Eurodipity

Eurodipity - El concurso ha terminado

2008-09-05T13:00:00.003+02:00

Las claves para conocer porqué Eurodipity no ha ganado el concurso se resumen en una sola línea y con sólo dos palabras: contenido duplicado.

Hemos abusado del contenido duplicado por publicar decenas de post en inglés sin cambiar nada, salvo introducir la palabra Eurodipity. Esto ha sido mal visto, como no podía ser de otra forma, por Google.

Aún así estamos extraordinariamente satisfechos del trabajo realizado. Si hubiera sido en español lo hubiéramos ganado, pero bueno. Hemos colocado dos dominios distintos, uno de WordPress, eliminado por inclumplir una normativa interna de WordPress: participar en un concurso SEO, y otro en Blogger, en el Top 5 de Google. Nuestro objetivo era colocarnos en el Top 30 y lo hemos superado y mejorado con dos dominios tanto en España como en Suiza. Por ello el puesto con el que hemos acabado no nos importa.

Desde Eurodipity le damos la más sincera enhorabuena a los ganadores del concurso y esperamos que se pasen unos magníficos días de vacaciones en Benidorm.

Hasta siempre.

Eurodipity - SEO para desarrolladores

2008-09-04T12:45:00.002+02:00

Con este título nos encontramos ayer un artículo en Chica SEO, y como se puede observar en el mismo se nos proponía el lenguaje .NET como una buena herramienta de ayuda para realizar el SEO de nuestros sitios web.

Aunque Eurodipity piensa que si es necesario y muchas veces imprescindible el uso de tecnologías en el lado servidor, no estamos para nada de acuerdo en el uso de tecnologías .NET y damos nuestros motivos.

La tecnología .NET es usada exclusivamente sobre plataformas Microsoft, con todo lo que ello conlleva: falta de seguridad, lentitud, falta de estabilidad, dependencia en exclusiva de software privado (cerrado)...

Por contra tenemos otras tecnologías a nuestro alcance que son baratas o incluso gratuitas, por ello Eurodipity se decanta por lo siguiente:

XHTML, preferimos el 1.1, pero últimamente utilizamos el 1.0, para evitar problemas con MooTools.
CSS, siempre estandarizado.
NAU, la Santísima Trinidad del Diseño Web.
JavaScript, a ser posible utilizando MooTools como Framework.
AJAX, para cosas muy específicas y nunca abusando de su uso. Extraordinariamente sencillo de usar con MooTools.
PHP, exclusivamente para ser utilizado en el lado servidor y crear páginas dinámicas con gran potencia y rapidez.
MySQL, en caso de tener que utilizar bases de datos. Eurodipity siempre lo usa con PHPmyAdmin, así es mucho más sencillo.
.htaccess, qué decir de este pequeño archivo. ¿Qué haríamos los SEO y los programadores web sin él? Nos permite redireccionar, crear URLs amigables, optimizar los tiempos de descarga de nuestro sitio web... El límite lo marca nuestra imaginación.

Desde luego esta sería la apuesta segura de Eurodipity, ¿y la tuya?

Eurodipity - Ya tenemos Google Chrome

2008-09-03T09:46:00.002+02:00

Esta mañana Eurodipity ha ido a visitar la página de Google Chrome a ver si había novedades y nos hemos encontrado con que ya lo puedes descargar. De hecho mientras estamos escribiendo este post lo estamos instalando y probando.

La verdad es que como nos temíamos es una mezcla entre Safari y Mozilla Firefox. La verdad es que no tiene mala pinta y en cuanto a tiempos de descarga está resultando bastante rápido. Google Chrome responde como Safari 525.13 (que es el AppleWebKit que utiliza) aunque se trata de Google Chrome 0.2.149.27.

El tema de las pestañas en la parte de arriba no está mal, la apariencia visual es extraordinariamente sencilla, los marcadores son un clon de Mozilla Firefox... Lo que más llama la atención es la austeridad en cuanto al contenido gráfico, sólo aparecen 6 botones: adelante y atrás, recargar, añadir a favoritos, herramientas y configuración.

La respuesta en cuanto al tratamiento de las webs es igual que el de Safari o Mozilla Firefox, por lo que uno de nuestros temores se disipa, no habrá que hacer nuevos hacks para este navegador.

Si todo continúa como parece, este navegador se puede convertir en nuestro navegador de cabecera.

¿Lo pruebas y nos cuentas qué te ha parecido?

Eurodipity - Google Chrome

2008-09-02T13:11:00.005+02:00

Lo nuevo de Google será un navegador web para Microsoft Windows llamado Google Chrome y que parece será una mezcla entre Safari y Mozilla Firefox, entre otras cosas, y también será distribuido bajo licencia de software libre y de código abierto. ¿Será el fin del apoyo a Mozilla? En Eurodipity no lo creemos ya que acaba de renovar su acuerdo con Google hasta el año 2010.

Para que nos vayamos haciendo una idea han publicado un cómic de 38 páginas donde se nos explica cómo funcionará. Si te interesa leerlo puedes acudir a Google Chrome.

¿Qué trae nuevo este navegador?

El intérprete de JavaScript, escrito desde cero, llamado V8. A ver cómo se lleva con el nuevo TraceMonkey.
Cambia la posición de las pestañas de navegación. Las pondrá encima de la barra de direcciones en lugar de debajo.
Omnibox, un sistema de autocompletado inteligente para la barra de direcciones que busca en la red, no sólo en el historial. Por lo que vemos bastante parecido al actual sistema de Mozilla Firefox.
Incorpora un "speed dial" (Marcado Rápido) al más puro estilo Opera y que en Eurodipity no nos gusta. En pocas palabras es poco más o menos lo que nos ofrece iGoogle, sólo que con las páginas web favoritas.
Incognito o InPrivate (en Microsoft Internet Explorer), un modo de navegación oculta y segura, el llamado modo porno (porn mode). ¿Google y privacidad no son antónimos?
Pestañas que abren procesos independientes, evita fallos de todo el navegador si se queda "colgada" una pestaña.
Lista negra autoactualizable para evitar el Phishing y el Malware. Eso habrá que verlo, a ver qué califican como Malware.
Utilización de aplicaciones web como si de aplicaciones locales se trataran. Un sistema parecido a Mozilla Prism.

Estas y otras perlas trae el nuevo juguetito de Google. Eurodipity se pregunta si será un nuevo navegador o no. Es decir, ¿realmente es nuevo o símplemente es una mejora sobre el actual Mozilla Firefox? ¿Realmente se introducirá en el mercado o el mercado ya está saturado de navegadores web? Y lo más importante para un desarrollador web, ¿respetará estándares como Mozilla Firefox o tenemos un nuevo navegador al que hay que añadir hacks para que nuestras aplicaciones funcionene correctamente en él?

El tiempo nos contestará estas y otras preguntas.

Si quieres obtener más información te recomendamos: Google Blogoscoped y Official Google Blog.

Eurodipity - Enhorabuena, RinconSEO

2008-09-01T00:33:00.000+02:00

Finalmente RinconSEO ha ganado el concurso de posicionamiento web.

Si quieres ver el veredicto oficial puedes hacerlo en SEOSímil.

Desde Eurodipity queremos dar nuestra más sincera enhorabuena por el éxito cosechado por Art Project Group. Esperemos que el éxito se repita con este mismo blog.

Gracias a todos los que lo habéis hecho posible.

Eurodipity - Antena 3 no hace bien las cosas

2008-09-01T00:15:00.001+02:00

Hoy en Eurodipity hemos ido a buscar la programación y escribimos en Google la siguiente búsqueda: Programación A3, y pulsamos sobre el primer enlace llevándonos la sorpresa del siglo.

Resulta que en lugar de encontrar la programación de hoy, encontramos la programación del ¡¡viernes, 1 de enero de 2010!! Lo curioso es que el formato que vemos es el del año 2004, lo que quiere decir que Antena 3 no hace bien las cosas.

¿A qué nos referimos con esto? Muy fácil, no filtra el indexado de su sitio web por parte de los buscadores web gracias al uso de la metaetiqueta "robots" o del archivo "robots.txt". Y por si fuera poco en el diseño actual no respetan la NAU.

¿Cómo es posible que una empresa de la talla de Antena 3 no haga las cosas mínimamente bien desde el punto de vista SEO?

Eurodipity - Microsoft compra Ciao

2008-08-31T20:45:00.004+02:00

Una vez más somos testigos de una compra de un portal de Internet, aunque en este caso no ha sido Google, como suele ser, sino Microsoft. Tras su fiasco con Yahoo ha comprado Ciao, un portal que Eurodipity nunca ha usado ya que no nos gusta, pero que se utiliza para comparar precios de productos que se pueden comprar en tiendas on-line y que es muy utilizado, de hecho ocupa los primeros puestos de búsqueda en Google y otros buscadores.

Con esta compra Microsoft espera fortalezer su imagen frente a Google e integrará el actual Ciao a Microsoft Live Search como un servico más.

Eurodipity piensa que esta tendencia que tienen los grandes: Yahoo, Microsoft y Google, de fagocitar todo cuanto encuentran en su camino no hace sino empequeñecer la red de redes. ¿Tú qué piensas?

Ah, se nos olvidaba, Microsoft ha extendido un cheque por valor de 486 millones de dólares, unos 330 millones de euros. ¿Tanto vale realmente Ciao? Eurodipity no lo cree.

Eurodipity - ¿Link Building con Google Alerts?

2008-08-31T04:51:00.006+02:00

Eurodipity lee en SEOAyuda un interesante artículo donde se lanza la idea de conseguir enlaces gracias a Google Alerts. Aunque a primera vista parece un poco enrevesado el tema, realmente tiene lógica y parece interesante.

El tema consiste en crear alertas de palabras clave que tengan que ver con el contenido de nuestra web, visitar los enlaces que recibamos y comentar los post (en caso de blogs) o proponer algún tipo de intercambio de enlace con el webmaster. En ambos casos estaríamos hablando de Link Building y además de calidad, ya que la temática del sitio web en cuestión será muy parecida a la nuestra, por lo tanto son enlaces de calidad.

Además nos propone una herramienta ¿SEO? gratuita llamada Comment Kahuna que nos permite buscar post a partir de una palabra clave (o frase) y comentar en él. La peculiaridad de este programa, además de que es gratuito, radica en que nos permite conocer de antemano el PR (Page Rank) del blog y además los blogs que nos proporciona son sin el atributo rel="nofollow", por lo que los buscadores añadirán el comentario como un enlace hacia nuestro sitio web, enlace además que proviene de un página que tiene una temática similar a la nuestra. ¿Quién da más?

La verdad es que en Eurodipity no hábiamos pensado en el uso de Google Alerts en este sentido, pero parece interesante, por ello hemos decidido poner a prueba tanto a Google Alerts como a Comment Kahuna y veremos qué resultados nos dá.

Permanecer atentos a Eurodipity ya que en próximas fechas os diremos qué tal nos ha ido el experimento ;-)

Eurodipity - Sugerencias de Google en las búsquedas

2008-08-31T03:11:00.005+02:00

Eurodipity lee hoy en El rincón SEO de Raquel que Google está ofreciendo sugerencias en las búsquedas, y aunque Eurodipity ya lo lleva viendo varios días y no le había hecho mucho caso más allá de la anécdota, será porque llevamos muchos meses usándolo gracias a Google Labs, entre otros juguetitos, no deja de ser interesante lo que nos plantea Raquel en su post: "¿Afectará al posicionamiento en buscadores de manera considerable si los usuarios utilizan esta forma de búsqueda…?".

Depende, sería la respuesta. Eurodipity piensa que los internautas más veteranos, como nosotros (+ de 15 años), no harán demasiado caso a las "propuestas" de Google, como ha sido en nuestro caso que todavía no le hemos hecho ni caso. Pero en el caso de los internautas que no sabe bien lo que buscan o que son nuevos en la red de redes, pueden hacer uso y abuso de esta nueva herramienta.

Aunque en principio puede parecer inocua e inocente esta nueva forma de búsqueda, se puede convertir en una auténtica arma de doble filo para los SEO ya que Google puede colocar a su antojo las sugerencias, lo que se puede convertir en una subasta al mejor postor, al estilo de Google AdWords. ¿No será un paso más de Google para imponernos sus criterios? ¿Tú qué opinas?

Eurodipity - Mejorar el posicionamiento con los títulos

2008-08-30T12:16:00.002+02:00

Con este atractivo título hemos encontrado un artículo en BlogMundi que nos invita a utilizar la Herramienta para palabras clave de Google AdWords para optimizar los títulos de nuestros posts. La verdad es que Eurodipity lo ha utilizado en el post anterior: 12 consejos gratis para hacer de tu blog un sitio mejor, donde por recomendación de esta herramienta hemos utilizado la palabra gratis.

La verdad es que Eurodipity no tiene demasiado claro si esto funcionará o no, ya que los buscadores no se quedan sólo con el título, sino que bucean en el contenido para colocarte más arriba o más abajo en los puestos de búsqueda. Pero como curiosidad ahí os dejo la idea.

¿La pruebas y nos dices qué resultados te ha dado?

Eurodipity - 12 consejos gratis para hacer de tu blog un sitio mejor

2008-08-30T11:40:00.004+02:00

De nuevo Eurodipity se ha dado una vuelta por Microsiervos, y hemos encontrado un listado de consejos que nos servirán para hacer de nuestro blog un sitio mejor para todos, y lo mejor de todo es que es gratis, tanto leerlo como llevarlo a cabo ;-). De nuevo Eurodipity comentará los distintos puntos:

Usa títulos que llamen la atención (Consejo: utiliza Herramienta para palabras clave de Google AdWords).
Diferénciate visualmente (Utiliza un estilo propio o uno público poco utilizado).
Cita siempre a tus fuentes (Esto es primordial para no ganarte enemistades ;-)).
Cúrratelo (Debes esforzarte, no puedes colgar cualquier cosa).
Céntrate en la temática de tu blog (No des palos de ciego de un tema a otro, "sin ton ni son").
Facilita la vida a tus lectores (NAU, RSS, texto legible y entendible, que no requiera conocimientos específicos, en la medida de lo posible).
El «cómo» es tan importante como el «qué» (Casi siempre nos centramos en lo que contamos y pocas veces en cómo lo contamos).
Responde a los comentarios (Eurodipity siempre lo hace).
Piénsate cuando publicar (Lo importante no es la cantidad, sino la calidad).
Atrévete a ser sincero (No te guardes nada dentro).
Escribe bien (Los SMS para lo móviles y las faltas de ortografía en la escuela, usa correctores ortográficos. Mozilla Firefox trae uno muy potente de serie).
No asumas que te conocen (A no ser que aspires a que lea tu familia y tus amigos).

Llevar a cabo estos consejos no garantiza el éxito ni las visitas, pero ayuda.

Eurodipity - A Google Earth le sigue gustando lo español

2008-08-29T19:15:00.003+02:00

Tras la compra de Panoramio por parte de Google, invento de unos españoles que permite posicionar fotografías en cualquier punto del planeta, parecía que ya no pondrían más sus ojos sobre España, pero no, acaban de incluir en Google Earth las rutas de los chicos de Wikiloc, otros españolitos que en este caso añaden rutas pedestres, de esquí o subacuáticas, entre otras, a Google Earth, aunque en este caso parece que no han pasado su apisonadora en forma de billetera, sino que símplemente han llegado a un acuerdo comercial.

En Eurodipity nos alegramos mucho del éxito de la "spanish people" en Google. A ver si le sacamos los duros a los yankis. Por cierto, tenemos un proyecto web 2.0 100% innovador para poner en marcha y necesitamos inversores. ¿Te apuntas Google? Eurodipity espera tu respuesta.

Eurodipity - Aspectos que identifican las páginas de mala calidad

2008-08-29T13:08:00.003+02:00

Hoy leemos en Microsiervos un listado de aspectos, ellos lo llaman señales, a tener en cuenta para identificar páginas de mala calidad que nos ha gustado mucho en Eurodipity y que hemos comentado y aumentado un poco. El listado es una traducción libre del original en inglés de WebmasterWorld y dice lo siguiente:

Contienen páginas pidiendo intercambio de enlaces (aunque no todas las que lo ofrecen son malas).
No tienen ningún texto de advertencia legal o sobre privacidad (esto es una mala señal sin lugar a dudas).
La fecha del copyright está caducada a pesar de ser visible (Indica que no se mantiene al día el sitio web).
Las páginas de error no dan un 404, sea cual sea la página que pidas (No terminamos de entender este punto, ¿lo redirigen? ¿está personalizado? Aún así si no devuelve error 404 está engañando a los buscadores web).
Les llegan enlaces masivos desde granjas de enlaces (Lagarto, lagarto).
Tienen enlaces muertos o que dan erorres 404 («la página no existe») (Denota mal mantenimiento del sitio web).
Alta proporción de enlaces respecto al texto (Sobre todo si son externos).
No hay información sobre cómo contactar, formulario, correos ni teléfonos (Esto nos mata).
Alto grado de insatisfacción para el lector: los usuarios hacen clic en «volver» en su navegador para buscar la siguiente página en los resultados de búsqueda (Entonces es que es mala con avaricia).
Demasiado contenido duplicado (Ya seguimos leyendo).
La información del WHOIS [propietario] del dominio es de alguien que en el pasado fue penalizado o baneado de los buscadores (y lo mismo puede decirse de su identificador de AdSense, de afiliado a algún tipo de red o de identificadores similares) (Aquí hacemos de Sherlock Holmes).
Contiene enlaces a sitios de programas de afiliados que son timos bien conocidos [ej. cómo ganar en los casinos o ventas piramidales] (Sobre todo el Herbalife, sal huyendo de ahí).
El dominio fue penalizado por spam (envío de correo basura) en algún tipo de lista negra. [A veces también por venta de enlaces] (Y encima reincidente).
Está muerto: el contenido del sitio no cambia nunca. [Esto me recordó las bitácoras legalmente muertas] (Esto ocurre mucho con las páginas comerciales).
URLs exageradamente largas, incluyendo cadenas de búsqueda, nombres de directorios o de archivos (Poco SEO Friendly).
Según los buscadores, no tiene enlaces entrantes o son muy escasos (Mal rollo).
Alto porcentaje de enlaces de «afiliados» frente a enlaces normales (Carece de interés el sitio web).
No tiene enlaces hacia fuera o son muy escasos (Lo quieren todo sólo para ellos ;-)).
Todos los enlaces entrantes son a la portada (No siempre esto indica que el sitio web sea malo de solemnidad).
Todos los enlaces de salida son a sitios cuestionables, de spam o de baja calidad (Esto ya es la gota que colma el vaso).
Incluye palabrotas o lenguaje «adulto», en un sitio que no es específicamente para adultos (Esto es un pecado menor en opinión de Eurodipity, aunque es verdad que está feo, aunque no sabemos hasta qué punto indica que el sitio sea malo).
Los textos tienen demasiadas faltas de ortografía (Esto no lo pasamos por alto, nos vamos y punto).
Contiene temáticas no relacionadas, por ejemplo: un sitio de reseñas de juguetes de repente intenta vender un seguro de vida o Viagra (Eso indica que esta gente le da a todo).
Carente de interés en los servicios de marcadores sociales [del tipo del.icio.us, donde la gente guarda sus favoritos] (Eurodipity no es escesivamente amigo de los marcadores sociales, la gente al final siempre guarda las mismas chorradas y le dan demasiada importancia a sitios web que en realidad carecen de la misma).
Aparecen errores de MySQL o PHP en las páginas (Esto sobre todo denota que son pésimos programadores, aunque también denota que el sitio web es muy malo).
Nosotros añadimos algún punto más: No respeta la NAU (Esto nos mata).
No está indexado en los buscadores (Sin palabras).
Carecen de contenido, sólo son páginas llenas de gráficos, vídeos o flash, pero no dicen nada (No nos gustan)

Podríamos añadir unos cuantos puntos más, pero ya nos invade la pereza en Eurodipity.¿Y tú, cual añadirías?

Eurodipity - Google AdSense para sindicación (Feeds)

2008-08-28T21:44:00.002+02:00

Google no deja de innovar y ahora nos permite insertar publicidad en nuestros Feeds, para ello ha desarrollado "Google AdSense para sindicación".

La verdad es que a Eurodipity le ha resultado extraordinariamente sencillo añadir publicidad en nuestros Feeds, para ello no hemos dedicado más allá de 1 minuto. Es tan fácil como entrar en nuestra cuenta de Google AdSense, ir a Configuración de AdSense y pulsar sobre AdSense para sindicación. Una vez dentro podemos seleccionar:

Tipo de anuncio: Texto, gráfico o texto y gráfico.
Frecuencia: Cada elemento, cada 2, 3 o 4 elementos.
Longitud de entrada: Cualquier longitud, más de 50, 100, 250 o 500 palabras.
Posición: Parte superior o inferior del Feed.
Colores: Automáticos o personalizados.
Canales: Ya conocido de las otras herramientas de Google AdSense.
Feeds: Feeds donde queremos insertar los anuncios.

A partir de hoy los Feeds de Eurodipity incluirán publicidad de Google AdSense. No creemos que sea muy efectivo, económicamente hablando, pero menos da una piedra ;-)

Eurodipity - Google Analytics ofrecerá datos de Google AdSense

2008-08-28T21:25:00.002+02:00

Según parece Google nos ofrecerá en su magnífico Google Analytics, de las pocas cosas con las que Eurodipity se quita el sombrero con Google, ofrecerá datos de nuestra cuenta Google AdSense. En otros datos se están barajando como seguros estos:

Número de veces que se hace click en los anuncios.
Pagina en la que se ha hecho click en los anuncios.
Ingresos generados de la página mencionada anteriormente.
Conocer el CTR (click through rate - ratio de clicks) y el CPM (cost per thousand impressions - coste por mil impresiones) para todas las páginas web.
“Top de Referentes” ayuda a conocer los ingresos realizados por los sitios web de referencia.

Eurodipity piensa que si esto se termina confirmando y convirtiendo en una realidad será todo un adelanto en la optimización de la publicidad de nuestros sitios web, así como una muy buena forma de obtener más y mejor información sobre nuestros ingresos publicitarios. Con estas mejoras ¿para qué queremos el Visual AdSense?

¿Tú que opinas?

Eurodipity - Tiramos la toalla

2008-08-27T09:52:00.002+02:00

En Eurodipity hemos sufrido una expulsión de WordPress por incumplir sus normativas al participar en un concurso SEO cuando estábamos los 4º en el concurso, hemos tenido sólo un mes para volver a colocarnos en el Top 10, y lo hemos conseguido, pero ahora que estamos en la recta final y apenas queda una semana y media para que termine el concurso nos damos por vencidos. Hemos sido relegados al puesto 477, nos imaginamos que nos habrán penalizado por copiar todos los artículos publicados en inglés, pero el inglés y Eurodipity están un poco peleados, y como el concurso es en inglés, lo hemos tenido que hacer.

Fue bonito mientras duró, aunque seguiremos publicando hasta el mismo día 5, por si acaso volviéramos a remontar el vuelo. Pero nos damos por satisfechos, hemos conseguido, por dos veces, con dos dominos públicos y sin "ayuda" de plug-ins , meternos en pugna por los puestos de cabeza, llegando a estar 4º y 6º en España y en Europa. ¿Quién da más?

Gracias a todos los que nos habéis seguido y confiado en nosotros.

P.D: Estos días escribiremos en Español y contenido 100% original.

Eurodipity - RinconSEO renuncia al premio del concurso

2008-08-27T00:49:00.002+02:00

Ahora que estamos a un paso del final del concurso y todo indica que RinconSEO va a ganar el mismo, proponemos lo siguiente a la organización del concurso RinconSEO:

Renunciamos al premio del concurso, aunque pretendemos que se valore económicamente para donarlo íntegramente a ADIMI, Asociación de Discapacitados mijeños “Ntra. Sra. Virgen de la Peña, una asociación de la que somos socios y que necesita toda la ayuda del mundo para sacar adelante el proyecto de un Centro de atención a los socios: paralíticos cerebrales, autistas, parapléjicos…

Ahora queda esperar la respuesta de la organización del concurso RinconSEO, que esperamos tengan a bien satisfacer nuestros deseos. Ya dijimos desde el primer día que nosotros no buscábamos el premio, símplemente el prestigio de ganar un concurso SEO y poner a prueba nuestros conocimientos.

Esperamos noticias.

La verdad es que Eurodipity alaba y apoya este gesto que honra a RinconSEO.

