Open a link in a new windowIts easy to use HTMLso that links open in a new window. This is a better way than using javascript as it will work whether the browser has javascript installed or not. You can implement it by adding the text target="_blank" to your anchor tag. For example:
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I found this great little tip while searching youtube today. It talks about a method of finding out how many websites have a certain word in their title. You can use this to judge how much competition you will have or to simply work out which keywords you will target. This video is very short, but it is certainly a handy thing for all webmasters to know.
Adsense Review
Ok if your a webmaster and you haven't heard of adsense you may have had your head under a rock for the last few years. In March 2003 Google launched Adsense, which runs text, image and video ads on your website that are targeted to your websites content and location of your visitors. This has made adsense an extremely popular program with webmasters because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website.
Currently these ads run on a cost-per-click basis and the webmaster gets a cut of the profits each time one of the ads on his/her site is clicked. Sounds simple...? Yes well it is really!
Adsense have also released referrals 2.0 where webmasters are paid on a cost-per-action basis (An action can be a product being purchased, a form being filled, etc).
Adsense is very simple to set up (copy and paste a small section of HTML) and the rest is done for you. Adsense is a great way of making some money if you have a website and if you haven't signed up yet then I recommended getting into this great program. There is a link to the adsense page on the right menu of this page so start making some money now!
If you want someone to click on your links, use brief but meaningful link text that:
Avoid the following sentence on your page:
To visit my blog, click here.
or:
To sign up to blogger, go to the Blogger Website and fill in the necessary form.
This doesn't explain what blogger is or offers
Instead try this - An example
If you want to call your reader to action, use something like:
Visit Webmasters Central!
A longer link text might be:
Tell me more about Blogger: A free blog creator that lets you create you very own blog.
I hope this little tip has helped. Good luck writing quality links!
There is no doubt that most webmasters and businesses on the web put search engine optimization (SEO) at the top of the importance list. Still this really is the ultimate question most people are asking.
Ask yourself - how many visitors do I want?
If the answer is a dozen a day then SEO shouldn't be a major concern. You should simply focus on writing great content and a few people will certainly come and visit. Good content is one of the keys to a decent google ranking and rumours abound that great content will become even more valuable to your listing in the future. That is why constantly updated blogs get into the top rankings of google - their content is always being updated! If you want hundreds of visitors daily then certainly put some of your focus into SEO, but still don't forget to write great content.
In the end true long term success with google comes from genuinely good content.
What should I be doing to optimize my page...?
Heaps of information can be found on this and I am not going to go into great detail, but these are the things you should be trying to do:
This is a very old secret, but it certainly still works.
If you are on a website and like something the webmaster has done with HTML you can learn how to do the same thing. On most (if not all) popular browsers you can see the HTML code/tags for everything on the page you are viewing. If you like something the webmaster has done then you can find the code for it. While I don't just condone copying and pasting other peoples HTML, many people do this. I suggest either modifying it to make it your own or asking the webmaster permission to use it. This will certainly get you a better response than simply stealing it!
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7:
Click the page button (in the right hand corner) and then click view source (see picture below)
Older Versions of Internet Explorer Simply click on 'View' then on 'Source'
Firefox
Click on view and then page soruce (shortcut Ctrl - U) - see picture below
Final Stage
Now once you view the source you can copy and paste the tags you want to use.
Shortcuts for copying and pasting:
Highlight the 'section' you want hold down the Ctrl key and hit C (Ctrl C). Next you go to place you want to paste and use Ctrl V to paste the code.
Please do not use this tip to steal code - always ask first!
If you thought that this post was useful you might want to consider subscribing to this blog or bookmarking this post. I will always be updating with more tips for webmasters.
When you are a webmaster increasing your google page rank, or pagerank as it is sometimes spelled, is almost the holy grail. Hours are spent trying to make your page look valuable to the google search engine gods and often it can be a frivolous exercise. Over the next few weeks I am going to include tips on how to increase your google page rank and the first tip starts today!
Tip 1 - Submitting to directories
One of the ways google ranks pages is to look at the quality and number of sites linking back to your website (backlinks). One way to increase your backlinks without pestering webmasters to link back to you is to submit your site to directories. The best thing about directories is that many are absolutely free (for the cheap webmasters like me this is great) and many have a high page rank themselves, which is important for making your site look like a quality page. Basically the higher the page rank of the directory you are listed on the better your page will end up looking. Now I have heard many things about this topic, but I always say you need at least 100 good quality back links before google will take any notice of you.
