SEOTops

Hey guys CHECK THIS OUT one of our competitiors being a sour a sore loser in all aspects of the word. Although we are a new blog it looks as though these guys know that we will become one of the most loyal blogs so they are trying to KILL us on the way up. Just a little hint guys “it wont work”, we are here for good

As for the Author who wrote that article all we can say you need to do some link bait yourselves because as it goes there advising on SEO but are not performing very well themselves.

For a blog to take time out of there schedule to write about us we are glad so we thought we would repay the favour!! LOL

So they are slating our good friends over at webwire too - What are they about, I have read through there blog and most of what they actually write is utter garbage, looks like there one of them so called “SEO cowboys” we were talking about

One question we ask is Are Port80 Jealous? Or does there Blog Suck Big Time!!Well the conclusion is both there jealousy excels there intelect and there blog!! Well dont want to say to much hahaha

RSS (Really Simple Syndication), has been around for a good few years now - its basically a method where you can easily syndicate your content. For example if someone finds your posts interesting and they would like to publish it on there site it would be much more simple to use an RSS feed.

RSS is a very useful tool for delivering information and news to clients and bloggers around the world, alot of companies still do not use RSS feeds which is very likely going to slow them down in the long run. It is also great for SEO efforts as there are numerous RSS feeds around these days where you can submit your feed to and everytime you publish your content vwalla - its in the front of thousands of people increasng your link bait and viral awareness. If you are still clueless as to what RSS is thn read on

It was developed by th now retired Netscape (RIP) it is a means of receiving updated content instantly, when the user subscribes to your RSS feed. The growth of RSS over recent years has been extrodinary to say the least it could infact take over email communication as a new way to deliver and read content.

Nowaday any sort of information can be sent via RSS and the end user can also choose what category or subject they would like to receive information about, one tip is not to use javascript when creating your RSS feed as this will stop the spiders in there tracks .

So for anyone that is not using RSS we recommend to as it will not only help your SEO with keyword rich content but it will also open your site up to a whole new audience that will be going crazy to read your unique content!

Dmoz the worlds greatest and largest human edited directory has been a debatable subject on all terms in our community but what really are the SEO effects of getting listed in one of the worlds most reliable directories.

Well to begin with if you dont already know DMOZ is a human edited directory meaning that the editors will only accept top quality sites related to there industry, this has caused not only caused a lot of knit picking but it feels as though somewhat alot of favouristism has been awarded to say for example “editors friends”. Lets just put it this way if you are looking to get listed in a freelance area of the directory and the editor also owns a freelance site and may see you as competition then there is no way they will accept you. We feel that although DMOZ can create could quality links as alot of directories extract listing from there, including google. Dmoz has nowaday become somewhat of a black market whereas if you know the right people or have the right funds your going to get listed just CLICK HERE and take a look at this its terrible.

Our conclusion is that Dmoz a few years ago was well worth every effort and can still get you a heck of alot of backlinks, but you should not become obsessed with getting listed instead concentrate more on your link building campaigns and overall if you stick at it you wont feel you need DMOZ at all.

Remember if you want to rank well, getting listed in one site wont do this for you so:

D = Do,

M = More,

O = Optimization

Z = Zestfully

Information is finally coming to lights that Microsofts and Yahoo’s senior executives have made a breakthrough as this is the first formal communication that both companies have attended. Although no bankers attended the meeting it is said to have been a discussion on what Microsoft and Yahoo can achieve combined as a whole. Although Microsofts bid has been officially rejected due to the fact that it was an undervalue pricetag they are said to want to have a close look at Yahoo’s finances to consider raising the price. Although AOL were also very interested in Yahoo that has now probably been scraped due to the high price purchase of bebo earlier this week. You can read more regarding this over at CNET

AOL has today stated they have purchased social media site Bebo. So what does this mean for AOL’s future - well we believe it is a great buy for AOL as it gives them a very strong launching pad to compete with Myspace, Hi5, and facebook, it is going to be very interesting as to what AOL will do with Bebo.

Bebo claims to have over 40 million registered users wordwide and with AOL’s takeover it is expected to rise very fast as they plan to expand globally as they are already one of the top players in the UK abit about bebo taken from the takeover statement below

Bebo, founded by Michael and Xochi Birch, is the world’s leading global social media network. Building on the notion of traditional social networking websites, Bebo combines community, self-expression and entertainment to enable its users to consume, create, discover and share professional and user-generated content through the Bebo website. Bebo has 11.4m unique users in the UK and a total membership of more than 40 million worldwide. Bebo also ranks as the UK’s most engaging social network with users spending an average of 33 minutes on the site per usage day

So in all conclusions this has been a great buy for AOL as they are firmly establishing themselves in the social market. Although a hefty price tag the conclusion is that its very much worth it

Ok guys internet explorer 8 has been released in beta version, so how does it match up against IE7 and firefox. Well firstly it does not look that different but it has some interesting new features as shown on the official Microsoft site

You can download IE8 Beta Here

Activities
Activities are contextual menu options which quickly access a service from any Web page. Users typically copy and paste from one Web page to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.

