Need Links? Give them something for free!

I ran across an interesting website today that listed the top 100 US domains with the most unique back links.  As any good SEO guy would tell you back links are one of the key factors in ranking well on the search engines so it got me thinking what are some of these websites doing to get so many unique back links?  As you look at the list the answer is quite clear- GIVE WEBMASTERS SOMETHING THEY CAN USE!

Coming in first is Google Maps- This surprised me.  I though for sure it would be just plain old Google but I guess when you think about it Google has done a great job of making their maps easy to import right into a website and it's unusual these days to find a site that doesn't have a Google Map on the contact us page.

In the number 6 position was Wordpress-  Wordpress is one of the best FREE blog software tools. 

Number 10 Youtube.com -  Free video hosting with the ability to embed the videos onto a website (When you embed the videos you create a back link to Youtube)

Number 57 on the list - ezinearticles.com really stuck out in my mind as well.  This site offers articles on a wide variety of content that webmasters can put into their website as long as they link back to ezinearticles.com.  Apparently they do because the back links to this site are off the chart.

Check out the list for yourself.  It's clear to me that if you really want to build a lot of great back links offering free tools or content is where it's at. 

So I know what your thinking..."I'm a wedding photographer, how can I build a bunch of good back links I don't have anything to give away?"  Let's think outside the box a bit here.  How about a page on your site where you have a bunch of photos that anyone can download and use as long as they gave you credit in the form of a link below the photo(Free Wedding Stock Photos).  Next time you shoot a wedding take some pictures of the cake, the buffet line, the decorations etc.  Wouldn't you love some back links from a catering company, a cake decorating company a DJ???  All of these types of companies could benefit from some fee stock photos for their website and in return you could build some great links.  You may not be in the top 100 but some good related back links will make a great deal of difference in your search engine rankings. 

In the words of Jim Rohn:  “Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process.”

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The home page is not the only page on your website

A lot of the folks I speak to seem to think that the home page of the website should be the page that pops up on the search engines for every search term that is related to a company.  In other words a lot of companies try and optimize their home page for every search term they want to rank well for.  This is a big mistake.

As a general rule your SEO efforts will be most successful if you try and optimize for only one to two closely related search terms per page.  You have a much better chance of ranking well for one or two closely related terms on a page then a bunch of somewhat relevant search terms.

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Analyzing the value of a paid web banner ad

Every so often I get a call or an email from a client that has just been approached by a publisher or marketing website trying to sell them the banner add.  The jist of the question is something like this:

Do you think this site would be worth advertising on? It runs about $500/yr. with first page placement.  www.websitenamehere.com  He’s telling me that they’ve had 14,000 hits, 3,000 per year, which doesn’t include members.

The first thing I do is check a site like http://www.compete.com/ for some more meaningful and realistic traffic levels.  Hits really mean nothing to a marketer and are are typically used by a webmaster that either doesn't know any better or is trying to make his site look better then it really is.  Basically a hit is registered any time a file is requested on a website.  A typical HTML home page with 3 pictures on it and 1 video on it could easily log 5 hits (3 Photos+1 Video +1HTML file=5 Hits) when viewed by a web surfer.    A site like Compete.com will give you a better estimate of Unique Visitors Per Month- which I will use below in the analyzation process.

So I check out Compete.com and see that the site in question averages about 800 visitors per month.


That's 9,600 visits per year so you are paying 5.2 cents per visitor just for them to see your add.

If you get a 5% click through rate- (That's probably on the high side) That's 480 visitors or over $1.00/Click.

So now the question is would I be willing to pay $1.04/Click for leads from this site?????

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The Facts on Search Engine Optimization

The primary benefit of search engine optimization (SEO) is widely known as a prime placement on a search engine’s first result page. Companies across the globe are manipulating their website in order to achieve the elusive status of a first page appearance. There are many things that a company should be aware of in the SEO process. First, it will necessitate change and a significant amount of time. Along with this, keywords will be chosen and links will be earned. Above all, your company should set realistic goals for your search engine optimization.


Change

In order for SEO to be effective, you web page will change; it may be as simple as minor wording adjustments or it may be a complete overhaul. The HTML code on your site must be changed so that search engine spiders can easily scan your site. Along with this, the keywords for which you want to be known must appear throughout your web pages. If you are a small site competing against large sites with various blogs, communities, archives, and forums, your site will most likely require significant change in order to compete.

