For a link bait to be successful and to get the expected result of generating more traffic, a link baiter can make use of several hooks. Link baiting can take the form of news, informational, humor, contrary and fear contents.

News hook – making your site the source of news tidbits and fresh information is one way of generating the much coveted traffic. Being the first to make a scoop on a current event will entice other webmasters to make a link to your website. News readers will turn to your website every time they want to know what is happening around the community and around the world.

Informational hook – the internet is an easy, fast and inexpensive means of access to information. Providing this useful information will encourage readers to make a link.

Humor hook – many people are looking for an outlet to break the daily routine. By providing jokes, funny stories and videos readers will be enticed to click on your site. Surfers will come back often in the hope of finding amusing content and will click on a link referenced link to see if other funny things are provided as well.

Evil hook- negative or mean statement about a person or a product will encourage a reader to click on a link to verify the validity of the statement.

Fear hook – is possibly the most effective link bait. A headline that stimulates the fear of the reader will have the effect of an influx of traffic. Readers will click on links to search for explanations.

Link bait may generate the desired traffic until your server crashes but after all is said and done, good quality content will push a website to the top of a search engine ranking.

Would you take the risk and email Google asking them to exchange links with your website?

I’m trying to get this blog at the top since its my main blog where I post all my articles and thoughts. My targeted keywords are Webmaster Blog and I’m already ranking at the top for these keywords. The problem is I always like to be number one and I always manage to get there, but what if the number one is the Google blog itself !!

Well, I guess I’m going to have settle down with the current rankings and be quiet.

I’m used to having my articles copied without permission but seeing Google ranking a useless automated blog, instead of ranking my blog. That did heart a lot and I was really upset about it all day.

I complained about the issue on webmaster forums, I left a comment on the automated blog asking the owner to remove my article from his blog, I also contacted/reported all the blogs that have copied my content without permission. Guess what, no results came from all of this and it was a big waste of time.

When all hope was lost and I was ready to let go of the issue and move on. I remembered that Google always has a tiny url on every results saying: Dissatisfied? Help us improve.

So, I went on and sent my complain. I did not expect much and I really did not expect a real human to read it.

Today, I searched again for “How to upload files to your virtual private server” and I was surprised that the automated blog, was removed from the results pages !

This whole issue wasn’t really that important but I learned from it something important, Google does care after all!

A few years back, another way to generate traffic was introduced – the social bookmarking. Prior to the internet boom, socializing means joining social circles or groups that shared your interests. Be it a garden club, a book reader club or a needlecraft club as long as you will be able to share your thoughts and ideas.

Social bookmarking is basically the same. It is a means of getting connected with people who share your interests. The only difference is that it is done on the web. Aside from connecting people, social bookmarking is an exciting way to generate traffic and of course a most productive source of internet income.

Digg.com is one of these social bookmarking sites. Digg would literally send tons of visitors to a website. Once your submitted page is bookmarked, thousands of visitors would rush to your site. Basically, every one can use Digg for free. You can submit as many pages of stories, videos, pictures and articles as you want. You just have to register to join the Digg society. Signing up with Digg will provide you with the chance to choose buttons that you can add to your blog posts. These buttons will allow your readers to easily “Digg” your post. The “Digg” will signify vote for the content. The article that has the highest number of “Digg” will naturally be on the Digg front page. On the other hand, stories that do not have enough “Diggs” will go down the ranks and will eventually be “buried”.

When a webmaster’s Digg link or button is clicked, the visitor will be sent to the Digg site. After logging in, the site will appear as URL and the visitor may post a message or a comment about the site. Think of all the traffic you will get and the links Digg will point back to your site. Your web traffic will surely be increased every time visitors log into Digg. Backlinks is a very effective traffic generator.

Signing up with Digg will be very profitable to a webmaster’s business venture. Because Digg pages almost always rank high in Google, readers will easily find your submitted pages and will click on your website thus generating instant traffic. Digg, as a social bookmarking site will give the webmaster the chance to get connected with other people with the same interests, a reputation of being specialized in a certain subject is developed by spreading his message to peers. Aside from increasing traffic, this is also a way of reaching out to potential customers.

