I bet you never tried this one before! Well if you are a member at Digital Point Forums you probably know what I am talking about. Since yesterday Site Sift Directory has this picture in many member's avatar

Most of the high post count members had this in their avatar and I think the site sift picture was in more than 200,000 posts yesterday, wow got a nice exposure! Only problem is that it created a lot of confusion among the members... it was difficult to know who was who, many thought that members were bumping their own thread before they discovered what was happening :)
Some more creative members edited the picture a little bit, I added my name (ruby) in mine for less confusion :p Very personalized hun? :D check it out ;)


Avatar advertising seems to be working very well, Sevenseek Directory also joined the game... This is one of the picture sevenseek is using as members avatar, there're many other variations.
Sevenseek is also reaching many posts, apparently because he's paying more than sitesift lol, but I think for sitesift many were doing it just for the fun. Anyway a member even started a thread to see who's going to win the max posts among the two here. Since I got no PM from any of these two directory owners to support them and I don't know them neither, I am actually supporting both with this:


I am a seven-sifter! hahaha

No kidding now.. I think avatar advertising is a very good marketing technique, even if they're not getting links on the forum, many bloggers (like me) are going to write about this... and just think about it, both of these directories will get tons of backlinks!

----------
update (08.12.06 - 12:14AM)
Stuart, the owner of site-sift sent me a pm, I just corrected the mistake I made in his url, really sorry about that :)
When I posted the avatar thingy I said to myself that I'll support the directory who first pmed me at DP, so I guess I'll change back to the 100% site-sift avatar now :D well the one specially personalized for me of course hehe.

Nowadays it is not very easy to find the perfect online marketing company who will offer you prefessional services. I've been to a website today and they seem to offer every you need in term of Internet Marketing Services, from SEO to AD Server Management serives. Complete company I must say, nice portfolio, they have worked with big names, just have a look at their customers. So, think if you are looking for online marketing then Discount Click Online Marketing Services is what you need.

I've found the AD Server thing quite interesting, I would really like to know more about this and what kind of result we can get with this type of advertising. Well I think it's worth giving them a try as there's one thing I really appreciated is that they mentioned on the SEO page that they "do not guarantee top search engine rankings" and this only shows that they will not be using any techniques that the search engines frown upon. Worth having a look at their services.

http://www.discountclick.com/

One of my good friend, Mong at DP sent me his new backlink check tool today and I feel quite honoured to be one of the first "top secret beta testers" to try the tool :)

And only one word to describe the tool "WOW" just wow, really it's the best backlink checker tool I used and best is that it also shows the anchor text used for your link. I think from now I'll use only this great tool to check backlinks.

One more thing let's not forget his other top niche watch tool

Thank you Mong :)

Google Page Rank seems to be updating according to some webmaster forums, at digital point they're are talking about this update and seems it's a backlink update too.

I haven't seen any changes for this blog, I think my PR will stay at 3 for this update, it's no surprise since I don't have much high PR backlinks linking to me. Other than this I've noticed changes on many websites, DP Forums seems to be going for PR8 etc.

I posted some PR Checker tool here.

This will be more than just SEO Tips for the Cpayscom2 Online Casino SEO Contest, I will share with you some SEO tips that you can use for your other websites also. In short i'll give some details about the things to do and to avoid for better ranking on the major Search Engines i.e. Google, MSN and Yahoo. And let it be clear, I am not saying I am a SEO expert, it's things I have noticed over time.

Let's start with some on site optimization. Many people don't use meta tags, it's true that they are almost "dead" but Search Engines still pick your title and description tag for their listing. I noticed that google take part of you description tag and some random text from your website as description so it's good to have keyword rich content. Try to include your main keyword (e.g. Cpayscom2 Online Casino) in almost all your post if you have a blog, be very informative and add fresh and unique content regularly. Every body knows the saying 'Content' is King, but many doesn't understand this and just get tons of content, mostly from article directories, which will lead you nowhere since these articles have been published at hundreds of other websites. So it's best to say 'Unique content is King'. Also if you use images, don't forget the alt tags, remember that search engines can not read images, some say that it is good to include keyword in the image filename but so far I have not seen how this helps most important is the alt tags, try to be as descriptive as possible.

