Developer Shed Weekly SEO News for 2010-02-19

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February 19th, 2010 Welcome to the SEO Chat newsletter! Google seems to be getting into everything; you may even remember hearing recently that the search giant is looking to build a fiber network capable of delivering 1 Gbps speeds to about 50,000 people. I don't know about you, but my first thought â€" after “where do I sign up?” â€" was “this can change everything.” At the very least, it will reshape the current ISP landscape. Not convinced? Check out the article we're highlighting this week from eWeek and I think you'll change your mind. You'll find one less article than usual this week on SEO Chat, as we were closed in observance of President's Day, but you'll get a lot of use out of the two that we did publish. Tuesday's item showed you how to set up an online quiz with Google Docs. This could save you a lot of money if you run a website for an educational organization, as you won't have to hire a developer to build the quiz. Wednesday's article gave you some tips to help you get the most out of your WordPress database: securing it, backing it up, and more. Trying to build links for your website and running out of ideas? Check out this week's thread and you'll find some great suggestions. It just might make you redefine what kinds of sites you consider to be related to your own. And while you're thinking flexibly, why not pay a visit to Tutorialized? You'll find more than 100 tutorials focused on SEO-related topics such as choosing keyword and promoting your website. You can even share your wisdom with the world by submitting your own tutorial. Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, takes a look at Google AdWords. This particular form of search advertising can work well â€" but is it right for you? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out. As always, thanks for reading. Until next time, SEO Chat Staff

ARTICLES WordPress Database Tutorial: Security, Backup and Efficiency Tips Design an Online Quiz Using Google Docs Holiday! SEO on Tutorialized SEO Thread of The Week SEO Chat News Spotlight TOOLS Get Our Content on Your Site with DevText! New Articles, Right To Your E-mail

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It's edgy! It's irreverent! It's all about technology! It's News You Can't Use, and you won't want to miss it! View this week's edition to learn the answers to these burning questions: DevShed Hulk is back and green with envy. And radiation poisoning. Plus Jenny brings us all the news that's weird.. Watch the video!

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WordPress Database Tutorial: Security, Backup and Efficiency Tips by Codex-M 2010-02-17 WordPress is currently the most important open source website publishing software. It has diverse applications, ranging from self-publishing content (blogging) to acting as a full-fledged content management system. Yet, only a few tutorials give serious emphasis to the WordPress database, which is the core of WordPress operations. This tutorial seeks to remedy this situation. As we all know, WordPress is a PHP-powered dynamic website platform that depends on the MySQL database; content, and everything else, including website settings, are stored in it. This tutorial contains some semi-advanced tips and techniques for working with the WordPress MySQL database. In this tutorial, you will learn three important topics which every WordPress website developer should know. Read WordPress Database Tutorial: Security, Backup and Efficiency Tips

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Design an Online Quiz Using Google Docs by Codex-M 2010-02-16 In this article, you will learn how to build an online quiz using Google Docs. Popular applications of this can be found at websites for online universities and schools. If you are planning a website that offers online training and assessment, Google Docs saves you a lot of time in designing an online quiz. This is particularly true if you are not an expert web developer. You might have read " How to Build an Online Survey with Google Docs ” elsewhere on this site. It contains a very basic discussion on how to get started with Google Docs. At points, this article will refer back to that one, linking to the appropriate page. Basic Preparation Before you can start making a quiz using Google Docs, it is important to stick to the objective in formulating questions. The questions must be carefully planned to assess whether the examinee meets the objective. You can read tips on how to formulate questions . Read Design an Online Quiz Using Google Docs

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Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other tech related tutorials. Submit Your Tutorial Today! Tips for SEO Friendly Websites Form follows function. Before designing a website there are quite a few important factors to consider. Read the tutorial. What Does Seo Stand For? What does seo stand for? Simply put SEO stands for search engine optimization. Read the tutorial. Submit Your Sitemap to Google Techniques you can use to submit your sitemap to Google. An imperative step to get good rank! Read the tutorial. 30 SEO Tips for Web Designers & Small Business Owners 30 SEO Tips in 30 Days to turn your website SEO ready. Read the tutorial. Submitting your URL to Search Engines How to get search engines to crawl your site as often as possible. Read the tutorial. How to Make Your Blog Stand Out from the Crowd Quick tips to improve your blog from every aspects! Read the tutorial.