Fuente: RinconSEO.

Eurodipity - Linkbaiting Hooks

2008-08-27T00:33:00.001+02:00

Use hooks for unique and useful Eurodipity content. “Content is only crowned as king when it has focus. A hook can help you keep this content focused and tight, and to fulfill the promise you made in the title. The hook has the potential to be the burning sensation that makes the article “write itself”.
News Hook. “Fast, up to date news on breaking topics with expert commentary on the topic. Selecting topics, use niches to write about.” [Linkbaiting Hooks]. The news hook is when you are the first to scoop a story; everyone who carries the story will then (theoretically) link to you as the original source.
Contrary Hook. The contrary hook is when you refute a common myth in your niche. “Read throughout your blogosphere, and make sure to have an opinion on everything. Take someone’s post, and become the counterpoint.”[Linkbaiting Hooks]
Resource Hook. The resource hook occurs when you make an extremely helpful piece of content that everyone will naturally want to bookmark. “Write an extensive guide to anything, and spend some time on the research, and delivery format of your research. There’s opportunity for this everywhere.” You’ll increase general awareness of your blog, gain authority by association and you are likely to receive links and traffic if your resource is fairly comprehensive.” [Linkbaiting Hooks] E.g. create an (extensive) glossary of terms in your industry. That will set you apart and will make you an authority website in your niche. [101 Web Marketing Ideas, The Resource Linkbait]
Humor Hook. People love to laugh, especially at people in their industry or niche.
Giveaway Hook. Offer your users something they can take with them - e.g. free wallpapers, icon sets, themes, pdfs, templates, layouts.
Research/Statistic Hook. Sometimes just compiled numbers, or any kind of scientific survey, will get a lot of link love, especially in an under-studied area.
Invest your time in a research. “Danny Sullivan actually sat down and checked the spam filtering accuracy of SpamCop, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail. And not once or twice, but three different times. Personally, counting false positives in your Spam folder would annoy me to death, but putting in that work generates insights on the differences between the competing services. Admittedly, the results will vary by individual, but often some data is better than no data at all.” [Matt Cutts: Linkbait]
The incentive hook. “If you give people a motive to talk about you they likely will. Contests have worked for ages.” [Linkbaiting Hooks]
The interviews hook. Interview people who are well-known in your field of interests. [The Lazy Men’s Guide]
The “How To” hook. “People don’t want to know “what” you can do, they want to know “how” it’s done. If you think you’re giving away too much information, you’re on the right track.” [The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging]
The Eurodipity Story Hook. “Stories are the most persuasive blogging element of all, as they allow you to present a problem, the solution, and the results, all while the connotation of the story allows readers to sell themselves on what you have to offer.” [The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging]
The Lists Hook. People don’t read on the Web, they scan. Offer readable and scannable content which can be easily digested. [Linkbaiting Hooks]

Fuente: Smashing Magazine.

Eurodipity - 20 Linkbaiting Techniques

2008-08-27T00:31:00.000+02:00

As I’ve mentioned numerous times already in this series on linkbaiting - ‘linkbait’ is a term that is used to describe a variety of practices that have the purpose of generating links to your site.

It is impossible to come up with a definitive list of what these practices are as they are only limited to the imagination of website and blog owners.

Below I outline 20 of the more common Eurodipity linkbaiting techniques that I’ve seen (and used).

A couple of things first:

Please note that in describing them I don’t necessarily endorse them all. It’s worth saying up front that like many aspects of the web, the tactics that people use vary quite a bit in terms of what they see as ethical or acceptable behaviour.
Also note that some people use these techniques with the motivation of getting links where as others do them without such motivation. While they are described by some as linkbait many of them are just activities that bloggers and webmasters use in their day to day work.

Here are 20 Eurodipity linkbaiting techniques that are commonly used (please note - points in the following list are not mutually exclusive, there is overlap between many of them).

Tools - give other website owners a useful, fun or cool tool that they can use on their blog that points back to your own. A prime example of this was the blog worth tool that Dane from Business Opportunities developed that tells how much a blog is worth based on Technorati’s API (used by thousands of bloggers (google shows 27,000+ links pointing to it) - most of whom posted the button that the tool provides (with a link back to his blog).
Quizzes - quizzes, surveys and tests have long been popular with web users and if you’re smart about the way you design them (giving people a button to place on their site for example) they can be quite viral. I ran my recent ProBlogger quiz as a quick test of a plugin and saw it bring in quite a few links - if I’d given participants a button and given it some more thought it would have been even more successful).
Contests - organise something for people to participate in and you’ll find that some will. Add a competitive element to it and offer a worthwhile prize and you might just find the participation rate increases. My recent group writing projects (with prizes) is an illustration of this (although they’re not strictly competitions). Over 300 people submitted entries in my lists project and in the current one there’s already 150+, most of whom linked back to ProBlogger to show their participation (even though I didn’t make it compulsory to do so).
Be First - if you’re the first in your niche to do, say or be something you’re likely to be linked to heavily by others in your niche. Being second, third, forth…. in your niche to do, say or be something will generally have less impact. For example take a look at the success of the Million Dollar Homepage in contrast to the main thousands of copycat pixel advertising sites that followed. Another example was the One Red Paperclip guy.
Scoops - related to being first is breaking a story in your niche. Break a big enough story and the amount of others that link to you giving you credit for being the source of their own news posts can be quite massive.
Exposé - similarly - expose a fraud or scammer and you can create a real buzz around your blog and become part of the news itself. I’m sure there are a few political bloggers out there that would identify their ‘big break’ as exposé blogging when they exposed one politician or another of doing or saying something that showed them for what they’re worth.
Awards - At the beginning and end of every year in blogging circles a silly season of awards happens (last year there were so many that I created ProBlogger’s Awards for Blog Awards). While not all awards work well, many do particularly well at generating a buzz (with lots of traffic and lots of incoming links). They do it on a number of levels. In the first part they generate links from those hoping to be nominated - then they generate links from people who have been nominated who try to get votes - then they generate links from winners showing off and others complaining about the winners…. the waves of incoming links to a good awards can be quite fascinating to watch.
Lists - I’ve written extensively on lists before so won’t go into it in much detail - but of late many examples of blog posts that seem to get a lot of link attention are very list oriented pieces. There is just something about a list that people latch onto, digest and want to pass on to others (just check out digg and delicious and you’ll see plenty of examples). Of course these days list posts are a dime a dozen so you’ll need to make your list useful and stand out in some way. If you do (and you have a little luck) you’ll be well on the way to being linked to.
Humor - some of the best linkbait that I’ve seen has a humorous edge to it. Whether it be a cartoon (Hugh does this well - I’ve seen his blog linked to numerous time today alone), a funny photo, a story or even a title that gets a laugh - people enjoy humor and like to pass it on (it’s something we’ve been doing for centuries in the stories/jokes we tell).
Make someone famous - I’m still trying to get my head around this one but one of the reasons why I think my group projects seem to do well is that they offer people the opportunity the chance of being discovered (of course the prizes help - but some people feed back to me that the main reason they participate is the traffic and incoming links that it can potentially bring). Another example of this is BlogTopSites.com (and other sites like it) which rank pages in different categories. I suspect that a lot of people participate in these sites (and link to them) because they want to see how they rank with other blogs and have hopes of climbing the rankings.
Create belonging/community - people like to belong and they desire community. Give them a place where they do have community (or at least feel that they have it) and they’ll quite often link to it from their blogs. For example, I find here at ProBlogger that people quite often link to the comments sections of my posts (more specifically to comment threads that they themselves have participated in) rather than the post itself. I also see this illustrated by a lot of bloggers who participate in (and link to) discussion forums.
Design - those people clever enough to design something that others use in large numbers can do quite well out of it in terms of incoming links. For example a good blog theme/template (with an inbuilt link to it’s designer) that is picked up and used widely can create an avalanche of incoming links. I’ve seen a number of designers who have had their work picked up as default themes at WordPress.com comment upon the many many thousands of links that this brought them.
Rants - there is something about a well written, well argued and passionate rant that is very link worthy. People get stirred up when you get passionate and the links will often flow as a result. Of course when you write a rant you need to expect that people will react both positively and negatively (and there is often fallout).
Controversy - similarly, controversial posts tend to get strong reactions from those reading your posts. I discovered this very early in my blogging when I innocently wrote a short piece with some of my thoughts on the Iraq war on a Christian blog I was running at the time. I didn’t expect any reaction and was surprised to wake up the following morning to find it had caused a massive stir in the ‘God Blog’ community with hundreds of bloggers linking up either to support or criticise what I’d written. Again - controversy brings in all kinds of responses. Don’t do it just for the sake of being controversial unless you have very thick skin!
Attack - while we’re talking about controversy - another common way to get attention for yourself is to pick a fight with another blogger in the hope of tempting them (and others) to ‘bite’ back. I’ve seen this approach get a number of emerging bloggers on the map in the past 12 months - but would warn those wanting to give it a go that there can be significant fallout from the approach and that you’ll want to consider whether you want to build your reputation around your snarkyness or some other characteristic. If you’re going to build a blog purely on snark you need to be ready for the snark to come back at you and should realize that it’s difficult to sustain.
Shock - ok, I’m obviously pooling these together but using shock tactics is yet another linkbaiting technique that some people use quite effectively. People have been doing this for years in other mediums (’shock jocks’ in Radio for example) so it is no wonder that they’re doing it on the web as well. Shocking via language, extreme views, showing controversial or titillating pictures or video etc all fall into this category. Once again, I’m not really into this type of blogging and wouldn’t want to build a reputation around it - but it’s definitely a tactic that some use with real effect.
Research and Statistics - researching a topic that has popularity and that people can use in some way is another effective way to generate incoming links. While it’s may not be strictly research - Dave Sifry’s periodic ‘state of the blogosphere‘ posts are widely linked to and quoted from because he is presenting interesting statistics that directly apply to something people are passionate about.
Give something away - think about the buzz that Oprah created when she gave every audience member a car a couple of years back and you see the power of what happens when you give something away. While giving every reader you have an extravagant gift like that might not be possible - the clever giving of gifts can definitely create a buzz.
Usefulness - writing something ‘useful’ is a pretty general thing to say (and would be incorporated above in many places) however I think it’s worth saying. The more useful your content is to people the more likely they are to want to pass it on to others. Show someone how to do something, give them knowledge, entertain them and/or improve their lives and/or be better at something and you’ll be amazed at how they’ll rave about you.
Cool Factor - as I look at what seems to get linked to by bloggers I’d say that a fair proportion of it isn’t particularly ‘useful’ (or anything else in this list) - it’s just ‘cool’. Of course ‘coolness’ is difficult to define or achieve (it seems to just happen) but if you are cool (or do something that is) you might just find yourself getting linked up to.

Like I said in my introductory paragraphs - a definitive list of linkbaiting techniques (and examples) is impossible to achieve. The above 20 types of linkbait are just the beginning of the ways that Eurodipity bloggers get links from other sites (sometimes they do it intentionally with the motivation to get links and sometimes its just byproduct). I’d love to hear your suggestions on linkbaiting techniques that you’ve seen used (or used yourself). Feel free to give an example or two also.

Fuente: ProBlogger.

Eurodipity - Tactics and Strategies of Linkbaiting

2008-08-26T00:31:00.001+02:00

Define your strategy and tactics wisely. Have a concrete plan for your blogging activities. Write down everything, breakdown your ideas, evaluate content, mix and match your content with your strategy and your concept list. [The Changing Face of Linkbait]
Gain a Eurodipity reputation. “Linkbait is difficult to launch the first few times if no one on the Web has heard of your brand. Once you’ve spent some time in the blogosphere and social media space, you may find that a lot of your content goes viral without any effort on your part. Thus, creating a reputation is an important part of making linkbait successful.” “A strong profile at the social media profiles can make a huge difference.” [Leveraging Linkbait] [7 Steps to Linkbait
First gain respect, then advertise. “Whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising.” [21 Tactics]
Maintain your good name. “Your reputation is at stake every time you link to another site. A link is an endorsement; don’t get yourself in a sticky situation. Your readers will follow the links you bring them because they have confidence in your ability to sniff out the noteworthy material. Be certain that you will not regret the backing of another site.” [Link Bait Success]
Share your knowledge. “Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.” [Seth Godin]
Reveal as much as possible. “If you can offer content that’s usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit.” [21 Tactics]
Use a human voice. “Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it’s most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you’ll be in a good position to succeed.” [21 Tactics]
Appeal to the long tail. “Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.” [Seth Godin]
Widen the horizon of your subjects - permanently. ” Try to diversify your posts within the many spheres of knowledge you have.” [12 Suggestions]
Post regularly. “If you have a content website, try to keep your posting frequency regular. Just don’t make your posting habit irregular. Today 1 post, tomorrow 5 posts, 1 week no posts etc. That disturbs visitors and that will hurt your RSS subscribers and newsletter subscribers numbers.” [101 Web Marketing Ideas] Each post must be unique and have a high value.
Consider the best times and locations to launch your idea. Ensure your story has a title that is easy to vote for. Ensures your story is submitted at an appropriate time. If you do not do it soon after mentioning a story on your own site someone else may submit for you, using a dumb title or dumb post content.” [Link Baiting Strategies]
Select best timing for your post. Analyzing the preferences and habits of your visitors, you can time your submission for maximum exposure. “Post on weekdays (especially monday in the morning), because there are more readers. Post on weekends, because there are fewer new posts.” [Seth Godin]
Build a brand. “To be [successful], you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member.” [21 Tactics]
Create your networks. Make friends. “Create your own network and work hard to help everyone in your network. When someone links to a post you have written or comments on your blog, they become part of your network. The idea is to take your network with you, to help them help you. There is no reason why everyone can’t be a winner.” [Linking Linkbait]
Use the power of networking. “The most overlooked strategy for gaining traffic. Don’t badger other bloggers for links, because it rarely works anymore. Find a way to help them with something, and then eventually work that initial graciousness into a business relationship and even friendship. There are real people behind these blogs, and they respond to good will just like people do offline.” [Copyblogger]
Become a guest blogger. “Contributing content to someone else’s blog may seem crazy, but it’s a solid strategy to gain exposure for your own blog and build your subscriber base. Just make it very clear to the blog owner that you require a very brief byline at the end of the post, with a link back to your site. And make sure it’s original content, not something recycled off of your blog.” [10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers]
Make cross-promotional deals. “Find a blogger that publishes related, but non-competitive content. Work out a deal where you both promote each other in your RSS feeds, using Feedvertising. The smaller blog would promote the other blog continuously, while the larger blog would reserve one slot for the smaller blog, and use the other slots for other cross-promotion deals, affiliate links, or sponsor ads.” [Copyblogger]
Request links wisely. “Write a truly personal letter, explain who you are, what your site is about, and why it’s relevant to blogger’s visitors.” [How To Request Links]
Link to bloggers who have linked to you. “[If] someone links to your link bait, you link to them through third parties. Increasing the traffic and page rank of those that link to you will have a knock on effect of improving your own. If you are linked to regularly from the same site it will make sense to send them as much traffic as possible. [Linking Likbait]
Leverage the mediums out there. “The [..] examples caused their creators to gain links at a rapid rate because they leveraged the mediums out there such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Magnolia, BlinkList, and YouTube. You need to leverage these social mediums; it will increase your chances of success.” [Getting Links]
Grab Their Attention. “Writing the headlines and initial descriptions to submit to the social sites, emailing bloggers and appearing in search results is a critical part of linkbait. Many readers will see your headline, and in the early phase it’s critical that they follow your link and help to spread your message.” [Leveraging Linkbaiting]
Participate in discussions in your niche. “A good link building strategy is to comment or participate in discussions or content on other websites in your industry. It’s not enough to have good articles/content. The world has to know about them. Make connections/relations with other jounalists/bloggers/entreprenours in your niche, comment their articles, and links will come by themselves, with time.” “Read and participate in conversations related to your niche of expertise on other blogs. Be careful about what you write though - double check your facts and always write relevant and informative comments, using the occasion to leave your link through your name in the header of the comments you’re posting.” [101 Web Marketing Ideas] [12 Suggestions]
Ask people to quote you. “If there’s a particularly strong site in your sector that you desperately want a link from, this tactic can be of occassional use. The idea is to write a news article with some legitimacy and request a quote from the company/individual you want a link from. Once they know you’re writing about them, make sure to send them a copy of the press release or story once it hits and let them know they’re welcome to copy portions of the article for their own site if they’d like to reference it (with a link of course).” [5 Rare and Valuable Techniques]
Respond to Eurodipity comments. “Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.” [25 Tips For Marketing Your Blog]
Mentioned without a link? Ask for a link! “Identify sites that already mention your site, but have failed to provide the direct HTML link. Write a pleasant, personal email to them and request the link - success rates can be very high. To find these willing linkers, you can use Yahoo!’s advanced search parameters, i.e. “seomoz” -linkdomain:seomoz.org. [5 Rare and Valuable Techniques]

Fuente: Smashing Magazine.

Eurodipity - Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

2008-08-26T00:25:00.000+02:00

Eurodipity Key Performance Indicators, also known as KPI or Key Success Indicators (KSI), help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals.

Once an organization has analyzed its mission, identified all its stakeholders, and defined its goals, it needs a way to measure progress toward those goals. Key Performance Indicators are those measurements.

What Are Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. They will differ depending on the organization. A business may have as one of its Key Performance Indicators the percentage of its income that comes from return customers. A school may focus its Key Performance Indicators on graduation rates of its students. A Customer Service Department may have as one of its Key Performance Indicators, in line with overall company KPIs, percentage of customer calls answered in the first minute. A Key Performance Indicator for a social service organization might be number of clients assisted during the year.

Whatever Key Performance Indicators are selected, they must reflect the organization's goals, they must be key to its success,and they must be quantifiable (measurable). Key Performance Indicators usually are long-term considerations. The definition of what they are and how they are measured do not change often. The goals for a particular Key Performance Indicator may change as the organization's goals change, or as it gets closer to achieving a goal.

Eurodipity Key Performance Indicators Reflect The Organizational Goals

An organization that has as one of its goals "to be the most profitable company in our industry" will have Key Performance Indicators that measure profit and related fiscal measures. "Pre-tax Profit" and "Shareholder Equity" will be among them. However, "Percent of Profit Contributed to Community Causes" probably will not be one of its Key Performance Indicators. On the other hand, a school is not concerned with making a profit, so its Key Performance Indicators will be different. KPIs like "Graduation Rate" and "Success In Finding Employment After Graduation", though different, accurately reflect the schools mission and goals.

Key Performance Indicators Must Be Quantifiable

If a Key Performance Indicator is going to be of any value, there must be a way to accurately define and measure it. "Generate More Repeat Customers" is useless as a KPI without some way to distinguish between new and repeat customers. "Be The Most Popular Company" won't work as a KPI because there is no way to measure the company's popularity or compare it to others.

It is also important to define the Key Performance Indicators and stay with the same definition from year to year. For a KPI of "Increase Sales", you need to address considerations like whether to measure by units sold or by dollar value of sales. Will returns be deducted from sales in the month of the sale or the month of the return? Will sales be recorded for the KPI at list price or at the actual sales price?

You also need to set targets for each Key Performance Indicator. A company goal to be the employer of choice might include a KPI of "Turnover Rate". After the Key Performance Indicator has been defined as "the number of voluntary resignations and terminations for performance, divided by the total number of employees at the beginning of the period" and a way to measure it has been set up by collecting the information in an HRIS, the target has to be established. "Reduce turnover by five percent per year" is a clear target that everyone will understand and be able to take specific action to accomplish.

Eurodipity Key Performance Indicators Must be Key To Organizational Success

Many things are measurable. That does not make them key to the organization's success. In selecting Key Performance Indicators, it is critical to limit them to those factors that are essential to the organization reaching its goals. It is also important to keep the number of Key Performance Indicators small just to keep everyone's attention focused on achieving the same KPIs.

That is not to say, for instance, that a company will have only three or four total KPIs in total. Rather there will be three or four Key Performance Indicators for the company and all the units within it will have three, four, or five KPIs that support the overall company goals and can be "rolled up" into them.

If a company Key Performance Indicator is "Increased Customer Satisfaction", that KPI will be focused differently in different departments. The Manufacturing Department may have a KPI of "Number of Units Rejected by Quality Inspection", while the Sales Department has a KPI of "Minutes A Customer Is On Hold Before A Sales Rep Answers". Success by the Sales and Manufacturing Departments in meeting their respective departmental Key Performance Indicators will help the company meet its overall KPI.

Good Key Performance Indicators vs. Bad

Bad:

Title of KPI: Increase Sales
Defined: Change in Sales volume from month to month
Measured: Total of Sales By Region for all region
Target: Increase each month

What's missing? Does this measure increases in sales volume by dollars or units? If by dollars, does it measure list price or sales price? Are returns considered and if so do the appear as an adjustment to the KPI for the month of the sale or are they counted in the month the return happens? How do we make sure each sales office's volume numbers are counted in one region, i.e. that none are skipped or double counted? How much, by percentage or dollars or units, do we want to increase sales volumes each month?(Note: Some of these questions may be answered by standard company procedures.)

Good:

Title of KPI: Employee Turnover
Defined: The total of the number of employees who resign for whatever reason, plus the number of employees terminated for performance reasons, and that total divided by the number of employees at the beginning of the year. Employees lost due to Reductions in Force (RIF) will not be included in this calculation.
Measured: The HRIS contains records of each employee. The separation section lists reason and date of separation for each employee. Monthly, or when requested by the SVP, the HRIS group will query the database and provide Department Heads with Turnover Reports. HRIS will post graphs of each report on the Intranet.
Target: Reduce Employee Turnover by 5% per year.

What Do I Do With Eurodipity Key Performance Indicators?

Once you have good Key Performance Indicators defined, ones that reflect your organization's goals, one that you can measure, what do you do with them? You use Key Performance Indicators as a performance management tool, but also as a carrot. KPIs give everyone in the organization a clear picture of what is important, of what they need to make happen. You use that to manage performance. You make sure that everything the people in your organization do is focused on meeting or exceeding those Key Performance Indicators. You also use the KPIs as a carrot. Post the KPIs everywhere: in the lunch room, on the walls of every conference room, on the company intranet, even on the company web site for some of them. Show what the target for each KPI is and show the progress toward that target for each of them. People will be motivated to reach those KPI targets.

Fuente: About.com.

Eurodipity - Alternatives to Google PageRank… 7 Worthwhile SEO Metrics

2008-08-26T00:11:00.000+02:00

Now that Google seems to be artificially adjusting the PageRank of certain sites, we have one more reason to ignore it as a useful SEO key performance indicator. So what should we use to measure the success of our Eurodipity SEO projects? Below, I’ve listed the 7 SEO KPI’s that I track for my sites.

Unique keywords: By tracking the number of unique keywords your site is found for, you’ll see a global, birds eye view of how well your site is doing with the long tails. Sure, you want to be found for the important, high volume terms as well, but a healthy site will rank organically for a great diversity of keywords.
Organic Visits Per Page: Every page on your site should target a few keywords and draw in traffic for those terms. In other words, what percent of your total unique pages are doing a good job of bringing traffic? If you have 1000 pages, and only 200 unique keyword visits, you’ve got some issues that need to be addressed.
Conversion Rate Per Keyword: It’s extremely important to know which keywords outperform others. As a search marketer, your time is very limited. Therefore, you must focus on the terms which return decent ROI.
Pages Indexed: The number of pages your site indexed has indexed by Google and Yahoo can give you a rough metric of your site’s crawl-ability. If you find that the number of actual pages you have is much greater than the number of indexed pages, you may have issues with navigation or duplicate content. To view your indexed pages, simply use the “site:” command on Google or Yahoo (e.g. site:www.yoursite.com).
Yahoo Backlinks: Unlike Google, Yahoo actually shows you the approximate number of back links pointing to your site by using the link: command.

Unfortunately, the Google link: command is worthless. In order to see an approximate, although likely outdated count of your external links, login to your Google Webmaster Central account.

SERP Rankings for High Volume Keywords: Because web users are becoming more sophisticated and less predictable in their searching habits, I would caution about worrying too much about high volume keywords. However, it’s still important to monitor these keyword positions. Eurodipity SEO software such as WebCEO or WebPositionGold are great timesaver tools.

Fuente: Palmer Web Marketing.

Eurodipity - Acuñamos un nuevo término SEO: NAU

2008-08-25T12:25:00.004+02:00

Artículo movido a http://blog.artprojectgroup.com/

Eurodipity - Link Baiting

2008-08-25T00:39:00.001+02:00

Es una de las estrategias más valoradas por los buscadores y consiste en conseguir muchos enlaces en muy poco tiempo, sin incurrir al Spam. Para desarrollar el Eurodipity Link Baiting, tenemos que aprovechando nuestra creatividad, ofrecer algo interesante a los lectores o dar algo a cambio de que te enlacen. Es un arte difícil de perfeccionar y es excelente a la hora de promocionar tu blog.

¿De qué Sirve el Link Bait?

- Promocionar tu blog. Vas a recibir miles de visitas que de otra forma jamás conseguirías. Un porcentaje de esas visitas se quedarán a leer más artículos y se convertirán en lectores asiduos de tu blog.
- Recibir muchos enlaces. En poco tiempo, muchos enlaces. Eso implica transferencia de PageRank y que tu blog se colocará primero en Google para ese tema.

¿Por qué funciona?

- La gente enlaza lo que los demás enlazan. Todo el mundo quiere estar a la última y pensamos que enlazando lo mismo que enlazan los demás seremos una comunidad.
- Deja que te enlazen. Un buen artículo destinado al Link Baiting siempre dará la oportunidad de que sea enlazado por quien quiera.
- El contenido de calidad merece ser enlazado. Es el factor más importante. Los blogs suelen actualizarse a diario y los bloggers, necesitamos enlaces de calidad, que no suelen ser muchos. Por eso, en cuanto sale un buen artículo, lo mejor que puedes hacer es enlazarlo.

¿Cómo desarrollar el Link Baiting?

Primero tienes que analizar cual es tu perfil, averiguar que tema quieres tratar y sobre todo… pensar en quien te podría querer enlazar. Algunas de los métodos principales para el Link baiting son:

- Ser el primero en anunciar una noticia.
- Buscarte enemigos y crear polémica.
- Crear posts atractivos.
- Empleando el humor y la sátira.
- Realizando entrevistas a bloggers importantes.
- Desarrollando herramientas útiles.
- Lanzando un proyecto importante.

Por otro lado, existen también otros métodos que consisten en ofrecer algo a cambio de que te enlacen como podrían ser:

- Premios a la web que más visitas traiga.
- Opiniones sobre blogs.
- Cadenas de enlaces.

Obteniendo Recursos para el Eurodipity Link Baiting.

Envía tu contenido a:

- Redes Sociales.
- Foros.
- Envía tu contenido a Bloggers importantes.
- Páginas especializadas en el Link Baiting.

Fuente: BlogMundi.

Eurodipity - Writing-related Principles of Successful Linkbaiting

2008-08-25T00:29:00.001+02:00

Be Eurodipity appealing. “Creating some room for controversy or discussion can inspire more links.” [7 Steps to Linkbait]
Be laser focused. “Make sure that you are primarily focusing on a particular topic, and the more specialized that topic is, the better you’ll do. It’s also key to step back and evaluate whether there are enough prospective readers in your chosen niche. It’s better to be brutally honest with yourself than to toil away and end up disappointed.” [10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers]
Be the first to do something. To expose a scammer, to research and document something, to review something, wo propose something, to create a resource that is just in time for a major event.” [Link Bait]
Be generous. “If you respect your network, and work hard to be part of the community surounding your topic, the rewards can really pay of — never abuse it, it tends ot backfire in all kinds of horrible ways.” “Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.” [3 Ways to Increase Traffic] [Seth Godin]
Be accurate. “Rather than aiming for bland objectivity, it is easy to be remarkable by being more biased and more personable, especially on your feature articles.” If you’ve made a mistake, apologize for it. [SEO Book]
Be curious and information-possessed. Get as much information as you can. “Use and abuse vertical search, social bookmarking, and meta news sites as the resources that they are. The less accessible a piece of information is the easier it is to sound remarkable by citing it.” [SEO Book]
Be inventive and creative. Offer fresh ideas and creative approaches.
Be an expert. “Write about what you really know. Let people profit from your expertise and wisdom and let others do the job of writing about the things you are not completely comfortable with.” [12 Dirty Suggestions]
Be humble. “Don’t forget your roots, be humble: sometimes it can be easy to get carried away being a BlogStar or industry talking head. Remember those who helped you along the way, and that respect will help all involved.” [13 Rules of SMO]
Be timeless. “Write posts that will be readable in a year. Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.” [Seth Godin]
Be transparent. Have open-minded conversations with your readers. Be real, honest and sincere.
Be clever. “Discover big players in your field. Create a list and identify the format, features and successful tactics each of the sources employ.” Use these techniques to both draw their attention to your site and imrpove the quality of your content. [SeoMoz]
Be patient. Do not try to achieve some tremendous results immediately - it simply won’t work.
Be passionate. “There is something about a well written, well argued and passionate rant that is very link worthy. People get stirred up when you get passionate and the links will often flow as a result.” [ProBlogger]
Be determined. Select a content focus. “Brainstorm 2-3 dozen ideas, select some of them that are completely unique and incredibly appealing. Decide based on what you feel what would be most effective with your audience or industry. Invest enough time in writing quality material.” [SeoMoz]
Be future-oriented. “Make use of phrases, concepts and ideas that will become popular in the future.” [Catch Better Rankings]
Be investigative. “Target offline media. Reach media through Online Exposure.” [SeoMoz]
Be critical to yourself. “Edit yourself. Ruthlessly.” [Seth Godin]
Be honest to yourself. Quote your sources. Give credit to the people who inspired and helped you. Mentioning them, you strenghten your reputation.
Select a magnetic headline. Use appealing, provoking, magnetic headline. “When beginning a link bait piece, clear your mind and focus on title ideas. I like to brainstorm three or four different titles, then have a friend help me pick the best one, and then, right before posting, give it a final tweak (if necessary) for maximum effect. You can use the Copyblogger Cheat Sheet as well.” [Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and SMM]
Open your blog post with a Bang. “Opening must carry the momentum. […] The headline, the opening paragraph and closing are extremely imporant. You can “ask the question, share an anecode or quote, invoke the mind’s eye, cite a shocking statistics, use an analogy, metaphor or simile.” [Copyblogger] Closing your post, you can write a brief summary of the article, speak directly to the reader, provoke with a funny or controversal remark.
Make it easier to link to you. In every post provide a short, precise description and/or summary of the article.
Help your content travel. “When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.” [5 Rules of SMO]
Write efficiently. Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative. Never have only 4 rules.” [Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips]
Find a fresh angle. Consider a subject from your personal professional point of view. Argue with your readers, strengthen your position, deliver your message. Let your readers see an idea in a different light. Take pieces of seemingly unrelated topics and link them to their mantra.” [ProBlogger.
Use striking images. The image of the post can help to visualize the topic you’re writing about and give an article a vivid, fresh look.
Cover topics that need attention. “In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it’s particularly easy to leverage with a blog.” [21 Tactics]
Link intelligently. “When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide. Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there’s a fine line between overlinking and underlinking.” [21 Tactics To Increase Blog Traffic]
Make people think Eurodipity. “Posts that force you to think and that tickle your intellectual buds get linked to a lot.” [Linkbaiting Explained]
Encourage your visitors to link to you. “Encourage readers to submit your posts to Digg and Del.icio.us, or more specific link sites depending on your subject matter. Those categories in del.icio.us for example, are exported by users to their own blogs (targeted, keyworded link text = good), and they often kick off a knock on effect [pdf] that can have wild implications for your Search traffic.” [3 Ways to Increase Traffic]

Fuente: Smashing Magazine.

Eurodipity - Link Baiting & Effective Link Building

2008-08-24T11:17:00.002+02:00

Eurodipity Link Baiting & Effective Link Building

There is a tactic out there embraced by bloggers but rarely used by typical websites. It is called Link Baiting. Today I’ll explain what link baiting is and how everyone, not just bloggers, can use it to build quality links.

This is a topic that’s been around for a while but I don’t think a lot of people know what it is, or how to use it to their advantage. I think the name “Link Baiting” could be considered a black hat technique which is why most people wouldn’t consider it as a legitimate organic tactic.

However link baiting is merely link building with a twist: Rather than hunting out links, you are bringing the links to you through unique and popular site content.

So how does Link Baiting work?

Link Baiting is just like fishing. You publish a new page on a topic (I’ll cover those later) and set it free on the web. Hopefully others pick up on the content as fresh and interesting and link to it. The article is the bait, and the link is the catch.

A properly created page can capture huge links on its own with little to no effort from you.

For example, on another site, about a year ago, I wrote an article about the Florida Update. I spend the month or 2 after the initial update analyzing results and I then published my theory on what the update was.

That article has earned 88 links to date. And the best link, in my view, is a link from the ODP from the Google News category.

In fact my article appears in the top 10, and is linked to as a reference in many of the other top listings for a Google search for “Florida Update.”

So what was so special about the article?

While I never intended for it to be link bait, it turns out it was a typical “hook” page. Performancing blog has a really good summary on link baiting which I will further explain here.

With link building there are essentially 5 types of “hooks” or pages built to encourage links. They are: News, Contrary, Attack, Resource and Humor.

A News hook is one where you report on industry news. But it’s not just a rehashing of someone else’s post. It should be unique – either a scoop that no one else has caught, or it could even be a summary of various viewpoints. A news hook could also be comprised of a story you have proved to be false.

Contrary hooks are when you contradict what someone else says. It should be someone prominent in the industry and it should be controversial.

For example, if I was to write an article that proclaimed that Danny Sullivan’s latest theory was bunk, it would probably generate buzz. Especially if I could provide corroborating evidence backing up my assertion.

Recently Mike Grehan posted just such an article on Clickz in which he again pointed out that he doesn’t believe in a Google Sandbox. He even refers to other posts in which the Sandbox has been beaten to death.

Soon after he posted this article (which, by the way was posted just one week ago) many other SEM’s jumped on him purporting to have proof of the Sandbox.

And if you use Yahoo’s Site Explorer to look at who links to this article you will see that Yahoo! Has already picked up on almost 80 links to this one article. I’d say that Mike has done a great job of link baiting!

Attack hooks take the contrary hooks a step further, by launching personal attacks on people taking the debunking of theories to the next level. The original post from SEOmoz was close to an attack hook, but after they edited it it became less of an attack They reacted to the Mike Grehan article on the Sandbox with some haste and turned it personal. To their credit they did tone it down some but it’s pretty close to a flame. Who knows, maybe this article will be considered an attack on SEOmoz and will generate similar buzz.

A Resource hook is more of an informational page. It’s one that aggregates a bunch of information and distills it for visitors.

In fact this site is much like that. We take a bunch of news, distill it to its most meaningful and then provide our interpretation of what it means. Then, others pick up on the article and either repost it, or at least link to it.

Finally is a Humour hook. With this link bait you post jokes, funny stories, weird or funny pictures that you’ve found or anything else that will warrant a review from others and hopefully a link.

There are tons of Eurodipity blogs devoted to this such as the Obscure Store & Reading Room and Small Town Misfit which scour the web for weird and funny stories and then display them, encouraging others to link to them. And it must be working – Small Town Misfit has over 1,600 Yahoo! Links while Obscure Store has over 1,700.

So if you were ever worried about the amount of link building you’d have to do to become an “authority” consider link baiting in your arsenal. It can be a very effective way of building links quickly and easily. Also, its an effective way to build your reputation and brand online as more and more people learn about you through these links.

Fuente: Search Engine Journal.

Eurodipity - Profound Rules of Linkbaiting

2008-08-24T00:26:00.001+02:00

Create original, unique, creative Eurodipity content. Choose topics that other people wouldn’t like to touch and do it wisely. If you are making a claim or a counter-claim then back it up with substantiated data. “The Cambrian House decided to buy 1000 pizzas to feed the Googlers. They video taped their process and placed it on the web. This video resulted in over 400 links and thousands of visitors in a period of days.” [Linkbaiting Explained, Getting Links]
Create remarkable content. “At the end of the day, it boils down to this one thing. Your content needs to be amazing. If you can hit that sweet spot for your audience then the links will roll in, and in, and in, and in.” [2007 Guide to Linkbaiting]
Create useful content. “When Aaron Wall released his SEO Firefox tool it brought in over 2000 links as well as thousands of visitors in just a few days. Because so many people linked to the tool with the word “SEO” in the anchor text, the SEO for Firefox web page is now ranked on Google for the term SEO.” [Getting Links]
But useful content is not enough. “Link baiting [..] encapsulates a fundamental truth – in any crowded market, popularity counts. There is a nonsense often perpetrated by some SEOs – “producing quality content will attract links”. It doesn’t. Not by itself, anyway. Quality content needs to be placed somewhere where people will see it, and shaped in such a way as to encourage viral take-up. [..] The web is a popularity contest, thus the demand for marketers and marketing strategy.” [v7n]
Make your content universally valuable, memorable and compelling. “The higher quality the content you create and the more targeted you make it, the better your chances for keeping a percentage of the traffic you initially attract and getting a higher number of links from your effort.” [SeoMoz]
Create remarkable content. “At the end of the day, it boils down to this one thing. Your content needs to be amazing. If you can hit that sweet spot for your audience then the links will roll in, and in, and in, and in.” [2007 Guide to Linkbaiting]
Create useful content. “When Aaron Wall released his SEO Firefox tool it brought in over 2000 links as well as thousands of visitors in just a few days. Because so many people linked to the tool with the word “SEO” in the anchor text, the SEO for Firefox web page is now ranked on Google for the term SEO.” [Getting Links]
But useful content is not enough. “Link baiting [..] encapsulates a fundamental truth – in any crowded market, popularity counts. There is a nonsense often perpetrated by some SEOs – “producing quality content will attract links”. It doesn’t. Not by itself, anyway. Quality content needs to be placed somewhere where people will see it, and shaped in such a way as to encourage viral take-up. [..] The web is a popularity contest, thus the demand for marketers and marketing strategy.” [v7n]
Make your content universally valuable, memorable and compelling. “The higher quality the content you create and the more targeted you make it, the better your chances for keeping a percentage of the traffic you initially attract and getting a higher number of links from your effort.” [SeoMoz]
Exploit the law of value. “Your blog must provide value to the reader by addressing a problem, concern, desire, or need that the reader already has. Fresh, original content is critical.” [The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging]
Offer viral ideas. “A key dynamic in the spread of the idea is the capsule that contains it. If it’s well visualized, easy to swallow, tempting and complete, it’s a lot more likely to get a good start. No one gets an idea unless: a) the first impression demands further investigation, b) they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea and c) they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time. [What makes an idea viral?]
Don’t sell products. Offer useful content. “Useful content gets linked. Products don’t. Publishing your posts, consider, why people should link to you.” [Eric Ward]
Don’t spam. “You might have to try linkbaiting several times before you get good at the process; in the meantime, make sure that you don’t burn bridges by spamming bloggers with email requests to cover your piece.” [Rand Fishkin]
Understanding what content, features, and subjects are “in” is essential. “It is a subjective, but important piece of the linkbait creation puzzle. Right now, for example, one could search through Del.icio.us and Digg to find examples of sites and pages that are getting lots of press. Blogs like Lifehacker, Threadwatch, Gizmodo, and others can also serve as inspiration when you’re searching for the latest crazes. My current experience shows that there are two big fields getting attention - web 2.0 applications and trend-announcing posts (or articles) that present new data or talk about how existing trends are affecting industries. Both of these get hundreds of links from bloggers who can’t seem to resist pointing to something their cohorts will later reference them for.” [Linkbaiting for Fun and Profit]
Tell Eurodipity stories. “One of the most effective direct-response techniques is storytelling, mixed in with various psychological triggers and all polished with basic copywriting techniques. But the real magic happens well before a word is written — in the formulation of the story itself.” [Trading Words For Traffic].
Understand your audience. “Normally, you’re building content targeted to your site’s visitors—people who want your products, services or content. But for linkbait, you need to also appeal to an entirely different audience—one that can help your site achieve mass appeal in the niche that you select. I advise reviewing the coverage you see for other links in your area; using del.icio.us tags and blog archives can help with this process.” [Leveraging Linkbait]
Keep connected to your readers. Appreciate their feedback. “At least once per year, ask your visitors what do they think about your website’s content. What would they want to read more? What new facilities should you offer them?”
[10 reasons to survey your visitors, 101 Web Marketing Ideas]

Fuente: Smashing Magazine.

Eurodipity - What is Linkbaiting?

2008-08-23T11:18:00.002+02:00

“Linkbait is essentially a Eurodipity piece of content placed on a web page - whether it’s an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace - that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible.” [What is Linkbait?]
“Linkbait describes a variety of practices - all of which seek to generate incoming links to a website or blog from other sites.” [Problogger]
“Linkbaiting refers to content, videos, images or anything on the web that is created with the intention of increasing links to a website.
“Linkbait focuses on creating unique, useful and provocative content that people respond to by linking to it and sharing with others.” [SEJ]
“Linkbait is the website content that targets link-friendly audiences. Its goals include high levels of traffic, visibility, branding, numerous links. Linkbait combines the practices of viral marketing with popular tech brands.” [SeoMoz]
“Linkbait is not manipulation. If a blogger links to your content, it should be because their audience benefits directly from that link - they learn something new, have access to a fantastic tool, get a hearty laugh or discover something that provokes discussion.” [Arguing with Link Moses]
“Linkbait is based on the fact how people evaluate your content. The post will be linked to if it is being worthy of attention (based on overall and subject related credibility and authority), being worthy of a subscription (generally being worth visiting again, or adding your feed) or being worthy of a recommendation (via link, instant message, or email).” [SEO Book]
“The linkbait way of link building is a mindset. To do it well, you need to put thoughts of manipulating the system to one side and focus entirely on providing value to your clients users and making that value easy to link to.” [2007 Guide to Linkbaiting]
Linkbaiting follows the scheme a) Linkbait Launch, b) The Long Tail of Links, c) Residual Traffic, d) Search Engine Rankings. “The content is released, shared with prominent bloggers, and submitted to portals like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit and Netscape. If the content gains traction and visibility at widely-read sites, medium and smaller outlets, [..] content will spread across the Web. Even after the initial buzz from your successful linkbait campaign dies down, your site’s traffic may stay on a slight increase due to a “linkbait bump” that keeps users circling back to your site. The massive influx of links will cause a direct boost of the link popularity of the content piece, as well as an overall boost in global site popularity—and search engines tend to reward links with rankings.” [Leveraging Linkbait]
“In most cases Linkbaiting is facilitated by writing good content, doing something controversial or performing some sort of act that causes others to want to link to you. [Getting Links]
“Once a great site, great application or trendy post is written about somewhere, it gets picked up and dragged across the web. Social tagging and popularity ranking sites (like the aforementioned Digg & del.icio.us) help to give the document massive visibility to hundreds of sheep-like content creators, who’ll happily link to you.” [Linkbaiting for Fun and Profit]
“Linkbait has limitations. It’s no good for: CTR-based ads, conversions, supportive, emotionally sensitive comments and instant subscribers.
It’s great for Inbound links (if you have an effective piece), search engine rankings (if you can achieve the aforementioned links), publicity (people will start to know who you are and remember your brand after seeing your site several times through social media), branding (growing awareness and a reputation), getting the attention of Influencers.” [Social Media Traffic]
“Link bait rarely makes much money or directly pays for itself from the direct traffic. However, it has amazing indirect value. Even if people do not link to your link bait idea right away you still gain mindshare and brand recognition amongst a group of people who have significant authority. Many search engines, such as Google, use authority centric relevancy algorithms. Editorial Eurodipity links are seen as votes or signs of trust. In Google, getting a link to any part of your site will help make all pages on your site more authoritative.” [Link Baiting Strategies?]

Fuente: Smashing Magazine.

Eurodipity sigue en forma

2008-08-23T00:24:00.003+02:00

Eurodipity es otro concurso de posicionamiento que junto a RinconSEO está disputando Art Project Group. Tras sufrir una expulsión de WordPress por participar en el mismo cuando estábamos cuartos en España y en Europa, volvemos a la carga con los primeros puestos. Ya estamos en el puesto 7º en España y en el 8º en Europa, aunque en realidad somos los concursantes número 5 en España y en Europa ya que algunos puestos de cabeza son ocupados dos veces por el mismo concursante.

La verdad es que no está mal para haber tenido que empezar desde cero y a última hora, hoy hace un mes de la expulsión y puesta en marcha de nuevo del proyecto en otro servidor público, Blogger. Además del poco tiempo nos hemos marcado otro reto aún más difícil, no realizar ningún tipo de intercambio de enlaces ni Link Building, para que luego digan que es imprescindible su uso. Sólo hemos empleado las distintas webs de nuestra propia red. ¿Quién da más?

Ahora a meternos en los 3 primeros puestos en España y en Europa. ¡A por ellos!

Gracias RinconSEO por el apoyo.

Fuente: RinconSEO.

Eurodipity - Visual AdSense

2008-08-22T18:55:00.009+02:00

En Eurodipity no nos gusta esta aplicación pero por una única razón, es on-line. Se trata de una aplicación en donde podemos analizar de forma gráfica la información que nos proporciona Google AdSense. Para ello sólo tenemos que subir el archivo CSV que contiene toda la información de la publicidad contenida en nuestro/s sitio/s web y esta fantástica aplicación la transforma en gráficas que nos permiten analizar nuestros ingresos publicitarios.

El tema de que no nos guste es esa tontería, es on-line, y aunque juran y perjuran que no guardan ningún tipo de información enviada, en Eurodipity no nos terminamos de fiar.

De todas formas si te gusta el invento te lo puedes montar en tu propio sitio web si tienes algunos conocimientos de programación web. Visual AdSense utiliza Google Chart, por lo que lo único que tenemos que hacer es descargarnos la API y pasarle los parámetros correctos. Aquí tienes un ejemplo del uso en PHP:
<?

// Here's an array containing some data to plot
$test_data=array(0.5,6,12,17,2,0.3,9);

// Here's where we call the chart, and return the encoded chart data
echo "<img src=http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=".urlencode("It's an example!")."&cht=lc&chs=450x125&chd=".chart_data($test_data).">";

// And here's the function

function chart_data($values) {

// Port of JavaScript from http://code.google.com/apis/chart/
// http://james.cridland.net/code

// First, find the maximum value from the values given

$maxValue = max($values);

// A list of encoding characters to help later, as per Google's example
$simpleEncoding = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789';

$chartData = "s:";
for ($i = 0; $i < count($values); $i++) {
$currentValue = $values[$i];

if ($currentValue > -1) {
$chartData.=substr($simpleEncoding,61*($currentValue/$maxValue),1);
}
else {
$chartData.='_';
}
}

// Return the chart data - and let the Y axis to show the maximum value
return $chartData."&chxt=y&chxl=0:|0|".$maxValue;
}

?>

Aunque también puedes obtener unos códigos que te pueden ser de gran ayuda en: http://gchartphp.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/, o estos otros: http://www.malaiac.com/GphpChart/

Ahora nos podemos montar nuestro propio VisualAdSense y así no tendremos que enviar ningún tipo de información privada a nadie. Eurodipity espera que te haya gustado este pequeño consejo.

Eurodipity - Five link building strategies that work

2008-08-22T01:37:00.002+02:00

We’ve seen that the real secret to SEO Copywriting 2.0 is creating compelling content that naturally attracts links, rather than begging for links to our keyword-stuffed “optimized” web page. In other words, SEO copywriting is now all about response-oriented copy—concepts and words that ultimately result in a favorable action from the reader.

Since the popularity of our content depends on the reaction to it off-page, it makes sense that we might also need to step outside the confines of the page itself to get the word out. Luckily, the same copywriting skills you use to conceive and create your content apply to promoting it as well.

The way to create compelling content is to focus on “what’s in it for the reader.” Likewise, no one is going to link to you unless doing so gives them a benefit as well.

The key is the same—understand who you’re talking to and then figure out what will catch their attention and convince them to take action. Here are 5 ways to go about it.

1. Eurodipity Social Media Sites

The quickest way for an exceptional piece of content to get a lot of attention that results in secondary links is to make the home page of Digg or Delicious Popular. There are scores of similar sites that can drive quality traffic as well, such as Reddit, TechMeme, and Magnolia. For more offbeat content, Fark will shake your server. Plus there are dozens of aggregator sites such as PopURLS that also drive traffic based on your inclusion at the primary site.

