An interesting series is being written on the Google Webmaster Blog about Linking Strategies. They have already got my interest. After all, Google giving us any hint at all about links is a plus.

This one part really interests me;

Day 4: Inbound links (sites linking to you)
Inbound links are external sites linking to you. There are many webmasters who (rightfully) aren’t preoccupied by the subject of inbound links. So why do some webmasters care? It’s likely because merit-based or volunteered inbound links may seem like a quick way to increase rankings and traffic. Answers to your questions like, “Are there no-cost methods to maximize my merit-based links?” are provided on Day 4.

So I can’t wait until day 4. Google hints here that inbound links are not so important? I have to read this. So should you if you own a website and want to understand links. They are going to talk about internal links, outbound links, and inbound links and how important all of them are to your website.

We all talk about SEO a lot. There are a ton of things you need to know in order to rank well in the search engines, but what do you know about website security and how it can affect the SEO of your website?

Chances are, not much, because we don’t talk about it often enough. But there are several things about security and they can all affect how well you rank in the search engines.

Quick security checklist for webmasters

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 12:34 AM
Written by Nathan Johns, Search Quality Team

In recent months, there’s been a noticeable increase in the number of compromised websites around the web. One explanation is that people are resorting to hacking sites in order to distribute malware or attempt to spam search results. Regardless of the reason, it’s a great time for all of us to review helpful webmaster security tips.

Obligatory disclaimer: While we’ve collected tips and pointers below, and we encourage webmasters to “please try the following at home,” this is by no means an exhaustive list for your website’s security. We hope it’s useful, but we recommend that you conduct more thorough research as well.

The Rest of The List of things to do about website security and how it can affect you with the search engines here

A lot of people are also not aware that Google has more than one blog. Most people read the Google Webmaster Blog where the post I mentioned above was written, but Google also has a blog about Security.

A lot of people already use Google Webmaster Tools, but when is the last time you checked your website? Sometimes we just get busy and we forget how helpful Google Webmaster Tools can be.

Others of you may not know about them. Read this blog post about Google Webmaster Tools and you will see why you should be using them.

Ok, a lot of people have been using video as a marketing tool for a long time. More and more people are using it to market products and services each day. However, video marketing is still in the baby stages, but it’s time is now.

The reason is the number of people who are watching videos is growing at a record pace. Building websites without any videos for users is ignoring one of the best marketing tools available to you.

These days, producing a video is not that expensive. It is very cost-effective and can help you close sales you would not otherwise close. Video marketing pays for itself in a very short time.

So when planning your new website or expanding your old website, make sure you include videos as part of the content you will be adding to it.

If you want to know more about how we can help you with video marketing, call me at 786-317-8774.

I like Stephen Colbert and think he is hilarious. This interview with Nicholas Carr about his book and about Google in no different.

I have been writing about the rise of social media for a long time now and how it compares to search engine traffic and users. Many SEOs say social media traffic does not convert well and therefore useless to advertisers. I disagree.

First of all, you can read my post about the number of people who actually use search engines here, then you can read my post about google optimization and social bookmarking here.

Then you can read more about the debate and two more sides to the story about social media vs search engines here.

I think that social bookmarking and social networking are in the baby stages with much more to come. There will be niche social networking websites that cater to specific industries and those will be much more relevant to both searchers and advertisers than search engines are today.

Social networking is the google killer everyone was asking about. it is not another search engine that will beat google. it’s social networking.

Check out our Social Bookmarking Service. If you do not have the time to do social networking, we do it for you.

There is a lot of talk about Google’s announcements about dynamic URLs vs. Static URLS. Google has confused a lot of people on this since it differs from previous statements out of Google and also differs from common sense SEO techniques. First, what is a dynamic vs. a static URL for those of you who do not know;

What is a static URL?
A static URL is one that does not change, so it typically does not contain any url parameters. It can look like this: http://www.example.com/archive/january.htm. You can search for static URLs on Google by typing filetype:htm in the search field. Updating these kinds of pages can be time consuming, especially if the amount of information grows quickly, since every single page has to be hard-coded. This is why webmasters who deal with large, frequently updated sites like online shops, forum communities, blogs or content management systems may use dynamic URLs.

What is a dynamic URL?
If the content of a site is stored in a database and pulled for display on pages on demand, dynamic URLs maybe used. In that case the site serves basically as a template for the content. Usually, a dynamic URL would look something like this: http://code.google.com/p/google-checkout-php-sample-code/issues/detail?id=31. You can spot dynamic URLs by looking for characters like: ? = &. Dynamic URLs have the disadvantage that different URLs can have the same content. So different users might link to URLs with different parameters which have the same content. That’s one reason why webmasters sometimes want to rewrite their URLs to static ones.

We have done URL rewrites for quite some time, especially when it involves permalink stucture in wordpress blogs. The rewrites work just fine and still make more sense than the default dynamic URL wordpress uses.

One thing the Google blog did not mention is that the keywords in the URL can help with search engine rankings. The Google blog talks about the fact that Google can crawl dynamic URLs just fine so you should just use those and not rewrite them.

I suspect that John Mueller of Google knows that the keywords in the URL do affect search engine rankings and does not want people putting keywords into the URLs. In other words it could have the potential of abuse by SEOs who might put keywords into the URL that are not relevant to the content.

However, I do not believe that putting terms in the URL that are not relevant to the content would help you anyway, so I don’t understand why that wasn’t mentioned as part of the reason to rewrite URLs in the first place.

A URL that has parameters like ? in the url are not as beneficial as having keywords in the URL that is relevant to your webpage content. Therefore, we will still use rewrite methods for dynamic URLs, especially when it comes to permalink structure in wordpress.