Time

SEO does not garner immediate results for your website. It should be seen as an ongoing marathon, instead of a ½ mile sprint. A search engine has to first find and index your website. Older, more established sites are rewarded a higher ranking because of their long-standing success. New sites require much more time, sometimes even years, to rank well in big search engines. On the other hand, some sites may only require relatively quick fixes to appear on the first page. Be persistent and continually work toward optimization success.

Keywords

In order to attract your target customer to your site, your keywords should be chosen specifically and deliberately. Although common words may appear on your list, it is also important to target the keywords to the best products/services/information on your site. For example, the website of a cosmetic dentist will contain keywords of elective dental treatments rather than general dental provisions. In this way, you are attracting your target audience to your site rather than those that are looking for something else entirely. It will often take time to find the best keywords.

Links

The right backlinks are crucial to your placement on Google’s results pages. Generally you are looking for links to your site from related websites. Your keywords should appear in the link text. If you only have links that were simple to get, it is likely that their influence will be minimal to Google or another major search engine. Create a high-quality, dynamic, attractive website in order to obtain good links. After all, if your content is bland and dull, no one will find it linkworthy.

Goals

Successful search engine optimization involves setting realistic goals. First of all, the objective is to draw your target audience to your website based on the keywords they have entered into the search engine. You need not lure just anyone to the site; the goal is the draw potential buyers to the site. Additionally, your goal should be to increase your sales based on the SEO efforts.

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Notice of Internet Intellectual Property Rights Dispute in China???

Update 4/22/16-

 I can't believe this scam is still going on. Today one of our clients received a version of this message but the spammer was claiming to be part of Network Solutions. 

We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in China. We received an application from Huabao Ltd on April 18, 2016. They want to register " rockcountyalliance " as their Internet Keyword and " rockcountyalliance .cn "、" rockcountyalliance .com.cn " 、" rockcountyalliance .net.cn "、" rockcountyalliance .org.cn " 、" rockcountyalliance .asia " domain names, they are in China and Asia domain names. But after checking it, we find " rockcountyalliance " conflicts with your company. In order to deal with this matter better, so we send you email and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China or not? 

We still get a call on this topic once a month or so. Be careful out there people.

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

The information contained in this message and in any attachment is intended only for the recipient. It may be privileged and confidential, and should be protected from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, or you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender by replying to the message and delete it from your computer. Please be aware that any dissemination or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited.   ­­  

For about the last year or so I have been getting calls from many of our manufacturing customers that are in a panic because they have received an email with the subject line: "Notice of Internet Intellectual Property Rights Dispute in China". 

The email claims to be with the department of Asian Domain registration service in China and they claim to have received a application from a company that is attempting to register my clients brand name  in a domain. 

This is a scam.  They are attempting to sell you a bunch of over priced domain names.  Don't be fooled.   Often times the phone numbers in the email actually work but in none of the cases we have looked at have we found the companies initiating the emails NOT legitimate ICANN registrars.

Here is an example of one such email:

Subject: Notice of Internet Intellectual Property Rights Dispute in China
(If you are NOT CEO,please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent.Thanks.)

Dear CEO,

We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in China, have something need to confirm with you. we formally received an application on July 19,2010. one company which called "Brazil Kpore Investment S.A" are applying to register "YourCompanyName" as Brand Name and Domains.

YourCompanyName.asia (Asia)

YourCompanyName.hk (Hong Kong)

YourCompanyName.com.tw (Taiwan)

YourCompanyName.hk (Hong Kong)

YourCompanyName.net.cn (China)

YourCompanyName.org.cn (China)

YourCompanyName.tw (Taiwan)

YourCompanyName.com.sg (Singapore)

YourCompanyName.com.vn (Vietnam)

YourCompanyName.sg (Singa pore)

YourCompanyName.vn (Vietnam)

YourCompanyName.my (Malaysia)

YourCompanyName.ae (Arab Emirates)

YourCompanyName.co.kr (Korea)

YourCompanyName.kr (Korea)

YourCompanyName.cn (China)

YourCompanyName.com.cn (China)

But we found that "Brazil Kpore Investment S.A" is not the original owner of the brand and trademark in the checking period,which belong to your company .I need confirm with you whether your company authorized that company to register these domain name.If you have done that ,We will finish the registration for them and link to their website.

If not, please let me know ASAP.

In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit for dissent application is 7 workdays. If your company files no dissent within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application.