Second thing to consider now that your Cpayscom2 Online Casino website is ready and search engine friendly is your link building campaign. Many people misunderstand this and think that the only thing to do is to get tons of links as fast as possible, this is not true. Link building takes time and should be from different sources like these:

1 - SE's Submission (to get more exposure but not very necessary)
2 - Directory Submission (submit to the most related category)
3 - Writing Article's
4 - Blogging (please blog wisely, don't SPAM)
5 - Forums (some forums allows links in signature)
6 - Press Release (make sure you have something news worthy)
7 - Reciprocal Link (I hate doing link exchange, but well it still helps so go for it and make sure to exchange link with only related websites)

I've seen many people whining about why search engines ban them or why they are no longer in SERP and so on, I think the reason is because they have got thousands of links from many sources (mostly unrelated) and then for a good period no links at all, the search engines probably saw these links as FFA since they were acquired over a very short time, that's why I am telling to spread your link campaign over a period of time, you'll build link slowly and search engines will not penalize you. And do not concentrate on only one source of incoming links, I've seen many people just buy links here and there, they does not care whether these links are related or not. Think big, I've listed 7 ways to get links above, it's much better to get links from different sources. Another thing that I noticed is many Cpayscom2 Online Casino are bombing blogs with comments and most only links to their Cpsyscom2 Online Casino entry, this is considered SPAM, you will probably be penalized for this. I am not saying blog comments is not good, but moderate it, one or two legitimate comments here and there won't hurt.

According to me, the key to have better SERP is to stay SPAM free, stay away from FFA, link farms, comment SPAM, and never try to fool search engines, have fresh and unique content. With all these it will be hard for the search engines to refuse you some love.

SEO is not difficult but not easy either, there are some strict rules that you need to follow to rank well on the Search Engines. Many people say MSN is the easiest SE to rank for then comes Yahoo! and finally Google. The problem with google is that it values old pages too much, you can have a new very informative website but you will probably not be in the top 10 for your main keyword if it is a very competitive one.

Ok enough blabbering let's now come to the steps that you should follow carefully so that SE's does not consider your website as spam or worse can ban your website. The most important thing you need is link. Links, links and more links from relevant sources, tons of irrelevant may help you on MSN but it will not do your website any good on Google, so it's better to do the best thing that is not penalized by non of the main Search Engines, that is Google, MSN and Yahoo!.

How to get links? This is a tuff answer... where to get your links from? You can get links from web directories, article directories and from link exchange with other related websites. When submitting to directories, search for the category most relevant to your website, check how many outgoing links the directory have per page. It will be kind of useless to submit to directories that does not follow the Google webmaster's guidelines. Also check if the directory is indexed by Google. PR is NOT the most important thing to check when submitting to a directory, it's has some value since it's an indication its importance (backlinks from good sources).

Writing articles can also help you to get backlinks. How? Write one or two article about your website's subject, be sure to include your main keywords in the article, make it fun but to the point, don't write as if you are the most intelligent person on earth, this will just scare people away. Include examples where needed to back up your thoughts this will make you more credible to the reader. If you are not sure about something, search about it if you can't find better not write about it. Be sure to include a link to your website in the author note else the whole step will be useless. Now just search for article directories and start your submissions. There are hundreds of article directories around so you are sure to get some quality backlinks from them.

Getting link partners is the most difficult and time consuming part in your link building campaign. Most websites will not be very keen to exchange link if they are in the top 10 and you are not. Here also you need to look for websites that are most relevant to yours, let's say you have a web design website, it is ok to exchange link with templates or SEO related websites that is any websites that are related to web development. Search engines values 3 way links exchange more, e.g. I link to site B from site A and Site C links to Site A. So better go for it when you get the opportunity.

