One of the biggest challenges that site owners face is link building. Whether you run an e-commerce site, a niche blog, or a reputation management website, generating quality backlinks is absolutely vital. SEO used to revolve around the on-page optimization, but since the Panda update it seems that backlinks (especially those from relevant sites) are now playing a more important role in the ranking of websites. There are lots of ways that backlinks can be generated, but not all of them are easy. And the ones that are tend to be not worth your time. So let’s look at three mistakes that many webmasters make when trying to boost their backlinks – and how to avoid them.

Assuming that a link from a high PR site is more valuable

The Page Rank system is useful because it lets people know how highly regarded a site is in the eyes of search engines like Google, but it’s not always a green flag. It’s understandable that if a site with a PR of 3 or 4 wants to link to you, that’s a tempting offer, but if you have to pay for the privilege you should do a little research first. The first thing to check is relevancy: does this page have anything to do with your site and topic? If not, the backlink won’t pack as much punch with Google. Another thing to check is how many other links this high PR site has. If your link is one of ten or more on a page, you might as well be throwing money away. Carry out these simple checks every time you’re considering a new paid backlink and you’ll be much better off in the long run.

Believing that NOFOLLOW links are useless

When Google is considering its rankings, it takes into account a great many factors. Some of these are well-known, like keyword densities and the age of the site, but others are a little more obscure. Take NOFOLLOW links for example. While it’s true that these don’t have a direct effect on your page rankings, they do affect the ‘spread’ of your links across the web. For example, if you had spent time and money generating 100 backlinks and they were all FOLLOW, this could count against you because the link spread doesn’t appear organic. On the other hand, if you have a nice mix of FOLLOW and NOFOLLOW, your link spread is much more natural. The bottom line is, don’t always assume that FOLLOW is best – try to mix it up a little.

“1000 backlinks for just $5.00? What a great deal!”

There are lots of places on the web that you can get something for next-to-nothing. In fact, there are sites that provide nothing but $5 services. And very often you’ll find someone there offering thousands of backlinks for very little money. Now, your logic should kick in here and tell you that these aren’t going to be quality links, but it’s easy to be blinded by what you consider a ‘steal’. The truth is that, wherever you find them, these cheap backlink services are a waste of money. Not only that, there’s a chance you’ll get your site blacklisted because your link will inevitably appear on spam sites. So the end result may be the opposite of what you intend, and your site will be penalized by Google. This will reduce your Page Rank, lower your site’s visibility in SERPs, and make all of the time and effort you’ve put into your SEO a waste of energy. No matter how cheap they are, no matter how smooth their patter, don’t be fooled into buying cheap backlinks – it’s a recipe for disaster. That’s not to say that buying backlinks can work, just always remember that you get what you pay for – and five dollars isn’t going to get you much.
Remember, the generation of backlinks is one of the best tools in a site owner’s toolbox, but going about it in the wrong way can have negative consequences. Tactics such as guest blog posts and link exchanges with other relevant sites are generally successful – just don’t let yourself get suckered into anything that sounds too good to be true. Because, as we all know, it probably is.

The type of material one carries in one’s wallet tells people who you are and what you make, where you live and how you spend. But in the wrong hands this could be deadly. Your Social Security Card, pay stub, occupational health membership card, even your health membership card can be used to social engineer a password or reset at a moment where your email account is compromised. Hackers are that clever, and in this world of online job competition they are motivated indeed.

1. Too Much Information

Take a look at the information inside your wallet. The worst type of identity slacker has their computer password or even printed out documentation with their passwords on it folded inside. This is the mother lode to a hacker looking to hack your corporate account by way of your personal email account. Little strips of paper and notes tucked inside for later use can be forgotten, but a hacker has plenty of time to figure out why they are so significant to you.

Solution: Carry a sport version of your everyday full wallet. reduce the full wallet and use it only during travel or International commerce, such as stock exchanges, border travel, or purchasing cruise tickets or anywhere you’ll need passport level documents with you. Keep a drawer in your desk with spare bit  of addresses passwords, and other task reminders. If you think you need the information somewhere in your everyday travels, transfer it in code to an email. A hacker won’t even know what it means in a sentence or subject line but you will.