Best Regards,
Peter Yan(Mr)
Auditing Consultant

Tel: +0086-566-2629-555 Fax: +0086-566-2629-666

Address:Room205, No.D4 Qingxi South Garden, South-ChangJiang Road,Guichi Shi District,Chizhou,China

UPDATE- 12/20/2011

Here is another email I received from what I believe is the same group:

Dear CEO,
(If you are not in charge of this, please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent. Thanks)
We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in Shanghai, China. On Dec 15, 2011, we received an application from Hantong company requested "foremosthunting" as their internet keyword and China (CN) domain names. But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it's necessary to send email to you and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China?
Kind regards 

Paul PangOffice Manager Shanghai Office (Head Office)3002, Nanhai Building, No. 854 Nandan Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200070, China Tel:             +86-21-6191-8696       Mobile: +86-182-2195-1605Fax: +86-21-6191-8697Web: www.yiguannetwork.comP Please consider the environment before printing this email

I responded to the latest email from these guys posted above stating that the domain in question was our brand name. This is the response I got back:

"Dear Sirs,We are Hantong company based in China. We will register the "foremosthunting" as internet keyword and CN domain names .cn, .com.cn, .net.cn, .org.cn. We have handed in our application and are waiting for Mr. Paul Pang's approval. We think this name is important for our products in Chinese market. Even though Mr. Paul Pang advises us to change another name, we will persist in this name.Best regardsGareth Lee"

I responded again saying I wanted to protect my brand and this is the response I got back:

Dear Jon Ballard,

Based on your company having no relationship with them, we have suggested they should choose another name to avoid this conflict but they insist on this name as CN domain names (.cn/.com.cn/.net.cn/.org.cn) and internet keyword on the internet. In our opinion, maybe they do the similar business as your company and register it to promote his company.
According to the domain name registration principle: Domain name and internet keyword which applied based on the international principle are opened to companies as well as individuals. Any companies or individuals have rights to register any domain name and internet keyword which are unregistered. Because your company haven't registered this name as CN domains and internet keyword on the internet, anyone can obtain them by registration. However, in order to avoid this conflict, the trademark or original name owner has priority to make this registration in our audit period.
If your company is the original owner of this name and want to register these CN domain names (.cn/.com.cn/.net.cn/.org.cn) and internet keyword to prevent anybody from using them, please inform us. We can send you an application form with price list and help your company register them.

Kind regards

As you can see the end game here is to get me to buy some over priced Chinese domain name extensions.  The next correspondence I received from this company was a invoice.  The invoice contained:

$144/Year from a "Internet Key Word" (My Brand Name)
4 different Chinese domain name extension versions of my URL at $44/Year.

The invoice said it was the "Internet Keyword & CN Domain Name Application Form"

Attached please find this application form. You can find the price from this form. If your company want to make this application, please fill out this form and send it back with the copy of company business license (company registration certificate).

I also asked what a internet keyword was (Only $144/Year) and this is the response I received:

Thanks for your email. Internet Keyword is one of the new accessing ways to internet, which is the real-world brand’s extension and incorporeal property in the network. It is also a new generation of network accessing technology, which can help users get the companies and products’ information directly by inputting the name of company, product, trademark etc. into browser, search engines, regional infoports and so on.
Kind regards
Paul Pang

Here is the latest version of this scam from an Abby Wang 11/13/12 :

Dear Manager,
(If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward this to your CEO,Thanks)
This email is from China domain name registration center, which mainly deal with the domain name registration and dispute internationally in China and Asia.
On Nov 12th 2012, We received Kenya Ltd's application that they are registering the name "foremosthunting" as their Internet Keyword and "foremosthunting.cn "、"foremosthunting.com.cn " 、"foremosthunting.asia "domain names etc.., they are China and ASIA domain names. But after auditing we found the brand name been used by your company. As the domain name registrar in China, it is our duty to notice you, so we are sending you this email to check. According to the principle in China, your company is the owner of the trademark, In our auditing time we can keep the domain names safe for you firstly, but our audit period is limited, if you object the third party application these domain names and need to protect the brand in china and Asia by yourself, please let the responsible officer contact us as soon as possible. Thank you!
Best Regards,Abby Wang

 

General Manager
Anhui Office (Head Office)Registration Department Manager
Room 1008 Shenhui Building
Haitian Road, Huli Anhui, ChinaOffice:  +86 0553 4994789
Fax:     +86 0553 4994789

web:  www.ygcompany.org

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What's in a font?