SEO takes time but it is fun and there are always new things to learn since the Search Engines change their algorithm once in a time, Google is the most complicated one but I read somewhere, better you optimize for Google and the other two will follow. Most techniques mentioned in this article are free strategies that only require your time. My advice: try all the free techniques first then go to paid if free doesn't work. Happy SEOing.

As a webmaster you probably already know what a SEO Contest is or you surely came across some of them or even participated in. Some of the major SEO contests organized are the v7ndotcom elursrebmem (by v7n.com), Ambachdotcom, Carcasherdotcom, and more recently the Cpayscom2 Online Casino where the winner gets $10,000 for ranking number one on MSN. Now the big question is whether it is good or bad to organize SEO Contests.

Let’s start with the organizer of the SEO Contest. For the website organizing the competition, it is surely a good thing in terms of marketing as the SEO contest will bring thousands of backlinks in much shorter time that it would take if link building was done normally, that is, directory submissions, article submissions and so on. On the bad side, the website will mostly get tons of unrelated links as many of the website participating don’t know much about the main theme of contest, let’s say the website organizing the competition is about acne and most of the participating website are talking about SEO, these are definitely non related links they will get.

Let’s now come to the participant. For him participating in a SEO contest can do only good since he will try his best to rank for a keyword that has 0 competitions. So in short it is a good way to test his SEO skills and also learning new techniques and improve himself.

When organizing a SEO contest for sure the whole webmaster world knows about it, and thousands of webmasters will participate in the competition resulting in millions of pages created in a short time. Do search engines see this as spamming? Nobody knows… But I personally think that after a competition the participating websites should be deleted since many of them will not be of any value on the web. For example a website talking about SEO to rank for the keyword “acne” is completely useless don’t you think?

To sum up, SEO Contests are both good and bad. But I think it will be a good idea to remove participating websites from the web once the contest is over. Many people may not share the same view but we should also think about the average internet users as not everybody online are webmasters.
**
Cpayscom2 Online Casino

With the actual Google PR update going on many websites are already seeing changes in PR, some good some bad, this update is probably not like the last one where only "new" websites benefited.

You can check your PR on all google datacenters with these tools:
http://livepr.raketforskning.com/ which checks on 69 sources
or this one
http://www.rankalert.net/index.php which gathers data from 72 google datacenters

You might have noticed that I didn't mention any PR prediction tool, well only Big G has the last word about PR and all the prediction tools you can find are not based on the actual google algo, so better not waste your time with them.

A great place to submit your article is SubmitContent, when you submit your article to this directory, it is also submitted to a network of 1500 directories!
Notice that Submit Content is a partner of isnare.com, this means you are sure to get quality links.

Good luck with your submissions.

I came across this recently and found it very helpful to check backlinks rapidly
http://www.shoemoney.com/siteinfo.php
here's what it looks like

I was using some other online tools to check backlinks but I found this tool from Shoemoney very useful, what's nice is that it checks backlinks from all the mayor search engines, no need to check one by one.
(Most of my backlinks are from my forum signatures :) I never SEOed (don't know if this term exists) my blog)

Another tool that I found very interesting is this one
http://www.shoemoney.com/serps.php
Result will look like this
Good tool to check your ranking on all these SE's at same time, cool I didn't know I was #1 on msn for the keywords "seo secrets"

These results are from 26.04.04, today I checked again, seems I no more in top 100 on Altavista, some days back I was even on yahoo... Anyways I think am doing well (LOL) for a blog that has never been SEOed.

This is a question I've heard more than a thousand times, in all webmaster forums there should be a question about this. We all know that it's not very easy to get listed there, it all depends on the editors. Some do their job faster than the others. So, to get listed in DMOZ can take you from 4-5 minutes to 4-5 years! I know this sounds incredible but I've got proof recently on Digitalpoint forum, this thread "How to get submitted" will answer your question.