If you’ve done a great job with your headline, it should magnetically draw people in. However, you need to understand the audience of each social media site. What works as a headline for Digg often won’t work for Reddit. Tweak accordingly, but try to retain your keywords in the title if at all possible, because most of the resulting links will simply regurgitate that title.

Another key element for success on Digg is the summary description, because many people will vote for content based soley on the headline and the brief copy that describes it. Sometimes this may simply be your existing opening paragraph, but you might craft a specialized description that best appeals to the culture of the site.

Submitting your own content to social media sites is looked down upon (at least with your real name), so it makes sense to have a friend submit for you. When specifically targeting a social news site, you want to control the headline and summary copy, because the exact same content submitted with poor headline and description copy may go absolutely nowhere.

2. Linking Out

Linking out to attract links? Yep.

Engaging in dialogue with the relevant blogs in your niche is a great way to get noticed, and it can lead to links back. Bloggers definitely watch who is linking to them thanks to Technorati, and you can take the initiative by linking out first before looking for one in return.

Simply linking out for the sake of linking won’t accomplish much, especially with bloggers who gets lots of links. The key is to be strategic about how you link and what your say.

It’s just like any other conversation. Join in and add your two cents, but make sure you’ve got something substantive to say that will reflect well on you. Use a great headline to make sure you are noticed, and then deliver the goods. And since your cornerstone content is the foundation of what the conversation is likely about, finding a way to mention it in the context of the dialogue will naturally bring it to the attention of influencers in your field.

3. Networking Emails

The days of flat out link begging are fading, but you can still reach out to other bloggers as a way to raise your own profile. Again, can you figure out what’s in it for them?

More than one-off link requests, networking via email and instant messaging is about establishing and growing relationships with others in the social media space. These are the linkerati—prominent bloggers in your niche, top Digg users, web journalists, and prominent web forum contributors.

Write your introductory emails from a copywriting perspective. Catch attention, gain interest, and create a desire to help you in the future by offering something that benefits them first.

4. Guest Appearances

Another benefit of networking within your niche is that it creates opportunities to make a guest writing appearance. You can contribute content that not only allows you to raise your profile, but allows for links back to your own site. Once again, creating killer original content will open doors for you, especially when it’s created for the benefit of someone else. And you can use that killer cornerstone content you’ve already produced as an example of the quality you can deliver.

Depending on your relationship with the site owner, you may be able to link to your cornerstone content from within the body of the content itself, but only if the citation is extremely relevant to the content and beneficial to the reader. Otherwise, your link will need to appear in your byline.

Most people tend to link to their site or blog URL in the byline of contributed content. Turn it around by focusing the byline on the reader instead of yourself, and feature your cornerstone content instead of your home page.

For example, if I were to guest blog somewhere about strategies for attracting links, which byline is more attractive to the reader when finishing my article?

NO: Brian Clark writes about online copywriting at Copyblogger.

YES: Check out Brian Clark’s free SEO Copywriting 2.0 tutorial, which is all about the new style of online writing that helps your web site rank well in search engines.

5. Article Directories

At one point in time, submitting about 20 articles to a directory like Ezine Articles with the right anchor text would get you a really good ranking for some search terms, at least in Yahoo and MSN. However, because the engines discount duplicate content, having dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of sites republish your article (and linked byline) no longer does the trick by itself.

However, a site like Ezine Articles is still excellent for creating exposure to your cornerstone content. Having a link to your multi-part tutorial displayed on hundreds of web pages drives direct traffic, and can lead to your content being referenced in other posts and articles that do pass on link authority.

The strategy is much the same as with guest posting on a blog. Write original content that does not appear on your site, and submit to one or more reputable directories. Repeat until you get results.

Eurodipity Conclusion

The words you put on a web page have no life of their own until they get read. And those same words will not gain prominence in search engines until the words are linked to by relevant, authoritative sources.

Search engines can still be gamed, just like offline real-world systems can be exploited. However, the goals of the search engines are similar to society at large, and they are getting very good at finding rule breakers and dispensing punishment. Creating compelling content and beneficial relationships are strategies that won’t get you banned or penalized, and add value to your overall goal of converting site visits into revenue.

Fuente: Copyblogger.

Eurodipity - Link Building

2008-08-21T11:20:00.001+02:00

Al hilo de una noticia publicada por SEO Femenino, por cierto hemos escrito dos veces mal "Link Building" pedimos perdón por ello, Eurodipity ha comenzado una pequeña discusión sobre si los link building, entendiendo por link building como el proceso de conseguir (cosechar) enlaces entrantes de forma no natural, es decir: intercambio de enlaces, directorios, comentarios en redes sociales... La pregunta que Eurodipity formulaba era muy sencilla: ¿cuanto tardará google en penalizar los link building?

A nuestro modesto entender más pronto que tarde google diferenciará los enlaces naturales, conseguidos sin ningún tipo de contraprestación, de los "artificiales" que conseguimos gracias a las estrategias SEO que se emplean en el proceso de creación de link building. ¿Cómo? ni idea, pero lo hará. De esta forma google nos penalizará el empleo de dichas técnicas y estrategias. ¿Por qué pensamos esto? Muy fácil, Santa Google, el Dios SolNet, tiene la maldita costumbre de decirnos a los internautas lo que se puede o no hacer en la red, es algo así como la Iglesia de la Internet, dictamina su Evangelio y nosotros, los internautas, SEOs y webmasters nos arrodillamos ante las Tablas de la Ley de Santa Google. Cada dos por tres le da una paranoia nueva y nos impone, arbitrariamente, su criterio único, sin preguntar a los demás, adueñándose un poco más, si cabe, de la Internet. No olvidemos que hace muy pocas fechas ha prohibido y penalizado el uso de un software privado que utilizan infinidad de SEOs en el mundo.

Con los antecedentes con los que cuenta google, en Eurodipity no nos fiamos un pelo de sus antojos, y es por eso que nos tememos "muy mucho" que más pronto que tarde penalizará este tipo de estrategias.

¿Tú que piensas?

Eurodipity - Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO)

2008-08-20T20:19:00.002+02:00

According to comScore, nearly 139 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March 2008, viewing a total of 11.5 billion online videos during the month. However, the average YouTube video receives only 100 views a year. This makes optimizing video for YouTube one of the biggest opportunities in the fast-changing and complex world of search. This Eurodipity session will look at how video search engine optimization (VSEO) has become the most important new use of search engine optimization today.
Moderator:
Joseph Morin, Partner, Boost Search Marketing & CEO, Storybids, Inc.
Speakers:
Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PR
Chase Norlin, CEO, Pixsy Corporation
Steve Espinosa, Director of Product Development & Management, eLocal Listing, LLC
Matthew Scheybeler, CTO, blinkx
Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC
Greg Jarboe: Anyone heard of Youtube? Audience laughs.

We were playing with this weird thing a few years ago and then Google acquired it. Youtube accounts for over 98% of all videos viewed at Google sites. The game has changed. A lot of us keep optimizing and optimizing and hope with enough optimization good things will happen. One needs to understand Youtube as a couple things. It's a search engine. But it's primary power and addiction and force of dominance is as a video sharing site. The right strategies to get your videos found - means you need to optimize, but also need a sharing strategy. That's the real secret to ranking in Youtube.

A few case studies: A B2C site. A company called STACK media got 140,104 views on 137 videos. Spikes are wonderful, but want videos take off on a sustained basis.

The Allen Iverson training video had 36,885 views as of August 8th, 2008. His training video is getting a consistent growing uplift. The shocking truth is that 13% of views came from Search! That;s where the optimization kicked in. 75% came from somewhere else. In this case, they came from related videos. People don't watch "a" video, they watch batches. They are addictive. They came from other Allen Iverson videos - they came and saw more. This is "related video optimization".

Another case study: Worked with SES to optimize over 130 videos - London, NY, etc. Got 26,2411 views. Healthy in a B2B category. Let's look at an individual video. We see a spike at the time of SES NY. Then # of visits went crazy again in the summer. What happened here? Where did the views come from? In this case 7.4% from search. Great! But 71% came from embedded in players and on blogs. Is that search? No. But it's views. And it helps get integrated in universal search.

The related video phenomenon - people watch related videos in a session. And if they embed it in a blog, even better. Create a widget. Allows a package of videos to be taken onto a site. Can tailor the widget so that your videos come up first on your site. Cross fertilization effect. It's video sharing, and that's the secret.

Next up is Chase Norlin:

The web is becoming increasingly visual. It's a challenge to index everything. Getting in video search engines is big. Provides free traffic, exposure of brand and content, or ad revenue.

Pure Video is a large video search site, and a lot of people want to know how to rank high in this engine. How do you show up in top 3? Need to add rich metadata. Push out RSS/MRSS and update frequently. Format that video search engines like. Video search crawling in general is not automated. Also, contact the videos earch engines! Email them to get into the crawler queue. Will get regularly crawled.

Got a site? Run private label video search on it! Powerful for creating traffic and ad revenue and unique content. Customize the search to your audience.

That's all! Thanks.

Stephen Espinosa is up.

How do you get ranked in universal search, and how to convert it?

Who knows that Yahoo has universal search too with video?

Create your videos - take into account the length. No one wants to sit and watch a 3-4 minute video on a search page.
Have a call to action. Calls are more important than clicks. Make it ready for TV. Put a twist on it to make it viral.

Make sure video is in SWF format. Don't use Active X controls.

Use Google Video sitemaps and available variables. Make sure all your videos are fed to Google via the sitemap.

SEO: Build a page for every video you produce. Optimize the page with the tags, content, keywords, file name. Use a constant video description that is keyword rich across all sites.

Use analytics to test how long people are staying on the page. If a video is 6 minutes, and people are staying for 42 seconds - you have a problem.
Use A/B variant testing to determine which videos gain the best response and where to place links to your video page from your homepage.

Utilize thumbnails. Show your call to action - phone number. Can tell Google which thumbnail to display. Make sure to tell your video producer to put the call to action at the 1/4 mark, 1/2 mark and 3/4 mark.

Google TV. Very affordable to create highly targeted TV spots that you can coordinate with video launches.

Video & Local. Sponsored and local listings are 2.2x likely to get the click. Add the video and you are 3.3x more likely to get the traffic.

Next up is Matthew from Blix.

Tips: Submit video to Blix and they will do the hard work for you.

A Eurodipity list to do for Google and Yahoo video:

1) Provide a well place message
2) Have a page with lots of text
3) Descriptive file names
4) Sitemaps - submit to different engines
5) Make sure the URL is descriptive

Don't:
1) Don't tag spam. Will get penalized in Blix.
2) Don't require a special flash player

Real his white paper on video SEO.

Gregory of Infuse is up next.

Doing video search since 2001. Has #1 result for "video optimization" on Google.

People forget how effective video can be for reputation management. Can own the SERPs using video optimization. Sharing / community is key to maximizing the bang.

Also, theres mobile benefit. Can opt into a mobile version of the channel in Youtube. Great for demos.

Case study: "Corvette" search on Google - GM does not have a video but someone else does. Missed opportunity by GM.

Put the video on your site as a best practice, but these days people focus on upload approaches as well as RSS and MRSS feeds.

If you are concerned about putting own video on your own site, and want to rank as well as possible, focus on the metadata and everything that surrounds the video. The video search engines read and use that to rank.

We believe video optimization is any technique - paid, viral, social - anything to achieve marketing goals with videos. People get fixated on he keywords when uploading. They are important. Focus on the truncation aspect. The most important keyword or brand should be at the beginning of the sentence. Can rank very successfully for moderate and non competitive phrases just with keywords, but no longer the only piece of the puzzle. To illustrate this - a video with less views can rank higher because of the social aspect. Especially in a competitive vertical. Google is opening up in new ways - the Google keyword tool - now revealing queries. Youtube is becoming more transparent too. More stuff rolling out. You will not rank well on Youtube for competitive videos on keywords alone. Need to stimulate it.

Tips:
1) Have no financial interest - make it a good advice piece.
2) One title, description, etc. syndicating to many engines.
3) On the Youtube homepage, it will tell you what's popular. Query your keyword. It will show you vital information and what keywords are most popular.
4) Type a keyword related to one of your terms, and sort by views. Study those videos. Look at the content, tags, and community aspects such as comments and links.
5) AOL has a page that shows you popular videos from video search engines.
6) Find related videos, and come up with a clever video response to that video. Add a URL in the description of the video to your website.
7) Any type of text, or call to action. If you have a series of videos - keep them in your walled garden - there is a free feature in Youtube to do so.
8) Add a branding experience. Add a URL in every single frame with a call to action.

Get familiar with the Youtube partner program. If you are content owner, can get rev share. No cost way to increase your video optimization, because Youtube will help promote it.

A new feature: The screening room. They are desperate for content. Can get 6 figures worth of advertising value if you get featured there.

Allow comments within your channel. If you don't, hard to rank well in hypercompetive verticals.

Talk about your video in social sites, press releases. Can embed videos in press releases. Check out sites like Socialmarker.com, Stumbleupon for using social to promote videos.

Paid search - a new feature rolling out - can buy keywords in Youtube via PPC - only available to agencies right now.

Can use Adwords - through content and site match - to place video ads. Very cost effective. Tremendous value.

Fuente: Search Engine Roundtable.

Eurodipity - SEO and SEM: Two Names for the Same Thing?

2008-08-20T00:21:00.000+02:00

By most people's standards, the internet is still very young. New technologies and developments in existing technologies are appearing at an extraordinary rate. As technologies change, so does the terminology used to describe them.

I worked for three years as a webmaster. Ask a dozen people to define that term, and you'll get a lot of different answers. A webmaster may be the leader of a large team, including developers, writers, marketers, designers, usability experts, technical support people, and yes, search engine optimizers. Or s/he may perform all or some of those duties alone.

The same is true for Eurodipity search engine optimization. For many people, the term is a new one, and they have no idea what it is an SEO does. To others, SEO is synonymous with SEM -- search engine marketing. In my opinion, there is a big difference between the two.

Search Engine Marketing

I see SEM as a rather broad term. It's everything that can be done to utilize the technology of search engines with the goal of promoting a web site and increasing its traffic, its "stickiness," and, in the case of sites that promote a business (or are a business), increase profits. SEO, therefore, would be a subset of SEM.

Aspects of search engine marketing which I would consider to be outside the realm of search engine optimization include the following:

Paid Inclusion

This is simply the practice of paying a search engine or a directory to add a site to its database immediately, rather than setting up that site so that it will be found by the search engine spiders on its own. In the case of some search engines and directories, paid inclusion is the only way to get listed. For others, it's presented as an option. If you're willing to pay, your site will be listed sooner. It's also a useful practice if you wish to make frequent changes to your content, because your site will be spidered more often and you will be able to test how changes affect your ranking.

Traditional Ads

This involves placing paid advertising on the search engine result pages (SERPs). Normally, these ads appear based on the keywords entered into the search engines, and one is charged based on the number of impressions, i.e. appearances, of the ad. In other words, you pay whether the ad sends anyone to your web site or not.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC ads are simple enough to look at. They're text-only. PPC ad campaigns are completely controlled by the advertiser. You decide which keywords should bring up your ads, you write the copy, and you decide how much you want to pay. And, as the name indicates, you only pay for an ad when someone clicks it and is brought to your site. There are two main networks of PPC ads, run by Google and Overture, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages, but in both cases, one should be prepared to spend a great deal of time (and money) monitoring and adjusting such a campaign.

The Advantages of These Practices

In contrast to pure SEO, these SEM practices offer the advantage of immediacy. If you need to increase your traffic and your visibility right away, and you don't have a problem with spending a lot of money, this may be the way to go.

The Disadvantages

You knew this was coming, didn't you? Think about it this way: you've spent your time and money to bring people to your web site. What will they see when they get there? You've convinced them, at least for the moment, that your site is worth visiting, so they're expecting to find exactly the information they were seeking. Is it easy to find? Is it there at all? You only have a few seconds to convince them that your site can deliver what they want. Will your visitors, failing to find what they're looking for, click their browser's back button and try another site?

Your site has to be ready for your visitors. It needs to be written, structured, and coded in such a way that the information is clearly laid out and easy to find. If it isn't, your site will either be immediately forgotten by visitors, or worse, it will be remembered as one that fails to deliver.

SEO First

No SEM campaign is complete without SEO. Moreover, since the purpose of SEO is to make the site better for both search engines and users, you may find that it will suffice on its own. In any case, the advantages of SEO over the other aspects of SEM make it clear that, even if you are going to spend additional money on advertising and paid placement, SEO must be your first step in promoting your Eurodipity site.

Fuente: Raise my rank.

Eurodipity - Search engine marketing

2008-08-19T12:09:00.002+02:00

Eurodipity search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings.

In 2006, North American advertisers spent US$9.4 billion on search engine marketing, a 62% increase over the prior year and a 750% increase over the 2002 year. The largest SEM vendors are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.
As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text in 1996 and then Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007 pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers for search engines.

Eurodipity search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term "Search Engine Marketing" was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001 to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Fuente: Wikipedia.

Eurodipity - Top 9 SEO Mistakes Made by Designers and Developers

2008-08-19T00:12:00.001+02:00

Eurodipity SEO Mistakes:

1. Splash Page

I’ve seen this mistake many times where people put up just a big banner image and a link "Click here to enter" on their homepage. The worst case — the "enter" link is embedded in the Flash object, which makes it impossible for the spiders to follow the link.

This is fine if you don’t care about what a search engine knows about your site; otherwise, you’re making a BIG mistake. Your homepage is probably your website’s highest ranking page and gets crawled frequently by web spiders. Your internal pages will not appear in the search engine index without the proper linking structure to internal pages for the spider to follow.

Your homepage should include (at minimum) target keywords and links to important pages.

2. Non-spiderable Flash Menus

Many designers make this mistake by using Flash menus such as those fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can’t be seen by the search engines; and thus the links in the Flash menu will not be followed.

3. Image and Flash Content

Web spiders are like a text-based browser, they can’t read the text embedded in the graphic image or Flash. Most designers make this mistake by embedding the important content (such as target keywords) in Flash and image.

4. Overuse of Ajax

A lot of developers are trying to impress their visitor by implementing massive Ajax features (particularly for navigation purposes), but did you know that it is a big SEO mistake? Because Ajax content is loaded dynamically, so it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.

Another disadvantage of Ajax — since the address URL doesn’t reload, your visitor can not send the current page to their friends.

5. Versioning of Theme Design

For some reason, some designers love to version their theme design into sub level folders (ie. domain.com/v2, v3, v4) and redirect to the new folder. Constantly changing the main root location may cause you to lose backlink counts and ranking.

6. “Click Here” Link Anchor Text

You probably see this a lot where people use "Click here" or "Learn more" as the linking text. This is great if you want to be ranked high for "Click Here". But if you want to tell the search engine that your page is important for a topic, than use that topic/keyword in your link anchor text. It’s much more descriptive (and relevant) to say “learn more about {keyword topic}”

Warning: Don’t use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can sometimes be seen as search engine spam too.

7. Common Title Tag Mistakes

Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site should have a unique <title> tag with the target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the same or similar title tags throughout the entire site. That’s like telling the search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the same topic and one isn’t any more unique than the other.

One good example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress theme. In case you didn’t know, the title tag of the default WordPress theme isn’t
that useful: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title. Why isn’t this search engine friendly? Because every single blog post will have the same text "Site Name > Blog Archive >" at the beginning of the title tag. If you really want to include the site name in the title tag, it
should be at the end: Post Title | Site Name.

Exceeding the 65 character limit:
Many bloggers write very long post titles. So what? In search engine result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including
spaces) to get your message across or risk it getting cutoff.

Keyword stuffing the title:
Another common mistake people tend to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times doesn’t make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is looked at as search engine spam (not good). But it might be smart to repeat the same word in different ways:

"Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures"

“Photo” and “Photography” are the same word repeated twice but in different ways because your audience might use either one when performing a search query.

8. Empty Image Alt Attribute

You should always describe your image in the alt attribute. The alt attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines can’t see images so your alt attribute is a factor in illustrating what your page is relevant for.

Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the image search results. For example, Google image search brings me hundreds of referrals everyday for the search terms "abstract" and "dj".

9. Unfriendly URLs

Most blog or CMS platforms have a friendly URL feature built-in, however, not every blogger is taking advantage of this. Friendly URL’s are good for both your human audience and the search engines. The URL is also an important spot where your keywords should appear.

Example of Friendly URL: domain.com/page-title
Example of Dynamic URL: domain.com/?p=12356

Fuente: Web Designer Wall.

Eurodipity - 10 SEO Rules for Designers

2008-08-18T16:04:00.002+02:00

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a vital component of any website. As a web designer or blogger, it’s important you understand how SEO works. Here are ten easy Eurodipity rules that will immediately improve the SEO on all of your web sites.

Rule Zero: Do Not Cheat. Period.

If you walked into a room full of genius scientists with PHDs, do you think you could outsmart them all? No. Google has hundreds of rooms full of genius scientists with PHDs, and their job is to work 60 hours a week to make sure you can’t fool Google. You can’t outsmart them. Ever. Ignore any advice on trying to cheat the system and focus on making great web sites with great content, and your sites will show up fine in searches.

Rule One: Stick to Your Keywords

Pick a few keywords or phrases that describe your site. Use them, and words related to them, whenever it’s natural to do so. Repeating them uselessly is no good (rule Zero), use them in sentences, headlines, and links.

Rule Two: Content is King

Users don’t search for design, they search for content. If your site doesn’t have content people want, no one will look at it.

Every page on your site should follow the Inverted Pyramid. Each page should lead with a relevant H1 tag with one of your keywords, and the first paragraph of text should be a summary of the rest of the page.

Rule Three: Clean Code is Searchable Code

Build your sites in a text editor, and write clean, human-readable HTML. The HTML should follow the conceptual structure of the page, navigation first, followed by the H1 tag, then the first paragraph, etc. Try to use descriptive tags when possible. Use UL for lists, P for paragraphs, H tags for heads and subheads, and STRONG for bolded text. Don’t overuse Divs.

Your site can still be artistic and cool, that’s what CSS is for.

Rule Four: The Home Page is the Most Important Page

Your home page is the key to your site being found by search engines. It should summarize the rest of the site, and give a clear, compelling reason for a user to look at the other pages in the site.

Rule Five: Links Have Meaning

Search engines pay a lot of attention to the links on your site, and the words used in those links. Never use “click here” or “see more” for a link. The link text should describe where the link will take the user, such as “more examples of CSS web design” or “learn how we can improve your SEO.”

The more relevant the links on a page, the more findable the page becomes. Don’t go overboard, and don’t link to anything irrelevant. If your page is focused on minimalist web design, a link to the Design MeltDown page on minimalism will boost your SEO. A link to a hilarious picture of a cat will not.

Rule Six: Title Tags for the Win

Every page in your site should have a title with the site name and a short description of the page. About 60 letters total. Include a keyword. Remember that the page title is what appears in search results, it should give users a clear reason to click on it.

Your navigation links should have title attributes that match the titles of your pages. This looks like <a title=”name of page” href=”link”>. It’s a small thing, but it will give you a significant SEO improvement.

Rule Seven: Alt Tags Matter

Every image on your site should have an alt tag. Especially images that are relevant to the page. If your page is focused on CSS tricks, labelling a screenshot “example of rounded CSS corners” will improve your page’s findability. Labelling it “screenshot” or “image” will do the opposite.

Rule Eight: Ignore Most Meta Tags

A long time ago meta tags were the secret to SEO. Those days are gone. The only meta tag that really matters now is the description tag. Search engines may use it to provide the text under the link to your page in their results. Make sure it describes the page in a way that explains why a user searching for your content would want to look at your page.

Rule Nine: Have a Site Map

Make sure you have a site map.This is an xml file that describes the structure of your page. Make one, and give it to Google.

Rule Ten: Design for Humans

Search engines are designed to find what humans want. That means the best way to make your site findable is to design it for humans. Your job as a designer is to solve a problem, not make art, prove a point, serve your ego or break a boundry. In this case, your problem is to provide your users with a site that is easy to use and full of what they’re looking for. If you can do that, the search engines will find you.

Fuente: Just Creative Design.