Typography. It's such a beautiful art. Simple adjustments can drastically improve not only how we read text, but how we feel when reading text. Conveying emotions through text via the web has some serious limits. Only a small subset of fonts are going to work cross-platform. Here's the basics.

Arial / Helvetica
Courier New
Times New Roman

Of course it is possible to use other fonts, but those are the basics that are "guaranteed" to work.

Luckily, Google has done it once again. Using Google's font directory we can finally use a wider variety of fonts on the web. This is an awesome service that provides the web with open and royalty free fonts. Not only are these fonts free to use, but Google hosts this service for you. Embedding fonts is as simple as adding a few lines to your web page. Just check out this tutorial on Google's website.

We here at Foremost Media are really excited about this. We are always on the look out for cool new technologies to make your websites look and work great.

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Google announces new features

"We introduced a new way to view search results for sites with lots of images. Each result will now include a strip of images from the website, so you can get a better preview of what each page has to offer. [...]


This week, we released a new version of Goggles with translation capabilities built in. To use it, point your phone's camera at a foreign word or phrase and use the 'region of interest button' to draw a box around specific words."

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It's official: Google uses page speed as a ranking factor

Last Friday, Google announced that they started to use site speed as one of the 200 signals that influence the position of a website in the search results.

"As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. [...]
We've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites."

Will your website rankings drop?

Google's Matt Cutts says that the change will affect only some websites:
"Fewer than 1% of search queries will change as a result of incorporating site speed into our ranking. That means that even fewer search results are affected, since the average search query is returning 10 or so search results on each page.
So please don?t worry that the effect of this change will be huge. In fact, I believe the official blog post mentioned that 'We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing.'
The fact that not too many people noticed the change is another reason not to stress out disproportionately over this change."
While 1% does not sound much, it can be a problem if your website belongs to the pages whose rankings will drop.

At this time, Google's new site speed signal only applies to visitors searching in English on Google.com. 


What does this mean for Foremost Media Customers?  Not a whole lot, but if your using a ultra low cost web host, or  your site has lots of Java script calls or gZip is not enabled along with a multitude of other best practices you may want to pay attention to this announcement.  If you need help making your website preform better give us a call today!

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The State Of The Internet- Video

Some pretty interesting facts about the internet:

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Increase Website Load Speed With Neat Little Trick

I was looking into this a while back and it just popped back up in my mind again. To reduce bandwidth and page load times some websites will place a majority of their images in a single image and use it as if it were a tile sheet.

Example: http://www.google.com/images/nav_logo8.png

Using some a certain combination of CSS properties you can crop out unneeded parts of the image.

Example:

.next-button {

     cursor: pointer;

     background-image: url(tilesheet.png);

     background-position: 32px 0px;

     width: 16px;

     height: 16px;

}

Pretty cool stuff no doubt. It obviously not worth it for smaller sites considering the amount of work it would take to get it setup. But it's always an option for bulky high traffic sites. Keep in mind this is just one out of a thousand techniques Google uses to give you those quick loading pages.

-Posted By Foremost Media Staff Member Kevin W.

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Easy Image Resizing with the Web Resizer

As a web developer, I regularly open a website to see the images on the page slowly load line by line. I immediately know what has happened and think about the day that I will write a blog post about how to resize images for the web. Well, today is the day that I write the post.

The Problem: Large Images

Uploading images from a digital camera will put unnecessarily large images on your site. Today's digital cameras generally produce images that are well over 2000 pixels wide and over 2 megabytes in size. When these images are uploaded at full size to a web page and then displayed at 300 pixels wide, the web browser will scale the picture down to the width, but it is still loading the entire full-sized file. Place two or three of these huge image files on a web page and the page load time will increase drastically.

The Solution: Resized and Web Optimized Images

When placing photos on your web page, you should resize your photos to fit the space that you want them to take up on the page. A web page with optimized and resized images will load much more quickly and the smaller image files will still look as good as their larger siblings.

How does one resize/optimize images for the web?

While Photoshop is a great tool for completing this task, it is expensive and there is a learning curve involved in becoming proficient at it. Thankfully, there are plenty of free and easy to use options available for resizing and optimizing images. Of all that I have seen and used, none has impressed me as much as the online web resizer found at http://webresizer.com/resizer. This is an awesome tool that is extremely easy to use. The site allows you to resize and crop your images and they also provide some basic editing functions to help you get your images looking good quickly. One of my favorite features is the ability to quickly add rounded corners to an image.