2. Stacking the Deck

Another crime of wallet stuffing is carrying every credit card you ever got in a rubber banded stack. This can let thieves know you won’t miss one if it goes away or if you copy them the job you’ll have canceling every card will give them enough time to run up some charges. Hackers have bogus mail drops they can ordered goods delivered. Do NOT keep blank checks in there “just in case”. Keep your checkbook separate or have your wife carry it in the purse.

Solution: review what cards you carry every day and slim down the deck.

3. Layers Upon Layers

If you can’t tell tell by one look at the cards in your wallet what is missing, reduce down the number of cards and information you carry. Just trying to check if everything is there could take another ten to fifteen minutes hackers can use to set up a bogus account and use it to qualify for charges. Pickpockets know to steal the cards and information behind the visible layer. A man finds he left this wallet behind and has no idea someone has looked through it and seen what cards he has, what car he drives and his work and home address.

Solution:

4. Schedules

That work schedule or the department’s work layout plan?  Thieves really want to get their hands on these. This shows where you will be (and where your car will be left unattended) and when certain co-workers of yours will be present or not. Why do thieves and hackers want to know when you are not at home? because they can drop by you place and use your router or hack your desktop.

Solution: Keep your schedule online in a scanned version or text yourself pertinent days and hours you need to be at work.

5. The Phone as PDA

Think twice before committing a lot of sensitive information to your portable device or planner. If your phone is stolen, what will be more compromising, the renewal of phone service, activation of a new device, or chasing all the Internet access services you accessed by phone? And how much information about you social network is in there? Hackers usually start with emergency contact data, since this is a close relation to you and subject to being more vulnerable to social engineering.

Solution: carry either your cellphone with ID scanning and smart payment option  and some cash or your wallet, but not both. That’s two payments methods muggers can steal that hackers can enjoy all night long online. Or at least make sure you use a password on your phone that hackers can’t break.

Source: ClickJacker.com – July 30th, 2011

Hey domainers get out your small change. The $4.95 Godaddy special is up and working!

Remember when Groupon was just a funny little website with a unique sounding domain name? Groupon has now become the domainer’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But the GroupOn story has grown and grown, until the tombstone headlines in the business journals have proclaimed it a blue chip investment worthy of underwriting on the metropolitan stock exchanges worldwide.

The ongoing opportunity in the online space for a domainer to build a brand, establish a service, deliver a product and find a market still exists. As many experts observe, the SEO search result B2B offering has barely been tapped, domainer clams to the contrary. The SEO business available online is a green market ripe for plucking. Domainers needy for SEO development and cementing into the virtual universe on the vine.

Domainers and their service providers have fallen short of delivering the full scope of SEO quality services, as one observer notes in an article “The B2b of SEO”.

“Even with the popularization of SEO value present in the current online media community, actual search engine penetration is rare. But the cause of this is more counter intuitive than even the most qualified experts can defend.”

GroupOn was smart enough not to listen to the naysayers who scoffed at their idea or nodded knowingly at one more undevelopable app coming down the pike. They ignored even further the people who said according to the extant rules GroupOn might fail. Every domainer should doff their cap to GroupOn for extending the domaining possibilities for every name in every domain portfolio in existence.

Yes, I am talking to YOU. Why aren’t you marketing your domain harder? Don’t you want an IPO? Get on the stick and get your marketing department clicking. It costs NOTHING to plant urls and post comments, yet so many ambitious domain owners haven’t posted a self-serving blog comment or forum post in YEARS.

Physician, heal thyself.

The 2011 Domain Fest event garnered a small bouquet of winners. Moniker (formerly Snapnames) has posted the results. For Fijiislands.com, a $58,830.00 sticker price is fairy impressive, the standout sale of the auction. Longish name propertyappraisal.com fetched $23,530.00. An organic name, the totally potentially awesome organictea.com earned $17,650.00, a big hint to all those name searchers looking for “organic” revenue.

I’d like to see typo traffic for brassieres.com, which sold for $3,112.00. A more abstruse name, dialectic.com, earned $2,500. The multiuse product name generic, cables.info, did pretty well for a /info name, nabbing $1,315. An unusual entry shows that country code names are dead with the right shorty domain, to wit, staff.me got bid for $1,250.