Eurodipity - 17 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)

2008-08-18T12:29:00.004+02:00

For years now, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites has been honed into a fine art with entire companies devoting considerable effort to defining best practices and touting the value of SEO for raising a site's performance on organic search listings. While I believe in the power of SEO, there is a new offering we have started providing to clients which we call Social Media Optimization (SMO). The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs. Here are 17 Eurodipity rules we use to help guide our thinking with conducting an SMO for a client's website:

Increase your linkability - This is the first and most important priority for websites. Many sites are "static" - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront. To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers and thought pieces, or even simply aggregating content that exists elsewhere into a useful format.
Make tagging and bookmarking easy - Adding content features like quick buttons to "add to del.icio.us" are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but we go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to tag a site), and making sure to tag our pages first on popular social bookmarking sites (including more than just the homepage).
Reward inbound links - Often used as a barometer for success of a blog (as well as a website), inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to recreating Similarly, listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you
Help your content travel - Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.
Encourage the mashup - In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason). YouTube's idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can imbed videos from their site has fueled their growth. Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your content.
Be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you
Add value to users, including outbound links to areas that could help them with their goals and purposes. Deployed corrected, even if you link to competitiors you stand to gain as the communities first source of information finding. How will this help SMO? Folks will link to your social site and tag is as helpful or the ‘ultimate’ guide in that space. As this adds up, it will become more and more relevent in search engine results.
Reward helpful and valuable users
Often helpful or popular users will be influencers and champions within your social site, devise ways to elevate them buy promoting their works on the homepage, or develope a rating system. Sometimes a quick email or note in private telling them you appreciate them can go a long way. Some folks have done that to me, and for communities I run, I do that as well. Only do if sincere. Perhaps this is not truly SMO, but it will help to keep the most valuable members of a community closer to your site.
Participate - Join the conversation. Social Media is a two way street, lets not forget that. By conversing with the community you are creating awareness and prolonging your buzz. You are keeping it going and this often results in a snowball effect. Participating helps your message spread further and faster.
Know how to target your audience - If you don't even know your target audience you are in trouble. I would love to have everyone using my product too, but you need to be realistic. There is always going to be a certain audience you can appeal to and others that you can't. So know your appeal and who it is appealing to.
Create content - There are certain kinds of content that just naturally spread socially. It does not matter what industry you are in and what boring products you sell, there is always some kind of content that can be created that will work. Whether it is creating widgets, making people laugh, or writing a whitepaper, it can be done. Know what type of content can work for you and create it.
Be real - The community does not reward fakers.
Don’t forget your roots, be humble: Sometimes it can be easy to get carried away being a BlogStar or industry talking head. Remember those who helped you along the way, and that respect will help all involved.
Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh: Social Media is changing and morphing by the minute, keep up on new tools, products and challenges in your social sphere.
Develop a SMO strategy - define your objectives and set goals. Be fully aware of what your desired outcome is as a result of performing these tactics. Reputation, sales, influence, credibility, charity, traffic/page views, etc.
Choose your SMO tactics wisely. Be cognizant of what actions will influence the desired outcome with the most impact.
Make SMO part of your process and best practices. As with good SEO, SMO tactics should become part of your organization’s best practices. Find ways to incorporate SMO tactics at the “template” level of document creation and as part of information distribution. Minor things like encouraging social bookmarks and rewarding incoming links as a standard practice across the organization can go a long way.
Don't be afraid to let go of a message or idea and let others own it.

There are many other "rules" and techniques that we are starting to uncover as this idea gets more sophisticated. In the meantime we are always on the lookout for new ideas in Social Media Optimization to encourage even better thinking. Perhaps we may even see the rise of entire groups or agencies devoted to SMO in the future ...

Fuente: Influential Marketing Blog.

Eurodipity - Social media optimization

2008-08-17T12:26:00.000+02:00

Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Eurodipity methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding a "Digg This" button, blogging and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogsphere and special blog search engines such as Technorati.

Fuente: Wikipedia.

Eurodipity - ¿El SEO ha muerto?

2008-08-16T12:17:00.000+02:00

Últimamente no hacemos más que leer que el SEO tradicional ha muerto y que debemos dar paso al SMO (Social Media Optimization), es decir, introducir a los clientes en la Web 2.0 y en las redes sociales. Y la verdad es que no terminamos de entender por qué no son compatibles ambos trabajos ya que el trabajo de SMO sin apoyarse sobre el SEO difícilmente va a dar resultados, y al contrario igual.

En Eurodipity pensamos que lo mejor es combinar ambos trabajos, tener una página web corporativa tradicional e incorporar un blog que nos permita realizar el trabajo de "socialización" (SMO). De hecho es la mejor forma de hacer que ambos trabajos funcionen.

¿Y tú qué piensas?

Eurodipity - Wikia Search

2008-08-15T14:00:00.003+02:00

Según parece Wikia Search ha abandonado la fase beta y está a pleno pulmón. La verdad es que nos gusta mucho, y cada día más, este nuevo concepto de buscador, no olvidemos que es un buscador social, donde los usuarios somos los que decimos lo que queremos ver y cómo lo queremos ver, por lo que ningún "Gran Hermano" o "Salvapatrias" nos dirá qué tenemos que ver y cómo lo tenemos que ver.

Desde luego Eurodipity siempre ha apostado, desde mucho antes de su nacimiento, por este nuevo buscador. Ya somos más de un millón las personas que contribuímos en él, y cada día tiene más páginas en español, ¿quién da más?

En Eurodipity pensamos que ésta puede ser la única alternativa real al Todopoderoso Google. Ya estamos hartos de los caprichos de Santa Google y de sus tonterías mañaneras.

Apoyemos todos a Wikia Search.

Eurodipity - 21 Rules for Performing SEO

2008-08-15T01:58:00.004+02:00

Every so often, an experienced SEO in our SEO Chat forums makes a post with the goal of answering most of the concerns of those who are new to search engine optimization. Since newbies often ask the same kinds of questions, this gives them one thread to turn to, and saves time and space. Here’s the lowdown from the most recent version of this thread.

This time the call was answered by “The Berg,” who explains that he has been designing websites for over 10 years, “reading about SEO for as long as it’s been a term,” but only really started to “take advantage of the possibilities in the last 5 years.” He approaches SEO by finding a small niche and dominating it. He readily admits that he might have done as well by building a less strong presence for a more profitable term, but his lessons resonate regardless of the path you choose to take to Eurodipity success.

The Berg’s first point raises the theme of patience that runs through all of his words. “SEO doesn’t come over night,” he explained. Since you’re going to be working on something for quite a while before you see success, you should choose to build your site around a subject about which you’re passionate. If you do it right, you’ll be doing it for a long time, so it really should be something you love.

The road to the top, in SEO as in other things, is rarely smooth. There are tons of variables that can cause your ranking on the search engine results pages to fluctuate, as The Berg explains in his second point. “With the millions of factors that may have caused your change, you most likely won’t be able to point it out anyway without controlled testing,” he noted. And he directly addresses the anxieties of new SEOs when he says, “If your site is less than 6 months old, expect fluctuations and concentrate on solidifying your niche instead of watching every keyword movement.”

On the other hand, you shouldn’t wait too long before you do something. Inaction can be as bad as taking too hasty action in The Berg’s book, as he makes clear in his third point. Overanalyzing, hesitation, and procrastination are an SEO’s worst enemies, he notes; as an antidote, he recommends that you “Take action and record the results.” As a side note, if you’re interested in how this kind of thing is done, there is an entire section of the SEO Chat forum devoted to doing SEO tests and experimentation.

So haste is an enemy of SEOs, but so is overanalyzing your results and procrastination. The Berg believes that it is best to take your time, and make efficient, productive use of it. This comes from practice and to some extent from reading about SEO. The Berg admits that he has learned about 70 percent of what he knows about SEO from reading about it and asking for advice in forums.

Time and Patience

With all this emphasis on patience, and the conflicting desire for quick results, it can be tempting to cut corners or use short cuts. Don’t do it. “Short cuts offer short-term results,” The Berg emphasized. That may be what you’re looking for, but many people want to gain enduring success, and short cuts won’t take you there.

So how do you win at SEO? That brings us to The Berg’s sixth point. “The best way to gain ranking in Google’s organic search results: Write intriguing, insightful, unique, quality content and then promote that material to induce natural linking from relevant quality websites,” he said. That is why, going back to his first point, you want to choose a topic about which you are passionate. It will bring out your best writing.

While there is no way around the idea of quality content, you have a lot of choices as to the topics on which you post – which means you don’t have to struggle against sites that seem to own the most general, common, desirable, and competitive keywords. “You can get just as much traffic from 100 noncompetitive keywords” as you can from “some single highly competitive keywords,” The Berg explains, reminding us not to forget the long tail.

In The Berg’s eighth and ninth points, he encourages us to keep our visitors in mind. And if that means linking to a quality website that is related to yours, so be it. There are advantages to doing so: “The link will only create more value to your page by offering relevant options. The loss in traffic will be compensated by the rank adjustment caused by the increased value” in your web page, he pointed out. And for the visitors clicking around your site, it behooves you to “Make it simple enough for a 6 year old to navigate through.” Somewhat tongue in cheek, he adds, “They’re your primary audience.”

Unique (?) Problems.

Next we turn to some of the special issues that newcomers to SEO face. One of the biggest revolves around the fact that the Internet is global, but its dominant language is still English (though that might not be true for much longer). As a result, many site builders who may not be skilled in English feel compelled to work in that language. Poor English skills can inflict native as well as non-native speakers. But they can wreak havoc on your web site.

Here I’m going to quote The Berg in full: “If your English is poor, build in your own language. At the very least, have your content written by someone fluent in the given language. Also, anyone writing copy needs to spell check and proofread for grammar. Nothing turns a web page from quality to garbage faster.” I’ve encountered a number of sites with quality content tainted by poor use of the language; speaking as a visitor, it’s difficult to get past it when I see it. And speaking as a writer and editor, yes, it’s work, but it’s not as difficult as you might think, and the rewards are more than worth the effort.

The Berg’s eleventh point was about assumptions. Many newcomers to SEO see Google behave a certain way and think they have it figured out. That’s how stories like the 30-position penalty get started. So, “Before releasing your unique brilliant findings about Google, do some research and save yourself some embarrassment,” The Berg advises.

Visitors, of course, are unique to every site; they can be tracked, and you can find ways to invite more of the same (or similar) to your site. The Berg suggests that you profile your target visitors. Know what they like and dislike, so you can make them welcome. “Make that door a little bit wider,” The Berg said.

While you spend your time building the best site you can and appealing to your target audience, The Berg advises that you stay away from “black hat techniques or anything that produces short-term positive changes.” As noted earlier, short cuts offer short-term results, and most of us are in this for the long haul. It’s like dieting; lasting results will only come from long term changes that take time to deliver their value.

That doesn’t mean you’re destined to face a long, lonely struggle with no rewards until you reach the top. “Fighting for a #1 position often unwittingly wins you other prizes along the way,” The Berg notes. You might find that you’ve become an acknowledged expert in your field, and others want to interview you. You’re likely to make friends who give you good advice. You will almost certainly acquire new and useful skills. You may even gain a whole new perspective on what is important to you, the field, the future; take your pick.

Nuts and Bolts.

The Berg finishes up by taking a long view of the “nuts and bolts” an SEO does every day to earn a good ranking in the SERPs. For example, he acknowledges that keywords in your domain do help your ranking, but that alone won’t get you to the top and keep you there. Where in the domain name www.google.com does it say “search the Internet”? “Building a brand is far more important in the long run,” The Berg points out.

Speaking of Google, The Berg recommends that you stick to Google guidelines; whether they say it or not, most other search engines follow similar rules. Citing one of the search engine’s controversial recommendations, he reflects that “Buying links for the sole purpose of increasing organic rank is a risk not worth losing your honest work over.”

Going against the grain for some SEOs, The Berg’s seventeenth recommendation is to “Stop spamming for link juice.” By this he means the use of blog comments, forum signatures and the like to entice traffic. In his opinion, “Even if it’s worth something, it’s not worth the time and effort that could just as easily be put into something positive like contributing valuable content and making the Internet richer.” This should always be your first priority, of course, but some SEOs believe that promotion through blog comments and such can be helpful when done properly.

Taking away blog comments, The Berg also takes away certain tools. He advises you to ignore the Google PagRank bar and Alexa stats, and to not try to find back links through Google. Why? “None of these things are truly accurate. They are either samplings or out of date at best,” he explains.

The Berg also takes on common conduct in forums. If you’re entering a forum for information, you should not expect everything to be given to you. If you want the answer to a general question, you should start by searching for it in the forum; it has probably already been answered three times at least. “Anyone not willing to do simple research on their own will not survive a career in SEO,” The Berg notes. “Besides, if you don’t know how to use the search tool, how do you expect to conquer it?”

Conversely, The Berg continues, whatever you need is right in front of you. All you have to do is search for it, and read – albeit with a grain of salt. It’s one of the joys of living in the Internet age.

The Berg concludes with the reassuring thought that even today, the Internet is still in its infancy. What does this mean? “Chances are very good that the site which holds #1 with your target keyword is run by a single guy sitting in his underwear in his mom’s basement,” he says, giving hope to all of us. “With a little creativity and some hard work, you can beat him while he’s playing D & D.” Good luck Eurodipity!

Fuente: SEOchat.

Eurodipity - Nailing the Coffin Shut on the "Don't Link to External Sites" Philosophy

2008-08-14T11:36:00.002+02:00

Rare is the month that goes by when the spectre of the none-too-solid argument for hoarding link PageRank and link juice doesn't rear its ugly head. And since I've just spent the last 5 hours on Q+A duty (as our beloved Q+A manager, Jane, is on vacation), and in need of a short punchy post, I'll make this brief.

Arguments against linking out to other sites:

If the original PageRank formula holds true, and no other algorithmic elements are in place to benefit sites and pages that link out, you could be costing yourself a small fraction of potential link juice.
Visitors might click those links and never come back to your site.

Eurodipity arguments for linking out to other sites:

You tend to get more links coming back in (evidence)
Your domain and pages appear in the referral analytics of other sites, inviting site owners (who are often very likely "linkerati") to check out your site
The search engines have at least looked into algorithms that reward external linking behavior (like HITS)
Karma - and not just the invisible, metaphysical kind - bloggers really do look at who links out and who doesn't and they tend to reward the more generous
In any type of "neighborhood" link analysis model, a site's outlinks can be used as a good predictor of a domain's relative trustworthiness
Readers and web visitors can derive value from the links you point to, and they can help to prop up the credibility & association of your own site. Note this research about memory association & repetition (and apply it to the marketing world rather than the political)
Sites that don't link out are extreme outliers on the web's link graph and thus, may fall more easily into negative classification schemes (particularly if they're run by overzealous, over-optimizing SEOs) :-)
Never linking out doesn't keep visitors on your site any longer, it simply means they'll jump away via the back button, bookmarks, a browser close, or a typed-in address
Pete has a few more good reasons on his post - Quit Hogging All The Links!

What do you think? Is there anyone who still practices the never (or rarely) link out philosophy?

Fuente: SEOmoz.

Eurodipity - Ya estamos en el Top 10

2008-08-13T20:19:00.002+02:00

Después de sufrir el destierro de WordPress y tener que empezar todo desde 0, después de rozar el Top 3 en España y en Europa, volvemos a las andadas. Ya estamos en el puesto 10 de búsqueda de la palabra Eurodipity en Google en España y en el puesto 12 y 13 en Europa. Recordemos que las búsquedas oficiales son: http://www.google.es/search?hl=en&q=eurodipity y http://www.google.ch/search?hl=en&q=eurodipity.

La verdad es que la alegría es inmensa ya que en esta ocasión no hemos realizado ningún tipo de intercambio de enlaces, para que luego digan que es algo imprescindible.

Gracias a todos los que estáis haciendo posible la magia.

Eurodipity - 30 one minute ways of optimising your website for more traffic and higher sales

2008-08-13T11:44:00.001+02:00

Business people often ignore many simple fixes for websites. Their sites don’t get found or scare away visitors who do land there. Web developers often underestimate the plethora of ways to tweak a website for more visitors and higher sales. SEO has been around for 10 years but still many sites fail to take advantage of most little fixes Google needs to assess a site and visitors need to get what they want.

This Eurodipity list of 30 really “quick and clean”, mostly one minute fixes will enable you to give Google plenty of these so called “signals” it needs as well as the clues your visitors need to find what they want and ideally also to buy. I assume that your site has already some keyword research done, some basic on-page SEO measures implemented and some backlinks gathered.

Titles

Add one more keyword to your title-tag if your site is already performing well in Google, substract one if your still a little weak in Google. Strong? Then follow this example: Before “SEO Blog”, after “SEM & SEO Blog”. Weak? The other way around.
Add an often searched modifier to your title, something like “cheap”, “affordable” or “London”, “Glasgow” or “shop”, “services”.
Remove your company name or shorten and move it to the end of the title. Wrong: John Doe Industries SEO Services Glasgow. Right: SEO Services Glasgow - J.Doe

Meta Tags

Repeat the keyword/keyphrase at the beginning of the meta description: If the title is “SEO Blog” then the meta description should be: SEO blog: The UK’s leading SEO blog offering global search marketing news about SEM, PPC and more.
Remove al other meta tags, they just clutter your code and make your “code to content ratio” look bad. Google ignores most, others are nice to have, not more.

Headlines

Add a h2 headline which is a sentence explaining your h1 headline. Example: h1 - “SEO Services Glasgow”, h2 - “We’re the first professional search engine optimisation company in Glasgow offering SEO services since 1995″.
Add a h3 headline with a teaser, something that kicks ass, example: “Seoptmise - The SEO blog that will kick your ass like Beckham”. It can be a longer one. Do not repeat keywords too often.

Page Elements

Change your menu item “shop” or “services” to something that reflects what you offer or sell, e.g “SEO services”.
Change your homepage link from “home” to “SEO Blog” or whatever your site or blog is about.
Add your address in the footer.
Create a big bold link or button with a “call to action” like “buy now!”, “subscribe here!” or “join now!”.
Add a large phone number in bold at the top of your page
Delete an element on your homepage you never click on other websites
Change the anchor text of a “more” link to the keyword the “more” page deals with

Backlinks and PageRank

SMS your mother/daughter/sister or father/son/brother and ask for a link to your site.
Link out to your favourite site on a topic similar to yours. Recommend it explicitly.
Add a sentence like this “Like us? Link us! SEO blog UK by SEOptimise”
Add a “permalink” link to your pages
Add the nofollow attribute to your “contact page” link.
Add a “Bookmark to Delicious” badge or button, Delicious bookmarks often automatically appear on blogs

Copywriting

Mention what you offer exactly on your site/page, use brands and exact product names
Mention where you offer it “SEO Services Manchester”
Mention why you offer it “We offer recycling solutions because we believe that clean business is profitable business”
Mention to whom you offer it: “Web hosting solutions for small business”
Make an unordered list which reflects the 3 most relevant topics of the page you’re tweaking and put it on top adding the words “this article deals with…”
Explain one key term the page e.g your homepage contains: SEO (Definition: search engine optimisation, the process of making websites more search and search user friendly)
Add 5 tags to your page by adding following text: “Tags: tag1, tag2, tag3, tag4, tag5″. In our case it would be probably: “Tags: SEO, optimisation, website, traffic, sales”
Replace your homepage images with smaller ones in byte size (below 50 kb) so that non-broadband users stick with you
Convince! Start the first or second sentence of your page with “We will make you number 1 in…” instead of solely describing “X offers…”
Add your name to the text: John, CEO of John Doe Industries. People trust people not companies.

This Eurodipity “quick and clean” fixes will help already tremendously. Many sites miss these opportunities. Do you want to spend more time than half an hour fixing your website to get more traffic and higher sales? Well check out this huge list of 5 minutes website improvements.

Fuente: SEOptimise.

Eurodipity - Google Keyczar

2008-08-13T11:17:00.002+02:00

Keyczar is an open source cryptographic toolkit designed to make it easier and safer for developers to use cryptography in their applications. Keyczar supports authentication and encryption with both symmetric and asymmetric keys. Some features of Keyczar include:

A simple API
Key rotation and versioning
Safe default algorithms, modes, and key lengths
Automated generation initialization vectors and ciphertext signatures
Java and Python implementations (C++ coming soon)
International support in Java (Python coming soon)

Eurodipity Keyczar is designed to be open, extensible, and cross-platform compatible. It is not intended to replace existing cryptographic libraries like OpenSSL, PyCrypto, or the Java JCE, and in fact is built on these libraries.

Eurodipity - Leaks in Patch for Web Security Hole

2008-08-12T00:32:00.000+02:00

Eurodipity: Faced with the discovery of a serious flaw in the Internet’s workings, computer network administrators around the world have been rushing to fix their systems with a cobbled-together patch. Now it appears that the patch has some gaping holes.

On Friday, a Russian physicist demonstrated that the emergency fix to the basic Internet address system, known as the Domain Name System, is vulnerable and will almost certainly be exploited by criminals.

The flaw could allow Internet traffic to be secretly redirected so thieves could, for example, hijack a bank’s Web address and collect customer passwords.

In a posting on his blog, the physicist, Evgeniy Polyakov, wrote that he had fooled the software that serves as the Internet’s telephone book into returning an incorrect address in just 10 hours, using two standard desktop computers and a high-speed network link. Internet experts who reviewed the posting said the approach appeared to be effective.

The basic vulnerability of the network has become a heated controversy since Dan Kaminsky, a Seattle-based researcher at the security firm IOActive, quietly notified a number of companies that distribute Internet addressing software earlier this year.

On Wednesday, Mr. Kaminsky described the vulnerability to a packed room at a technical conference in Las Vegas. He said that it could affect not just the Web but also other services like e-mail.

The general risk of such a flaw had been known for some years within the insular Internet technical community. But in the last month security engineers have repeatedly stated that it is only a matter of time before financial organizations and others are attacked by computer criminals seeking to exploit the now-public flaw. One expert says this is happening now.

“We have already been seeing attacks in the wild for the past two weeks,” said Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit technical organization. Some of the initial attacks focused on distributing malicious software, he said, and more recently there has been evidence of so-called phishing attacks aimed at stealing personal information.

It is now almost certain that there will be an escalating number of attacks, Mr. Woodcock said. Before the patch, which has now been distributed to more than three-quarters of the affected servers in the world, it would have taken as little as one second to insert false information into the address database. Now, even with the patch, attacks will be possible in a matter of minutes or hours, he said.

Mr. Polyakov carried out his attack using two fast computers, but the same attack could be carried out more quickly. There is now an intense debate over how to find a more permanent fix for the system’s weaknesses.

“We’ve bought some time,” said Paul Mockapetris, the software engineer who devised the original D.N.S. system and is now chairman of Nominum, a firm that makes a version of the D.N.S. software that is not vulnerable to the current flaw. Mr. Mockapetris described the patch that is now being put in place as the equivalent of “playing Russian roulette with a gun that has 100 bullet chambers instead of six.”

“The point,” he said, “should be to take the gun out of people’s hands.”

The root of the problem lies in the fact that the address system, which was invented in 1983, was not meant for services like electronic banking that require strict verification of identity.

“They are relying on infrastructure that was not intended to do what people assume it does,” said Clifford Neuman, director of the Center for Computer Systems Security at the University of Southern California. “What makes this so frustrating is that no one has been listening to what we have been saying for the past 17 years.”

A number of Internet security engineers point out that if a solution is found for the deeper problem of identity and authentication on the Internet, it will go a long way toward stopping many of the identity-related crimes that are now commonplace.

Some experts are proposing an encryption-based solution known as DNSSEC. It would give Web users high confidence that the Internet address they are being sent to is correct.

So far several governments, including Sweden and Puerto Rico, have adopted DNSSEC, and the United States government is likely to deploy the system for its .gov domain this year.

“DNSSEC is not an overnight solution for the Kaminsky problem, but it’s the right solution in the long run,” said Richard Lamb, a technical expert at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit organization that oversees Internet security and stability.

Others remain skeptical that the more secure approach is practical for the wider commercial Internet, because it requires more computing power and because it would be hard to get the whole world to adopt it.

One technical expert, Daniel J. Bernstein, a University of Illinois mathematician who has also developed a version of D.N.S. that does not suffer from the current flaw, said DNSSEC “offers a surprisingly low level of security, while at the same time introducing performance and reliability problems.”

Fuente: The New York Times.

Eurodipity - The Pirate Bay Blocked in Italy

2008-08-11T21:48:00.002+02:00

Fascist state censors Pirate Bay

Eurodipity, we're quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech. A lot of smaller nations that have dictators decide to block our site since we can help spread information that could be harmful to the dictators.

This time it's Italy. They suffer from a really bad background as one of the IFPIs was formed in Italy during the fascist years and now they have a fascist leader in the country, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi is also the most powerful person in Italian media owning a lot of companies that compete with The Pirate Bay and he would like to stay that way - so one of his lackeys, Giancarlo Mancusi, ordered a shutdown of our domain name and IP in Italy to make it hard to not support Berlusconis empire.

We have had fights previously in Italy, recently with our successful art installation where we had to storm Fortezza in order to get our art done. And as usual, we won. We will also win this time.

We have already changed IP for the website - that makes it work for half the ISPs again. And we want you all to inform your italian friends to switch their DNS to OpenDNS so they can bypass their ISPs filters. This will also let them bypass the other filters installed by the Italian government, as a bonus. And for the meanwhile - http://labaia.org works (La Baia means The Bay in Italian).

And please, everybody should also contact their ISP and tell them that this is not OK and that the ISPs should appeal. We don't want a censored internet! And the war starts here...

Fuente: The Pirate Bay.

Eurodipity - .htaccess ese gran amigo

2008-08-10T11:50:00.003+02:00

¿Eurodipity, qué sería de los SEO y de los diseñadores y programadores web sin el archivo .htaccess? La verdad es que la vida sería mucho más difícil en general para todos ellos. Gracias a este pequeño archivo oculto que se aloja en los servidores APACHE del sistema GNU/Linux conseguimos hacer multitud de cosas. En Eurodipity lo usamos generalmente para:

Redireccionar extensiones. por ejemplo extensiones .php a .htm.
Convertir URL's dinámicas en URL's estáticas.

Estas dos funciones son las más conocidas y usadas. Se consiguen gracias a RewriteEngine y RewriteRule, pero existen otras funciones menos conocidas pero igualmente útiles:

Añadir encabezado de expiración. Por ejemplo:

<FilesMatch "\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">

Header set Expires "Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:00:00 GMT"

</FilesMatch>

Añadir compresión al vuelo:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>

<FilesMatch "\.(js|css|php|htm|jpg|png)$">

SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

</FilesMatch>

</IfModule>

Añadir caché:

<IfModule mod_headers.c>

# MOUTH

<FilesMatch "\.(flv|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|ico|swf)$">

Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2419200, public, must-revalidate"

</FilesMatch>

# WEEK

<FilesMatch "\.(js|css|pdf|txt)$">

Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, must-revalidate"

</FilesMatch>

# 10 MIN

<FilesMatch "\.(html|htm)$">

Header set Cache-Control "max-age=600, must-revalidate"

</FilesMatch>

# NONE

<FilesMatch "\.(pl|php|cgi|spl)$">

Header unset Cache-Control

Header unset Expires

Header unset Last-Modified

FileETag None

Header unset Pragma

</FilesMatch>

</IfModule>

Eliminar eTags:

Header unset ETag
FileETag None

Gracias a estas pequeñas líneas conseguiremos reducir considerablemente el tiempo de carga de nuestros sitios web y mejoraremos considerablemente el tiempo de respuesta del mismo tanto en la primera carga como en las restantes gracias al uso de la caché y las etiquetas de expiración.

Desde Eurodipity esperamos que os resulte útil este pequeño tutorial, así que copia y pega todo lo que quieras y úsalo en tus trabajos. En cuanto al primer punto no entro en detalles ya que encontraréis toda la documentación que queráis en Google.

Eurodipity - WordPress 2.7

2008-08-09T11:51:00.001+02:00

Here is a Eurodipity list of features that will be introduced into WordPress 2.7:

Comments API – This according to me is the most exciting feature, it will allow developers to create offline integration of comments management, where users could use desktop clients to manage comments (moderate, edit, reply, delete, spam, unspam).
Keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation – This feature will help users to quickly moderate comments using keyboard shortucts, so you can expect key combinations like Ctrl + S to spam a comment, Ctrl + A to approve and so on.
Theme Update API – WordPress 2.5 and above have really made plugin management quite easy, you automatically receive notices when a new update to a plugin is available and can upgrade it without having to manually upload it to your FTP server. With this addition WordPress aims to bridge the gap between theme developers and the users for publishing updates to themes.
One Click Plugin Installs – Installing a plugin will be much easier with One click plugin installs. A plugin with similar features called One Click Plugin was the winner of the Plugin Competition last year.
WordPress core updates – This is a feature many users have been waiting for, with core updates you can easily upgrade your WordPress versions. The WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin performs the same task.
Default Sitemaps – WordPress 2.7 will include a default sitemap creator, which will create Google XML sitemaps for your blog. Google Sitemaps Generator plugin is the best option available right now for creating XML sitemaps.
Admin Panel Comment Replies - This plugin will help administrators to reply to comments using the admin panel. There are several plugins which allow you to do so right now, including WP AJax Edit Comments, Better Comments Manager and Absolute Comments.
Comment Threading – This feature will allow users to reply to other commentators in a threaded manner, where replied comments will display below the actual comment, WordPress already has the ability to scale to accomodate threaded comments, without requiring database changes. Brian’s Threaded Comments is a does the job of allowing users to reply to comments.
Subscribe to Comments – The WordPress team is also planning to include a option to allow commentators to subscribe to follow up comments, but this is marked as a question, so it may not actully make it into WordPress 2.7. The Subscribe to Comments plugin does the job to notify commentators on follow up comments.
Widgets for Dashboard and Write Box – This feature will allow users to re-arrange the widgets on the dashboard and write page to suit their preferences.
Batch Editing of Posts – This feature will allow users to batch edit their posts. Though there is not much information available about this right now, and I could not really find more from my research on the topic.

Fuente: Weblog Tools Collection.

Eurodipity - KISS SEO

2008-08-09T11:28:00.002+02:00

When Eurodipity performing SEO its best to first implement the KISS strategy, Keep It Simple S…..

Forget about the old school keyword density equations, being completely W3C compliant, creating X amount of content, pages or acquiring X amount of links.

KISS SEO would include, but not limited to:

Unique TITLE tag for each page that includes your page’s targetted keyword(s) plus the benefit followed by Company/Site name.

Unique META Description tag for each page that should be used to enforce the page’s usefulness and be the marketing pitch to the visitor.

A CSS styled H1 tag centered around the page’s main keyword(s) focus - as a side note when I spoke with Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced he said Google doesn’t weigh the H1 tag any heavier than an H2 or H4, but it shouldn’t be used more than once.

Content that is both informative, unique, and useful by fulfilling a need of your target audience.

URLs in a non-dynamic descriptive format.

A flat site structure with breadcrumb links.

Absolute internal linking.

An html user friendly site map plus the backup parachute of a sitemap.xml file.

Robots.txt file blocking any duplicate content (print pages, etc).

Using 301 sever side redirects to consolidate similar pages and domain changes, including canocalization such as www vs non-www.

SEO can be boiled down to simply good organization of your site’s code and assets plus acquiring quality links natuarally via useful interesting content.

If this were Gene Simmon’s KISS SEO then it would be keyword heavy toward the ASSets.

Fuente: Graywolf's SEO Blog.

Eurodipity - Unit PNG Fix

2008-08-08T10:43:00.003+02:00

Eurodipity give it just the tiniest dose of Unit PNG Fix and bask in the the glorious phosphoresence of your png images once again!

Very compact javascript: Under 1kb!
Fixes some interactivity problems caused by IE’s filter attribute.
Works on img objects and background-image attributes.
Runs automatically. You don’t have to define classes or call functions.
Allows for auto width and auto height elements.
Super simple to deploy.

Only add the following code to your header:

Download.

Eurodipity - Clarified Networks Kaminsky DNS repair visualisation

2008-08-08T10:16:00.002+02:00

Red — Unpatched
Yellow — Patched, but the NAT is screwing things up
Green — OK

Thanks Dan Kaminsky from Eurodipity.

Eurodipity - Diagnostic Checklist

2008-08-07T10:45:00.002+02:00

Search Discoverability Diagnostic Checklist

Initial discoverability assessment
- Is site #1 for search of brand/domain name?
- Does the site rank for desired queries? [keyword research data]
- How much traffic does the site get from search? [web analytics data]
- How much non-branded traffic does the site get from search? [web analytics data]
URL structure
- Descriptive URLs
- No excessive parameters
- No non-standard parameters (for instance, beginning with "http")
On-page assessment
- Title and meta descrition editable outside the code
  - Title tag on every page
  - Unique title tags
  - Meta descriptions on every page
  - Unique meta descriptions
- H1 tag on every page
- Page templates use semantic HTML
- ALT text on images
- <meta name="robots" content="noodpt"> to prevent DMOZ titles and description
- Keywords in copy
- Keywords in internal links
- One optimized page per keyword
- Does not found page return an HTTP 200 or 404?
External link assessment
- External links describe site
- Links from authoritative sites?
- Large number of relevant links

Fuente: Jane and robot.

Eurodipity - Obejtivos de un profesional SEO

2008-08-07T10:15:00.004+02:00

Eurodipity ha leído hoy un pequeño artículo (pensamiento) en SEO Charlie que se preguntaba sobre cual debería ser el objetivo principal de un "profesional" SEO, y la verdad es que no hemos resistido la tentación de contestarle. Charlie propone, en orden de prioridad 5 puntos:

Obtener Google PageRank (barrita verde)
Comprar enlaces en sitios “reconocidos”
Vender sus propios enlaces
Ser “popular” a nivel personal
Posicionar Sitios Web

Y Eurodipity le ha contestado: "Mucho me temo que prácticamente ninguno de los puntos reflejados en tu artículo entran en mis prioridades como SEO.

Al PR le doy valor 0, que tienes más de 3 bueno, pero no es prioritario.
Comprar enlaces, nunca lo he hecho y no entra dentro de mis planes.
Vender enlaces, tampoco lo he hecho ni entra en mis planes futuros.
Ser “popular”, no me interesa.
Posicionar sitios web, si entendemos por posicionar utilizar técnicas SEO Friendly para colocar el sitio web en los 30 primeros puestos de búsqueda de determinadas palabras clave utilizando para ello exclusivamente las referidas técnicas SEO bajo código normalizado, accesible y usable, entonces soy culpable. En caso contrario no me considero SEO, sólo optimizador de código para mejorar su posicionamiento "

¿Y tú qué opinas?

Eurodipity - Nueva herramienta SEO de google

2008-08-06T21:27:00.004+02:00

Hoy en Eurodipity hemos descubierto una nueva herramienta SEO de la mano de google. El invento se llama Google Insights for Search y en realidad no es nada nuevo, simplemente es una mezcla de Google Trends y Google AdWords: Herramienta para palabras clave.

La ventaja de este "nuevo" sistema radica en que nos indica el nivel de búsqueda de una palabra clave por países y el volumen de búsqueda de otras palabras clave relacionadas. Veremos en qué queda este nuevo invento, que de momento se haya en fase beta.

¿Realmente nos será tan útil a los SEO a la hora de plantear una campaña de posicionamiento web? Nosotros, en Eurodipity de momento pensamos que si.

Eurodipity - A vueltas con la accesibilidad y la usabilidad

2008-08-05T13:00:00.004+02:00

Artículo movido a http://blog.artprojectgroup.com/

Eurodipity - SEO Tecniques

2008-08-04T19:30:00.001+02:00

So you want Your website to be on the first page of every Search Engine - Eurodipity will help You get there! The Techniques on this page will enpower You with the information that will move You towards that goal. Set Your aim high, the sky is the limit! Others have done it, so why can't You -- Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is really quite simple!

If You have been putting off optimizing Your website for a higher Search Engine results position, today is a good day to make Your start. Eurodipity will make it much easier that You expected!

The following list of SEO Techniques will help you optimize your website so you will get a higher Search Engine Results Position (SERP). Some of the items can be done quickly -- others will take a bit of time.

If you complete all the items on the following list of SEO Techniques, give the Search Engines some time to send out their bots to deep crawl your website, your site traffic will increase. Make sure you are ready for it!

Search Engine Optimization -- What is it?

Optimizing your website so you will obtain a high search engine results position is what SEO Techniques is all about. It is reported that 65% of all websites visited start with a search from a search engine.

For people to find your site via a search engine, the site will require a high Search Engine Results Position (SERP). This means when they search keywords phrases like SEO techniques, they will find you site page on the first page of the search engine results. Ending up on the 10 page of the search engines results will not get you any traffic.

Getting a high SERP is a combination of a number of things. Leaving out any of the items on the following list of SEO Techniques can result in your page not getting as high a search engine results position as it could.

The SEO List

There are no tricks here, just a bit of work and some time. So let's get started by reading the following list of SEO Techniques!

Domain & File Names:
Choose your site domain name that contains words from your primary keyword phrase. Your domain name should also be easy to spell and easy to remember. You keyword phrase also should in many cases go in your file name. Read this thread Keywords in the URL from SEO Chat Forum.
For example I use the file name seo-techniques.html for this page.
Keyword Phrases:
1. Use keywords that are being searched for. You can check your keyword phrases with either the Search Term Suggestion Tool or the Overture Keyword Popularity Tool to find out how often they are being searched. You can also look at Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions for suggestions for different keyword phrases.
2. Add keyword synonyms to your content.
3. Put the keyword phrases in the <title>keyword phrase</title>.
4. Insert the keyword phrases in a
  keyword phrase
  tag at the beginning of your page. Keyword synonyms should be put in your h2 & h3 tags. The h1, h2, h3 tags are used for titles and subtitles in articles.
5. Make sure you use your keyword phrases from the page you are linking to, in your anchor text on the site map. i.e. SEO Techniques.
Keyword Density:
Keyword density is a very important part of search engine optimization. Keyword density is the percent that your keyword or keyword phrase are of your web page text. You may want to look that your competition to see what keyword density they are using. To high a keyword density will be considered search engine spam and can get you blacklisted.
Your keywords should be toward the top of your page and your keyword phrase be in either every paragraph or every second paragraph depending on your paragraph length.
Bad Techniques:
Bad search engine optimization techniques can get you blacklisted from a search engine. Some techniques that are considered spam are cloaking, invisible text, tiny text, identical pages, doorway pages, refresh tags, link farms, filling comment tags with keyword phrases only, keyword phrases in the author tag, keyword density to high, mirror pages and mirror sites.
While these techniques might work to give you a higher ranking for short time in the long run they will hurt you.
Google has a good article on Google information for webmasters that is very imformative if you are considering Getting a SEO Company to so work on your website.
Title & Meta Description Tag:
Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed the title is the first thing people see.
Below the title is a description which will be either be taken from your meta name description content="Description phrase" or from the first sentence on at page. You description should also have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning as so should your first sentence. You should have a different title, description and first sentence on each page. You many also what to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance. Also you can consider putting your domain name at the very end of the title.
Meta Keywords Tag:
The meta keywords tag is not as relevant as it used to be and some say Google doesn't ever look at it anymore, but put it in anyway. It is as follows, <meta
name="keywords" content="keywords,go,here" /> and put in it all your keywords and keyword phrases. This tag should be different for each page.
Author & Robots Tags:
The Author Tag should contain the name of the company that owns the site. This tag will help you get a #1 position for your company's name.
<meta name="author" content="Solutions with Service">
Use a generic Robots Tag on all pages that you want indexed. This instructs the robots to crawl the page. The following is the generic robots tag.
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
Quality Content:
Quality content will bring people back and as people always want to tell others about a good thing it will get you forward links from other sites. Your content should be written with your keyword phrases in mind
Quantity Content:
The more the better. Just remember your content will need to be both quantity and quality.
Changing Content:
You can do this by hand or with a script. For example you can have a php script that draws five paragraphs from a pool of twenty paragraphs when the content is different each time the php page is accessed.
www.carsinlondon.com/used-cars-london-ontario.php shows a sample of php script that will do this.
Avoid Dynamic URLs:
Are you pages via php, asp, or cf? Some search engines may have a problem indexing them. Create static pages whenever possible. Avoid symbols in your URLs like the "?" that you will often find in php, asp or cf pages.
Static pages are the best but if you have a db driven site, make sure the menu and site map like go to inventory.cfm not inventory.cfm?vn=0 .
Frames:
Many search engines can't follow frame links. Make sure you provide an alternative method for the search engines to enter and index your site. For more information read Search Engines and Frames.
Site Map:
A good menu system is really a site map. A well constructed menu system that is on each page and contains a link to very page on the website is all you need.
Site Themes:
All of the top 3 search engines look for site themes or a common topic when they crawl a website. If your site is about one specific topic you will rank better than if you have more than one theme or topic on your site. By using similar keyword phrases in each page the search engines will detect a theme this will be to your advantage.
Site Design:
You may think, what does site design have to with search engine optimization. Well if your website has a bad color scheme that is hard to read, is not organized, is a cheesy looking site, then all your site optimization has been a waste of time. Make your site attractive to the viewer, make things easy to find, have you graphic header and menu bar the same place on each page.
These things will keep your visitors on the site and bring them back. A well optimized site with a high search engine results position that is ugly and is hard find information on, will not keep the visitors your optimization has brought to the site.
Use W3C Link Checker to make sure all your page links are good. If you have broken links on your site this can effect the ranking you are given.
Put a proper doctype on each page. If you don't have a proper doctype on each page Internet Exployer will go into quirks mode and display it different.
Use The W3C Markup Validate Service to verify that your pages are Validate HTML or XHTML code. The W3C validation will verify that your HTML or XHTML is not broken. This validation show you any broken code that could cause your webpages from displaying properly in all the different browsers and browser versions.
Separate Content & Presentation:
Put all your presentation code into Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). This separates the presentation from the content and makes your html files up to 50% smaller. It is reported that the search engine bots prefer this and the more content you have compared to presentation in your file, the better you get rated. Read why tables for markup are stupid for an overview.
Robots.txt File:
While this file is not really required it should be included so that the search engine bots don't get 404 errors when they look for it. Just include the following 2 lines and drop it in the root.
User-agent: *
Disallow:

Fuente: SEO Company.

Eurodipity - Ahora sí vamos bien

2008-08-03T11:41:00.003+02:00

Eurodipity ya está en el puesto 55 tanto en google España, como en google Suiza, mientras que el antiguo dominio de WordPress se ha hundido en los últimos puestos, aún así ha aguantado casi dos semanas entre los 100 primeros.

Todo indica que seguiremos subiendo y ya no habrá más fluctuaciones hacia arriba y hacia abajo, o al menos eso esperamos, y creemos que a lo largo de esta misma semana nos colocaremos entre los 30 primeros puestos.

Para ello seguiremos como siempre publicando artículos todos los días y mantendremos la temática, SEO.

Os mantendremos informados, como siempre.

Eurodipity - 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

2008-08-03T02:56:00.001+02:00

A considerable portion of my consulting time has recently revolved around the optmization of corporate blogs (or the addition of blogs to revamped sites). As usual, I find a pattern emerging in the strategies that need attention and the pitfalls that must be avoided. So, rather than charging $400 an hour to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here on the blog (business part of Rand fights with open source Rand, but loses, as usual).

Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)
The right blog CMS makes a big difference. If you want to set yourself apart, I recommend creating a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users. In most cases, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad will suffice, but building from scratch allows you to be very creative with functionality and formatting. The best CMS is something that's easy for the writer(s) to use and brings together the features that allow the blog to flourish. Think about how you want comments, archiving, sub-pages, categorization, multiple feeds and user accounts to operate in order to narrow down your choices. OpenSourceCMS is a very good tool to help you select a software if you go that route.
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Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain
Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot. From worst to best, your options are - Hosted (on a solution like Blogspot or Wordpress), on a unique domain (at least you can 301 it in the future), on a subdomain (these can be treated as unique from the primary domain by the engines) and as a sub-section of the primary domain (in a subfolder or page - this is the best solution).
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Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind
First and foremost, you're writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. A great way to do this is to write the post and the title first, then run a few searches at Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see if there is a phrasing or ordering that can better help you to target "searched for" terms.
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Participate at Related Forums & Blogs
Whatever industry or niche you're in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that's already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention. A great way to find out who these people are is to use Technorati to conduct searches, then sort by number of links (authority). Del.icio.us tags are also very useful in this process, as are straight searches at the engines (Ask.com's blog search in particular is of very good quality).
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Tag Your Content
Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. I actually recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you're targeting. There are other good places to ping - del.icio.us and Flickr being the two most obvious (the only other one is Blogmarks, which is much smaller). Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a "bump" towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon (which requires that you download the toolbar, but trust me - it's worth it). You DO NOT want to submit every post to these sites, but that one out of twenty (see tactic #18) is worth your while.
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Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)
There's something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there's an easy solution - don't offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity. Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site (and thus, its worth), so play to your strengths and keep your obscurity private.
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Don't Jump on the Bandwagon
Some memes are worthy of being talked about by every blogger in the space, but most aren't. Just because there's huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they're already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related).
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Link Intelligently
When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide. Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there's a fine line between overlinking and underlinking. The best advice I can give is to think of the post from the standpoint of a relatively uninformed reader. If you mention Wikipedia, everyone is familar and no link is required. If you mention a specific page at Wikipedia, a link is necessary and important. Also, be aware that quoting other bloggers or online sources (or even discussing their ideas) without linking to them is considered bad etitquette and can earn you scorn that could cost you links from those sources in the future. It's almost always better to be over-generous with links than under-generous. And link condoms? Only use them when you're linking to something you find truly distasteful or have serious apprehension about.
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Invite Guest Bloggers
Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowedging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers. Just be sure that you really are getting a quality post from someone that's as close to universally popular and admired as possible (unless you want to start playing the drama linkbait game, which I personally abhor). If you're already somewhat popular, it can often be valuable to look outside your space and bring in guest authors who have a very unique angle or subject matter to help spice up your focus. One note about guest bloggers - make sure they agree to have their work edited by you before it's posted. A disagreement on this subject after the fact can have negative ramifications.
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Eschew Advertising (Until You're Popular)
I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That's not to say that contextual advertising can't work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don't get me wrong - it's unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you'll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don't. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they're sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don't want that limitation while you're still trying to get established.
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Go Beyond Text in Your Posts
Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occassional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs. Even if you're having a tough time with non-text content, think about how you can format the text using blockquotes, indentation, bulllet points, etc. to create a more visually appealing and digestable block of content.
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Cover Topics that Need Attention
In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it's particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.
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Pay Attention to Your Analytics
Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don't get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies. Feedburner is great for RSS and I'm a personal fan of Indextools. Consider adding action tracking to your blog, so you can see what sources of traffic are bringing the best quality visitors (in terms of time spent on the site, # of page views, etc). I particularly like having the "register" link tagged for analytics so I can see what percentage of visitors from each source is interested enough to want to leave a comment or create an account.
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Use a Human Voice
Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it's most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you'll be in a good position to succeed. It's also critical that you maintain a level of humility in your blogging and stick to your roots. When users start to feel that a blog is taking itself too seriously or losing the characteristics that made it unique, they start to seek new places for content. We've certainly made mistakes (even recently) that have cost us some fans - be cautious to control not only what you say, but how you say it. Lastly - if there's a hot button issue that has you posting emotionally, temper it by letting the post sit in draft mode for an hour or two, re-reading it and considering any revisions. With the advent of feeds, once you publish, there's no going back.
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Archive Effectively
The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a "noindex" in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.
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Implement Smart URLs
The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you'll find on the page. I don't like the 10 hyphen, lengthy blog titles that are the byproduct of many CMS plugins, but they are certainly better than any dynamic parameters in the URL. Yes - I know I'm not walking the talk here, and hopefully it's something we can fix in the near future. To those who say that one dynamic parameter in the URL doesn't hurt, I'd take issue - just re-writing a ?ID=450 to /450 has improved search traffic considerably on several blogs we've worked with.
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Reveal as Much as Possible
The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that's usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit. Make a decision about what's off-limits and how far you can go and then push right up to that limit in order to see the best possible effects. Your community will reward you with links and traffic.
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Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait
Not every post is worthy of making it to the top of Digg, Del.icio.us/popular or even a mention at some other blogs in your space. Trying to over-market every post you write will result in pushback and ultimately lead to negative opinions about your efforts. The less popular your blog is, the harder it will be to build excitement around a post, but the process of linkbait has always been trial and error - build, test, refine and re-build. Keep creating great ideas and bolstering them with lots of solid, everyday content and you'll eventually be big enough to where one out of every 20-40 posts really does become linkbait.
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Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days
If you do have linkbait, whether by design or by accident, make sure to capitalize. When you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer, your depth of understanding and let visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait "bump" faster than a blog whose content doesn't update for 48 hours after they've received a huge influx of visitors.
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Create Expectations and Fulfill Them
When you're writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who've come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don't ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic. That's not to say you can't take a vacation, but you need to schedule it wisely and be prepared to lose RSS subscribers and regulars. It's not fair, but it's the truth. We lose visitors every time I attend an SES conference and drop to one post every two days (note - guest bloggers and time-release posts can help here, too).
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Build a Brand
Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member. Exclusivity, insider jokes, emails with regulars, the occassional cat post and references to your previous experiences can be offputting for new readers, but they're solid gold for keeping your loyal base feeling good about their brand experience with you. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it's very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you're building a new blog, or building a low-traffic one, I highly recommend writing down the goals of your brand and the attributes of its identity to help remind you as you write.

Best of luck from Eurodipity to all you bloggers out there. It's an increasingly crowded field to play in, but these strategies should help to give you an edge over the competition. As always, if you've got additions or disagreements, I'd love to hear them.

p.s. Note to self - starting long blog entries at 11:30pm is not conducive to a good night's sleep. At least Angela got kicked off Project Runway tonight.

Fuente: SEOmoz.

Eurodipity - URL's amigables

2008-08-02T02:43:00.001+02:00

Este es un artículo símplemente perfecto que viene directamente de SEO Profesional. 100% recomendado por Eurodipity:

URLs amigables

¿Qué son las URLs amigables?

Para entender qué es una URL amigable o “friendly URL”, lo más sencillo es entender primero qué es una URL sucia o compleja o una “dirty URL”. Hoy en día existen una gran cantidad de sitios web con contenido dinámico y que usan bases de datos, con lo cual es necesario de alguna manera enviar información de una página a otra para poder construir correctamente las páginas. Esta información es enviada al final de la URL como parámetros (después de un signo de interrogación – método GET). Este método es muy útil para la programación ya que una sola página dinámica puede mostrar diferente información según los parámetros enviados por la URL. Por ejemplo, cuando en google realizamos una consulta para buscar “empresa posicionamiento web” la URL que pone google es la siguiente:

http://www.google.es/search?source=ig&hl=es&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ESES273&=&q=empresa+posicionamiento+buscadores&btnG=Buscar+con+Google&meta=

A veces no hace falta ni siquiera que haya contenido dinámico para que las URLs no sean amigables, sino que el programador, o por desconocimiento del concepto de URL amigable o por dejadez en la programación utiliza URLs que no dicen absolutamente nada:

http://www.mi-sitio.com/conv/arg-m_s.html

Entonces llegamos a la conclusión de que una URL sucia es una URL difícil de escribir, de recordar y de conservar.

Pero, ¿esto supone un problema? La respuesta es depende, más adelante contestaremos a esta pregunta.

Bien, ¿entonces, qué es una URL amigable? Las URLs amigables son URLs descriptivas del contenido de la página, es decir, son URL que dicen algo sobre el contenido que se está visualizando en el navegador entre otras características. Pongamos un ejemplo muy simple:

http://www.misitio.com/contactar.html

Características de las URLs amigables

Son fáciles de adivinar y son descriptivas del contenido.

http://www.misitio.com/contactar

Muestran la estructura del sitio.

http://www.misitio.com/contactar/administrador

http://www.misitio.com/contactar/comercial

Son fáciles de comunicar verbalmente en persona o por teléfono.
Son suficientemente cortas para copiar en un correo electrónico o documento sin que haya que realizar un cambio de línea (60 caracteres o menos).
Son estéticas para poner en catálogos, folletos y otros documentos.
Son fáciles de recordar.
Son fáciles de escribir.
Promueven la usabilidad evitando ser largas y complejas.
Evitan los espacios en blanco en los nombres de archivos y carpetas. Por ejemplo, un nombre de archivo como “especificaciones de producto.html”, provocaría una URL como “especificaciones %20de%20producto.html”.
Evitan los signos de puntuación en nombres de archivo y carpetas, como por ejemplo el signo “&”, la arroba (@), el porcentaje (%) o el guión bajo (“_”): especificaciones_de_producto.html. El guión bajo normalmente es difícil de comunicar y de escribir y este tipo de nombres normalmente denotan estructuras de Web mal diseñadas. En caso de ser requeridos nombres de este tipo recomendamos usar el guión, por ejemplo especificaciones-producto.html, ya que google lo entenderá como un cambio de palabra.
Todas las letras que las componen son minúsculas. Puedes pensar que la mejor opción del caso anterior es la de poner EspecificacionesDeProducto.html, pero esto es un gran error ya que muchos servidores son sensibles a las mayúsculas y a las minúsculas y si un usuario pone especificacionesdeproducto.html cuando el nombre del fichero es EspecificacionesDeProducto.html el servidor retornará un error.
Evitan, siempre y cuando sea posible, introducir variables al final de la URL ya que en algunas ocasiones URLs del tipo www.misitio.com/noticias.php?id=5 son resultado de un uso de las páginas dinámicas inapropiado.
Evitan tecnicismos de programación, por ejemplo en vez de poner los estilos en la carpeta css/ ponerlo en la carpeta styles/ o estilos/ y en vez de javascript/ usa /scripts.
Los dominios pueden ser accesibles con o sin las tres w.

http://www.misitio.com

http://misitio.com

Los dominios son accesibles incluso cuando existe algún error de escritura por parte del usuario. Son muy comunes los errores a la hora de escribir, como por ejemplo al ir deprisa en vez de escribir video.google.es, escribir vido.google.es. Personalizar la página de error 404 ayudará al usuario a saber que ha llegado a la web solo que se ha equivocado al escribir la URL. Un buscador en la página de error 404 le ayudará a encontrar la página que buscaba. Además, si los usuarios se equivocan frecuentemente al escribir su dominio, puede ser conveniente comprar los dominios que coinciden con los errores más comunes (E.j. gogle.com).
Los dominios son accesibles en diferentes TLD (dominio de nivel superior). Es muy común en España no acordarse si un dominio acaba en .com o en .es, así que es muy recomendable pagar por el dominio en .com y por el dominio en .es,…

http://www.misitio.com

http://www.misitio.es

http://www.misitio.net

…

Son persistentes en el tiempo, no deben desaparecer.

¿Cuándo es conveniente usar una URL amigable?

Para contestar esta pregunta es mejor contestar ¿Cuándo es conveniente usar una URL sucia? Pues sí, a pesar de todos sus inconvenientes existen algunos beneficios. Veamos alguno de ellos:

Las URLs sucias son portátiles ya que generalmente contienen información necesaria para reconstruir una página dinámica. Volvamos al ejemplo de una búsqueda de google, imaginemos que se trata de realizar una búsqueda de software para edición de imagen y que además queremos realizar una búsqueda avanzada en la que las páginas que se muestren deben ser en español, deben estar ubicadas en España, pueden estar en cualquier formato y que además sólo se muestren los resultados en que los criterios de búsqueda están presentes en el título de la página. La URL es la siguiente:

http://www.google.es/search?as_q=software+edicion+de+imagen&hl=es&num=10&btnG=Buscar+con+Google&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=lang_es&cr=countryES&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=title&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images

Es evidente que esta URL no es amigable para nada ya que no cumple la gran mayoría de las características mencionadas anteriormente. Pero tiene una gran ventaja, ésta se puede almacenar en tus marcadores y reproducirla exactamente igual (con todas sus complejidades) en el futuro. Pero bien es cierto que en muchos otros casos se pueden evitar y que simplemente son así por simple desconocimiento o por dejadez del programador.

En algunos casos también puede ser útil usar una URL sucia cuando las desventajas de una URL sucia se convierten en una ventaja y es que existen casos en los que no es conveniente que el usuario pueda memorizar o escribir una URL. Esto se produce sobretodo en casos donde existe un control de acceso, si tienes una cuenta de gmail o hotmail podrás ver que es muy difícil memorizar las URLs que van apareciendo mientras consultas tu correo. Eso resulta ser una gran ventaja para la aplicación.

Es posible que exista algún caso más, pero en general es mejor usar una URL amigable.

¿Ventajas de una URL amigable?

Algunas de las ventajas son claras al observar sus características, son usables, fáciles de recordar, de escribir, de comunicar, etc. y todas estas características no sólo hacen que la navegación del usuario sea más sencilla e intuitiva, sino que también logras lo que todo el mundo quiere al hacer una página web, visitas. Porque en realidad estás favoreciendo la difusión de tu web.

Pero este tipo de URLs también es muy importante para el posicionamiento en buscadores. Anteriormente muchos motores de búsqueda ni siquiera indexaban páginas con variables incluidas al final de la URL con un interrogante (GET). Actualmente ya son indexadas, pero hay que tener en cuenta que los motores de búsqueda valoran mucho las palabras que hay en la URL. Aunque no se sabe a ciencia cierta, algunas teorías apuntan a que Google da más importancia a las palabras que hay en la URL que a las palabras que hay en el texto. Pero esto sí es seguro, Google valora mucho las palabras que hay en la URL y por tanto hay que procurar que las entienda. Por tanto, si tu URL es amigable y por tanto descriptiva, está claro que es muy probable que contenga palabras clave para las cuales quieras posicionar la página en concreto. Además, si las palabras están separadas con un guión (-) o una barra (/) google sabrá perfectamente qué palabras componen tus URLs.

Una cuestión muy importante que hemos mencionado en las características de una URL amigable es que ésta debe ser permanente. ¿Por qué es importante este punto? Muy sencillo. Tu página web va creciendo en importancia a medida que tus páginas son enlazadas por otras webs. Es más, pongamos que en tu web hay un artículo muy interesante y este ha sido enlazado desde muchas webs de terceros por la relevancia y el interés de su contenido. De repente lees este artículo y te das cuenta de que la URL de tu artículo es pobre y deseas cambiarla. Esto sería un gran error, ya que todos los enlaces que has conseguido se perderán en una página que retorna un error 404 (“Page not found”). Si alguna vez has realizado algo de posicionamiento sabrás que una de las tareas más arduas y difíciles es la de conseguir enlaces, así que perderlos de esta manera es, con perdón, bastante idiota. Si por lo que fuere es totalmente imprescindible cambiar la URL porque por ejemplo realizas un cambio de leguaje de programación en el servidor (pasas de tecnología asp a php, por ejemplo) puedes realizar una redirección 301 “Moved Permanently”, ya que cuando la araña de google visite tu web toda la relevancia que había ganado tu página en *.asp se traspasará a tu página *.php.

¿URLs en páginas estáticas?

Si vas a crear un sitio web desde cero, no realices una estructura pobre y sin sentido. No sólo va a ayudarte en el posicionamiento tener una buena estructura sino que a la larga la programación será más cómoda y sencilla. Antes de ponerte a programar, pensar en lo que vas a hacer puede ahorrarte mucho tiempo y quebraderos de cabeza.

¿URLs en páginas dinámicas?

En este artículo se ha presentado una serie de ideas que concluyen en que el contenido dinámico en una página web en algunos casos puede llegar a ser perjudicial para la usabilidad, el posicionamiento del sitio, etc. ¡Es entonces la solución realizar todo de manera estática! ¡Incluso los catálogos! Por supuesto que no, existen alternativas para ello, pero esto ya es otro artículo.

URLs amigables con mod_rewrite - http://www.posicionapro.com/blog/URLs-amigables-con-mod_rewrite.html

MuxhA

Eurodipity - Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

2008-08-01T02:52:00.002+02:00

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page.

But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.

Eurodipity, here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in

http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.

I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal. But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.

Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog.

Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites

Link Exchanges:

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

Trackbacks:

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

Comments:

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. Update frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.

Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.

You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.

For more ways of building traffic to your blog, read the article "How To Build Traffic To Your Blog."

Fuente: Blog Maniac.

Eurodipity - Vamos subiendo puestos

2008-07-31T11:48:00.002+02:00

Pues sí, Eurodipity se encuentra en el puesto 101 y 102 en la búsqueda oficial de la palabra Eurodipity en google Suiza, válida para el concurso a nivel europeo, y en el puesto 134 en la búsqueda oficial en España, mientras que ya estamos en el puesto 70 en España, español. No está nada mal.

A este ritmo de ascenso en menos de 15 días estaremos entre los 30 primeros puestos, o al menos eso es lo que esperamos.

Os mantendremos informados.

Eurodipity - Magnífico editor CSS con Mozilla Firefox 3 integrado

2008-07-31T00:29:00.002+02:00

Stylizer es el nombre del programa que te trae hoy Eurodipity.

El programa es un magnífico editor CSS que posee dos versiones: Basic (gratuito) y Ultimate ($69,95 CAD "dólares canadienses" - 40,00 €). El programa nos hará la vida más fácil a la hora de programar las hojas de estilo de nuestros sitios web.

Una de las cosas que más nos gusta de este programita es que nos permite ver nuestras hojas de estilo en Mozilla Firefox 3 (que lo lleva integrado) y Microsoft Internet Explorer, por lo que nos va a ahorrar muchos dolores de cabeza y mucho tiempo.

¿Cuando lo pruebes nos dices qué te ha parecido la propuesta?

Eurodipity - Yahoo Robots Combat Spam and Phishing

2008-07-31T00:15:00.001+02:00

Eurodipity, how much of a responsibility do search engines have to police the internet, and protect their users from email and instant message and web spam, phishing fraud, and misuse of chat rooms? How can search engines be socially responsible and work towards keeping consumers from harm?

How effective can they be in pro-actively identifying and fighting phishing attempts on the Web as they index the Web?

A newly published patent application from Yahoo tells us that people using the Web have an expectation that their services providers will help protect them from such abuses, and Yahoo describes how they might use robot programs to help identify emails, IMs, chat rooms, and Web sites where inappropriate activities take place.

The document goes into detail on how a Yahoo robot might interact with others in a chat room, and through email and instant messaging programs to identify spam and fraud, through phishing attacks aimed at obtaining passwords, credit card details, social security numbers and other confidential information.

These robots could passively or actively seek out abusive activity on the Web, and collect information about the abuse, such as “a sender’s network address, a sender’s account name/address, Universal Resource Locators (URLs) associated with the abusive communication or web page, or the like.”

Under this approach, a robot could log in to web pages, sign up for news letters, sign in to chat rooms and initiate conversations, receive emails and respond to them, and proactively take other steps to identify spam and phishing attacks.

Depending upon where and how the abuse takes place, Yahoo could take different responses to spam and phishing, such as blocking or filtering messages and web pages, warning the sender, or disabling accounts.

Dynamic Combatting of Spam and Phishing Attacks
Invented by Richard Sinn and Miles Libbey
US Patent Application 20080177841
Published July 24, 2008
Filed January 19, 2007

Abstract

A self training set of robots are configured to proactively search for selective communication abuses over a network. Robots may enter a chat room to proactively send messages. The robots then analyze patterns and/or content of a received message for potential abuse.

Robots may also passively reside on/off line without publishing their network address. If a message is received, the message may be interpreted to be SPAM/SPIM.

Robots may also perform a variety of other actions, such as access websites, and analyze received messages to determine if the messages indicate abuse. If abuse is detected, information may also be obtained to enable blocking or filtering of future messages from the sender, or access to/from an abusive website.

The information also may be used to retrain robots, so that the robots may learn from and share their collective knowledge of abusive actions.

Fraud run loose on the internet makes the Web much less safe for all of us. It’s great to see Yahoo attempting to find ways to identify spam, phishing, and misuse of chat environments.

Resources on Phishing

In researching this post, I found a number of articles, blog posts, organizations, and academic papers about phishing, and about some of the technology being developed to address phishing. It’s by no means a complete list - there are many more resources on the web about phishing, but hopefully it’s a good introduction to the topic.

The Ocean is Full of Fish - An introduction to phishing, and phishing attacks, with some thoughts on technical solutions to stopping phishing.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group - A world wide organization “focused on eliminating the fraud and identity theft that result from phishing, pharming and email spoofing of all types.” Members include some of the leading technology service providers in the world, including Microsoft, Yahoo, MySpace, and eBay.

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) - Aimed at preventing online messaging abuse, another organization sponsored by very large technology groups. The press releases section provides many details of activities undertaken by members of this group.

Pew Internet and American Life Project Report on Spam 2007 - People are getting more email spam, and indicate they they are getting better at identifying it, according to this survey.

Federal Trade Commission - Spam Summit: The Next Generation of Threats and Solutions - The staff from the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Marketing Practices put out this report in November 2007, providing a look at spam and phishing from the perspective of the FTC.

Spam, Phishing, and the Looming Challenge of Big Botnets (pdf) - What dangers might be around the corner for consumers as spammers start utilizing huge networks of virus-compromised computers, called botnets? What does this mean to technologies intended to fight sphishing attacks, such as SSL certificates and DomainKeys/DKIM.

Combating the Botnet Scourge (pdf) - Information about botnets, and some basic and advanced defense approaches to address them.

A Forensic Framework for Tracing Phishers (pdf) - Some ideas on using phishing methods against those engaged in phishing, to help investigators and service providers to “pro-actively fight phishing online fraud by identifying and tracing the involved actors.”

CANTINA: A Content-Based Approach to Detecting Phishing Web Sites (pdf) - an approach to examining the content of web sites to identify ones used in phishing fraud activities.

One small step for email, one giant leap for Internet safety - Yahoo’s May, 2007, announcement of the use of Domain Keys Identified Mail to authenticate the original domain of emails from organizations that are using the technology.

Fighting phishing with eBay and PayPal - Google’s July, 2008, announcement of the use of Domain Keys Identified Mail in Gmail for messages from eBay and PayPal.

Phinding Phish: Evaluating Anti-Phishing Tools (pdf) - A paper from later 2006, which compares tools that help web surfers identify phishing activity, focusing upon the effectiveness of 10 popular antiphishing toolbars.

You’ve Been Warned: An Empirical Study of the Effectiveness of Web Browser Phishing Warnings (pdf) - A paper written by Carnegie Mellon University researchers for CHI 2008, held in April 2008, which explores the effectiveness of the warnings that anti-phishing programs provide, and ways to improve upon those warnings.

Muy buen artículo, disfrútalo en Eurodipity.

Fuente: SEO by the SEA.

Eurodipity - Nuevo buscador: Cuil

2008-07-30T13:15:00.003+02:00

Hoy en Eurodipity vamos a hablar del nuevo buscador que han puesto en marcha ex-ingenieros de google. Se trata de Cuil y la verdad es que tiene muy buena pinta, lo malo es que no tiene apenas indexadas páginas en español, pero tiempo al tiempo, sólo tiene 2 días de vida.

Según dicen ellos mismos en About Us:

Welcome to Cuil—the world’s biggest search engine. The Internet has grown. We think it’s time search did too.

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.

Es decir, CUIL significa "conocimiento", ¿será verdad?

Dicen tener un índice tres veces mayor que el de Google y diez veces mayor que el de Live Search, aunque en Eurodipity no nos lo creemos.

Como curiosidad nos muestran un thumbnail de la página en la búsqueda, no tiene mala pinta, no. ¿Y tú qué opinas?

Ah, se nos olvidaba de la última curiosidad, no recopilan información sobre nosotros a diferencia de google. ¿Será la alternativa a google que estábamos esperando? Esperemos que sí.

Eurodipity - Volvemos a entrar en el juego

2008-07-30T13:10:00.002+02:00

Según parece google ya ha indexado todas las páginas que componen este nuevo blog, sólo ha necesitado casi una semana, se va superando, y eso que el blog es de su "grupo".

Bueno lo importante es que Eurodipity ya aparece en los puestos 192 y 193 en la búsqueda en Suiza, para el concurso a nivel europeo, en http://www.google.ch/search?hl=en&q=eurodipity y en los puestos 263 y 264 en España en http://www.google.es/search?hl=en&q=eurodipity.

Seguiremos dando caña para aparecer de nuevo en los 10 primeros puestos, todavía tenemos tiempo para ello y seguiremos dando guerra a nuestros competidores, ¿o no?

Eurodipity - Scour Search Engine: Make Money By Searching Online

2008-07-29T18:00:00.004+02:00

Eurodipity Is it a scam? That’s the first question in my mind when I heard about Scour search engine which is claimed to be paying for searching online. And it’s obvious, everyone of us had faced this fact some or the other time in life.

Scour will pay you $25 Visa credit card as gift if you accumulate 6500 points, $50 for 12500 and $100 for 25000 points. Scour is delivering search results that are nothing but combination of major search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN. In addition, you can give thumbs up and comment on any search results. This makes it kind of a social search engine network.

Though I had these thoughts that this might be a scam, it does not seem to be. I thought to give a try to Scour search engine. Why should you think positively to sign-up with Scour -

We don’t have anything to lose. We are just using scour to search but getting the results from our favorite search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN and fun commenting and recommending the search results.
We can research on how commenting and giving thumbs up contribute to certain results with Scour’s algorithm.
It has a great affiliate program that gives you 25% of what points your referrals earn, so you need not to do all the work.
We would get something to give away free to our readers - that would be the visa gift card that we might get from Scour. Or you can just simply keep it for your own use. I would think of giving it away to one of my lucky readers.

How to gain points in Scour?

Signup with Scour and invite some friends for 250 points.
Search on Scour, and get 1 point; 2 points for every vote and 3 points for each comment limiting it to 4 points for every search and related activities. So you might not go on voting each results of your search.

When would you be paid?

After accumulating 6500 points, but you know what - currently it seems no one is paid - even the topper in points tally has around 6100 points. But remember, in the game where referral layers are involved, it’s better to start off early in the game. Go ahead and sign up with them and start referring it to your friends.

Looks like Eurodipity would soon come up with the post on how legitimate they are, as already have 100+ people in my referred list.

Fuente: Life is colorful.

Eurodipity - Google indexa un billón de páginas

2008-07-28T12:29:00.001+02:00

En el post We knew the web was big… del Blog Oficial de Google, ingenieros del buscador explican con orgullo que Google alcanzó por primer vez un billón de URLs únicas indexadas (¿cuántos ceros son eso? Un billón = 1.000.000.000.000). Este post, también traducido al castellano, nos explica rápidamente la indexación de páginas, junto con una breve reseña histórica del crecimiendo del índice de Google.

La traducción convierte erróneamente trillion (un millón de millones, es decir, un billón) por trillón (que en español es un millón de billones).

Eurodipity opina que desde luego esto es una auténtica barbaridad. A ver dónde acaba la capacidad fagocitadora de Google.

Fuente: Barrapunto.

Eurodipity - Sin novedad en el frente

2008-07-27T12:08:00.002+02:00

Bueno, seguimos sin terminar de ser indexados por Google ya que sólo tenemos dos páginas indexadas, pero como novedad hoy hemos entrado en el ranking en el puesto 322, ya nos queda menos ;-)

Como curiosidad el anterior dominio de Eurodipity permanece fuerte en los primeros 30 puestos a pesar de haber sido bloqueado.

Con paciencia y una caña conseguiremos subir de nuevo a los primeros puestos de nuevo y volver a luchar por los 10 primeros puestos, aunque tampoco nos matamos por ello.

Suerte a todos y os mantendremos informados.

Eurodipity - Business Strategy Reality Check With Google Adwords Keyword Tool

2008-07-26T17:49:00.002+02:00

Some might find the title somewhat oxymoronic, given that the words Business Strategy are coupled with the notion of a Keyword Tool. However the linkage will become clear later.

Recently Trevor Claiborne of the Inside AdWords crew at Google informed us all that the Keyword Tool is now Updated With Search Volume Data. He illustrated this with the image shown below:

If you are not familiar with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, it would be worth your while to check out. This latest change provides for free what many expensive keyword tracking services had been providing. It’s no surprise that AdWords professionals, such as Xurxo Vidal, Bloom Search Services, are enamored by this new Search Volume Data service.

As Tamar Weinberg of Search Engine Roundtable pointed out, some other experts are questioning its usefulness. Michael VanDeMar believes that the tool is useless for SEO, even though it shows exact numbers. Certainly the source of the numbers needs to be considered carefully. It may not provide an exact indication of the clicks your own particular AdWords campaign might produce. However for comparative purposes the figures would seem to be useful and clearly Google itself is the best source for Google click data.

The other advantage of the data is that you can download the figures into an Excel spreadsheet. Previously for all results, an indication of the search volume was presented as small histogram bars and only a rough visual comparison was possible. These quantitative results allow more intensive analysis, which is why it can provide a reality check for your business strategy. To explain this requires a short background review of Eurodipity Internet marketing.

Challenging Business Realities

An increasing number of businesses are realizing that the Internet is the primary way many prospects and clients will be communicating with them. Of course the Internet has a major weakness. That is because the Internet is a really, really crowded scene. It’s hardly surprising to hear that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet, is working on tags to help find online information.

