In the best case SEO specialists create relevant well-structured keyword rich pages, which not only please the eyes of a search engine crawler but also have value to the human visitor. Unfortunately it takes months for this strategic approach to produce feasible results, and many search engine optimizers use so-called “black-hat” SEO.

‘Black Hat’ SEO and Search Engine Spam

The oldest and simplest “black SEO” strategy is adding a variety of popular keywords into web pages to make them rank high for popular queries. This behavior is easily detected since generally such pages include unrelated keywords that lack topical focus. With the introduction of the term vector analysis search engine became immune to this sort of manipulation. However “black-hat’ SEO went one step further creating the so-called “doorway’ pages – tightly focused pages consisting of a bunch of keywords relevant to a single topic. In terms of keyword density such pages are able to rank high in search results but never seen by human visitors as they are redirected to the page intended to receive the traffic.

Another trend is the abusing the link popularity based ranking algorithms, such as PageRank with the help of dynamically-generated pages. Such pages receive the minimum guaranteed PageRank and the small endorsements from thousands of these pages are able to produce a sizeable PageRank for the target page. Search engines constantly improve their algorithms trying to minimize the effect of “black-hat”‘ SEO techniques, but SEOs also persistently respond with new more sophisticated and technically advanced tricks so that this process bears a resemblance to an arms race.

“Black-hat” SEO is responsible for the immense amount of search engine spam-pages and links created solely to mislead search engines and boost rankings for client web sites. To weed out the web spam search engines can use statistical methods that allow computing distributions for a variety of page properties. The outlier values in these distributions can be associated with web spam. The ability to identify web spam is extremely valuable to search engine not just because it allows excluding spam pages from their indices but also using them to train more sophisticated machine learning algorithms capable to battle web spam with higher precision.

Using Statistics to Detect Search Engine Spam

An example of an application of statistical methods to detect web spam is presented in the paper “Spam, Damn Spam and Statistics” by Dennis Fetterly, Mark Manasse and Marc Najork from Microsoft. They used two sets of pages downloaded from the Internet. The first set was crawled repeatedly from November 2002 to February 2003 and consisted from 150 million URLs. For each page the researches recorded HTTP status, time of download, document length, number of non-markup words, and a vector indicating the changes in page content between downloads. A sample of this set (751 pages) was inspected manually and 61 spam pages were discovered, or 8.1% of the set with a confidence interval of 1.95% at 95% confidence.

Another set was crawled between July and September 2002 and comprises 429 million pages and 38 million HTTP redirects. For this set the following properties were recorded: URL, URLs of outgoing links; for the HTTP redirects – the source and the target URL. 535 pages were manually inspected and 37 of them were identified as spam (6.9%).

The research concentrates on studying the following properties of web pages:
– URL properties, including length and percentage of non-alphabetical characters (dashes, digits, dots etc.).
– Host name resolutions.
– Linkage properties.
– Content properties.
– Content evolution properties.
– Clustering properties.

URL Properties

Search engine optimizers often use numerous automatically generated pages to massively distribute their low PageRank to a single target page. Since the pages are machine generated we can expect their URLs to look differently from those created by humans. The assumptions are that these URLs are longer and include more non-alphabetical characters such as dashes, slashes or digits. When searching for spam pages we should consider the host component only, not the entire URL down to the page name.

The manual inspection of the 100 longest hostnames had revealed that 80 of them belong to adult site and 11 refer to the financial and credit related sites. Therefore in order to produce a spam identification rule the length property has to be combined with the percentage of non-alphabetical characters. In the given set 0.173% of URLs are at least 45 characters long and contain at least 6 dots, 5 dashes or 10 digits-and the vast majority of these pages appear to be spam. By changing the threshold values we can change the number of pages flagged as spam and the number of false positives.

Host Name Resolutions

One can notice that Google, given a query q, tends to rank a page higher if the host component of the page’s URL contains keywords from q. To utilize this search engine optimizers stuff pages with URLs containing popular keywords and keyphrases and set up DNS servers to resolve these URLs to a single IP. Generally SEOs generate a large number of host names to rank for a wide variety of popular queries.

This behavior can also be relatively easy detected by observing the number of host name resolutions to a single IP. In our set 1,864,807 IP addresses are mapped to only one host name, and 599,632 IPs-to 2 host names. There are also some extreme cases with hundreds of thousands host names mapped to a single IP, and the record-breaking IP referred by 8,967,154 host names.

To flag pages as spam a threshold of 10,000 name resolutions was chosen. About 3.46% of the pages in the Set 2 are served from IP addresses referred by 10,000 and more host names and the manual inspection of this sample proved that with very few exceptions they were spam. Lower threshold (1,000 name resolutions or 7.08% pages in the set) produces an unacceptable amount of false positives.

Linkage Properties

The Web consisting of interlinked pages has a structure of a graph. Therefore in graph terminology the number of outgoing links of a page can be referred to as the out-degree, while the in-degree equals to the number link pointing to a page. By analyzing out- and in-degrees values it is also possible to detect spam pages which would represent the outliers in the corresponding distributions.