The conventional wisdom about only short names selling coms under fire after news of th this next sale. The Long long domain name wirelesssecuritycamera.com got $830, this could be huge because the market for this generic product has highly specialized tiers of price ranges. Wirelesssecuritycamera.com is a long domain name but can be promoted and marketed with keywords or used as a forward.

Product based domain names can be Amazon stores or review sites, or with a little imagination real communities for product interface comparison and upgrade sourcing. Every try finding an upgrade or patch for your product Wouldn’t it be nice if you could Google your unit and get the patch or upgrade link or file at one website?

Net hitter cyberbargains.com earned, $750, a good hint to scout out cyber- starting names or cerate one for revenue or marketing. That is a real nice price for such a generic and promotable name. You can practically hear the Facebook calling. The winter product based domain name newskis.com schussed outta the rack for $675.

These name sales should illumine the sales process and value generation plan for domainers looking to leverage online web site publishing tools and resources for value creation in domain name investment.

Oversee.net recently streamlined 13% of its workforce. Along with pending new hires, will allow the “new” Oversee.net to leverage core assets to innovate more effectively, improve competitive positioning and achieve growth.” Um, sure. I guess now they have less to “oversee”. Domainers wear so many hats, almost every domainer I know is their own Internet company. I’d like to see the actual product flow from an internet company just once with a profit model that reflects a monetary relationship what people are paid.

DirectI, parent of BigJumbo, DomainAdvertising.com, Logicboxes and ResellerClub (amongst others) announced this week the merge with the DomainAdvertising and BigJumbo brands into a single Domain Parking Platform. The merged entity will function under the brand DomainAdvertising.com. this signals a shift in parking offerings from seller side features to a more customer based approach.

Do you need an entire company to structure a parking offering? Aren’t these generated by scripts? Where does the human factor add value? I have yet to see a compelling content generation model from any parking company, which emphasizes the metrical aspect to website and domain promotion but skips the content angle. This mirrors how I feel the parking industry should be developing. Once the arrogance of a parking company fades away, the utility of their service offering improves.

One of the worst and most ignorant comments I heard this month about doing business online is that you “can’t promote your website on Youtube because you don’t have any videos to upload”. I had to stop laughing after a few minutes out of sheer disbelief. When you wonder why the competition isn’t winning inflating the value of their domain names, statements like this will emerge as big reason why the strategy bubble on the other side has burst.

I actually read an email where this man claimed that “nobody” could watch the content of the TV site on YouTube because it was ”all taken down”. I was gobstopped. I absolutely stared at the screen in horror at this comment. Since I had spent days watching films and clips and fan videos concerning the very subject, that would not be taken down, and been on Youtube for years, this guy was full of it.

I guess that’s why Google bought Youtube, because it would “all be taken down”. At this writing, Youtube has billions of videos up and people taking part in discussions and comment exchange worldwide. These are the kinds of statements that “ROFL” was invented to cover. All i could think of was that this client was so removed from the actual user experience at his website that he had no clue how organic web traffic actually grabs hold of one of his pages and stops by for a visit.

The opportunity to gain valuable first time end user feedback from YouTube contacts is one of the most exiisting online. Using the browser traffic to get a concrete opinion about how your site fits user needs, by users who have already passed the subject and interest test qualification, is priceless. This is specially true the when the domainer is the webmaster. The communication cycle is very shrunk indeed when a user says “that picture is awful” or “There’s no place to comment”. These golden kernels of user feedback can be directly incorporated into site redesign steps.

I could tell that the client not only had never traced the end user’s navigational path to the website, but had errantly shut out all related wisdom. This client insisted Youtube was not the place for any links back to his website. He also insisted that dropping links in forums was not a good idea either. Yes, these are usually the people who come crying to me at the end of the year saying they can’t figure out where the traffic is going.

Catch a clue, buddy. People search YouTube because they want video formatted content. They search YouTube because it is entertainment not found anywhere else. They look for the sarcasm, pathos, satire, comedy and witticism that makes human communication surprising and worthwhile. I know these entries stay up for a long time because I can get response emails from youTube a year after I commented. That’s the longevity of a YouTube link marketing effort.