We all give much importance to DMOZ as it's one of the main directories on the internet, but editors must improve else in some years webmasters will not give much importance to that directory.

I've also seen that DMOZ listing increases a domain value, not quite sure why... is it because DMOZ has PR10? Does that boost your PR in any way? Well I don't think so, at the last PR update many websites have got high PR even with no backlinks!

Search engine optimization is a much-debated topic and there is a lot of different on the net. Let's cut through the muck and discuss things you should and shouldn't pursue to get high rankings.

Before blasting into the subject, we need to define optimization. It simply refers to the manipulation of a site to gain top rankings on the three search engines that dominate the search traffic on the net - Yahoo, Google and MSN. If you do a search on Google, the optimized listings are found in the large section on the left hand side of the page. These are often referred to as organic rankings since you don't pay for placement. Of course, you manipulated the page for optimization, but we will stick with organic as a name.

The first optimization tip is the most basic and the one many people screw up. Pick the correct keywords for your site! The correct keywords are not what you personally think based on your knowledge of your service or product. They are not the phrases returned in the Overture inventory tool. The only place you will find the exact keyword phrases you should use are in Wordtracker. The site gives you an analytical tool that provides the exact keyword phrases being used by your prospects, how often they are being used and which are easiest to get high rankings on. It costs a whopping $8 for a single session, but you will want to get a year subscription so you can pick up different cycles of keywords. Your prospects will search for different things in summer compared to winter.

The second thing to consider is the isolation keyword strategy. Many people will try to cram as many keywords into a page as possible. The accepted standard is 10 to 15 words. This is an old approach that works, but it will take much longer to get high rankings. Instead, you should develop a list of as many keyword phrases as possible. A single page should be made for each keyword phrase. You should never have to pick one keyword phrase instead of another for your site. Instead, you should make individual pages for each phrase.

A major third optimization tip is interlinking. The links from one page of your site to another matter a lot. When you create a link, make sure the link is the anchor text for the page the prospect will be going to. Anchor text is simply the keyword phrase on that page.

Turning to things you should avoid in optimization, well, there are a lot. Do not put your site name in your meta title, the search engines will list you high without it. Do not skimp on text, you need at least 250 words per page. Do not put database parameters in your urls because spiders have problems reading them. Stay away from flash as much as possible for the same reason. Stick to a single subject per page, to wit, do not wonder around like a drunken web designer! For the love of God, do not use frames. Finally, keep your html code streamlined so search engines can read it with ease.

The list of things to do and avoid is nearly endless. Follow these simple steps, however, and you will see marked improvement in your rankings.

The answer is "Of course not!"
I've seen in many forums people want to get a .eu domain and want to know if it has market value and blah blah.. Am sure you've already heard all this too.
Well the .eu domain is reserved for european countries.. check this
-------------------------------------
Remember! - .EU is the first domain extension made exclusively for individuals and businesses in the European Union. Registrations will only be available to those who can provide an address within the European Union. The European Union includes all of the following 25 countries:

Austria	Belgium	Cyprus
Czech Republic	Denmark	Estonia
Finland	France	Germany
Greece	Hungary	Ireland
Italy	Latvia	Lithuania
Luxembourg	Malta	Poland
Portugal	Slovakia	Slovenia
Spain	Sweden	The Netherlands
United Kingdom

-------------------------------------

This was a nice PR update, many new websites have got really nice PR, this blog jumped from 0 to 5, I was really happy to see this, and I have not done much SEO to achieve this, My blog is very new, I created it on February 06 only and I already have a PR 5!

Older websites haven't seen much change in their PR, both dwd websites, are still at PR3, both got PR 3 at last update in February.

