Professional Poker Player

Today I was doing some regular work over at RentaCoder.com (I’m usually the buyer) and saw somebody looking for a search engine optimization expert. I sent them a message noting my skills along with a bid price for the work that I can do for them. But that’s not why I’m writing this post. I’m writing to tell you about something that I found, a search engine optimization expert test.

This test is administered by a third party IT company, ExpertRating.com, that tests technology skills and determines if the person who is taking them is considered an expert. There is an extremely large field of tests available, and it costs $25 to take each of them. Of course, I decided that it would help me gain some recognition if I could pass, so here I go!

At this point of the post, I’m ponying up the $25 and am about to take the exam. Of course, you don’t have to worry about how long the expert search engine optimization test is going to take me, because you can just skip to the next paragraph and find out.

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Google made their Google Gadgets (widgets) available for website owners to add to their webpages. Good gadgets are basically Java Applets that offer dynamic content that can be displayed on any web page. A directory of ‘Google Gadgets for your webpage’ is now available to browse and select gadgets. It’s an easy way to get the content you need and want without spending hours writing code!

I recently had an issue with one of my other websites. Somebody decided that they would copy my content and list it as their own, on their own website. Obviously I was not okay with this, and nobody should. In leiu of this, I’ve decided to write about what you as a webmaster can do to fight people from copying your content, or at the very least prevent it from happening.

From my experience, the only thing worse than searching for plagiarists, is finding one. I mean, what on earth do you do when you find one? What steps should you take in getting them to remove the content in which they’ve freely copied and listed as their own? I’ve come up with a few ideas that I personally implement when somebody decides to copy my content, and they are quite effective.

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Being a webmaster, and having a few websites which have forums on them, it has become apparent to me that spam is a very serious problem, with very few people knowing how to stop forum spam.

You’ve probably noticed a much worse problem if you’re using phpbb, simply because it is commonly referred to as a “walking security vulnerability.” Not only that, but it seems that phpbb is largely targeted by hackers of all types. These hackers have developed numerous bots that run 24/7 with the sole purpose of spamming phpbb forums.

Users of Simple Machines Forum (SMF) and vBulletin are much less at risk, but there can still be spam if certain settings aren’t chosen.

With that being said, here are some general strategies to prevent forum spam:

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I was looking through the general FAQ at Google today and noticed some subtle differences. I decided to figure out just what has changed and list it in my professional search engine optimization blog.

The part that I want webmasters to pay most attention to is what is said about expired domains or domains that change hands. I didn’t know it before, but Google is a registrar and can see the WHOIS database of every domain name, whether it is privately listed or not. This makes it very easy for Google to be able to tell what has happened with a website.

Google showed these new differences in their FAQ:

How do I get listed in Google?

There are several ways to do it:

1) Submit your site directly to them

2) Submit a Google Sitemap

3) Get incoming links to your homepage. These will be followed by Google’s crawlers and will lead them to your site.

When does Google update?

Google updates its SERPS every day. The changes may be subtle or they may be large but they do occur daily.

Big algorithm changes occur once a year or so but technically are no different then the daily updates other than the fact that large changes may occur to some pages’ rankings.

Google Dances, as they were once known, no longer exist and have not existed for at least a couple of years now.

How do I check to see if I am banned from Google?

Type the following into Google search bar:

site:yourdomain.com (Use your real domain)

If your site is over six months old and nothing appears you may be banned.

If your site is less then six months old and nothing appears then you may be banned or Google may not be aware of you yet. If you haven’t submitted a Google SiteMap you should do so right away. Also get some incoming links to point to your website.

If your site does come up, even if it is only one page, then you are not banned.

How do I get the ‘additional links’ shown in Google top results?

As with anything Google it’s all part of an algorithm that no one but Google knows. The one common factor is that this typically occurs only for the top ranked site and is usually a major brand/popular site. You can read more about it in Matt Cutt’s blog.

If I buy an expired domain with PageRank do I get to keep it?

No. Google, as a registrar, can tell if a website has expired and changed hands. They reset the information for that domain automatically as a result.

How do I optimize an image for Google image search?

1) Use the keyword in the ALT attribute
2) Name the image with the keyword
3) Put the image in a directory containing the keyword
4) Put the image on a page about the keyword
5) Link to a page using that image with the keyword in the URL

How do I stop Google from using the DMOZ description in their SERPs?

You can add a meta tag to your pages that will prevent Google from using the DMOZ description for your site. The tag is used like this:
Code:

Which is better the strong tag or bold tag?:

According to Matt Cutts the bold tag is supposedly slightly better although by such a slight margin is really doesn’t make a difference.

Does using a Google Sitemap help me in the SERPs?

No. Google Sitemaps are just there to assist Google in discovering your pages. It does not help you improve your rankings in Google’s SERPs.
Here are more resources on what has changed:

Google Links

• Submit your website
• Report Spam to Google
• Google Information for Webmasters
• Google Sitemaps
• Google PageRank Explained
• Google API
• WikiPedia’s Explanation of PageRank
• Webmaster Help Center
• Remove Pages From Google’s Index
• Matt Cutt’s Videos

I figured that I would post this as my first marketing related article. As most of you marketing people know, most companies have a Mission Statement proclaiming their goals and what the company’s ultimate purpose is. Of course, this statement can’t be more than a paragraph so I’ve always found mission statements to be useless at best.

I found a solution to coming up with a statement, being that they are useless anyways. It’s called the automatic mission statement generator. Generate it a few times until you find the mission statement that you might want to use, your boss will love you for it!

It has come to my attention that Google is in the process of developing a new product which may be very useful to us search engine optimizers. It’s called Google Website Optimizer and simply adds a new twist to how we see our readers convert into sales.

The main purpose of Google’s new Website Optimizer is to test different types of website content and analyze the results based on the statistics that have been gathered. Webmasters will be able to access graphical data reports allowing them to better analyze which content engages readers to convert to a sale. Google asserts that whether we want to believe it or not, statistics are the best answer to improving our websites, and the Google Website Optimizer will help improve content so better conversions can be made.

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I was just playing around on the internet for a little bit and did a search in Google for “Google” to see what would happen. I couldn’t believe it, but there are a couple tools that I haven’t even heard of before listed on there. I was particularily interested in a tool called the Google Web Accelerator.

The Google Web Accelerator is a tool that IE and Firefox users can download and install into their browser. What it basically does is speed up the internet for broadband connections (dial up users don’t get much help). I’ve heard of tools like this before and have actually used them, but G’s Web Accelerator has a concept that I’ve hardly heard about called prefetching, which is normally used for images on websites.

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After being a webmaster of multiple websites and learning more and more about topics such as SEO (search engine optimization) and various internet marketing strategies, I’ve decided that it is time for me to create a blog where I can post my findings for others to read.

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