In our set for example there are 158,290 pages with out-degree 1301, while according to the overall trend only 1,700 such pages are expected. Overall 0.05% of pages in the Set 2 have out-degrees at least three times more than suggested by the Zipfian distribution, and according to the manual inspection of a cross section, almost all of them are spam.

Similarly the distribution for in-degrees is calculated. For example 369,457 pages have the in-degree of 1001, while according to the trend only 2,000 such pages are expected. Overall, 0.19% of pages in the Set 2 have in-degrees at least three times more common than the Zipfian distribution would suggest, and the majority of them are spam.

Content Properties

Despite the recent measures taken by search engines to diminish the effect of keyword stuffing, this technique is still used by some SEOs who generate pages filled with meaningless keywords to promote their AdSense pages. Quite often such pages are based on a single template and even have the same number of words which makes them especially easy to detect using statistical methods.

For Set 1 the number of non-markup words in each page was recorded, so we can draw the variance of word count in pages downloaded from a given host name. The variance is plotted on the x-axis and the word count is shown on the y-axis, both axes are drawn on a logarithmic scale. Points in the left side of the graph marked with blue represent cases where at list 10 pages from a given host have the same word count. There are 944 such hosts (0.21% of the pages in Set 1). A random sample of 200 these pages was examined manually: 35% were spam, 3.5% contained no text and 41.5% were soft errors (a page with a message indicating that the resource is not currently available, despite the HTTP status code 200 “OK”).

Content Evolution

The natural evolution of the content in the Web is slow. In a period of a week 65% of all pages will not change at all, while only 0.8% will change completely. In contrast many spam SEO web pages generated in response to an HTTP request independent of the requested URL will change completely of every download. Therefore by looking into extreme cases of content mutation we search engines are able to detect web spam.

The outliers represent IPs serving the pages that change completely every week. Set 1 contains 367 such servers with 1,409,353 pages (97.2%). The manual examination of a sample of 106 pages showed that 103 (97.2%) were spam, 2 were soft errors and 1 adult pages counted as a false positive.

Clustering Properties

Automatically generated spam pages tend to look very similar. In fact, as already said above, most of them are based on the same model and have only minor differences (like inserting varying keywords into a template). Pages with such properties can be detected by applying clustering analysis to our samples.

To form clusters of similar pages the ‘shingling’ algorithm described by Broder et al. [2] will be used. Figure 7 shows the distribution of the cluster sizes on near duplicate pages in Set 1. The horizontal axis shows the size of the cluster (the number of pages in the near-equivalence class), and the vertical axis shows how many such clusters Set 1 contains.

The outliers can be put into two groups. The first group did not contain any spam pages, pages in this group are more related to the duplicated content issue. In the same time the second group is populated predominantly by spam documents. 15 of 20 largest clusters were spam containing 2,080,112 pages (1.38% of all pages in Set 1)

To Sum Up

The methods described above are the examples of a fairly simple statistical approach to spam detection. The real life algorithms are much more sophisticated and are based on machine learning technologies which allow search engine to detect and battle spam with a relatively high efficiency at an acceptable rate of false positives. Applying the spam detection techniques enables search engine to produce more relevant results and ensures a more fair competition based on the quality of web resources and not on technical tricks.

References:

1. Dennis Fetterly, Mark Manasse, Marc Najork. “Spam, Damn Spam, and Statistics: Using statistical analysis to locate spam web pages” (2004). Microsoft Research.

2. A. Broder, S. Glassman, M. Manasse, and G. Zweig. “Syntactic Clustering of the Web”. In 6th International World Wide Web Conference, April 1997.

What is Link and Link Popularity?

The link (hyperlink, or Web link) is a connection from one web resource to another. Internet begins with the hyperlink and a person go from one page to another page by clicking link. Links are the buttons and underlined text on web pages that take you to other pages on click.

What is Link Popularity?

Link Popularity means how much you are known on the internet which can be measured how many sites or web pages linked to you. Link popularity is a measure of both the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site. Link Popularity is the number of quality hyperlinks pointed to your website.

What is Link Exchange?

In Link Exchange basically, we exchange links – you add my link to your website and I will add your link to mine. It is a barter system give link and in return get link .By exchanging links, with theme based sites or authority sites you can increase your websites link popularity and which will results into increase of your website search engine rankings.

What are new site link exchange problems?

For new sites it is quite difficult to get linked with other sites. Even the google takes the site for indexing if it has got few inbound links from other websites. Google says “The best way to ensure Google finds your site is for your page to be linked from lots of pages on other sites…”

In one of the reason for site not listed Google has explained: “If we have not picked up your site and it has been several months, then it is likely that our spiders are not able to find your site. If you increase the links pointing to the page, Google will likely find your site in the future. “

It is clear that your site will not be listed on Google quickly. Search Engines usually takes news sites very fast if you are linked by other popular related web sites. New site will also not get reciprocal link from other sites because of non popularity or 0 PR (Google Page Rank).

Link building strategy for new site owners

Now what strategy should new sites adopt to get started on the Web? Here are the few one, which will work.