Activities typically involve two types of scenarios: “look up” of information within a Web page, and “send” of Web content to a Web application. Consider the example of a user who is interested in a restaurant and wants to see its location. This is the form of a “look up” Activity, where the user selects the address and views an in-place view of the map using a favorite map service.
In an example of a “send” Activity, a user reads an interesting article and wants to blog about it. The user can select a portion of the article and use the blog Activity. This navigates to the user’s blog site with the selection already available in the edit field.

Users can access an Activity on selection simply by selecting content and opening the context menu. For example, users can select an address on a webpage and the Activity button appears. Alternatively, you can access selection Activities from the context menu. Activities are also available for the current webpage in the Page menu on the Command bar and for links within a page in the context menu for the link.

Activities are services that the user can install and manage. Users can install them from the Internet Explorer 8 Service Guide or through any website that advertises Activities.

Activities are described using an XML file that provides the interface of how the browser should communicate with the service through URL templates. Web-based services should take advantage of the XML-based Activities since they are easier to create, test, and deploy to users.

This is a simple sample that shows the map Activity that you can host on a website:

Activity XML file – copy the sample code below to a text editor and save it as “GetMap.xml”. This code below describes the functionality of the Activity.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<openServiceDescription xmlns=”http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0”>
<homepageUrl>http://maps.live.com</homepageUrl>
<display>
<name>Map with Windows Live</name>
<icon>http://www.live.com/favicon.ico</icon>
</display>
<activity category=”map”>
<activityAction context=”selection”>
<preview action= ”http://maps.live.com/geotager.aspx”>
<parameter name=”b” value=”{selection}”/>
<parameter name=”clean” value=”true”/>
<parameter name=”w” value=”320″/>
<parameter name=”h” value=”240″/>
</preview>
<execute action=”http://maps.live.com/default.aspx“>
<parameter name=”where1″ value=”{selection}” type=”text” />
</execute>
</activityAction>
</activity>
</openServiceDescription>

Hosting the install button – add this code snippet to the website that you want to advertise the Activity.

<button onclick=”javascript:window.external.addService(’GetMap.xml’)”>Add Map Activity</button>

To test:
Install the Activity by clicking on the “Install” button on your website. This launches the installation dialog.
Check the “Make this my default provider” check box. This sets the Activity to appear in the top listing for Activities.
Go to a site that contains a street address.
Select the address and click on the button that appears next the mouse cursor.(Alternatively, you can right-click to get the context menu.)
Hover over the “Map with Live Maps” Activity. This displays the preview of the map Activity.
Click on the “Map with Live Maps” Activity. This navigates to the map Web site in a new tab.
WebSlices
WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.

A WebSlice is a portion within a webpage that is treated like a subscribe-able item, just like a feed. To enable a WebSlice on your website, annotate your webpage with class names for the title, description, and other subscribe-able properties.

Internet Explorer 8 Users can discover WebSlices within a webpage and add them to the Favorites bar, a dedicated row below the Address bar for easy access to links. Internet Explorer 8 subscribes to the webpage, detects changes in the WebSlice, and notifies the user of updates. Users can preview these updates directly from the Favorites bar and click-through to the website to get more information.

WebSlice Authoring
WebSlices are enabled by adding HTML annotations directly to the webpage. WebSlices use a combination of the hAtom Microformat and the WebSlice format to describe a subscribe-able portion of a webpage.

The Basics
The basic properties of a WebSlice are the WebSlice container, Entry Title, and Entry Content.

WebSlice
Required.
Uses class name hslice.
The WebSlice element must include an ID.
Represents the entire region of a WebSlice that contains the title, description, and other WebSlice properties.
Entry Title
Required
Uses class name entry-title as defined in the hAtom Microformat.
There can be multiple instances of Entry Title.
Entry Content
Optional
Uses class name entry-content as defined in the hAtom Microformat.
If the Entry Content is missing, assume it is the empty string.
There can be multiple instances of Entry Content.
This is an example of how to mark up an auction item with the link, title, and description properties.

http://www.auction.microsoft.com/item

<div class=”hslice” id=”1”>
<p class=”entry-title”>item - $66.00</p>
<div class=”entry-content”>high bidder:buyer1

  …
</div>
</div>
CSS 2.1 Compliance
Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing, positioning) to Web documents. Before the introduction of CSS, stylistic properties were set directly within HTML through different attributes. With CSS, authors may separate a page’s data specified via HTML from the display logic, thus improving markup organization and facilitating easier site maintenance.

The W3C CSS working group has made great strides towards converging on a final specification for CSS 2.1. At the time of this writing, the specification is in ‘Candidate Recommendation’. The main goal of this effort is to enable web developers and designers to write their pages once and have them render properly in many browsers. The new Web Developer Toolbar included with Internet Explorer 8 will also help in this endeavor. Internet Explorer 8 supports the latest feature set as defined in the specification.

While one of Internet Explorer 8’s main goals is CSS 2.1 compliance, it is also forward looking towards CSS3. CSS3 is the next step in the evolution of Cascading Style Sheets, and unlike CSS 2.1 which consists of one single document, the CSS3 specification is broken down into different modules in order to increase the speed of converging on clear specifications and implementations of different features. Additionally, CSS3 hopes to further clarify some of the ambiguities in the CSS2.1 Specification while providing new features to web authors. Internet Explorer 8 hopes to implement some of the most requested CSS3 features by web developers and designers.