Digg, com is a social bookmarking site that a webmaster would choose to promote his website and to increase web traffic. Any smart webmaster would know that good web traffic is tantamount to big earnings and profit.

The content: The substance, and information on the site should be relevant to the site and should target the area of the public that the website is interested in. Choose keywords properly. Make sure that your keywords or phrase describes the content of the webpage. And since every page will have different contents, keywords too should also vary. Page titles, which are shown at the top of your browser, are the most important thing you easily control when optimizing a site. You need to have the proper keywords in that title. If Internet users are going to find the keyword in your title, then most likely, you’ll get a chance of being clicked. It’s also advisable to limit your number of words to 8 or less for your title.

The usability: The site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation simple and reliable. For the sake of usability, make use of RSS feeds. This will ensure that your website is updated regularly and latest information on your website is carried to the people. This will also increase your search engine ranking, because search engines are upon the look of websites, that are regularly updated and have a good keyword density.

The appearance: The graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout, to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and relevant. Take professional help in designing and updating your website according to the formats laid down by the search engines. Generally speaking, your website is mosaic. And one of the key features of a website’s success are its design and usability, which must be taken into a count simultaneously. Web design is making your website to the limit inviting and appealing. That’s why always think about what to place at it and how to do that.

Now is the time to host your website. Shared data centre infrastructure is considered to be a wise choice for web hosting. Colocation hosting is similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colocated server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the hosting provider may provide little to no support directly for their client’s machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. With high levels of physical security, colocation facilities’ power generators that start up automatically when utility power fails, usually running off diesel fuel (though natural gas is probably also possible), motor generators and other alternatives to batteries, with air conditioning for the computer equipment in the building you will enjoy the freedom to focus on your core business and speed up your website access by outsourcing network traffic to a colocation service provider with greater bandwidth capacity.

These all factors will help you to get a search engine optimized website and achieve more traffic and more business. Care about your business. If you’ve made your first steps in the online world, keep it up!

23 years old Marek W. from Cieszyn has written an amateur piece of software for so-called “website positioning.” After typing the given keyword into a search engine [Google, it turns out] the positioned website pops up as first item.

The man used the official website of Polish president Lech Kaczy?ski for testing the software. When internet users typed “kutas” ["penis"] they got the official president’s site. Furthermore –

it was the first result.

They played with this for couple of months – right up to March this year. That’s when the 23 years old was traced by investigator from the Katowice police office.Finding him wasn’t difficult – the man used his home computer, which police easily traced by its IP address.

The computer amateur confirmed that he wrote the program. “I just wanted to verify my skills and check if the software works” this was his explanation during the hearings.

Well, if you ask me, the word “Kutas” in google has 500k results so its not hard to be number 1. Its not like targetting “web hosting” or “real estate”. I don’t even understand why he built a software for it, just get a few quality backlinks with the keyword “Kutas” as your title and give it sometime.

Anyway, Insulting your own president world wide is not a great thing to do but I hope they take it easy on him. Here is the latest news from google about Google Bombs:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/01/quick-word-about-googlebombs.html

Google pagerank is not only a tool to measure the importance of a web site, it has also become a symbol for almost all webmasters. The more pagerank your web site has, the more respect you get from other webmasters. In fact, if you have pagerank 7 or higher, you will start getting hundreds of natural backlinks talking about your high pagerank !

As of today, it has been 116 days since the last pagerank update and the new update should have been weeks ago which means its VERY late. I can see alot of webmasters starting to go crazy on forums and blogs. Some of them posted that they check their pagerank every 10 minutes hoping for a change, they’re having a hard time sleeping and can’t concentrate on their work anymore ! Google pagerank has become more like a black hole, if you get sucked on it, there is little hope of saving you.

You should go back to the start and think it all over again. Almost all of us work online to earn some extra money, for that  you will need targeted traffic coming to your web site to sell your products/services, in order to get targeted traffic, you will need good rankings in the major search engines. Which means you need unique content and quality backlinks from related web sites.