1. Get Listed on Free Top Web directory Try to get listed on open directory project DMOZ ( www.dmoz.org.) and also submit your site to Yahoo! by visiting http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/. Be sure to follow their guidelines for listing. The important free directories in addition to dmoz are:

http://www.dmoz.orghttp://dir.yahoo.com

2. Get Links for Your Associates Try to get link from your associated or friends web sites. If you are in business you can get link from your dealers or business associates. It will also help you in getting theme bases links. In initial stage you can take link from your friends and relative web pages or site although they may not be theme based but at least search engine like Google will find your link and index you.

3. Free Site Submission Tools There are lot free site submit tool are available on the Internet. Use them to get listing as for the new site owner it is difficult to find the important search engines. Be careful and do not submit many time to same search engines as they may consider repetive submission it Spam. Further try to keep away from FFA pages as they are treated as ‘link farms” by search engines and listing is penalized.

4. Join Discussion Forum The Discussion form is another media to get inbound links. Join the Message Board which is related to the theme of your site and if you are expert in your field you can reply the many threads. Be sure to include your URL in your signature and also anchor text to be linked with URL should be your site Keyword. If the message board allows it, you can even include a short promotional blurb about your site at the end of your posts. Even if you do not post try to add your url in profile and it is also an inbound link and is important if from your theme based Forum. Try to add your details i.e city, country name, interest and occupation in profile as it will make your theme based pages where all contents are related to you.

5. Email based discussion Email based discussion lists, which are archived on the web in static HTML pages can also be used to boost the link popularity of your site in a similar manner. In this case, the signature file that you use with your email program should contain the URL for your web site.

6. Reciprocal links request low page rank sites The New site faces difficulty in exchanging link with high Page Rank Sites. It is better to start exchanging link with sites which are related to your topic or theme of your site even they may have low Page Rank. You will see that there page rank will increase with the time and you will gain.

7. Link Popularity through Awards Try to join the award sites. There are many sites which open contest or award of good site design or good content site you can apply for it. If you get a chance to which your brief site content will be published on Award site, which will increase your link popularity.

8. Major Industry Associations There are many industrial association sites which publish free listing of there sites. Just find the association site relating to your products or theme of site and get listed.

9. Signing of Testimonial Lot of website ask to write testimonial and also add your URL. Just study the site and write brief genuine testimonials about the website. If you will be able to write good, genuine testimonial you are sure to get listed there with your comment. Do not sign guest books with vague comment just to get link.

10. Discount Offer You can offer a discount or concession on your good, products and services to anyone who put a small banner or text link back to your site.

11. Affiliate program Set up an affiliate program, which is an excellent way to boost link popularity. Your affiliate members will put there affiliate code on there sites which will contain your URL and your will get theme based inbound link.

12. Free Netcard Try to make free netcard available on the Internet and your complete detail to make your full information page and inbound link is also important as it is your business card on net.

It is always said better beginning is half done. So if new site adopt the above method to increase link popularity they are sure to build good page rank in the beginning and latter on all higher page rank web sites will be ready to exchange link with you and will result into building of solid link popularity for your site. You should not expect results (Increase in search engine ranking) so fast. Wait for at least 3 month till search engines index you all full site pages.

#1 – Create the Right Permalink Structure

The permalinks WordPress uses by default are not search engine friendly. You can make this simple change by inserting %postname% instead of the default that is already there. This will successfully create URL’s that include your post name which should include your targeted keywords.

#2 – Install All in One SEO Plugin

This is a must-have plugin which allows you to specify a title, description, and the keywords for the search engines. It can really help you boost up and reach the top of the listings, whereas the standard WP installation can fall short.

#3 – Install Related Posts Plugin

Search engines love it when they get content pages that are interlinked. It also works very well for the search engines. It will automatically include links to other posts that are similar. Very convenient!

#4 – Research your Keywords

When people search, they search by keyword. It is vital that you know what these keywords are if you want to rank at the top of the search engines. Your posts should be centered around these keywords.

#5 – Include Your Keywords in the Title

In the title of your blog you need to include your main keyword. Also, include your main keyword and select others in the titles of your posts and sprinkle throughout your pages.

#6 – Make Your Blog Easy to Navigate

Easy navigation is essential for your guests and the search engines as it makes it easier for the guests. That means including your blog’s categories, recent posts (to make sure they get indexed) and pages. Easy navigation is also part of choosing a good design.

#7 – Expand the Ping List

When you make a new blog post WordPress will “ping” the blog search engines. This alerts them that content on your site has changed and ready for guests to view. This can help you get indexed fast so you can start making money even faster. Do a Google search to find an expanded ping list you can include in your wp-admin so you make sure you get as many of these sites to update you as possible.

Using these seven plugins will make your job of ranking highly in the search engines easier than ever. If you’re new to blogging with WordPress then these terms may seem incredibly strange to you right now. As you study them and go over them a couple times, put them into action and it will start to feel like second nature!

What is Link and Link Popularity?

The link (hyperlink, or Web link) is a connection from one web resource to another. Internet begins with the hyperlink and a person go from one page to another page by clicking link. Links are the buttons and underlined text on web pages that take you to other pages on click.

What is Link Popularity?

Link Popularity means how much you are known on the internet which can be measured how many sites or web pages linked to you. Link popularity is a measure of both the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site. Link Popularity is the number of quality hyperlinks pointed to your website.

What is Link Exchange?

In Link Exchange basically, we exchange links – you add my link to your website and I will add your link to mine. It is a barter system give link and in return get link .By exchanging links, with theme based sites or authority sites you can increase your websites link popularity and which will results into increase of your website search engine rankings.

What are new site link exchange problems?

For new sites it is quite difficult to get linked with other sites. Even the google takes the site for indexing if it has got few inbound links from other websites. Google says “The best way to ensure Google finds your site is for your page to be linked from lots of pages on other sites…”

In one of the reason for site not listed Google has explained: “If we have not picked up your site and it has been several months, then it is likely that our spiders are not able to find your site. If you increase the links pointing to the page, Google will likely find your site in the future. “

It is clear that your site will not be listed on Google quickly. Search Engines usually takes news sites very fast if you are linked by other popular related web sites. New site will also not get reciprocal link from other sites because of non popularity or 0 PR (Google Page Rank).

Link building strategy for new site owners

Now what strategy should new sites adopt to get started on the Web? Here are the few one, which will work.

1. Get Listed on Free Top Web directory Try to get listed on open directory project DMOZ ( www.dmoz.org.) and also submit your site to Yahoo! by visiting http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/. Be sure to follow their guidelines for listing. The important free directories in addition to dmoz are:

http://www.dmoz.orghttp://dir.yahoo.com

2. Get Links for Your Associates Try to get link from your associated or friends web sites. If you are in business you can get link from your dealers or business associates. It will also help you in getting theme bases links. In initial stage you can take link from your friends and relative web pages or site although they may not be theme based but at least search engine like Google will find your link and index you.

3. Free Site Submission Tools There are lot free site submit tool are available on the Internet. Use them to get listing as for the new site owner it is difficult to find the important search engines. Be careful and do not submit many time to same search engines as they may consider repetive submission it Spam. Further try to keep away from FFA pages as they are treated as ‘link farms” by search engines and listing is penalized.

4. Join Discussion Forum The Discussion form is another media to get inbound links. Join the Message Board which is related to the theme of your site and if you are expert in your field you can reply the many threads. Be sure to include your URL in your signature and also anchor text to be linked with URL should be your site Keyword. If the message board allows it, you can even include a short promotional blurb about your site at the end of your posts. Even if you do not post try to add your url in profile and it is also an inbound link and is important if from your theme based Forum. Try to add your details i.e city, country name, interest and occupation in profile as it will make your theme based pages where all contents are related to you.

5. Email based discussion Email based discussion lists, which are archived on the web in static HTML pages can also be used to boost the link popularity of your site in a similar manner. In this case, the signature file that you use with your email program should contain the URL for your web site.

6. Reciprocal links request low page rank sites The New site faces difficulty in exchanging link with high Page Rank Sites. It is better to start exchanging link with sites which are related to your topic or theme of your site even they may have low Page Rank. You will see that there page rank will increase with the time and you will gain.

7. Link Popularity through Awards Try to join the award sites. There are many sites which open contest or award of good site design or good content site you can apply for it. If you get a chance to which your brief site content will be published on Award site, which will increase your link popularity.

8. Major Industry Associations There are many industrial association sites which publish free listing of there sites. Just find the association site relating to your products or theme of site and get listed.

9. Signing of Testimonial Lot of website ask to write testimonial and also add your URL. Just study the site and write brief genuine testimonials about the website. If you will be able to write good, genuine testimonial you are sure to get listed there with your comment. Do not sign guest books with vague comment just to get link.

10. Discount Offer You can offer a discount or concession on your good, products and services to anyone who put a small banner or text link back to your site.

11. Affiliate program Set up an affiliate program, which is an excellent way to boost link popularity. Your affiliate members will put there affiliate code on there sites which will contain your URL and your will get theme based inbound link.

12. Free Netcard Try to make free netcard available on the Internet and your complete detail to make your full information page and inbound link is also important as it is your business card on net.

It is always said better beginning is half done. So if new site adopt the above method to increase link popularity they are sure to build good page rank in the beginning and latter on all higher page rank web sites will be ready to exchange link with you and will result into building of solid link popularity for your site. You should not expect results (Increase in search engine ranking) so fast. Wait for at least 3 month till search engines index you all full site pages.

So for a layman if his intention is to have is own web site, then the first step would be owing a host provider so as to host the website on web server. As soon as the website is online on the server, online users can browse that website through Internet. All this job of providing host facility is with the providers called web-hosting providers.

Any established web hosting provider can host even thousands of websites example, iPowerWeb is a popular web hosting company that hosts websites in amounts of lakhs i.e. 3 lakhs. Due to this reason only these hosting companies needs large number of web servers for storing the website. Thereafter all these web servers are connected to Internet and are kept in a physical center ‘data center’. As these web servers needs to be fully operational all the time so data centers are made fully secure having 24/7 environment and given protection from fire, HVAC temperature control, virus detections, computer data backup, redundant power backup and complete disaster recovery capabilities.

Now after knowing what is web hosting it is also important to know the different types of web host which are summarized below:

Shared Hosting

As the name suggests, in shared hosting several websites share space on the common physical web servers. A physical web server can host thousands of websites at one time depending upon the web host. With so much pressure on web servers it tends to make one think that due to over burden perhaps the performance of web server gets affected. But that thinking is totally wrong as for this reason only web servers are equipped with high-end powerful computer so as to support large number of websites to some extent without any problem. However but it is even possible at time of over burden on web servers that the response is badly effected.

In order to get rid of this problem reputed and experienced host providers constantly keep on monitoring the performance of web servers and keeps on adding new web servers when and where required. As many websites share a same physical web server the cost is generally low with start from mere – per month and they also have to accept slower server response time.

Dedicated Hosting

As against shared hosting, in dedicated hosting a specific web server is allotted to one customer only. Due to one server the customer is having option to host his single/multiple web sites, can modify the configuration of software, can handle greater site traffic and can even scale the bandwidth when it is taken as necessary. It is because of this facility that dedicated hosting charges good amount which starts from and can range even upto0 to 0 monthly. So dedicated hosting is regularly used by extremely important web sites having high traffic.

Co-location hosting

The only difference between dedicated hosting and co-location hosting is that here in this case customers can own the web server hardware whereas in case of dedicated hosting customers can just rent the web server during the hosting period. So Co-location hosting provides more flexibility to its customers in respect of control and maintainence. Here in this case 24/7 server monitoring is also possible which can evade the problem of slow response. Because of all above benefits co-location hosting charges good amount depending upon monthly bandwidth and rack space required which is as high as 0 – 00 monthly.

Reseller hosting

The third type of hosting is reseller hosting where the provider offers web server storage space to third party at a discounted price, who again resell it to his own customer. Normally resellers include web consultants like web designers, developers or system Integration Company who after charging commission which is even upto 50%(taken as discount) can resell the web hosting. Resellers can set up their own hosting company and can decide for their own pricing structure with establishing their own branding.

In case of reseller hosting for reseller’s customers, the reseller is the web host provider. When some technical problem arises like down server or any access problem then in that case the resellers have to settle all with actual web host provider. However this is not the effective way as it leads to unnecessary waste of time due to various channels involved in the communication process like first customer contacts reseller and then reseller contacts actual web host provider and same is with the response it also comes back from the same process, so the problems pertains for a long time. Thus reseller hosting is not considered a good option unless user is having his own personal website or he is having an alternative for poor support from reseller.

Now with growing competition market is having abundant of resellers who are selling their services at a very low price. Due to this and other factors like even some web-hosting providers provide their own toll free numbers to their resellers for co-branded technical support, this makes the decision more difficult to choose which is the right choice.

Thus it is more important to act wisely and to not get attracted with marketing techniques employed by resellers like professional outlook of their website and other strategies like proving technical support in their own name which is actually provided by the provider and not by them but they tend to present it in such a way that they are providing that support.

The general distinguishing feature between resellers and hosting company is firstly the hosting price and secondly the company’s information including their balance sheet example iPowerWeb.com get their company’s information published where they mention their financial strength, their offices and highly equipped data centers. As against this resellers lack these assets and for price what they quote is generally below per month whereas providers charge between and .

Thus considering all these facts it can be concluded easily that due to a minute difference of several dollars one must not get struck in the web of resellers and must go for best facilities instead of getting harassment afterwards.

Regardless of the frustrations involved in designing and launching your own newsletter, never forget this truth: There are people from all walks of life, in all parts of the world, many of them with no writing ability whatsoever, who are making phenomenal profits with their newsletter.

Your first step should be to subscribe to many different newsletters. Analyze and study how the others are doing it. Learn how the successful newsletter publishers are doing it, and how they are making money. Adapt their success methods to your own newsletter, and add your own twist to it.

Plan your newsletter before launching it. Come up with a plan of action, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, etc. Make a plan to distribute it, using subscription services and lead sources.

Most newsletter publishers do all the work themselves, and are impatient to get that first issue online. As a result, they neglect to devote the proper amount of time to market research and distribution. Don’t start your newsletter without first having accomplished this task!

Market research is simply determining who you will be marketing your newsletter to, and who will be interested in buying your products and services, and reading your newsletter. You have to determine what niche you’re going after and what it is your readers want from your newsletter.

Your market research must give you unbiased answers about your newsletter’s capabilities of fulfilling your prospective buyer’s need for information. The questions of why they need your information, and how they will use it should be answered before you proceed too far. Make sure you have the answers to these questions, publish your newsletter as a method of fulfilling these needs, and you’re on your way!

You’re going to loose prospects unless your newsletter has a genuine point of difference that can be easily perceived by your potential buyer. If you are using someone else’s newsletter and just adding your own affiliate links, don’t be surprised when your prospects start leaving by the dozen. If you found the newsletter you’re copying, it stands to reason they’ve seen it before you did.