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Link building is always a challenge, especially for those new to SEO. Here's a thread that might help you get your mind in gear for the kind of brainstorming you need to do when building links. Feel free to stop by the thread and add your suggestions. wylie_uk New to SEO, good start now stalled Hi guys, I'm new to SEO, only first looked at it in Dec 09. I have read dozens of posts and gone through many articles to glean what info I could. I have a customer's website that I have played with (content wise) then submitted back links all over creation. I have posted a few articles, although it is not my thing; I did my best. The website is [URL removed] and the keywords I really want to rank for are "used trucks" and "trucks for sale" and perhaps "used trucks for sale" in google.co.uk. "trucks for sale uk" and "used trucks uk" rank in google(dot)com, but pretty bad. I watched as the position climbed through the rankings of google(dot)co(dot)uk and I'm now on page 2 or 3 but for the last few weeks there have been very little change, and I have been doing the same amount of work each day, a few back links here and there. I wonder if anyone out there can give me a few pointers to push things on? Thanks in advance jsteele823 I think that one thing that would help is to stop thinking of only other used truck dealerships as the only "relevant" sites to yours. That buying guide is a start, but try thinking along the lines of a bigger picture..... How about a forum for trucking enthusiasts? I'm not sure about the UK, but I know "muddin" (in case of a need for explanation..... driving through the mud, big puddles of it, up muddy hills, etc.) is rather popular here in the southeastern US, so maybe a list of potential locations for such things, a place where people can upload their own pictures, "awards" for the best pictures, user voting, buttons that say "vote for me" that people could put on their own sites, send out in emails, etc.... Perhaps you could offer tips for driving in snow, mud, rain, fog, sleet, ice, etc.... Perhaps go after driving schools where people could learn to buy their "new" used truck. Give them a free link and ask them to reciprocate. Give the advantages and disadvantages of the most popular brands/models of trucks that you sell (and even those you don't). There are plenty more ways to get creative with it. Just remember you don't have to stick to what is exactly the same as your site in order to remain relevant. And on top of that, you don't really even need to focus on what is relevant. It just helps that much more, just not totally necessary. If you still fail, then you may want to seek out some professional link builders/developers. When you can't find links, you can always go through a third party. andrewsmith Do not assume that only you are doing SEO; your competitors may also be doing SEO. So look at the competitors' back links. Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts. Read the full thread.

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Should You Be Using AdWords? If you're reading this newsletter, then you know about AdWords, Google's search advertising platform. You may even have used it, to good or not so good effect. It can be a great way to increase your site's traffic and conversions. But does it make sense for you? A forum member wondered that about his own site. He sells artist prints and original works. He did the math to discover what conversion rate he needed to make his AdWords campaign pay off â€" and thought it was unrealistically high. Was he wasting his time and money? “You must be really smart about keywords, match types, negative keywords and ads, have a website with lots of highly specialized landing pages with great conversion rates, and have a favorable wholesale and retail pricing environment to win with AdWords. And you must be willing to do lots of math,” notes EGOL, one of our most respected SEO Chat forum members. He should know; he's been running AdWords campaigns since ! the first week they became available. If you're going to run an AdWords campaign, you need to convert better than your smartest competitors “because their success rate determines your bid,” EGOL pointed out. That said, there are some things you can do to optimize your AdWords campaign. Start with doing some really in-depth keyword research to target the most specific phrases possible; searchers looking for very specific terms are further along in their decision-making process, so they're much closer to being ready to buy (and therefore more likely to buy from you). Along the same lines, consider using the “exact match” option for your keywords. Link your AdWords account with your Google Analytics account to get a better handle on traffic. Check the times of day when you receive the most conversions, and then run your ads only during those times. After a couple of weeks to a month of activity, remove any keywords from your campaign that have cost you more than, say, six dollars, but not converted (your mileage may vary depending on your budget, profit margin, expected conversion rate and what you're actually selling). If you're trying to save money, don't target keywords for which you already appear high in the SERPs. You'll find lots more good advice in the thread I've linked to for this Spotlight, but the final item I'm going to touch on here is negative keywords. Don't overlook their usefulness â€" or their importance. Say you're trying to sell beer, so “beer” is one of your keywords. Well, your ads are going to show up if a searcher looks for “free beer,” but, since you're selling beer, they're not going to convert. How do you know if you have this problem? “Go into one of your ad groups, click on the keyword tab, then download the list of all keywords that delivered traffic. You might find a lot of KWs in that list that deliver low value traffic. Turn them off. This will decrease your spend and also might up your quality score,” EGOL explained. One of the ways to raise your quality score is to increase your click-through rate â€" which should happen in the example I used if you tell Google not to show your ad for “beer” if the search includes the word! “free.” A better quality score, incidentally, can also lower your bid price. The point is, nothing comes for free, or even easily. If you're seriously thinking of running an AdWords campaign, you need to be prepared to do a lot of work; it's not something you can just throw together, let run, and hope for the best. Do your research and make your decision. In the meantime, continue the SEO work on your website. You might even find that this works better for you than AdWords. Good luck! Read the relevant forum thread.

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