You can read more about the update at Digitalpoint Forum
4/4/06 PR update

These sources will be of great help to you if you want to submit your website to lots of Directories.
My favourite source is:
http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html a very good list of free directories, the list gives the PR of all the directories, the number of Google, Yahoo & MSN documents, and Alexa Ranking (you can have an idea of how much traffic the directory is getting, this will help you to decide whether to submit your website or not).

Another list that I really like is http://www.addurl.nu/ PR of all the directories is provided with some comments, read them before submitting your website as some directories have some problems while submitting.

You will get lists of internet directories from many other sources like other directories e.g www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/ Directory owners also have to submit their website to other directories, else how would their ranking increase?
Another good list is http://www.andilinks.com/sea5.htm (not very "clean" just click on view in column and it'll be ok) - 789 Directories

You now have a list of more or less a thousand directories, it's a good amount to start submitting your website, remember to choose the most appropriate category before submitting your website, else all the hard work would be useless.

I started doing Search Engine Optimization very recently, at the end of December 2005, at first I could not understand anything about it, when I started, I couldn't tell what was the difference between a Search Engine and a Directory! It was hard to believe that people has to do that much to get their website listed in Search Engines. I think all normal internet users don't realise this, what's important for them is that they get what they want from their searches.

Well I am still new in this field but I've already learned a lot and want to share some ideas and my point of view about the matter. To optimize your website you should follow these simple steps:

1. Search Engine and Directory Submission
2. Article Submission
3. Link Exchange

The motive of Search Engine Optimization is to get the maximum of links pointing to your website, that is more links pointing to you means better ranking in Search Engines. Traffic plays a big role in your ranking, there are many ways you can bring traffic to your website, posting your website to the maximum directories and Search Engines that you can. And be sure to post in the good category, if your website is not suggested in the good category, it has many chances of not getting listed. Article submission is also a very good way of getting traffic.

For those who are not familiar with these terms: A Search Engine is a searchable online database of internet resources. Some examples are www.google.com, www.yahoo.com, www.msn.com, www.altavista.com, www.askjeeves.com, etc there are really thousands of Search Engines on the net but these listed above are what surfers use most frequently (the major search engines). Among these google is the mostly used by internet users then yahoo, I personally do like 80% of my searches on Google and the rest on yahoo and very rarely on msn. It's important that you submit your website to these search engines, you can add your website to google here http://www.google.com/addurl.html

A Directory is a web page consisting mostly of categorized links to other web pages. Some examples of directories are www.dmoz.org (google directory is based on dmoz, it is important that you submit your website here, but there are very small chances of inclusion), the yahoo directory, www.zeal.com (you will need to follow some steps before you can start submitting websites to zeal, but it's worth the effort as Zeal has PR8) and so on and as for Search Engines, there are many directories where you can submit your website. The submission process is very easy but the real point is whether the directory will list your website or not. The best way to get your website listed is to read the guidelines well as you would not like spending all this time and not getting listed..

Article submission is another way to get traffic and links to your website. Write articles and submit to as many article directories as possible, try to write about things that people want to read, make them want more, well your article must reflect what's in your website, for e.g. if your website talk about wedding your article should also be about wedding not about any other subjects, you can give tips, or explain about the particular stuff, anything that you want as long as it is interesting. It doesn't need to be long articles of more than 1000 words from 500 words should be fine.

You can also exchange link with websites having the same subject as yours, contact only websites with good PR (Page Rank) I suggest 3 or more as exchanging links with a website with PR0 will be useless as itself is not having much traffic, how will it be able to bring traffic to your website? And the website you've been exchanging links with try to verify regularly if your link is still on their website as they may remove your link as you've added a link back to them.

You now have an idea of what SEO means, it's very interesting and I really enjoy doing, what I find more time consuming till now is Link Exchange as you have to wait a lot until a person reply to you. You can start doing SEO for your website. Good Luck.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please feel free to republish this article provided you keep this resource and the hyperlink.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------