Nobody goes to a search engine page looking for humor. But people online check out YouTube on the hour looking for diversion. But that’s not the only end user online at YouTube. The information from a slideshow or clip, video or narrated upload is infinitely more appealing to some than blocks of dry text. If you can engage even the operators of other channels that is a dozen more users watching your site, or citing it in communications than you had before.

Youtube is the most popularly used website on Earth. That’s the planet you are now on, by the way. People go to Youtube to look for things because going through a search engine is a needless extra step when they know they want video. And when users want video content, the default is all the content that Youtube has. Video has become the easiest information to digest, both visually and by audio “entertaining” an end user into learning or knowing more about any topic.

Any website owner who does have one single Youtube to their credit deserves a stay in the domainer’s penalty box. This is because even a narrated version of a slideshow of the website, images to match, or a progression of clicks through the site can work as the uploaded video content. Why would any website manager or webmaster not want a descriptive tour of their website ready for interested would-be visitors to assess? Why waste a search opportunity and gift-wrap it for your competitors?

YouTubes has all kinds of ways to put out the SEO sign. (They’re kind of in on the whole thing). Titles, search tags, captions, bubble comments, Facebook links and channel comments drive YouTube interaction. Getting the debate going and reacting to a comment from someone else is the most exciting social networking interaction happening online today.These kinds of content triggers are exactly what spurs web traffic in the first place.

What kinds of videos on YouTube might lure viewers to your website? While several thousand domainers believe users will visit their site for no reasons, using grass-is-greener techniques with game-the-system strategies for empty parked pages, several hundred thousand domainers know a YouTube link can only help traffic stats and end user satisfaction. In fact, by qualifying your next end user by subject type and word associations, clickthrough likelihood and overall site visit times will only rise.

A recently published article in Entrepreneur Magazine quoted a Google employee as citing the probability of getting funding from Google Networks, when connected to a member of the Google Networks employee’s own networks as a sizeable influence. Google ventures, launched in 2009, seems to play favorite son with only it own siblings. Does Google hope to attract all the best opportunities, or only venture it is already invested in through third parties?
Google’s article expresses candidly that referred deals from the personal networks of the seven investing partners are the golden children of Google’s venture arm. But opportunity seeking franchise or startup investor might scratch their heads about the point of applying for funding from a “global” venture capital grower that specifically only funds its own grandchildren. What do other investor funds think about such a narrow minded approach? And how can Google Ventures maintain a competitive profile in modern B2B business arenas with such core values?

Google has both promoted (to the Web) and denied (o the FCC) its business goals toward cornering the online market in forward thinking enterprises. Only Google can afford to overlook business opportunities not blessed by their own strategic development and those without personnel already in its own immediate business networks. This leaves good opportunities for angel funding for companies which don’t have the Google seal of Good Housekeeping on them. As a business strategy the entire functionality of a separate funding company seems like an elaborate bit of paperwork.

A curious quote from the Google Ventures article says “We don’t invest to help Google sell products or services. We don’t avoid companies that do that, but it’s not an objective of ours”. This sounds like the way companies talk when they are distinctly trying to not say their fundings are targeted to individuals already associated with their company. Life science companies and bioscience starups don’t really have an association with Google ventures or Google products, but it’s a safe bet the workplaces of those funded startups utilize Google products and apps. Just as if they were really Google business partners.

If you think this doesn’t sound like an equal opportunity funding resource, you’re probably right. Which makes it a target for every ethnic based startup requiring venture capital funding. Google Funding claims it invests in areas which Google “understands”. This is obviously the strategy behind the conception of Google Funding in the first place, to make sure a Google Ventures employee was already part of the ownership of anything they fund. So, what was that about Google not trying to monopolize its business venture clients in a monopoly-type business practice?

So, all a startup CEO needs to do to secure B2B enterprise funding is to target Google Funding using one of its own “areas of understanding” and tapping a Google Funding staff member or employee to be part of the enterprise. Just a hint: you’ll probably get accepted. In case the original CEO’s or partners look for fersher pastures, this leaves the Google ventures staffers holding the bag, and the blueprints and the copyrights. Just as Google intended it to be. (or B2b).