This is the proccess that we all follow and its no big secret. My question for you is, where the hell do you see the words “Google Pagerank” in this plan/proccess !?

Google pagerank is only important to those who sell/exchange links. Its also important for seo companies, in order to show their clients that they’re good at what they do. Other than that, it has no importance at all. My advice for you is not to worry much about your google pagerank and concentrate more on your web site products and content.

Short term:
You add 100 new pages to your website now, your pagerank will drop in the next update. Thats because the old pages will leak/give pagerank to the newest pages.

Long Term:
Your pagerank dropped last update due to the leak, but this time it will increase because you already have 100 pages that are no longer new, which will leak/give pagerank to the homepage and the rest of the site.

Keep in mind some issues such as, if your website has 10.000 pages, adding 10-100 new pages would hardly affect your pagerank. But if your site is 20 pages and you add 100 new pages, then you will notice a drop in your pagerank in the first update, then an increase in the next update.

When I add a high amount of new pages to my site, the next thing I do is try to get a few quality backlinks to cover the pagerank leak. This way I would keep the pagerank stable in the first update and then it would increase in the second update.

* The website details.
I’m talking about the details that webmasters submit about their websites, such as the title, description and the category they choose. We can all agree that if the owner doesn’t have the time to write a proper title/description and choose the most appropriate category. Then its not worth our time to review it no matter how good is the web site !

* The website content.
We all know that content is king, so does the website offer any content, or is it simply an HTML page full of affiliate links and google adsense. If we find a reasonable amount of content, is it unique or simply copied from other websites. We can always search the content in google to see how many websites have it.

* The website design.
A very poor design with bad internal linking will mostly get the website rejected unless its offering some unique content/services that can’t be found elsewhere. Any design is good as long as its easy to navigate and read through, but if i’m reviewing a web design company, I would expect to see a quality design and I would even check their portfolio.

* The website loading time.
Its not a major issue but if the website is taking too long to load, then I would visit it after a few days. If the problem persist and the website is still loading very slow. I would have to reject it and might contact the owner informing him of the issue.

* The website chosen category.
If the category already has hundreds of websites listed, then there is no need to list any new sites unless its offering something new and unique. Remember that a directory is made to provide its visitors with quality websites, its not our goal to list every website on the internet! 

These were the basic rules I use to determine if a website should be listed in my directory or not. I hope it will help you become a good editor and build a quality directory.

Your website pagerank depends on many factors such as incoming links and outgoing links from your website. Keep in mind that the quality of these links is also another important factor, because getting a backlink from a pagerank 9 website is not the same as getting a backlink from a pagerank 3 website !

Pagerank prediction tools such as iwebtool, simply ignore most of these factors and predict your future pagerank according to how many backlinks you have in google. keeping in mind that google does not show the true number of your website backlinks due to competition issues !

Seochat and Live PR tools are not pagerank prediction tools but they were called so, to attract more users and visitors. These tools simply check’s your website pagerank on google datacentres and that’s it !

If you get the pagerank directly from a datacentre then that’s the PR that datacentre has for your website - it’s not a prediction, that’s what it is ! You might see different pagerank on different datacentres but that’s during a pagerank update while the new pagerank propagate around all the datacentres.

Anyway, I personally recommend you stop wasting your time on prediction tools and start working more, on the quality of your website content and backlinks.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

This will force all visitors and spiders to www.mysite.com version, even if they visit your site through mysite.com. If you want to find out if its working or not, simply visit http://mysite.com and see if it changes to http://www.mysite.com

Using this 301 redirect code, I managed to redirect http://webmastertable.com to http://www.webmastertable.com but the problem I had was with the internal pages. The non-www version for any internal page would redirect back to the main page, instead of redirecting to the www version of the internal page. So this 301 redirect code did not work for my wordpress blog but I have found a wordpress plugin called Enforce WWW which did the job for me. So the code above might work or not, depending on what type of script your site is using.