At the same time the Internet has a major strength. That is because the Internet is a really, really crowded scene. That means that for any product or service, however specialized, there will be a very large number of prospects who are active on the Internet. Since the Internet is a superb way of communicating, which is independent of geography, this gives great opportunities in Internet marketing.

Given that the Internet has changed the way the business world functions, clearly a business strategy must make sense in this modern reality. As Michael Porter has said,”Of course strategy is hard - it’s about making tough choices.” In other words you must decide what you will do and what you will not do.

The best reality check for your business strategy would really be provided by the views of those prospects you are aiming to persuade to become customers. One indicator of the prospects needs is how they go looking for solutions. What keywords might they use in searching for solutions? The Adwords Keyword Tool provides such data. Of course it is mixed in with keyword data for non-prospects who happened to be looking for somewhat related products or information. Nevertheless the Tool can help in confirming or rejecting a particular strategy.

Doing The Reality Check

The following is very much a Big Picture approach and cannot be pushed to the nth degree. It only confirms that a particular strategy has the necessary characteristics to allow success. It does not go beyond that to check that it has sufficient characteristics to actually be successful. However by applying the check, it may give insights into how a strategy can be tuned to improve the chances of success.

Step 1 - Determine the characteristics of your most typical preferred prospect and their needs.

Step 2 - Determine the most likely keyword phrase that would be included in a Google search for a solution

Step 3 - Use the Keyword Tool on that phrase in the following way. Insert the words of the phrase on a single line without quotes and allow synonyms to be included. What the Tool does is to explore the concept that is behind that keyword phrase and show you what closely related keyword searches are being done.

Step 4 - Download CSV files of the two lists of keywords developed by the Tool into Excel spreadsheets. The data should be combined into one spreadsheet of adjacent rows. Sort the rows based on the values in the 4th column in descending order. The fourth column contains the annual monthly average searches for the particular keyword or keyword phrase. Sometimes you will find a large number of closely similar keyword phrases that have high search rates measured in the tens of thousands. This may either mean trouble or opportunity. In other cases, very many fewer keyword phrases are listed. Provided the search rates are measured in the thousands, then you likely are looking at a potentially interesting strategic niche.

Step 5 - After comparing a number of different businesses and the key words that might be appropriate, one can develop a sense of what this analysis suggests for the corresponding strategy.

Step 6 - (optional in some cases) Repeat the analysis with the keyword phrase in quotes to produce a tighter comparison of what may be competition.

Possible Outcomes From The Reality Check

This approach is very much a work in progress. Accordingly it is not yet possible to produce a taxonomy of all the different patterns and what they may imply for a given strategy. The following represent examples of what we have seen in practice. Repeating the cycle and refining the ideas is often beneficial. Readers who try out this approach are encouraged to add their own experiences in the comments.

Case A - A Strategy Lost In The General Noise
Findings - The words with high search numbers clearly represented much more than just searches by the prospect niche. Clearly there would be many other online properties that such searches were accessing. A website focused on the keyword phrase would probably never stand out in this very crowded space.

Case B - Too Much Competition
Findings - There is only minimal information on the advertising competition for certain phrases (a scale from 0 to 100%). Nevertheless, if many of the keyword phrases have 100% competition, then clearly this is a market with a large number of competitors who are willing to spend money on PPC advertising. This undoubtedly translates into equal competition in organic search as well. Using that keyword phrase to define your target prospect may well be very weak strategy.

Case C - Prospects Don’t Use That Keyword Phrase
Findings - One analysis showed that surprisingly there were no searches at all for the assumed best keyword phrase. Prospects were likely using some synonyms that did have high search results. The strategy was refined using one of these alternate phrases.

Case D - Several Keyword Phrases All Somewhat Strong
Findings - In this case, a number of alternate keyword phrases had somewhat comparable search rates. The advertising competition for some of these was strong whereas for others there was little competition. One of the alternates with little competition was selected to define the ideal prospect and therefore the best approach.

A Robust Eurodipity Strategy - Focus, Focus, Focus

The common thread that often runs through these strategy check cases is that focusing on a tightly defined niche is often the best policy. The overall measure that counts is the size of the niche multiplied by the small percentage who will convert into purchasers. The advantage here is that by targeting a tighter niche, it is more likely that the prospect will be aware of the company and more likely that they will find that what the company offers is attractive. Given the crowded Internet, even what might be thought of as a micro-niche can be preferred. This will be more fully explored in an upcoming SMM Newsletter.

Fuente: Internet Marketing And SEO From A Different Point Of View.

Eurodipity - Google a parido un nuevo vástago

2008-07-25T13:17:00.001+02:00

Sí, Eurodipity, ayer se presentó oficialmente la versión beta de Knol, un nuevo servicio que Google ya está en disposición de ofrecer, aunque de momento sólo en inglés.

Este nuevo servicio no es más que un clon de Wikipedia, aunque en Eurodipity preferimos usar la Wikipedia ya que además de que está en español, entre otros muchos idiomas, nos parece más clara y organizada la información que refleja.

Otra diferencia notable entre ambas enciclopedias es que Knol sólo admitirá artículos de expertos en la materia, que pueden llegar a ganar dinero con los ingresos por publicidad, mientras que en la Wikipedia cualquiera puede añadir contenido, sin tener que ser un experto en la materia. En Eurodipity nos gusta más la segunda opción, ya que permite obtener una mayor cantidad de artículos que de la forma propuesta por Knol.

Como siempre Google sigue con su política de "si no puedes con ellos, machácalos". Esperemos acontecimientos, pero mucho nos tememos que Wikipedia seguirá fuerte frente a los ataques de Google.

¿Tú que opinas?

Fuente: RinconSEO.

Eurodipity - Art Project Group ha parido un nuevo sitio web

2008-07-25T13:13:00.001+02:00

Hoy se han finalizado los trabajos para Arteyesa, un nuevo dominio que ha sido realizado íntegramente por Art Project Group para la empresa Arteyesa, dedicada al mundo de la construcción, y más concretamente al aislamiento acústico, techos desmontables o registrables, escayola, yeso y perlita, entre otras cosas.

La verdad es que ha sido una apuesta innovadora la tomada por Art Project Group con este dominio dándole un aire nuevo y fresco al mismo. Como siempre el sitio web cumple con la normativa W3C y WAI, obteniendo certificación Triple-A, además el código ha sido optimizado mediante el archivo .htaccess para optimizar al máximo la descarga del sitio web. Por supuesto el código está optimizado para mejorar el posicionamiento web del dominio y éste ha sido dado de alta en Google Analytics, Google Local Business Center y Google Herramientas para Webmasters, Yahoo! Site Explorer y Live Search Webmasters Tools.

Como curiosidad se puede apreciar que tiene dos versiones, según el tamaño del navegador, que cambian dinámicamente: 770x420 píxeles y 960x520 píxeles.

Esperamos que os guste.

Desde luego en Eurodipity sí que nos ha gustado.

Fuente: Blog de Art Project Group.

Eurodipity - Qué rabia

2008-07-24T10:47:00.000+02:00

Resulta que el dominio con el que estábamos participando se encuentra el 3º en España y el 4º en Suiza según los parámetros de búsqueda, y eso que ha sido borrado de WordPress.

Desde luego esto si que es mala suerte para Eurodipity, aunque seguro que vendrán tiempos mejores ;-)

Y de momento sólo tenemos indexadas dos páginas en Google y estamos en el puesto 281 en Suiza, no está mal para haber pasado apenas 10 horas. Dadme un par de días y veremos.

Eurodipity - Comienza una nueva era

2008-07-24T10:04:00.001+02:00

Tras la currada de ayer de dar de alta todos los post de WordPress, hoy comienza una nueva etapa dentro del concurso Eurodipity. De momento no estamos indexados en Google, por lo que no existimos y además nos toca avisar a todo el mundo de que hemos cambiado de ubicación, y eso si que es difícil.

De momento nos toca esperar y seguir trabajando, pero esto no es más que un aliciente.

Espero la ayuda y colaboración de todos vosotros.

Eurodipity - Flash and SEO - Compelling Reasons Why Search Engines & Flash Still Don't Mix

2008-07-24T00:12:00.000+02:00

I know, I know. Google's indexing Flash and Flash developers can rejoice now that their content is SEO-friendly. Sorry - I don't buy it for a second. Flash content is fundamentally different from HTML on webpage URLs, and being able to parse links in the Flash code and text snippets does not make Flash search-engine friendly. I think it's great that Google's digging deeper into Flash, but I don't believe web developers should be any less wary than they've been in the past about Flash-based websites or Flash-embedded content.

And guess what - I used to be a Flash developer (prior to founding SEOmoz). I still build graphics and wireframes and content (like this demo I quickly made for SEOmoz's PRO content) entirely in Flash. I'm not a hardcore Flash junkie or an actionscript developer anymore, but I can say with confidence that Flash ≠ a smart SEO strategy.

Some reasons why include:

Different Content is NOT on Different URLs
This is the same problem you encounter with AJAX-based pages. You could have unique frames, movies within movies, etc. that appear to be completely unique portions of the Flash site, yet there's no way to link to these individual elements (unless the Flash developer is specifically building for this scenario - and even then, there's almost always some portions that are missed).

The Breakdown of Text
Google can index the output files in the SWF to see words and phrases, but in Flash, a lot of your text isn't in nice clean <h1> or <p> tags, it's jumbled up into half phrases for graphical effects and will often be outputted in the incorrect order. Worse still are text effects that often require "breaking" words apart into individual letters to animate them - I'm guessing search engines aren't yet smart enough to play Scrabble with Flash output.

Flash Gets Embedded
A lot of Flash content is only linked-to by other Flash content wrapped inside shell Flash pages. This line of links, where no other internal or external URLs are referencing the interior content, means some very low PageRank/link juice documents. Even if they manage to stay in the main index, they probably won't rank for anything.

Testing Crawlability with Hope
That's what you're doing with Flash content for SEO - hoping. Google's Flash-crawling technology is proprietary, and while we all know and can test what search engines see from a content and link perspective in HTML, there's no "test my site's Flash file crawlability" feature that I'm aware of, leaving us very much in the dark about exactly how the engine's going to parse your material.

Flash Doesn't Earn External Links Like HTML
For whatever reason, etiquette on the web simply doesn't lend itself to Flash media earning link love. An all-Flash site might get a large number of links to the homepage, but interior pages almost always suffer. For embeddable Flash content, it's the HTML host page earning those links when they do come. As a simple example, imagine a blog post or news article in HTML - those who enjoy it might copy and paste a few quotes into their own pages and link over, yet this rarely ever happens with Flash text (which can be hard to copy and paste unless the designer builds it properly) and even still isn't common practice among the "linkerati."

SEO Basics Are Often Missing
Anchor text, headlines, bold/strong text, img alt tags, and even title tags are not simple elements to properly include in Flash, and 9 times out of 10, the designer won't build them in properly. Developing Flash with SEO in mind is not just more difficult than doing it in HTML, it's not part of the cultural lexicon of the Flash-development world.

A Lot of Flash Isn't Even Crawlable
Google said they don't execute external javascript calls (which many Flash-based sites use) or index the content from external files called by Flash (which, again, a lot of Flash sites rely on). These limitations could severely impact what a visitor can see vs. what Googlebot can index.

Of course, it is nice to see some Flash content ranking at Google (like for the query "break apart flash letters," which illustrates point #2 above quite nicely). Just don't let a Flash developer who just found out about Google's new ability to crawl their work talk you into doing anything rash.

Eurodipity love Flash - I still work in it and I think that a lot of great sites and applications have used it well. But, trusting Flash content to get good SEO results is like trusting a Seattle summer wedding to be rain-free. It could happen, but no one would call it a wise bet. If you're seeking to make Flash as accessible and SEO-friendly as possible, that's a noble philosophy (and Jon Hochman's How to SEO Flash is quite a good start), but making it your primary content delivery system on the web is a recipe for disaster.

p.s. For more on the subject, see Ian Lurie's post - Google Indexing Flash, Don't Party Just Yet and Flash's New SEO is Overhyped from Ickydime.Eu

Fuente: SEOmoz

Eurodipity - Hoy estamos que no nos lo creemos

2008-07-24T00:07:00.000+02:00

Con estos resultados ya nos damos más que satisfechos, por nosotros que termine hoy el concurso, ya hemos ganado, no queremos más.

En nuestra revisión de puestos diarios, nos hemos encontrado con que Eurodipity está en el puesto número 4 de búsqueda en España, con los parámetros de búsqueda oficial, y 1º y 2º en España en español, aunque estos resultados no cuentan, lo cual no está nada mal, ya estamos entre los 5 primeros, a punto de entrar en el pódium. Pero lo increible de hoy es que estamos 5º en Suiza.

Desde luego estos resultados los firmábamos con mucho gusto, ya que nuestra intención era terminar entre los 10 primeros en España y no atacar el concurso a nivel europeo, Suiza, pero la verdad es que nos encontramos muy satisfechos.

Además y como viene siendo habitual en las últimas semanas, seguimos liderando el concurso RinconSEO. ¿Seremos capaces de terminar ganando los dos concursos SEO? En septiembre se decidirá todo.

Eurodipity - Estamos cosechando los buenos resultados

2008-07-24T00:05:00.000+02:00

Pues en apenas unos pocos días publicando artículos en inglés Eurodipity ha subido puestos espectacularmente en Suiza, donde se gana el concurso a nivel europeo, aunque en España apenas han habido cambios. Concretamente en Suiza hemos pasado del puesto doscientos treinta y tantos al 35, mientras que en España nos movemos entre el 16 y 20 durante toda la semana.

Seguiremos combinando la publicación de artículos en inglés y en español, siempre relacionados con el mundo SEO para seguir aumentando puestos en ambos sitios y atacar el concurso en España y en Suiza, aunque prioritariamente estamos interesados en el concurso a nivel nacional.

En Suiza la búsqueda oficial es: http://www.google.ch/search?hl=en&q=eurodipity, y competimos con 250.000 entradas, mientras que en España la búsqueda oficial es: http://www.google.es/search?hl=en&q=eurodipity, y competimos con 178.000 entradas. Recodermos que a dia de hoy estamos en el puesto 17 en España y en el puesto 35 en Suiza, la verdad es que no está nada mal.

Si quieres ayudar a que sigamos subiendo puestos puedes poner un enlace en tu web con el siguiente código: <a href="http://concursoeurodipity.blogspot.com/" title="Eurodipity en estado puro">Eurodipity</a> - Eurodipity en estado puro, el cual tiene la siguiente apariencia:

Eurodipity - Eurodipity en estado puro

Si me pones un comentario con el enlace que quiere que te publique, muy gustosamente te lo pondré.

Gracias de antemano a todos por hacer posible este proyecto.

Eurodipity - Más términos SEO

2008-07-24T00:04:00.001+02:00

Hoy en Eurodipity traemos otra lista de términos SEO para que os vayáis acostumbrando a la jerga:

Crawler / Spider / robot: programa diseñado para recorrer la web siguiendo los enlaces entre páginas. Esta es la forma habitual empleada por los principales buscadores para encontrar las páginas que posteriormente forman parte de sus bases de datos.

Click Through Rate (CTR) – Tasa de clicks: corresponde al número de veces que un enlace es seguido por los navegantes, dividido por el número de veces que dicho enlace es mostrado (llamado a su vez impresión).

Contenido: información disponible en una página. Se incluyen las imágenes, textos y cualquier otro tipo de información proporcionada independientemente de su formato.

Enlaces profundos: consiste en enlazar a páginas que están varios niveles por debajo de la raíz del dominio.

Enlaces cruzados: consiste en enlazar entre sí varios websites con el fin de mejorar su posicionamiento en buscadores. Si es detectado por los buscadores los dominios pueden ser penalizados.

Doorway Page: página diseñada y optimizada para un buscador y una palabra clave en particular. El empleo de múltiples páginas de este tipo permite que el mismo contenido se posicione correctamente en distintos buscadores. Esta estrategia está altamente penalizada por los principales buscadores.

Contenidos dinámicos: páginas generadas normalmente a partir de la información contenida en una base de datos y las peticiones formuladas por el navegante. Este tipo de contenidos suele presentar el caracter “?” dentro de la URL.

Filtros: programas de software especializados en la detección de prácticas fraudulentas o penalizadas por los buscadores. Si el filtro de un buscador detecta una de estas prácticas aplicará directamente una penalización al website.

Palabra o frase clave: palabra o frase empleada en un buscador con el fin de obtener páginas que contengan dicha palabra o frase. Una página debe ser siempre optimizada para palabras o frases clave relacionadas con el contenido de dicha página.

Link popularity: es una medida de la importancia de un website en Internet basada en el número de enlaces externos que tiene dicho website. Es uno de los factores más importantes empleados por los principales buscadores para ordenar los resultados presentados a los navegantes.

Metabuscadores: websites especializados en consultar varios buscadores al mismo tiempo y presentar la información proporcionada de forma entendible y ordenada.

PageRank: valor numérico asignado por Google a cada página presente en su base de datos. Dicho valor es calculado por Google empleando algoritmos especiales basados en la valoración cualitativa y cuantitativa de los enlaces externos de cada website.

PFI (Pay for inclusion): algunos buscadores y directorios cobran una cantidad fija por considerar y revisar la inclusión de una página concreta en su base de datos. Este pago no garantiza, en ningún caso, una posición concreta para el website revisado.

Buscadores PPC (Pay Per Click): buscadores en los cuales los anunciantes presentes en los resultados pagan a dicho buscador cada vez que alguien hace click en su enlace. Los principales buscadores PPC actualmente son Google Adwords, Overture y Espotting.

Penalización: castigo impuesto a una página concreta por parte de un buscador como resultado del empleo de tácticas de posicionamiento contrarias a las normas editoriales de dicho buscador. Dicho castigo suele resultar en la pérdida de posiciones y la desaparición del website, a veces definitiva, de dicho buscador.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization – Optimización (de un website) para buscadores: proceso por el cual se pretenden conseguir posiciones elevadas en los buscadores para un conjunto de palabras o frases clave determinadas.

Relevancia: grado de afinidad de una página incluida en un listado de resultados de un buscador con el tema o información buscada por un navegante.

Top10: página listada entre los 10 primeros resultados de un buscador para una palabra o frase clave concreta.

Alta de URLs: proceso por el cual damos a conocer a un buscador la existencia de nuestras páginas web con el fin de que las analice, revise y acepte en su base de datos.

Visitantes únicos: número de visitantes que acceden a nuestro website a lo largo de un periodo de tiempo concreto desde una dirección IP determinada.

Fuente: Duamu.

Eurodipity - Términos SEO

2008-07-24T00:03:00.001+02:00

Hoy en Eurodipity os traemos un listado de 9 términos SEO según XeoWeb:

SEO: Search Engine Optimization, optimización en motores de búsqueda. Todo lo relacionado con el posicionamiento en buscadores. Las técnicas que se utilizan para salir en los primeros resultados, procesos de popularidad web, y, en definitiva, entenderemos por SEO, todo aquello referido a obtener los primeros puestos en los motores de búsqueda.

Anchor Text: El texto ancla que diríamos en español, aunque nunca se traduce. Se refiere al texto de los enlaces que apuntan a nuestra web. Por ejemplo: <a href="esto.html">esto es anchor text</a>. Tal vez, y sólo tal vez, sea el factor más importante del posicionamiento en Google y AllTheWeb.

Page Rank: Uno de los mejores secretos guardados de google. El Page Rank podemos entenderlo como una valoración que google tiene de las páginas webs. Una vez que las páginas son indexadas en la base de datos de google, cada cierto tiempo se calcula este valor, normalmente con una periodicidad aproximada de un mes. El Page Rank de una página se puede conocer con la google toolbar, la conocida barra de herramientas de google. Esta valoración de las páginas, se hace de 1 a 10 en la barra de google, aunque algunas páginas ofrecen el cálculo de esta valoración con decimales. ¿Para que sirver el Page Rank? En principio, sería un factor muy importante a la hora de los resultados que devuelve google en un búsqueda cualquiera. Se suele abreviar por PR.

BackLinks: Enlaces entrantes. Los links de otras páginas que apuntan a nuestra página web son backlinks. En los buscadores se suelen mostrar por el comando link:www.dominio.com; hay que señalar que, con este comando, Google no muestra todos los enlaces hacia nuestra página web; MSN es el más rápido actualizándolo (diariamente); y Yahoo! es el más completo mostrando todos los enlaces que encuentra.

Popularidad Web: Es un valor númerico, muy variable, en función de los backlinks que tenga una página en un número determinado de buscadores. Se puede medir con algunos programas y en algunas páginas web, pero hay que tener en cuenta que depende mucho de los buscadores y el número de estos que se usen en la medida de este valor. Es una forma aproximada de saber si una página crece en popularidad a lo largo del tiempo.

Datacenter: Algunos de los servidores que tiene google y que se utilizan para chequear los diferentes resultados cuando este servidor varía sus resultados. Algunos son: www-ex.google.com, www-in.google.com...

Spider: Arañas de los buscadores. Cada buscador tiene unos cuantos que se dedican a recorrer las páginas e irlas indexando y actualizando en sus bases de datos.

Cloaking: El único motivo por el que hago mención a este término, es por ser muy utilizado, y algo de lo que se habla en abundancia en el mundo SEO. Se refiere al hecho de devolver resultados diferentes según la IP que acceda a la página, devolveríamos páginas optimizadas a las IPs de los spiders de los buscadores, y páginas diferentes a los usuarios que entren en nuestra web. Evidentemente, las páginas que devolveríamos a los buscadores, estarían optimizadas hasta tal punto que serían mal vistas por el usuario. Hay diferentes técnicas, mejores y peores, no me interesaré por ellas en ningún artículo por dos motivos.
1.- Son técnicas no consideradas éticas en el mundo SEO, aunque sí validas, y funcionan.
2.- Conllevan el riesgo de que los buscadores que lo descubran decidan banear la web que usa estos métodos.

Google Dance: El baile del google, hasta mediados de 2003 se entendía por dance un período de unos 4 días en los que google actualizaba sus índices y los resultados de las búsquedas eran variables, ahora la google dance ha cambiado y parece que se realiza de forma continua, con pequeñas oscilaciones diarias, y con días de grandes actualizaciones, al menos 1 vez al mes, en los que las posiciones cambian notablemente. Entenderemos por dance o baile esos períodos de actualizaciones que devuelven diferentes resultados en los distintos datacenters.

No está nada mal este pequeño listado SEO en opinión de Eurodipity.

Eurodipity - ¿Qué es SEO?

2008-07-24T00:01:00.000+02:00

Según la Wikipedia:

El posicionamiento en buscadores o posicionamiento web es el resultado de la recuperación de información en la base de datos de los grandes Motores de Búsqueda de Internet por el uso de algoritmos de búsqueda en el software.

La tarea de ajustar la información de las paginas que se pretenden hacer aparecer en primeras posiciones de los resultados es conocida como SEO, sigla en inglés de Search Engine Optimization, optimización para motores de búsqueda. Consiste en aplicar diversas técnicas tendientes a lograr que los buscadores de Internet sitúen determinada página web en una posición y categoría alta (primeras posiciones) dentro de su página de resultados para determinados términos y frases clave de búsqueda. También es entendido como las técnicas de desarrollo web que tengan como objetivo mejorar la posición de un determinado sitio web por sus páginas en la lista de resultados de los Motores de Búsqueda que en inglés se identifican como SERPs y forma parte de la jerga de los webmasters hispanohablantes.

La aplicación de técnicas SEO es intensa en sitios web que ofertan productos o servicios con mucha competencia, buscando el posicionar determinadas páginas sobre las de sus competidoras en la lista de resultados (SERPs).

Estrictamente hablando, se posicionan URLs de páginas. Los sitios logran buen posicionamiento como una consecuencia.

Las técnicas SEO pueden ser desmedidas y afectar los resultados naturales de los grandes buscadores por lo que si incumplen las cláusulas y condiciones de uso de los mismos pueden ser consideradas, en algunos casos, como una forma de SPAM, el spamdexing.

El trabajo es amplio, ya que el posicionamiento involucra al código de programación, al diseño y a los contenidos. También nos referimos a SEO para definir las personas que realizan este tipo de trabajo.

La verdad es que probablemente es el término más acertado, y en Eurodipity estamos totalmente de acuerdo con esta definición.