Once upon a time in domainland, a domain name such as a five character generic might be had for a song. Then came the land rush, the market flooded with buyers and sellers, arbitrageurs and entrepreneurs. The cycles of name selling fury and famine drove the domain name commodity around the globe. Soon, geographically specific domain names had their vogue. And target end user markets for every type of product or service, entertainment or activity rose just as geographically specific country codes came online as well.

Domain names today should come with a monetizing plan, a social network campaign, a end user participation strategy and a promotion timetable. The monetizing plan keeps the domain owner evaluating every effort to market and develop the site behind the name. A monetizing plan for the domain name should include the webmaster’s estimation of the earnings potential of a domain name as a resale target goal product, or a growing concern online. The social network campaign can reflect back on the system architecture and programming choices of the website developer.

An end user strategy for site interaction and participation can include social network promotion and communication throughputs, but it part of a larger whole. Who tells their friends about the site, and how? What kind of content prompts the reference of an article or url via email, Twitter, or FaceBook? What sets of users are evangelists, which digest the material and act on it, and which form a passive set of visitors? This brings into focus the change in available end user niche demographics now trolling the Web looking for place to surf.

The millennial niche consumer markets is reshaping food chain revenue volumes and it may be affecting small device and computer sales as well. Millennials are coming of age postcollege consumers with recreational incomes to spend but caveats previous groups didn’t have. The optimization of any such website marketing to Echo Boomers should integrate these factors into the look and feel of the website.

DINKS, Yuppies, and Baby Boomers did not have as many environmental and sustainability concerns in there foods as millennials. And a millennial niche market consumer will not be as likely to ignore chemical or medicinal warnings or aftereffects of certain types of chemical or preservatives in foods, products, home cleaning products, or clothing manufacturing processes or big box goods.

Millennials are also called Echo Boomers. The website of choice for a millennial will likely cater to a cause, which limits interaction to brief comments, ‘Like” actions, or donations, or will entertain the end user, with video or gaming content. Millennials are much more likely to type in a gossip website url as a news source than two thirds of older Internet users. Brand awareness of such a user group will include more website names than legacy product brands and site visits and searches shift toward clothing and media brands and trendy retailers than older groups.

The web user of today will likely expect a rationale behind a website and a way to interact with site instead of just encountering information and content the are expected to read. Audio and video enhancements flavor the experience in a way millennials like. The younger Internet user will be coming from sites where they are actively engaged in gaming, clicking, and watching moving pictures and animated ads. A site with “nothing to do” will bore this user from an interactivity standpoint. Millennials have a strong resonance with “MTV style content programming.

Webmasters can utilize ens user potential of millennials by exploiting the design to appeal to ease of use from mobile phone devices, cellphones, tablets and content enriched by updated media player upgrades. But millennial end users are also not shy about obtaining knowledge and participating in political or economic causes akin to their core values.

But future planning, like insurance and estate or financial affairs are not likely advertising successes for this user group. Matching millennials appeal website content and affiliates in site architecture that rewards search result lookups for this niche is key. i.e., Someone spending $6600 on a graphite hunting bow is not a match for a user who will spend $100 a month on digital downloadable game content.

Ad design and revenue potential for millennials sites should be carefully considered. Affiliate ads featuring teenage smartphones or senior disability living accessories are not good matches for content designed to attract millennials users. But products that utilize technology like digital or Mp3 content will be much more in line with this end user’s expectations and desires. Ads for TV shows or digital content can be very strong affiliate performers for programs and films that are marketed to this World Wide Web user segment.

Knowing which likely advertising offer users will click is key to implementing a monetization plan for a website or domain name. Since any buyer for that name will likely also intend the domain to be user for a similar purpose, grooming search engine results and navigable traffic to the site should be tailored to a likely demographic profile.

Social networking and TV-based content is a likely win for sites and domain names tailored to this group. Since millennials grew up with the Internet, likely sites to appeal to them will feature next-stage technology, products, and site design. Ad the entitlement so many critics attribute to this group with can work for domainers looking for product-related clicks and service offers on their millennials based web sites.