Another thing to mention which is related to our subject is link building. It does matter if webmasters are linking to your site with www or without www. So pick the version you want and always use it when requesting backlinks.

Im sure we are all interested in finding out these secret methods in order to get high pagerank but think for a minute, if some webmasters have already found easy methods to get pagerank 6/7, how long would it take them to figure out new methods to get pagerank 8/9, if not found already !

 If google doesn’t buy that $10 ebook and fix the problem soon, then the whole pagerank system would become as useless as FFA sites !

The google sandbox effect depindes on many factors such as the website age, website content, your targeted keywords, age of your inbound links and the quality of these inbound links.

Yahoo however does not depinde on many factors such as Google. I noticed that the two most  important factors for Yahoo, are your website age and the keywords you are targeting. 

Anyway, im not really surprised by all this because Yahoo has been known to clone Google for a while now. The most important for us is to hang on and keep updating our sites with quality content and backlinks. Once our sites get out of this sandbox mess, traffic will start pouring in as well as income

Its fair for yahoo to get a pagerank 10 and unfair for MSN to get a pagerank 8. We know its personal for google when talking about MSN although I don’t see MSN search engine improving in the near future.

MSN & Yahoo are well known over the world and well linked. Both sites should get a pagerank 10 whether google like’s it or not. Tring to ignore this fact and changing the results manually, would make us wonder how accurate this pagerank tool is and if it trustworthy !?

1. Title
Your website title is one of the most important factors in seo. Make it 2-6 Keywords. I prefer 2 or 3. Use the most important keywords that you want to rank high for. Ex: Webmaster Directory or Webmaster Blog or Webmaster Directory & Blog …etc

2. Keywords
Meta keywords are not important anymore but does not harm if you have it. I would say create a list of your targeted keywords and place it in your keywords meta tag.

3. Description
Meta description is still important and read by search engine spiders. I recommand 30 words max. It should include almost all your targeted keywords but also should make sense to human eyes and not just a bunch of stuffed keywords. It does matter if the description you write in your meta description, appear’s in your website content somewhere.

4. Bold Tags
Always have your targeted keywords BOLD if possible. Some argue that tag “B” is better than “strong”, but the difference is not big so you can use the one you prefer.

5. H1 Tags
Using h1 tag with your title is also good, the size would be huge but you can control that with CSS.

6. ALT Text For Images
Its good to add more text to your website. You can place your targeted keywords/phrases in the ALT Tags.

7. Text it self
Also known as content. The more text you have, means the more content you have. The more the text is unique, the more your content is unique. Avoid spelling mistakes by checking/reading your text for a few times. Stay on topic and avoid spelling mistakes as well. Always remember that content is king.

8. Hyperlinks
Use “title” tag when linking. Its like the “ALT” tag for images. If the hyperlink is an affiliate link, use “nofollow” tag. This way your page won’t leak pagerank because of your affiliate links.

9. Backlinks
Get links from sites related to your website and avoid FFA links or spamming guestbooks or blogs as it will get you banned. Do not build your backlinks very fast as it will get you banned, so do it slowly. Always remember that its not about how many backlinks you have, its about how many quality sites are linking to you.

Avoid link exchange at all costs. Try to exchange links only with the top sites related to your market. So it would be exchanging links with no more than 20-50 sites, which is hard for SE robots to find. You can build your website backlinks by submitting to Free Directories so there is no need for link exchange. Here is a list of 200 free directories that do not require a link back: http://www.senaia.com/freedirectories.php

10. Page Rank
Pagerank is not important as it seem. Its good to know if the site has been online for a while or not. Its very important for those who buy and sell text links as their main business. Quality backlinks from related websites to your market would get you a high pagerank. Also, links from high pagerank sites (whether related or not) would get you a high pagerank.

11. Dedicated IP Address
Put your website on its own dedicated ip address. Shared hosting means that, there are hundreds of websites hosted on the same ip address, if any of these sites is spam, crack, illegal…etc It will effect your search engine rankings. It does not cost much to have your own dedicated ip address, I pay my host $2/month for each dedicated ip address.