For those that do not know what permalink structure is; When you install wordpress all of the settings are on default. When you write a blog post, you are also creating another page. When you click the title of the blog post, you are taken to a single page with just that post on it.

The url will look something like this; http://www.yourblogname.com/?p=13. If you have a domain name that has good keywords in it, then the URL will contain your keywords to that extent. However, doing a mod rewrite, you can change that url to look like this; http://www.yourblogname.com/ categorynamewithakeywordinit/ thetitleofyourblogpostwithkeywordsinit/ thedateyoumadethepost.

The second URL is longer and of course short URLs are good for the most part, but the longer URL with the keywords helps rank better and helps people know what they are clicking over to read about. The benefits of the better permalink structure far outweigh the doiwnside of having longer URLs.

I compare this to the people who say shorter domain names are always better than long domain names. That isn’t true either. AutPrtsSite.com is not better than autopartswebsite.com for instance.

In wordpress you can also get a plugin called seo-slugs that will eliminate words like the, a, and, etc. from the post slug which will help shorten them for the search engines.

When asked about permalinks, John posted this on the google blog;

John Mueller said…
@businessgeeks: I would only recommend using WordPress permalinks if you are certain that they do not introduce any irrelevant elements into the URL. In general, WordPress is pretty good at this.

Really, it sounded like he wants to make sure you really know how to use mod rewrite or other methods of rewriting URLs. If you really know how, it isn’t a problem. It may have been a caution to those who are not sure about how to do this properly.

I love what one commenter said though;

DazzlinDonna said…
O.M.G. This is going to stir up a hornet’s nest of controversy. This is unbelievable. You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you Google geeks realize that you just made everything MORE confusing, not less? The very advice you are handing out is directly contradicted by the fact that THIS POST uses redirection to create its pretty url. How confusing do you think that is? Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

So the very blog that google uses to talk about this rewrites the dynamic URL to a static URL. Nuff said.

Well, SEO can be fun at least. The Search Engine Rap Battles are on. Here at SEO Service Provider, we will be offering our own entry into the search engine rap battles soon and we will dominate! In the meantime you can listen and see who the wannabee SEO rappers are here and more seo rappers here, before you watch the SEO Rap Video below.

The SEO Service Provider Rap is coming soon so stay tuned.

The Google Webmaster Blog clears up the duplicate content penalty myth once and for all. I have tried to explain this so often I feel like a broken record. The fear of duplicate content penalties have been rampant on the web with many so-called seo gurus blogging about it and giving bad advice when it comes to duplicate content penalties.

Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty.” At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.

There are some penalties that are related to the idea of having the same content as another site—for example, if you’re scraping content from other sites and republishing it, or if you republish content without adding any additional value. These tactics are clearly outlined (and discouraged) in our Webmaster Guidelines

But most site owners whom I hear worrying about duplicate content aren’t talking about scraping or domain farms; they’re talking about things like having multiple URLs on the same domain that point to the same content. Like www.example.com/skates.asp?color=black&brand=riedell and www.example.com/skates.asp?brand=riedell&color=black. Having this type of duplicate content on your site can potentially affect your site’s performance, but it doesn’t cause penalties.

To summarize this; There is NO DUPLICATE CONTENT PENALTY. Duplicate content in your website may mean that the duplicates are not indexed. This is not a penalty. Google will rank one of the pages and not the others because they have the same content. Common sense on Google’s part.

Scaping someone else’s content may get you a penalty and it should get you a penalty 100% of the time. But aty the very least, scraping someone else’s content will not get you ranked in search engines. So if you are scraping someone else’s content, you are not only a thief, you are a stupid thief.

To have original website content written for you, click here.

One of our clients used the service at QualityTrafficSupply.com and this was his experience.

From Darrel Dolph of LotteryNumberAdvisor.com
We are all looking for value traffic on our websites. If it’s good, we don’t mind paying for it either. So, when someone recommended that I check out QualityTrafficSupply.com, I was curious.

Then, I started reading their pitch. At first, targeted website traffic sounded good. Next, website traffic from contextual ads sounded even better. Even the price looked good. I should have known better and stopped right there. Since I’m writing this review, you’ve probably figured out that I’ve learned yet another lesson the hard way.

I purchased 25,000 visitors to my site, to be delivered over a 30 day period. Their stats show that I was supposed to receive about 833 hits per day, but they only delivered between 30 to 50 per day. One day I got 80. After trying various target audiences, I got the same thing.

Here’s what their marketing hype says:
• We answer all emails in less than 24 hours, including weekends.
• Our responsive service helps us retain many return customers.
• Fast service and support 7 days a week.

So, I emailed them to see if there was something we could do. Two days later, I emailed them again. Two days later, I emailed them again. Get the picture. Plus, their online Chat feature is always offline. These people are ghosts. Their website should have read:

• We answer all emails in less than 24 months, after we get around to it.
• Our responsive service guarantees that we will lose our customers.
• Fast service and support once every 6 months and on Cinco de Mayo, whichever comes first.

But, that’s not all. I just started my website, so traffic is low. I mean very low; like 20 visits per day. I figured that the traffic they promised would help bridge the gap until my SEO efforts kicked in. But, they didn’t deliver anything. Each day their stats were saying they were providing me with more visits than Google Analytics said I received! Somebody’s lying.

These guys don’t provide the traffic they promise. They only provide ghost traffic. The traffic they do provide is only in their mind. This company doesn’t even exist. Nobody is home and nobody is minding the store.

I recommend that you become a ghost customer and never let them see the color of your money.

Darrel Dolph