For the Cheapskates...
If you are going down the free directory route then you have to be prepared for two things:
1. To wait while someone checks your site and decides it is worthy of submission (this can take months).
2. To provide a backlink from your site to the directory.
It is possible that some will not accept you so always submit to more than you want and hope to get over about 100 (more if you are really serious)
I have money what about me?
If you have money for advertising your website (or someone providing a bankroll) then you can consider paying to be listed in directories. The price of this varies and you can find some companies who will do all of the work for a fee. There are two advantages of paying for a listing:
1 You often get a higher listing in the directories themselves
2 You are usually given a listing in the directory within 24 hours
What directories do I submit to?
Well this is up to you, there are literally thousands of the things and some are better than others. You should try submitting to directories with a high page rank (7-10) first and then hit some of the smaller ones (3-6) later. You can also take a gamble and submit to page rank 0 directories in the hope that they will rank better next time around.
You should also consider listing with directories that deal with your specific subject area of your website. For example if you have a golf page you might search google for "golf directory" and find a few directories specific to your topic to submit to.
A good list of directories and their page ranks can be found at:
addurl.nu
However there are thousands more.
Tips
Help I can't find the page rank... If you want to know the page rank of the site you are submitting to simply search google for a" page rank checker" and find out how good the site you are submitting to really is. Anything page rank 3 or over is fine.
How many backlinks do I have?
To check how many backlinks you have you can use the google webmasters tools that I blogged about earlier this week. You can read that post here: Linkback tool at googles webmasters central.
However the quickest and easiest way of doing this would be to perform a google search. Simply type in link: and then the full URL of your website
I found this little youtube gem while searching this morning and until now I hadn't realised what great tools google webmaster central offers.
Google webmaster central is a great way to find out about your site and the new feature they have added can even tell you about your backlinks, which are inherently linked to your google Page Rank (I will be posting a lot about page rank soon). This little tool is very accurate and this youtube video will tell you all about it!
I am not overly keen on the guys voice or the video presentation it has some great tips so it is well worth watching!
You can check out the google webmaster tools here:
google webmaster central
If you liked this post you might want to consider subscribing to this blog or bookmarking this post. I am always updating with more tips for webmasters.
Basically Meta Tags are used by search engines to work out what your site is about and how to display that to people who search for your site. They will not guarantee good placement in the search engines, but they are now used by all except one major search engine. So if you don't have good Meta Tags, you are doing your website a disservice.
Placement of Meta Tags<name="description" content="This blog is about tips for webmasters, including things like SEO, web hosting......etc.">
Use around 60 - 130 characters, and include a few of your keywords in the description.
Keywords tag
Keywords are how visitors find your site so they are obviously very important very and it is important you get them right.
<name="keywords" content="webmaster, SEO, increase traffic, etc,">
You can use 800 characters when writing a description tag. Include the most important keywords at the top. Don't repeat the same keyword to generate more results as most search engines ignore the spam. However, you can include keywords in both the singular and plural form.
Robot Tags
Robots are what the search engines send out to look over your pages and find out what it is about. This tag tells those robots what to do.
<name="robots" content="all / none / index / noindex / follow / nofollow">
Robot attribute:
"all" - This allows all of the files to be indexed.
"None" - tells the spider not to index any files and not to follow any hyperlinks
"Index" - Tells the spider that this page may be indexed
"follow" - The spider is free to follow the links from this page to other pages.
"noindex" - Tells the spider that this page may not be indexed, but allows it to follow the hyperlinks and index those pages.
"nofollow" Tells the spider that this page may be indexed, but the links should not be followed.
Distribution tag
<name="distribution" content="Global">
You can also tell the robots how you want the pages indexed. The options are global, or restricted to certain countries.
Rating Tag
<name="rating" content="General">
This helps the robots classify your site, you can assign a rating to your pages:
Revisit Tag
<name="revisit after" content="30days">
If you update your site often it is useful to ask the spiders to revisit your site after a certain time. The recommended time is between 21 and 180 days.
Hopefully these simple tips will help you write better meta tags and get more visitors to your website!
Hi
My name is Tom. I am a webmaster from Australia and this site is going to document my tips and tricks to becoming a successful webmaster. It will include topics such as:
