Cloaking - Black Hat Or Not.. an info

According to Wikipedia

“Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the users’ browser.”

DAMN! I am writing again a BLACK HAT SEO ARTICLE.

Cloaking is a term used for presenting a different page to human visitor whereas an entirely different page to search engine spiders or bots for the same url. Means the page you find at www.abc.com is entirely different than the page a Search Engine Spider find at www.abc.com

Cloaking is done by cloaking softwares that compare the IP address of the coming request for a webpage to a database of known IP addresses of specific search engine spiders. If the IP address matches one on the list, it serves a page that was specifically written for the search engines and if not than it shows a page made for human visitors. Most cloaking software has all the search engine spiders’ IP addresses indexed plus they are updated regularly.

So where is BLACK HAT In there ?

Ahh! I get it. You can build hundreds of targeted keyword rich pages designed specifically for the search engine spiders, or a link farm having 1000 links pointing to a website( HINT: USE 50 Links pointing to Google.com), while at the same time building a regular page for human visitors so they don’t get annoyed. So whenever a search engine spider visits your site, it is detected and sent to your that exclusive pages for them. On the other hand, whenever a human visitor arrives, the software detects that it’s not an IP from a search engine spider, so the human arrives at the non-exclusive such that a regular page.

A cloaking software see that following things when someone comes to a website

• IP address
• User-Agent
• The HTTP_REFERER header
• The HTTP Accept-Language header

Types Of Cloaking
There are two types of Cloaking

• User Agent Cloaking
• IP based Cloaking

User Agent Cloaking
In User Agent Cloaking, the cloaking script compares the User Agent text string which is sent when a page is requested with its list of search engine User Agent names and then serves the approp riate page. enerally, if a search engine spider requests a page, the User-Agent variable contains the name of the search engine. If the cloaking script does not detect the name of a search engine in the User-Agent variable, it assumes that the request has been made by a human being and delivers the page which was designed for human beings.

IP Based Cloaking
This is the more complicated method to do cloaking. It invloves IP address od search engine spiders. When a visitor (a search engine or a human) requests a page, the cloaking script checks the I.P. address of the visitor. If the I.P. address is present in the I.P. database, the cloaking script knows that the visitor is a search engine and delivers the page optimized for that search engine. If the I.P. address is not present in the I.P. database, the cloaking script assumes that a human has requested the page, and delivers the page which is meant for human visitors.

How Search Engine Detects Page Cloaking?

• If a site using user-agent cloaking method than a search enigne send a spider which does not report a user agent name.

• If a site using IP Based cloaking method then the search engines can send a spider or bot from a different I.P. address than any I.P. address which it has used previously.

• A Human representative from search engine. Emm. Well It may be possible

So Is this Technique still have Some Worth?

I don’t think so cause now Google don’t give importance to number of link but the quality and relevancy of link. So such type of thing now don’t work or caught after sometime resulting in that sweet ban in Google.

Here is great visual representation of the whole process of Cloaking.

This image and is from ELLIANCE: LINK. From here you can aslo find some more Visual representation if duifferent SEO Process.

Here is a Fire Fox Extension to change your user agent name to see if a site is claoking or not. Extension

Any suggestion or comments are welcome.

On-Page SEO

SEO is categorized in two major types

1. On Page SEO
2. Off Page SEO

On Page SEO
All the tweaks and changing you do for SEO purpose, directly on a website is termed as On Page SEO.

Important OnPage Optimization Factors Include

• Title Tag
• Meta Tag
• Keywords
• Navigational Structure
• Content (Heading tags, Keyword placement, formatting, Internal Linking)
• Images
• Size Of Page

TITLE TAG
and This is the title of your web page. It appears within the head section of html of your web page under tags . It appears in the search engine results. This is one of the important factors of onpage optimization. Here are some points you should consider to optimize title tag of your website

• Use unique title tag for each page of your website.
• Title Tag should be type in Proper Case
• Your title tag should not contain more than 64 characters
• Title Tag describe a page. So titles and content on the page should be related.
• Use your major keyword in title tag
• Don’t think title tag is a keyword tag.
• Don’t Use ASCII Characters in your title tag
• Avoid using Stop or Common words like AND , Or in Title instead use special characters like | or -

META TAGS
It appears within the head section of html of a web page after title tag. Major Meta Tags includes
description tag
keyword tag
http-equiv tag
meta refresh tag
meta robots tag

We need to optimize description tag, keyword tag and meta robot tag only

Meta Description Tag
Meta description tag is a tag fir a brief description of the page. It looks like..
(meta name="”description”" content="”Brief")

Remember these point while optimizing meta description tag

• Limit your description to at most 200 characters.
• Use unique description for each page
• Description must be relevant to the content of the page
• Start description of the page with major keyword for that page.

Meta Keyword Tag
Meta keyword tag is the tag contains related keywords for a page. It looks like…
(meta name="”keywords”" content="”keyword")

Remember these point while optimizing meta description tag

• Use your major keyword in each page meta keyword tag
• Don’t STUFF keywords
• Use the title tag keyword in keyword meta tag
• Never use same keyword twice for examle “keyword” and “Keywords”

Meta Robot Tag
Robots META tag indicate to visiting Web crawler that this page should be indexed, or links on the page should be followed. It looks like this..

(meta name="”robots”" content="”all”")
(meta name="”robots”" content="”index,follow”")
(meta name="”robots”" content="”noindex,follow”")
(meta name="”robots”" content="”index,nofollow”")
(meta name="”robots”" content="”noindex,nofollow”")

Beside these tags there are other tags too but they are of no use in ranking process.

KEYWORDS
Every single person who knows about seo cant deny the importance of Keywords cause all your SEO Campaign base on them. Keywords are the words that people use to search. All the words which are related to your site topic or market can be your keywords.

Here is a HOW TO CHOSE KEYWORDS GUIDE. Read it for better strategy to get most useful keywords for your site that will increase your site ranking in search engines.

When using keyword remember these points

• Use all your major keyword in the content of thepage
• Use major keyword in title tag
• Link those keyword to related pages of your site or blog.
• Use keyword in bold and itlaic.
• Use keyword in H2-H5 heading tags.
• Use your important keyword in first and last paragraph of your content.
• Use keyword in URL of the page
• Use related keywords instead of words like “READ MORE” or “NEXT PAGE”

NAVIGATIONAL STRUCTURE
Navigational Structure plays an important part in SEO process by both SE and human visitor point of views. If your Navigational Structure is too tough to follow than both human visitor as well as search engine spider will leave your site. no matter how much cool thing or service you are offering. This factor directly effects your site human visitors so better take good care of it.

Remember these key points when deciding the navigational structure of your website

• Use your major Pages Links in side navigation bar displaying on every page
• Don’t use buttons or java scripts for the menus, instead use TEXT LINKS
• There must be a HOME PAGE link on every page of your site
• Don’t use fancy fonts which are a little bit harder to read
• All your major pages should be no more than two clicks far from homepage

CONTENT
Every one has heard that quote again and again..

“Content is King” But its better if you alter that quote by “Good And Relevant Content Is King“.

This is the major On page SEO factor. Remember these points while creating content for your site

• Use relevant and Unique content
• Use all your major and minor keywords naturally in the content
• Use keywords in first and last paragraph of the content
• Link keywords to the related internal pages of your website.
• Use bold and italic styles in content for keywords.
• Use heading tags in content

IMAGES
Now a days many of you have already heard and read articles about imporantce of image optimization. Images are playing if not major than a good role in ranking in search engines. Here is an article on simple yet highly effecting tips for image optimiation.

IMAGE OPTIMIZATION(search in google)

SIZE Of PAGE
Your Page size must be between 50 to 60 K. It helps decrease the loading time of your site hence saving your bandwidth. Plus lesseer size pages have more good rankings than heavier size pages.

note*: use <...> instead of (.. ) in tags. I've used due to the inconstancy in posting.

mail me for further: mahaneesh@

11 Free Ways To Promote Your Site/Blog

To increase your site ranking or visitors, you have two options.

1. Pay someone else to do that
2. Consume Time

But you don’t always need money to increase your website visibility, ranking and visitors; which results in increase in your conversion. There are many free ways to do that. Here is a list of some highly effective free ways to increase your site ranking and visitors.

1) Submit Your Site to Directories
Directory submission is still means a lot in any link building campaign. Submit your website to quality directories. Here is a detailed article about Directory Submission Tips

2) Request Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal linking is a good way to promote your site and its free ;). Make a page on your website or blog offferign link exchange service. Remember these key points when doing Link Exchange.

• Always link exchange with sites that are related to your site market.
• Consider the amount of links on the page where your link will be placed
• Number of clicks from homepage to access the page where your link is.
• Use different Titles for link exchange
• Use your internal pages too for link exchange.
• See the site basic data in Google - Index page and Inlinks

Here is a more detailed article on How to get Link Partners: Link Exchange.
3) Write Articles For Others to Use In Their Newsletters
This is a good way to increase visibility of your site. Send your article to different sites and ask them to use it in your news letter and in return ask to remain your link in content.

4) Write Blog
This is the best way to increase your site ranking and visibility. Make a blog and cover all the news related to your industry. You don’t need to always create new content for it. You can use any news related to your market in your blog from other sources and give a link of actuals source in end(with some useless phrase). You have to just blog regularly which ends up in a great link-pot for your main site.

5) Press Releases
Whenever you write an article or introduce a new service, announce it via free press release service.

6) Offer Something Free
This is the best thing to increase your site backlinks and visitors at a same time. Offer some free tool, tutorial or service related to your industry. Make a buzz of it through Press Release and social media sites.

7) Forum Participation
Participate in Forums and put your site url in your signature. Don’t spam forums.

8.) Submit Your Article In Article Directories
Submit your articles in article directories like Ezinearticle. Put 2 to 3 links to your site anchored on your major keywords. Here is the detailed article about keyword suggestion and Analyze.

9) Social Network Sites
Participate in social media sites, like Digg, Delecious, Yahoo Answers

10) Submit Your RSS Feed in RSS Directories

11) Use Signature In Email
Always include your website url in signature when sending an email.

or mail me with subject "info" : mahaneesh@

Social Media And Social Media Optimization/Marketing - An Intro

According To Wikipedia (Yeah its still the best source to get any definition)

“the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.”

Social Media is a kind of media that empowers people to create content and give them authority to classify the content as good or bad and let them communicate and met with similar minded people.

Types Of Social Media

• Blogs
• Social Networks like Mybloglog, Myspace etc
• Content Communities or Social Bookmark Sites Example Digg, del.icio.us, Flickr
• Forums
• Wikis

Social Media Optimization/Social Media Marketing

According to Wikipedia

“Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites.”

Since the theory behind SMO is same that is to drive visitors. It has eased the life of folks that always asking why there site is not getting visitors . You don’t need to be a professional to do SMO. Any one can do SMO or SMM for there website or blog by sticking to some basic rules.

The main goal you should consider is to increase your visibility and authority. You just need to show your presence that you exist. Brand yourself. Once you get the voice that influence then marketing or gaining exposure for something is not a big problem for you.

Here are some Do’s and Don’ts when doing Social Media Optimization o rMarketing.

What To Do

• Join different communities.
• Add friends
• Vote and comments on others stories
• In general Participate
• Be Gentle

WHAT NOT TO DO

• Spamming
• Bulk Messaging(Its annoying dudes)

Social Media Optimization/Marketing Benefits

• Provide links for your site
• Provide traffic that has interest in your industry
• Your Community or page at a social media site serve as an alternate page for your site helping you in ranking for your main website
• Increase your site visibility

In coming days I will write about top social media sites individually, giving a research data about each site which helps you to get more from social media. So don’t forget to subscribe the feed or you may miss something valuable.

Any queries mail me: mahan_eesh@ebizel.com

How to Make Money With Your Blog?

Make money blogging is fun

: you enjoy blogging and getting money from blogging. As long as "making money with your blog" is concerned, it doesn't matter matter actually whether you enjoy or not. The way generating money from blogging is the same regardless of whether you enjoy blogging or painfully doing.

Let's get to the point.

Every business has the same process. That is, make potential customer come to you and sell your product, service or information. Paraphrasing it into blogging term, let the readers come to your blog and make them click the link like "Buy now", "Join Now", "Adsense Ads", etc.

We call readers as traffic. And about how many out of your readers click the link refer we as conversion rate. Of course, the higher the conversion rate, the better.

Specifically, make-money blogging follows for steps:

• Step 1: You blog, if not, start blogging.
• Step 2: Bring traffic to your blog.
• Step 3: PREsell with your blog.

  That is, your blog content attract your reader to do some kind of action: buy your own product or go to the link you prepared, for example. But did you notice the word "PREsell"?. That's the most important thing in your make-money blogging plan. Many experienced Internet marketers say that people are not buying anything when you extensively try to sell something. This makes sense if you recall your own experience. Did you buy something when a blogger tried to sell something? Maybe not! Instead, give your readers useful information and create the warm mood by giving them the benefits of product that you have in mind. And then, only then place a link so that your readers click through. This is so called PREsell.

• Step 4: Monetize: This is your final goal and the monetization has two streams.

  -Sell your own product, service or information, if you have one.

  -For the blogger who don't have their own product, it's still possible to earn money from their blog thanks to the many affiliate programs among which most popular one is "Google Adsense". But it's just one example out of hundred affiliate programs. if not thousand.

In short, make-money-blogging is doing step-by-step action: that is, you blog, bring traffic, PREsell your blog readers and finally monetize. Without bringing traffic and achieving PREsell, it is not possible to monetize your blog. That's why you need to keep in mind the fact that make-money-blogging is step-by-step action. Due to the space limitation, I can't explain all the detail. If you want to know more about each step, you can read it from the article, what blog can make money?. or mail me @: mahan_eesh@ebizel.com

Getting Honest With The Search Engines

By Mahaneesh chandra.

Getting Honest With The Search Engines

I spend a lot of time reading newsletters and forum postings about Search Engine Marketing. More often than not, people are asking about methods used to improve Search Engine rankings: what works, what doesn't, and what will get you in trouble.

Search Engine*:

A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found.

Algorithm*:

A formula or set of steps for solving a particular problem.

Frankly, no one can predict what will happen from day to day with the Search Engines. Only the Search Engine companies themselves know if the algorithms will change from one day to the next. Even the Search Engine rules change from month to month, sometimes daily. Think of the changes that have happened since pay for inclusion and pay-per-click have taken over the market for Search Engine results.

It seems so simple to try and comply with the Search Engine rules. Even though optimization adds to the basic content of a site and source code, there are ways to approach this without stepping over the line.

We personally do not use the methods mentioned below (methods to avoid, methods to be wary of) in order to play it the absolute safest way, using a long term plan in providing you optimum ranking in the Search Engines.

Methods to avoid

* Keyword stuffing. "Stuffing" keywords into places where keywords don't belong, such as comment tags, image ALT tags where the keywords have nothing to do with the specific image

* Invisible text. Text color the same as background color

* Automated submissions. Using automated tools to deliver huge numbers of pages to submission pages of Search Engines

* Submissions to "thousands" of Search Engines. A waste of time, since the major Search Engines/Directories drive the majority of the traffic to websites

* FFA (free for all) links. Link popularity is good, but only when the links are relevant; a link from a page of random links is not worth nearly as much as a link from a site that is relevant to your site

* Search Engine Marketing companies hosting your pages on their server. The marketing company "owns" your pages, and if you decide you want to move them, you may have a hard time wresting them away. (This is not always the case with marketing companies that also provide hosting, but you need to carefully choose when using this option.)

Methods to be wary of

* Cloaking

* Doorway pages

* Maintenance programs

Cloaking*:

Also known as stealth, a technique used by some Web sites to deliver one page to a Search Engine for indexing while serving an entirely different page to everyone else.

Cloaking is very difficult to do correctly, if you do not have an expert providing this service you could well be banned by the Search Engines. There are ways for this to be done that are accepted by some Search Engines. In general, cloaking is not always accepted by the Search Engine rules and can be a gamble unless you are certain your service provider knows what they are doing. Check credentials and get referrals from people who have used their services.

Doorway page**:

A page made specifically to rank well in Search Engines for particular keywords, serving as an entry point through which visitors pass to the main content.

Doorway pages are not accepted as they used to be by the Search Engines. A carefully crafted doorway page done by hand is entirely different from an automated doorway page generated by software. A few well-designed pages are a far cry from mass generated automated pages sent in large numbers through the Search Engine submission page, which are often considered as spam. Again, check credentials and get referrals from people who have used their services.

Maintenance programs

There are times when a page drops from the Search Engine listings or you re-design the page which might give you a reason to re-submit the page to the Search Engine. Re-submitting your pages every month is not always necessary. Having a log stats program in place will help you see which pages are still listed, along with a monthly ranking report. If you have these tools you should be able to see if any of your pages have changed. Be wary of people who consistently re-submit your pages, since re-submission can sometimes cause your pages to be dropped if they are already listed in the database.

My own experience with a very large website I did Search Engine marketing for, showed that the older (longer) the pages were in the Search Engine results, the better for link popularity and ranking. Of course, paid inclusion can give you more security in having your web pages stabilized in the Search Engine results.

A good maintenance plan will include providing consultation, a ranking report, tweaking keywords in your source code as needed for a monthly/six month/yearly fee and may also include log stats so you can see where your traffic is coming from and what keywords your visitors are using to visit your website.

Methods that work

Good content Content is one of the most important items you need for your website. Once visitors arrive, you need to keep them there. Adding keyword-rich text that makes sense and serves the concept of the web page improves your ranking and keeps your visitors interested. The more text, the better for Search Engine spiders when they index a website.

Good navigation There is nothing worse than arriving at a website and having difficulty understanding where to go for the information you are seeking. Have easy to use, clearly marked navigation so your visitors click through instead of click-away in frustration. Search Engine spiders (robots) index text and links; having good navigation is important to the indexing of your web pages.

Title/META tags Individualized Title and META tags for each of your important web pages gives you the best chance for optimum success in ranking. Title tags are necessary for Search Engine ranking, in particular with Google's Search Engine. META tags have decreased in importance, but are worth using for clarity and search results. The META description is still used by some Search Engines as the default text indexed by Search Engine spiders for the search results. The keyword tag is the least important but is still used by some engines. My theory is, you never know when the rules of the Search Engines will change, or a new engine will want them, so take the time to include these tags in all your web pages.

Link popularity Links from other popular websites back to your website are one way of increasing your site's popularity. Finding websites with similar content (but not your competitors) and high link popularity, then trading links to be posted on each site, is one way of increasing your site popularity. Good content is vitally important because visitors who stay longer while visiting a website help measure the popularity of the site in the Search Engines.

Paid Inclusion Paying a one-time fee or (as is most recently the case) a yearly renewable subscription fee to be included in the Search Engine results. Directories also use this style of service to accept submissions. Paid inclusion does not guarantee that you will be listed with the Search Engine or Directory, but gives a shorter time-line of acceptance if they do.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Overture is the most popular PPC engine. You bid an amount per keyword phrase to get the highest ranking in the Overture search results compared to your competitors.

Google AdWords Select Google AdWords is a program that uses your chosen keywords in an ad in the Google Search Engine results in order to promote click-throughs.

Log Stats programs Having a log stats program is very helpful in tracking your visitors, finding which keywords they are searching on to enter your website, tracking which pages they leave from and much more. Analog is a good free log stats program. WebTrends is a popular paid logs program used by many businesses.

Free submissions take patience After paying for inclusion, try submitting to some of the secondary Search Engines and directories. Long before Google was a household word, I thought it might become popular and submitted the company website. It certainly paid off a year later when Google became the best of the upcoming Search Engines.

Another avenue to venture down are specialty directories. As the web grows larger over time, specialty directories (also known as vertical portals or "vortals") focused on your business area may help you get more link popularity and your company name out to the public.

Stay Honest

Stay honest, create good content and do your homework when hiring for services. Using affordable Search Engine Marketing services you will add to your audience exposure on the web. In this way you will always be ahead of the game and hopefully, ahead of your competitors.

How to Make Money From Your Website

by Mahaneesh chandra.

Now that you've got a website, how do you make money from it? There are at least two ways in which sites can make money:

1. Advertising Revenue
2. Selling Goods and Services

I shall deal with the second case, "Selling goods and services", in another article. In this article, I will address the issue of how your site can actually make money from advertising.