The design and graphics of your newsletter, plus your unique content will help you keep your prospects from opting-out.

The name of your newsletter should also help to set it apart from similar newsletters, and describe what your fundamental premise is all about. A good name reinforces your marketing. Choose a name that defines what your newsletter is all about.

Try to make your newsletter’s name brandable and unforgettable – one that flows automatically. Don’t choose a name that’s so vague it could apply to most anything. The name should identify your newsletter and its theme promptly and positively. You should also brand it with your domain name if at all possible.

When you send out your newsletter, make sure that you use a name variable with your autoresponder. People like to see their own name and feel that they are the only one that you are sending your newsletter to. You create trust and a feeling in the reader that they are special and that they know you. This is a good thing.

You may want to add a picture of yourself, so your prospects have an idea of who is sending them this valuable information. The use of pictures will set your publication apart from the others and give it an individual image, which is precisely what you want.

The decision regarding whether or not to carry paid advertising, and if so, how much, is another policy decision that should be made while your newsletter is still in the planning stages. Some purists feel that advertising corrupts the image of the newsletter and may influence editorial policy. Most people accept advertising as a part of everyday life, and don’t care one way or the other.

The only issue with accepting advertising in your newsletter would appear to be that as your subscription list grows, so may the number of advertisers. At this point, the basic foundation or philosophy of the newsletter often changes from news and practical information to one of an advertiser’s showcase. So think this through clearly before you decide what you want the reader to experience with your newsletter.

Promoting your newsletter, finding prospective buyers and converting these prospects into loyal subscribers will be the most difficult task of your entire undertaking. It takes comprehensive planning, persistence and patience.

Make sure you send a welcome letter when a new prospect signs up and tell the reader how they are going to benefit from your newsletter, and then keep emphasizing, right on through your “PS”, the many benefits they will gain from staying on your subscriber list. Give the reader a solid list of benefits with examples of what you have, or you intend to include, in your newsletter.

You have to make your prospect feel that ‘this is the insider’s secret’ to the success they want to achieve. Present it to your subscriber as their own personal key to success.

Prepare yourself for the fact that not everyone that signs up for your newsletter will buy your product or service. That is all part of the internet marketing business. However, you should not be disheartened, keep trying to get as many subscribers as possible and always be available to answer any questions your subscriber may have.

Good luck and good publishing.

____________________

TLD Extension

TLD or Top-Level Domain is the ending extension attached to a domain such as .com, .net or .org. The .com extension is considered the most sought after even though there are other TLD’s that are gaining huge popularity and acceptance. CC’s or Country Codes are also seeing their fair share of registrations.

Name Length

Now that all the 2, 3 and 4 letter .com’s have been registered, the letter count on a domain is fast becoming a huge factor in a domain’s worth. The desire for a short domain is at an all time high and values are steadily climbing due to the limited supply of shorter length domains. Seems shorter names are easier to remember and with that a value increase.

Characters, Numbers and Hyphens

Hyphens integrated between letters are often viewed as separators between keywords. Although there is much dispute whether or not the hyphens negatively impact a domain’s search engine optimization, there is considerable preference that a domain not include anything extra in it’s name. Number digits are beginning to see their popularity rise and can be included with relevant keywords or letters to make a great domain.

Keyword Popularity

Marketable search terms and keyword popularity are extremely relevant in appraising a domain name. The frequency of a given search term helps to indicate the brandability or popularity of the keyword. Generic word domains, such as flowers.com or poker.com are the strongest in their keyword popularity genre.

Traffic and Revenue

Traffic or visitors to a particular domain is one of the most important factors to consider when appraising a domain. More traffic usually means more revenue due to pay-per-click income and possible advertising opportunities, therefore increasing the value of the domain.

Brandability and Trends

Any domain that is easily memorable, short and non-descript is considered brandable and therefore increases it’s value. It would be easier for a person to remember TVrepair.com instead of the longer fix-my-broken-television.com . Not only is the first choice shorter and has better word flow but also there is less of a chance of someone incorrectly typing in the URL. Also keep tuned in to current trends that may seem to increase an otherwise meaningless domain into a treasure. An example is when Apple Computers began to incorporate the letter i into their products descriptions, such as iPhone, iPod and iLife.

Automated Domain Appraisals

This is a tricky one. Although I feel automated domain appraisal systems such as Estibot are helpful in assisting to appraise a domain, I don’t feel they should be the “end all” decision used to obtain a domain’s value. If used more as a reference tool, they can be one of the greatest resources that help determine an appraisal value. Any script/applications can have some bugs, especially ones with complex algorithms as Estibot. Make automated domain appraisals one of the tools to find an appraisal, not the only tool.

Future Potential Interest and Overall Appeal

As time goes by, new words, trends and fads explode onto the scene, and with each new word or trend created, a domain is born. Stay up with current events and become a regular visitor to news aggregate sites, such as Digg and domain industry specific DNHour to stay on the cusp of emerging potential interests.

