell something at cost, just to get a new customer on my books, because the value of a customer is in the long term – not just the initial sale.

With that in mind I asked myself the question “What do I do really well and easily”. The answer for me was onsite SEO.

Previously I offered a service of doing a full SEO package for web site owners priced at $XXX. But considering the market I want to go in to as the start up part time / small businesses, I needed something cheaper.

The option I came up with wouldn’t have been possible several years ago, onscreen video recording.

What I decided to offer was a 5 minute video walk-through of someone’s website where I outline all the onsite SEO steps the owner has to do.

Along with that I offer some PDFs on SEO, traffic building etc. I worked out that it would take me 10 minutes in all to make the video, burn it to CD with the PDFs and package up – all for about $25.

Now this isn’t a loss leader, but close to it, BUT it gets me in someone’s front door. Do a good job here, develop a trusting relationship, and I’ve hopefully got a new long term customer.

So whether or not the wolf is at the door, look at selling what you do. It could help at least save, at the best boost your business.

Good luck!

Vic Carrara
www.MasterWebSoftware.com

PS. I’m testing this new service here: Onsite SEO Report

PPS. You need to “brainstorm” this to get the best results. Go here for some help: Brainstorming

Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Tags: boost sales, extra business, make money, more customers
Posted in Make Money | No Comments »

Google+ Oh No! Something Else to Learn About

November 9th, 2011

You just about get your head around all the marketing strategies and SEO you think you need to know … and something new springs out.

This time it’s Google+. Not exactly new, but new enough that I know nothing about how to “work it” into my marketing.

I don’t know about you, but there aren’t enough hours in a day. You just get in to a rhythm, have your regular schedule of daily stuff to do, and try to fit time in to keep up to date with the new SEO strategies and games.

Regularly visiting various forums and blogs is part of the routine, to make sure that I don’t miss out on anything. That’s how I became a member of Google+ a few months back … but have I done much with it since joining … well, no – life got in the way. Sorry, but haven’t had the time to learn what I’m supposed to do next.

So, when Google PLUS Exposed came on to my radar, I was interested. A short cut! Yeah! I love short cuts. Let someone else do all the digging around and put all the info I want in to a report – Thankyou!

Infact, liked so much, bought the rights to it. Can’t give it away (against the rights I have), but you can pick it up for only $5 which is going to be a lot cheaper than most other people.

Of course, you could just spend some hours reading up on forums and blogs …

Here you go: Google PLUS Exposed and only 5 Bucks!

Enjoy!

Vic Carrara
MasterWebSoftware.com

Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Tags: Google, Google Plus
Posted in General | No Comments »

Using Google Tools

October 24th, 2011

We all know that site speed has a correlation with your search rankings, and more importantly we know that it definitely has a direct effect on user satisfaction. With that in mind, there is no excuse for not doing the work needed to make your site more responsive.

The first thing you need to do before tweaking things to increase your site speed is to first find the loading time of your pages. You can do this easily using Google Analytics and checking the average page load time. Of course you’ll need to insert Google Analytic’s snippet for tracking page load time in order to get the required data. Finding out which of your pages are lagging in terms of page load times will help you use your time more wisely since you know which ones have issues that need addressing at once.

Once you find out which pages have problematic loading times, you can use Google’s Page Speed Tools to find out exactly what you can do to optimize your page. You can either use the Page Speed tool as a browser extension, or use the Page Speed Online tool, which is a web-based tool. You will be given a Page Speed Score (perfect score of 100), which indicates not the loading time of the page, but how much room for improvement there is in terms of following best practices related to page speed. The good thing about these tools is that they will point out which of the best practices the page you’re having analysed have yet to follow so as to reduce page load time. Suggestions for improvement are categorized according to priority so that you will know which issue to tackle first. Clicking on each suggestion will give you a brief explanation of how following that suggestion will improve your site speed, and will also give a detailed list of all pages affected by the oversight. Best practices pointed out range from serving scaled images to preferring asynchronous resources.

Once you do know what needs to be done in order to improve your site’s speed, all you need to do is just carry out the suggestions where possible. If you are just getting started with search engine optimization and do not understand most of the suggestions, don’t get daunted by the jargon. A little research will help you a lot since a lot of the suggestions are actually quite easy to implement. However, for suggestions that are really quite too technical for you, then just go ahead and enlist the help of a developer.

Another way you can make life a bit easier for you is to sign up for Google’s Page Speed Service. Unfortunately, signing up won’t guarantee that you will indeed be able to enjoy the service since it is still in a period of limited availability, but if you do get approved for this service you can rest knowing that Google’s doing all the hard work for you to ensure fast loading times.

Good luck!

Vic Carrara
MasterWebSoftware.com

Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Posted in General | No Comments »

Stop Comment and Forum Spamming

Spam is a fact of life for those whose job description includes moderating comments. Just this morning I checked the comments for moderation for one of my blogs and was greeted with laughable attempts to get me to approve the obviously generic and spammy comments.

Sell What You Do

Let’s face it, time are hard. People are spending less, in the high street and online. Sales on my web sites have gone down, with some niches dropping over 50% in sales.

For some people it’s not critical, the business can survive till we come out of the recession (though don’t hold your breath as it looks like another ten years of this).

Google+ Oh No! Something Else to Learn About

You just about get your head around all the marketing strategies and SEO you think you need to know … and something new springs out.

This time it’s Google+. Not exactly new, but new enough that I know nothing about how to “work it” into my marketing.

Using Google Tools

We all know that site speed has a correlation with your search rankings, and more importantly we know that it definitely has a direct effect on user satisfaction. With that in mind, there is no excuse for not doing the work needed to make your site more responsive.

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