Making Money From Advertising

If you look at many websites, you will probably notice that there are banner advertisements displayed on most pages. If you are a newcomer to the scene, you might think that you must either be a company or that your site must be famous before you can get advertisers, just as it is the case in hardcopy publications.

In reality, anyone with a website can get advertisers. While it is true that if your site is well-known, you may get companies contacting you to offer to advertise on your site, you can get advertising revenue even if you are just starting out and your site is relatively unknown.

The way to do this is to join as an "affiliate" of various sites, either directly, or through an affiliate network. An affiliate network is simply an intermediary where you can select from a variety of advertisers.

Payment Schemes

Before joining any program, you should probably be aware of the different payment schemes available.

1. Pay Per Impression

   Here, you are paid according to the number of times the advertiser's banner is displayed on your site. The amount you earn is typically calculated based on the number of thousand impressions of the banner (impressions = number of times the banner is displayed), often abbreviated CPM (cost per thousand, with the M being the Latin numeral for thousand). That is, $5 CPM means that you get paid $5 for 1,000 displays of the banner. In general, the amount paid is usually small, but it is easy to earn since everytime a visitor loads the page, you earn. This is known as a "high conversion rate". Needless to say, this method will allow you to automatically earn more if your site attracts a lot of visitors.

2. Pay Per Click

   When you are paid per click, you are only paid when visitors click the advertiser's banner on your site. The amount paid is usually higher than the pay per impression scheme. Whether you get a high conversion rate here depends on the banner (whether it attracts people to click it), although in general, it has a higher conversion rate than the pay per sale method. A high traffic site will probably enjoy a higher click rate than a lower traffic site, although you will probably get better results if your banners are carefully selected to suit the target audience of your site.

3. Pay Per Sale or Lead

   While you will probably get the highest payment rates with this method, it has the lowest conversion rate of the three schemes. You will only earn if your visitors click through the banner and either purchase an item from the advertiser or take some other prescribed action (eg, sign up for a service). Like the Pay Per Click method, you get much better results if you carefully select your advertisers to suit the target audience of your site.

In general, to avoid wasting resources in issuing cheques for very small amounts, advertisers will usually accrue the amount owing to you until it reaches a certain level (such as $25) before they pay you.

Where to Find Affiliate Programs

You can find a list of affiliate programs and affiliate networks on google.com

To join an affiliate network or program, simply go to the site and complete their online application form. Some programs will give you instant approval while others require a human to check out your application before it is approved. Once it is approved, you'll be given some HTML code which you can cut and paste into your web page. Note that some affiliate networks and programs will not accept you unless you have a domain name.

How To Choose An Affiliate Program

How should you choose an affiliate program? My suggestion is not to choose a program according to the payment scheme, but rather according to the kind of people who are likely to visit your website. For example, if you are targeting parents on your site, links to affiliates with educational software, books and the like may generate more revenue than banners that link to web hosting companies. The most important rule of choosing an affiliate program is to know your target audience.

Another point to consider is whether you really want to join every single affiliate program that comes your way. Some studies suggest that sites that make the most money from affiliate programs are affiliates of only a small handful of programs. Furthermore, concentrating your advertisements from one network may allow you to be paid faster. If you advertise for hundreds of different affiliate networks on your site, you may wind up earning only (say) a few dollars per month from each network. If your advertiser's minimum payment amount is higher than what you can earn each month, it may take you a long time before you accrue enough to be paid.

On the other hand, that formula does not necessarily hold true for every site (or every page on your site, for that matter). For example, if your site has a particular theme, and an affiliate network only supports one or two suitable advertisers, you might want to sign up for a few affiliate networks so as to get a greater number of relevant advertisers. After all, advertisements that are relevant to your audience are more likely to be taken up than general advertisements. (What's the point of putting banners from only one affiliate if nobody is going to click them?)

Get Started

Advertising revenue is one of the most effortless way to earn money from your site. You merely have to put the banner there and wait for the money to roll in. (Well, okay, not quite. You will still need to have some visitors first before you can make anything.)

Why wait? If you already have a website, let it earn even while you sleep (literally). Every day you let your site "idle" without advertising is a day of lost opportunity.

All the best in your endeavour! Remember also to check out our other article, Increasing Your Affiliate Program Income, for more tips on earning from your website, mail me: mahan_eesh@ebizel.com