Backlinks

I like to keep my eye on the number and quality of backlinks to evaluate an domain appraisal. While tons of irrelevant backlinks might negatively effect a domain’s search engine optimization, it can still be a positive thing for a domain names’ value. With more and more domains being “parked”, the links tend to lean towards relevant backlinks and therefore less likely to be bogged down in the SEO nightmare of page rank. And, it’s hard to argue that backlinks don’t increase traffic.

Relevance, Region Specific and other Fuzzy Logic

As said earlier, there is no exact formula to appraise a domain name, and therefore the not-so-exact elements must come into play. An example would be that veteran domainers tend to skew their entire method of appraising when it comes to country specific or region specific domain names. Different factors are incorporated to determine non-English domain word values and domainers across the globe are becoming better in detecting future potential interests in foreign markets. Another example is the continuously growing popularity of “long-string domaining”, or stringing multiple words or keywords to achieve a brandable and memorable domain name. TacoBell has ThinkOutsideTheBun.com and Amazon has the domain BuyABook.com. By definition, these would not be very valuable but that’s when the fuzzy logic creeps in. A domain’s value can be perceived in multiple ways.

____________________

So keep in mind that even though there isn’t one exact correct formula being used by the domain industry to appraise domains, a reasonable appraisal can be determined by anyone if they keep all the factors in mind and how they each interact with each other.

I’d suggest you monitor the pulse of current domain sales by frequently visiting

DNJournal’s Domain Sales Chart. This will show you weekly and even yearly to-date domain sales for the industry. And don’t forget to visit the front page of Sedo to view ongoing live auctions. Each of these great resources will help you in creating your own customized method of domain appraising by seeing what domains are selling and for what amount.

Established in 2007, CODANK has dedicated itself to providing clients both locally and nationally with outstanding professional service. The company targets either small to medium businesses or motivated entrepreneurs who don’t mind the satisfaction they receive from affordable designs.

CODANK Charlotte Web Design and Internet Marketing Company offers top-notch services that include:

Web Design and Development – Web Hosting, Project Management, Content Management Systems, E-Commerce, Web Applications

Graphic Design – Logo Design, Brand Identity

Internet Marketing – Internet Consulting, Email Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing

CODANK’s proven records of developing world class E-Commerce web sites, converting or typing into companies’ existing legacy systems, or developing customized content management solutions has provided development professionals with the experience required to deliver the results that meet our client’s expectations.

As a Microsoft registered business partner, CODANK Web Design also extends Microsoft based technologies to its customers making it simple to analyze each individual situation and apply the most appropriate, proven technologies in order to achieve the goals and objectives to each project.

As a Microsoft registered business partner, CODANK Web Design also extends Microsoft based technologies to its customers making it simple to analyze each individual situation and apply the most appropriate, proven technologies to achieve the goals and objectives of each project.

CODANK’s success is contributed to its inventive team of web specialist, creative designers, writers, programmers and marketing professionals that know how to get not only physical marketable results but online results as well.

If you are interested in learning more about CODANK Charlotte Web Design’s development process or have a question about their services, please visit www.codank.com

I made a good income from my domains because I did not just sell domain names, I sold domain names that had a business plan and a website while others were just trying to sell their domain names with no traffic, no business plan and no website.

Today many are still doing it that way. Although now they park them at SEDO or Go Daddy or somewhere to try to make adsense revenue while they list them for sale. So my background in domain names is good enough that I can dispel a few myths.

First TLD stands for Top Level Domain. .COM, .NET, .ORG are all examples of TLDs. The domain name most people refer to is what goes before the dot. The TLD is what comes after the dot.

These are some Common Myths about Domain Names;

.TV is for television or multimedia websites. Pure myth. Any domain name in any TLD can work for television, video, or multimedia. The TLD .TV does not give you any special tools for creating multimedia-rich content. .TV does not stand for television. It is the ccTLD or country-code TLD for Tuvalu Island. An island in the pacific that had no real use for owning a TLD so they sold the rights to sell domain names on their TLD to a company that leads people to believe it stands for television. It works. People buy them and use them and associate them with television and that is ok. It’s just a myth that .TV was created to mean television.

Another Domain Name Myth: If you want to build websites that people can access by their cell phone or PDA you need to get a .MOBI domain name. Just like dot tv does not give you any special capability for television or multimedia, dot mobi does not give you any special tools for mobile-capable websites. Any website on any TLD can provide content to cell phones and PDAs if it is made compatible for them. Many will lead you to believe that dot mobi somehow gives you the advantage when it comes to cell phones and PDAs. it doesn’t.

.ME Domain Names Myth: Coming soon to a domain registrar near you. Soon domain names will be marketing for the TLD dot ME. They will market them as great domain names for personal websites. They may be. But it was not created as such. It is the Country-code top-level domain designated for Montenegro.

.PN Domain Names: I own Blogs.pn. I would love to tell you it stands for Publisher network or something like that but it doesn’t. It is the Country-code top-level domain designated for Pitcairn Island. Another pacific island that did not have much use for a TLD so someone was authorized to sell dot pn domain names.

Soon ICANN will be allowing more TLDs to be created and domain names will be marketed in these new TLDs. More and more countries will also offer domain names for sale in their ccTLDs. So the market will be opening up and it may be confusing to some. The truth is what comes before the dot matters most. Getting a domain name in a TLD that makes sense to users can help you though.

Shorter Domain Names are better than Long Domain Names Myth: Only in certain circumstances is a shorter domain name better than a long domain name. Many domain gurus disagree. I don’t care. They talk about people being able to remember your domain name. Truthfully more traffic comes from people clicking links in search engines, on other websites, and on social bookmarking sites than comes from people who type in the domain name.

What is more important is that the domain name help you capture a phrase you want to target in the search engines. I can give you a ton of examples where having the exact phrase you want in the domain name has helped get a top position in Google and other search engines. So if the phrase is longer, do not abbreviate it just because you heard shorter domain names are better. Get the phrase you want to target.

If you are planning to advertise your domain name OFFLINE, in advertising on TV, radio, or even magazines and newspapers, shorter domain names ARE better. Offline, people have to be able to remember your domain name.

The best of both worlds: If most of your traffic comes from the web, shorter means very little. To cover both, get a domain name that matches your key phrase and put your website on that domain name. Then get a second domain name that is short and catchy and redirect or point it to the same website. Use the shorter-easy-to-remember domain name for your offline marketing and the domain that matches your key phrase for the search engines.

Anything other than a dot COM is worthless Myth: This is a favorite myth spread everywhere. It is based on the same myths about shorter domain names. If people have to remember it, then yes, they do remember dot com more often. If you are doing offline marketing, use a dot com.

Online your website can be on any TLD. People are clicking links. So again, get the domain name that matches your key phrase for your website whether it is on .com, net, org, tv, pn, cc, ws, or whatever. Start with dot com, try your phrase. If it is taken, move to the next TLD and try your phrase again. If it is taken, repeat your attempts to register until you find a TLD that your phrase IS available in and register it in that TLD.

These are some Myths about Trademarks and Domain Names;

Domain Name VS Trademark Myth #1: If I own a trademark I need to register my trademarked name in every TLD. Pure Myth and a worthless, time-consuming strategy promoted by Intellectual Property Lawyers who need to justify what you are paying them.

Domain Name VS Trademark Myth #2: When you register a trademark, you have to choose a classification for that trademark such as “entertainment television”, “clothing and apparel”, “beverages”, etc.

You do not own the phrase you trademark. You are being allowed to use that trademark in commerce within the classification you chose. Someone else can register the same exact trademark and choose a different classification.

In addition to that, the geographical area you registered your mark in only covers that area. Someone could have the same trademark in the same classification in a different geographical location.

So again, you do not own the phrase you trademarked, so no need to register every TLD in existence. It could even be construed as anti-competitive business practice to do so.

Domain Name VS Trademark Myth #3: If you chose the trademark, “goofball lawyer stuff” and chose the classification “clothing and apparel”, I could still register the domain name http://goofballlawyerstuff.com or net or org or whatever.

As long as I do not sell clothing or apparel, link to anyone who sells clothing and apparel, or try to confuse people into believing my website is owned by you, I have not violated your trademark rights. Get over it.

I hope this helps you dispel a few of the most common domain name and trademark myths you may have been reading about.

You might be wondering, “What is popular about a link!” Plenty! Link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine. So, how do I make my link popular?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It’s a simple recipe, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now most popular search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more popular tour keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on the search engines. But don’t be discouraged; there are ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that just linking up with a large number of other websites will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that are nothing more than “link farms” – pages containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have any problem about your visitors seeing. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

So let’s get to what you need to do to achieve high link popularity and improve your rankings on all the popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you around 0 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if your company sells Goats Milk from a farm located in the middle of Whoop Whoop, do NOT submit your listing to “Retailers from Nowhere.” BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper – and submit your listing to the “Goat Product” category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.

The next step after you have acquired directory listings is to locate other quality related sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site’s visitors. Let’s look at the Goats Milk site example. Linking up to a site that sells Goats Milk recipes would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of this site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website’s traffic, you are increasing both of your site’s business prospects – and both of your sites’ link popularity.

Not all sites want to link to other sites, so do some research when you are looking for possible linking partners. Google is an excellent starting place for your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to find your site. Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page. Go to these sites and assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with the crowd.

When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity. After you have added their link, you must contact the webmaster of their site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk mail. This requires that you tell them right off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will read on.

Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you admire their website. Make sure you stress that you have actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them to check out the link for themselves. It’s a good idea to mention that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two so you don’t sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your website.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites, be sure to check these website frequently to see if they have added a link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link appears, try another charming email. Then give it another month, and if your site is still absent from their links page, it’s time to remove their link from your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial to your link popularity and your business needs. Just remember to keep all your communications complimentary and cordial.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This will not happen over night. It will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no way around the labour-intensive nature of improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with such importance.

B.T.W – make sure you have a tidy, professional looking site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you achieve link popularity success!