Reviewer of Sites

Looking for a fun way to find others with similar interests on Twitter? You should check out Twiends, built by Dave Sumter of Webcandy fame.  He developed Twiends as a great way to build your Twitter community.  As he says, they “focus on making the introduction, and you focus on deciding who you want to be friends with in the long run. You get to choose who you friend and they get to do the same.  In saying that though, you will find that a lot people will follow you because you are on [Twiends]“.

So, if you are looking for more potential followers, sign up for Twiends!

Tags: Internet, Marketing, Social Bookmarking by reviews
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There are quite a number of traffic exchange sites, but I am going to review three of the top ones.

TrafficG

The first one is TrafficG.  It is not the largest or most popular, but  the layout is immediately easy to understand.   Unlike so many sites out there this one does not try to confuse you into clicking on something else.

The main page shows you your current credits (how many you have earned), the sites in which the credits can be distributed, and the Start Surfing button.

The Start Surfing is also available on the left side of the screen, along the menu.  Each page you visit uses a Captcha in the upper left corner, in order to deter automation.  You simply click on one of the three Captcha choices that you see.  Currently it is set to 20 seconds minimum between sites.

Features include:

1. Very simple site navigation and layout
2. One “splash page”
3. An excellent referral program, including contests
4. Many banners to use for referrals
5. A simple to use toolbar
6. 20 second timer

EasyHits4U

EasyHits4U is the most popular traffic exchange around.  It has existed since 2003.  The layout is pretty easy to follow, with a menu bar at the top of the site.

Features include:

1. Earn real money or credits toward more traffic
2. Includes a directory to add your site
3. Includes many prebuilt splash pages
4. Option to create your own splash pages
5. A site rotator to help you to manage, host, and track your sites
6. 20 second timer

StartXchange

StartXchange looks like it will catch up to others because of the founder very aggressively comping up with creative ways of gaining visitors and members.  He also hosts a very popular traffic exchange directory, which certainly helps.  It is the oldest, having been created in 2001.   Many of the traffic exchange sites out there are using a script written by the founder, Tim Linden.  He created the first version of StartXchange when he was 15 years old.  If you’re looking for an innovative traffic exchange then this is it.  They set the standard.

Features include:

1. Chat option
2. Contests and prizes
3. Ability to join various teams of people competing for prizes
4. An active forum
5. A very good referral program
6. Easy to understand layout and navigation
7. 10 second timer

Tags: Marketing, Traffic, Website Review by reviews
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I am now experimenting with making Squidoo lenses based upon lyrics of songs.  There are a number of benefits to their simplicity, including:

• The potential that you could rank higher is the way in which your lens is constructed and the fact that you could have more related content, thereby probably ranking higher in the SERPs than a competing page.
• You can add easily add the song’s Youtube videos and other content that is not included on other lyrics sites.
• Another benefit includes your including Amazon links to the album or MP3 single.

First, take a look at How To Make A Lyrics Lens.  He did a GREAT job describing how you can make one and the benefits of it.

My modifications include:

• Using the Amazon Spotlight module for the album
• Using the Amazon module for the singles (mp3 singles of just the one song)
• Adding a Blackbox module at the bottom, pointing to other related lenses
• Lensroll your related lenses together
• Adding a Flickr module and set it to a slide show (for the artist or band)

I just started and am already seeing good traffic.

After you’ve got your lenses out of WiP status (work in progress) add them to the following groups.

Lyrics Headquarters – add your lyrics lenses to groups, including this one

Here’s some of my current lyrics lenses:

Beck – Replica

Beck – Modern Guilt

Beck – Volcano

Beck – Orphan

Portishead – Hunter

Portishead – Silence

Constantines – Our Age

Constantines – Hard Feelings

Constantines – Trans Canada

Usher – Moving Mountains

Fleet Foxes – Your Protector

Tags: Affiliate, Marketing, Social Bookmarking by reviews
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SEO – Regional Targeting for Geographically Specific Traffic (geotargeting)

How does one target a specific geographic region/country/city?

There are a few areas of SEO and marketing that you can do to improve your site ranking within a particular region, known as ‘geotargeting’. The biggest challenge would be ranking well in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) across a range of regions. It would probably require several regional campaigns.

1. Domain TLD: You can register your domain with a country specific TLD, such as “.co.uk”. This should help you rank better in the UK. The same can be done for other countries.
2. Hosting: This is a major factor, if web host server is located in France, then you are likely to rank well in France. Unfortunately, you may not rank well for search engine users in other countries. You should look around for webhosts from that area, for example: you can be hosted on a Maui server, if you are targeting a Maui audience.
3. Languages: If your site includes more than one language, you will have a better chance of ranking well within countries where that language is spoken.
4. Keywords Usage: If your website has too much content for “German”, as apposed to the “UK”, then the search engines may perceive this as the website is targeting the location mentioned in the content. I do not believe in keyword density as being of any value, but I do believe that including the keywords within the content would be relevant.
5. On page/site SEO: Create individual pages or sections of your website for the area you are targeting. Your efforts should then focus the traffic to these pages/areas. This includes link building, advertising, and other means to direct traffic and improve your rank in the SERPs.
   
6. Localized Link Building: Find local bloggers and websites (government city, state, country too!) and see if they’d link to you. Even better, see if they would write an article or two about your site or services.
7. Create a network: Buy domains and host them on localized webhosts. Create original, good content and point them to your main site. You may even get some referral traffic from them as well.
8. Google Local Business Center: By using the Google Local Business Center, you are also narrowing your site down to local areas.
   

   Use the Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they’ll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even coupons to print out and bring to your shop. It’s easy, free, and you don’t need a website of your own.

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Tags: Advertising, Link Building, Marketing, SEO, Web Hosting by reviews
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Google Alerts: How to Use it to Track Backlinks

If you’re not using this, it’s worth giving it a try. The purpose for this is to have notification when new links to your site are found by Google. This can be very good for any linkbuilding campaign.

Click Here: Google Alerts

The search terms should be similar to any one or all of the following:

link: http://www.example.com <— notice the space between link: and http?
link:http://www.example.com
link:www.example.com
link:http://example.com

The question has been asked, “what does the space do?” It’s strange, but it does bring up different results of backlinks, so it’s worth using this modification. Why there is a difference, I have no idea.

It’s very handy for watching progress of Google picking up new links to your sites.

You can set the frequency to:

• as soon as it happens
• once per day
• once per week

Also, it can be set it for Blogs, news, web, etc.

What is the maximum number of alerts I can create?

You can create up to 1000 alerts. To create more alerts, you can either delete any existing alerts or request alerts to be sent to a different email address. Please remember that you can only have up to 10 unverified Alerts at any given time.

Tags: Google, Link Building, Marketing, SEO by reviews
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First, what is linkbait?

Linkbait is simply creating something that sparks peoples’ interest enough that they would create a link to you or use something that you offer, such as an image or a tool. They may knowingly or unknowingly create a backlink to your site.

With Google’s Matt Cutts doing a writeup of linkbait recently and an older one, it made me think more about it. The real thing always serves as the best example, rather than just explaining it. This seems to be an acceptable way of getting links, according to Google.

Here’s his definition: “On a meta-level, I think of “linkbait” as something interesting enough to catch people’s attention, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are a lot of ways to do that, including putting in sweat-of-the-brow work to generate data or insights, or it can be as simple as being creative. You can also say something controversial to generate discussion (this last one gets tired if you overuse it, though). Sometimes even a little bit of work can generate a reason for people to link to you.”

Examples of Linkbait

www.stclaire.com – PR4 – Links 2,630



Matt Cutts used this “Technical Communications” site that had a clever sign making section.

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Tags: Link Building, Marketing, SEO, Traffic by reviews
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DoFollow Social Bookmarking Sites

The following are Social Bookmarking Sites that provide dofollow backlinks to your site. As always, it is important to provide good content to these sites, as well as being relevant content to yours. Most importantly, we should not abuse or misuse these Social Bookmarking sites.

Are these really “DoFollow”? Read this to see other ways of blocking the spiders.

Ok, as I add new ones (or take away bad ones), then the number changes.

• Slashdot PR9
• Mister-Wong PR7
• Furl PR7
• Bibsonomy PR7
• Spurl PR6
• Unalog PR6 – Registration not currently available (thanks dauclair)
• Jumptags PR6
• Searchles PR6
• Plime PR5
• BlogHop PR5
• MyLinkVault PR5
• A1 Webmarks PR5
• ClipClip PR5
• Diigo PR5
• Listible PR5
• MyVmarks PR5
• Complore PR4
• OnMyList PR4
• Kapely PR3
  
• info4it PR3
• MyPIP PR3
• SyncOne PR3
• Yattle PR2
• Faves PR0
• UPCHUCKr PR0

NoFollow – How the attribute is being interpreted differs between the search engines. While some take it literally and do not follow the link to the page being linked to, others still “follow” the link to find new web pages for indexing. In the latter case rel=”nofollow” actually tells a search engine “Don’t score this link” rather than “Don’t follow this link.” This differs from the meaning of nofollow as used within a robots meta tag, which does tell a search engine: “Do not follow any of the hyperlinks in the body of this document”.

What is a good way to check if a link is Nofollow? Download Firefox

Install the Firefox SEOQuake Plugin from the tools page.

You may also like the DoFollow Forums List
*If you notice any changes or possible additions, please post a comment.

Tags: Link Building, Marketing, SEO, Social Bookmarking by reviews
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