This is not an efficient tool for processing a large number of images, but if you only need to resize a few photos for a page you are developing, this is a great option. Another plus is that you do not need to install anything to make it work. Everything is done inside of your web browser.

Take a few minutes to check out the Web Resizer and bookmark it for the next time you need to add images to your site.

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Switching to our email hosting has never been easier

If you are thinking about moving your hosting to us and one of your concerns is losing emails in the process, have no fear. We now have the ability to easily transfer your email accounts to our hosting environment from many popular email providers. We can help migrate your email from Exchange 2007, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail Plus, IMAIL and others.

Contact your current system administrator if you are unsure which mail server type you are using.

Learn more about our hosting options here:
http://tinyurl.com/fm-hosting-info

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Google Bot Feeds On Bread Crumbs

Google has recently started to return bread crumbs as clicable results on some of their search results pages (SERPS).  The program is still new and according to Googles Matt Cutts and what you are seeing now may change down the road.  The neat thing for webmasters is that it provides more links to your site from the SERPS page on Google.  At this point all that is needed to get Google to display bread crumbs with your search results is you need bread crumbs on your site with a consistent deliminator between them and the bread crumbs should reflect your sites hierarchy.

Remember bread crumbs aren't a magic bullet for SEO but it is my belief that every website should have them regardless of there effect on your search results.  Breadcrumbs help improve the user experience on your site especially if your site is pretty deep.

Here is what Matt had to say about the topic:

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Writing A Good Title Tag For SEO

Writing Good Title Tags For Search Engine Optimization

It amazes me how many companies are not taking full advantage of their title tags or not formatting their title tags properly. If your page is all about branding your company name then put the company name at the front of the title tag, but if your page is trying to capture traffic for a specific phrase like "Thermal Dynamic Techno Funk" you want the key phrase at the front of your title tag.

Missed Opportunity:  XYZ Company-  Leader in Thermal Dynamic Techno Funk

Properly Formatted:  Thermal Dynamic Techno Funk Information XYZ Company

Title Tags are one of the most important elements on your page so use it well.  For the most part, your company is going to show up well on the search engines because it's all over your site.

VNQK2PFKX4UN 

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Can you guranatee to get us on the first page of google?

Here is what Google Says About Ranking Guarantees: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings."


- Google's SEO Tips

At Foremost Media we have a great track record of providing top rankings for our clients and we can guarantee that your project will be completed in a ethical and honest manor and with the same attention to detail that we have used in the past to deliver excellent results to our other SEO clients. Our results with our past and current clients are our guarantee that we have had great success with search engine optimization.
I am confident that we can help your company generate more leads through the search engines. Remember that the search engine optimization projects are a collaboration between our companies. We will defiantly need input from you and your team as we move forward. The more involved in the process your group is the better the results. Our job is to help you tailor your content to both the search engines and the surfer to help you not only be found but also generate more leads for your business.

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Microsoft Warns that Internet Explorer 6 is Flawed...

This week Microsoft has admitted that its Internet Explorer 6 browser that is running on Windows 2000 and Windows XP computers has flawed code that contributes to a security hole in the software that was recently used in attacks on Google in China.

Microsoft is now urging users who have not yet upgraded from IE6 to consider upgrading to a new version of Internet Explorer. Upgrades from Internet Explorer 6 have been freely available from Microsoft for several years, but Microsoft has refused to force users to upgrade.

Do you think that these security holes will be motivation enough to cause users who have not upgraded in the last 3-4 years to take the leap now?

Read more about this story here...

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Do you catch my drip?

Drip Email Marketing Campaigns Can Help Sell Complex Products and Reduce Sales Cycle-
Many products epically in the B2C realm take some time to explain and buyers often need to be educated on the product. Enter stage left- Drip Marketing! The idea behind drip marketing is to take a cold lead or a researcher and educate that lead about the product in an attempt to turn them into customers. One way to do this is to have a series of automated emails sent a few days or weeks apart, which explain more about the product. Each email sent can build on the last email and highlight a new feature as an example.
Using drip emails like this help build trust with the prospect, and give the seller the opportunity to position themselves as an authority in the industry or topic under consideration.


Contact us today to learn more about using our email marketing software to set up drip marketing emails!

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