How does it Compare?

Well with all these new features we still will be using firefox for along time to come as it is more suitable for SEO purposes. Although IE8 is in beta version we have had to Emulate it to version 7 as it keeps on crashing there are still alot of problems to be fixed.

With Microsoft being the huge company they are we dont know why they are finding it so hard to make a perfect browser, if they continue like this they will surely lose out on the browser market as firefox is surely catching them up slowly slowly. To finalize things to date IE6 is still the best browser Microsoft have ever created. The question I bicker to ask is “why did they try to fix something when it wasn’t broken

This information is going to be interesting for those who are trying to define the basic SEO terms. I am going to focus on those terms that you meet in the SEO business every now and then. So, the top 7 terms list looks like this:

1. Anchor Text - is the specific text for a hyperlink.

2. Inbound links are links that point to your site. The number of links represents the link popularity of your website. The more, the better.

3. The Link popularity is one of the most important thing when it comes to SEO. Link popularity means the amount of links that point to your site. The link popularity will raise your site in the eyes of the search engines depending on the quality and quantity of the links.

4. Keyword is the quintessential piece of information of the context. They’re important for both sides – to the site owners and the search engine users. The former need them to get identified properly by the search engine spiders, the latter use them to find the information.

5. Spiders (crawlers) are the programs that follow the links and send the data to the search engine database for the further analysis.

6. META tags are specific HTML tags used at the top of the page. The Main purpose of having them, is to provide the additional information on the web page for the spiders to read it. The most important tag is the Keywords tag along with the Description tag.

7. PageRank. Google’s own evaluation rating system for ranking pages. Any page can be rated 1-10 depending on its importance, 10 being the highest

Remember, there are tons of more complicated and specific terms that SEO people operate but now, you are familiar with the basics of seo terminology which are important to know for beginners and experts

We all know that Google are the most visited and talked about search engine in the world, but now they are looking to buy the hottest social media site Digg. This will be an amazing buy for Google as they will be further seeking total domination of the online industry. Sources are said to be saying Google are to offer around $225 million for the aquisition of the largest social media site. You can read more info on the sources here and here

Long time ago, many webmasters and seo professionals noticed an interesting fact about some kind of time lag between launching the website and seeing it in the Google search results, occurring for the newly registered domains or domains that change the owner frequently. A website can be up an running for a month or so, the link building is in progress, but the results of the search queries would never return links to that website. Why is that? Two possible explanations are as follows:

1)    Google’s policy. It kind of makes sense to me why Google would implement such a policy towards the new web content. In fact we all know about it. It’s something you have the spam filters in your e-mail account for. Just imagine how easy it could be, to buy a thousand domains for a year and fill them with the links to your website. It’d take you about 6000 dollars but (!) what you get back is a whole lot of backlinks from the first level domains – somehow more important than anything else. This could boost your place in ranking up to the top 5 in a matter of days. Ok, this is a little exaggerated kind of an example but you can now see how important this feature is in filtering the content of the web.
2)    Google’s mathematical algorithm. Other way to look at the Google Sandbox effect is to think for a second about how much time Google might need to calculate the PageRank and the relevant importance of this website’s content before it can let it appear in search results. Pure math.
Also, not all of the webmasters do agree that there is this kind of effect taking place on the Google’s part, but no matter what, keep up with good content within your site, have a nice web design that appeals to your visitors and be sure you will do just fine and can actually forget about such thing as Google Sandbox.

Ever wondered on how to deal with SEO for your website when it is build using Flash? The only piece of advice possible in this case is to keep it something in the middle of what the website visitors are going to see and what it looks like to Googlebot. Because if you don’t, you’re likely to have your site appearing suspicious to Google’s algorithms. This includes cloaking, hidden text in metatags, Javascript redirects, doorway pages, over numbered hidden keyword listings. Here is a couple of practical pieces of advice by Google’s engineers:

1. Limit the use of Flash only to where there’s nothing can exist instead of it. This basically means that one should use Flash for the rich media accents on the page, not the content or navigation. This also expands your website’s audience to those who have non-standard browsers, those whose bandwidth’s limited (like PDA users or a people using cell phones), visually impaired visitors using screen readers, etc. Additional pro towards this method is visitors can use bookmarks and e-mail links to your site’s pages to their friends.
2. Some full flash websites utilize the Flash technology to force browser to show headers, pull quotes and/or other text elements with a font that might not be installed at user’s computer. A sIFR technique allows non-Flash readers read a page, since the content and navigation is still in the HTML – it’s basically displayed by an embedded Flash object.
3. Use of alternative versions of the site. Another way you can see the Flash used is a front page “into page” where the URL of a website has the flash intro that links to HTML content further into the site. Using this technique, make sure your visitor can navigate into the website (as well as the Googlebot) without the need of Flash.

To sum up although flash websites do look very attractive they would not be fully recommended for SEO purposes.