How To Use A “Server-Side 301 Redirect” To Get Credit For All Your Inbound Links

March 30, 2007

Many search engines rank web pages based on the number and “authority” of “inbound links” pointing to the web page in question.

In Google’s PageRank System, for example, a link from page A to page B is a vote, by page A, for page B.

Beacuse of rampant abuse by “Link Spammers,” Google’s PageRank Algorithm is in “Perpetual Tweak” — in this instance, just having thousands of links pointing to your website may not be good enough — A vote from an authority site carries more weight than from a lesser site, for example a link from the front page of www.bbc.com to the front page of www.afroarticles.com will count more than one thousand links from several www.IamAnewLowTrafficSite.com or www.IamAsiteWithNoTopicalSimilaritiesWithAfroArticles.com, so to speak.

Apart from being a high traffic “heavyweight” site, bbc.com is essentially an “article” site like afroarticles.com — hence the importance of relevant inbound links.

The notion of one link, one vote is no longer valid.

That said, “reciprocal linking” is not dead — it has just metamorphosed into “relevant reciprocal linking,” in order to thwart link-spammers. Note: We have tons of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) articles in our database to help guide you on this issue: Go Read Them!

On How To Get Credit For All Your Inbound Links, Ross Dunn writes:

Does your website have an alter ego? Strangely enough, the following addresses are considered separate websites by the search engines:

http://www.yourdomain.com (the “www” version)
http://yourdomain.com (the “non-www” version)

Though visitors see the same content, in the search engine world this situation poses a serious issue relating to link popularity. If the “www” version of your website has 300 inbound links and the “non-www” version has 300 inbound links, then each version is getting credit for only 300 links rather than the total 600.

Here are some immediate steps you can take to minimize the problem: Go Read The Rest of The Article!

References:

SEO Articles
SEO Tools
FREE Webmaster Tools
Add your “Marketing Site” to our TopSites Installation
Submit Your Stories To BookMarkAfrica.com
Submit Your Political Articles to PoliticalArticles.NET

$Google\'s PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings$ $Getting The Search Engine Ranking Your Website Deserves:: META Tags Yield To Google\'s PageRank As Search Engine Standard$

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under Marketing, Search Engines, Web-Dev-Design | Leave a Comment

Google Update — On Spam Reporting

March 29, 2007

The Google Search Quality Team has updated it’s SPAM reporting FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) at the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.

In an effort to weed out web sites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, Google states:

“We are proud of our users who alert us to potential abuses for the sake of the whole internet community. We appreciate this even more, as PageRank™ (and thus Google search) is based on a democratic principle, i.e. a webmaster is giving other sites a “vote” of approval by linking to it.”

“In 2007 as an extension and complement of this democratic principle, we want to further increase our users’ awareness of webmaster practices that do or do not conform to Google’s standards. Such informed users are then able to take counter-action against webspam by filing spam reports. By doing so a mutually beneficial process can be initiated. Ultimately, not only will all Google users benefit from the best possible search quality, but also will spammy webmasters realize that their attempts to unfairly manipulate their site’s ranking will pay off less and less.”

… essentially, the following questions are answered:

What happens to an authenticated spam report at Google?
Why are there no immediately noticeable consequences of a spam report, sometimes?
Can a user expect to receive feedback for a spam report.?

Read the full post at the Webmaster Central Blog

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under Search Engines | Leave a Comment

What is Web Accessibility?

March 28, 2007

By — Nelson Chung

What is web accessibility? With Wiki’s being so popular these days, why don’t we consult one? Wikipedia defines web accessibility as “the practice of making pages on the Internet accessible to all users, especially those with disabilities.” That sounds pretty accurate to me. With the ever-growing web, it is becoming increasingly important to cater to those with disabilities. In the United States alone, there are an estimated 10 million blind or visually impaired people.

In December of 2006, a company called Nomensa was contracted by the United Nations to perform an accessibility audit on 100 leading websites from 20 different countries from around the world. Five sectors were chosen: Travel, finance, media, politics and retail. Of the 100 websites audited, only three achieved Single-A accessibility in WCAG 1.0, the most basic level of web accessibility!

By making your website and forms accessible to persons with disabilities, you not only provide them with a better experience, you also harness a huge portion of the population that might not have otherwise used your website or purchased your products. Make money and make the world a better place - that kind of opportunity doesn’t always come along, now does it?

We’re going to be talking a little about web accessible applications and even show you guys how to build an accessible web form in this issue of tips and tricks. Screen readers can be a fickle bunch, with big differences from one version to the next, kind of like browsers. So read up, and don’t forget to test! If you’re interested in learning more about web accessibility and different types of screen readers that visually impaired people use, check out the following sites:

Accessibility Resources

http://www.w3.org/WAI - The Web Accessibility Initiative develops guidelines and resources for improving web accessibility.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria - The WAI-ARIA suite overview explores techniques for creating accessible rich internet applications.
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/research/default.aspx - Microsoft’s page on research studies about accessible technology.

Popular Screen Readers

Windows:

http://www.freedomscientific.com/ - This is the Jaws Screen Reader homepage. Jaws is by far the most popular screen reader on the market.
http://gwmicro.com/Window-Eyes/Beta/ - Window-Eyes is another relatively popular screen reader.

Mac: