Most of you must have noticed that from April 27th Pagerank started to update in a few website. April 29 is the some sort of an official date of the new pagerank update, which as google is used to do, was sudden.
I heard bothe negative and positive opinions about the new update which among the other seems to have “damaged” most webmaster communities.
I checked that pr5(pr=pagerank) webmaster forum dropped to as low as pr1 and pr2 which is a disaster for them. Some actually, have an uncertain future since their revenue will be limited from now own till the next update..

What is more, a lot of people have reported that some of their links must have not been included for some reason since their pagerank predictions were far higher than the ones they received. God Google have caused suspicions and nerves between webmasters…

I noticed one thing though. Google seems to favor blogs. Again the higher pr updates were at blogs(regardless their niche). That means that either blogs are the most easy to promote websites or that bloggers are the smartest SEOists

Well, for me personally, it’s been a good update. Our blog here got a pr2(hopefully will go better next update) and some of the websites of our group “climbed” as high as pr5!

Good Luck to all webmasters! And..don’t bother to ask when the next PageRank update will be…it shall be sudden as always..

An experienced webmaster might have already tried it, a newbie might have just thought of it and a large number of people may have never had that idea.
Open-source, software that is used by everyone! Since a lot of php scripts such as wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and lots more are common nowadays, due to the fact they are open-source and free for use, templates and themes for them are developed everyday.

If you have used wordpress even only once, you’ve probably wanted to customize it a little and wanted a free template.  Free templates and quality ones are available in hundred nowadays and after a little search you will find an appropriate that suits your needs.

After installing the template, you may probably notice that there are some links-which you are not allowed to remove- in the footer of every page. These links are known as sponsor links and are either links to the template designer’s website or peple who spent money buying that footer link.

And that’s exactly my point! have you ever thought of buying, or let’s say it better, “sponsoring” free templates and themes? You can spend 40 dollars one time fee and if it’s a professional and good theme, you’ll get hundreds of free backlinks when a lot of people use it.

Actually, you may even get good PR backlinks that way because there are lot of website of a sufficient PageRank(around 4) that use free templates for Joomla, Wordpress and others.

There are even designer that for around 70 dollars sell even the “designed by” link and you can add your URL there

Wondering where you can find such templates/themes to sponsor? Visit the DigitalPoint forums and you’ll see lots of offers there! It certainly a worthy investment, you can try it

Best Regards,
Thanos P.

We have talked about various methods of advertising, mouth-to-mouth..forum signatures but recently i saw a new one…for which actually i got mixed fillings..

Most of you probably know about graffiti, some consider it art and others vandalism. Well, i used to consider it art until i saw some facts recently which put me in a lot of thought.
Supporters of a local football(soccer) team started their forum. That’s good and OK. I visited it myself and liked it a lot.
Everything was fine, until i saw some graffitis which actually were spamming the forum! I said “what the..“, why did they do it?

They probably wanted to get more visitors to their forum and they thought of that as a free way to advertise. Since they website url was writen on some walls of abandoned buildings i thought it was ok to “spam” it that way.
But, that was only the beggining…after that they started writing the website url and painting graffitis with in all over the town! Even on public buildings and outside museums. For god’s sake!

That has gotten really annoying. At the moment, wherever you go, you’ll probably see the forum URL writen on wall or pavement. I heard even police is lookings for those “talented spammers”.

Yesterday, when i got home from supermarket, i thought of checking the alexa ranks and some traffic stats of that forum. Don’t know why i thought to do it, it just came on my mind. I typed the alexa address on firefox..searched for the website traffic ranks…and what i saw was unbelievable…

It had a huge traffic boost almost 600% in percentage accordin to alexa and forum activity was boosted as well! Not to mention that it is almost #900 in my country’s alexa ranks…

I couldn’t believe it.. I am spending hundreds of dollars monthly for advertising of my websites and a bunch of footballers with sprays did better than me(at least temporarily)..

So, i am wondering..thos “vandals”-that’s the correct term for them- have found a new “neat” way to advertise? Should we just get a spray and start painting our website’s url in bathrooms and walls to get traffic? Is this the future of spamming?

Oh God, i wish not..it’s the most annoying thing i’ve ever seen.

Looking for some comments.

Have you ever heard about mouth-to-mouth advertising? It’s when you say your website to someone so that he’ll visit(in real life, in person) and you also ma say to him, if you like it tell your friends about it too.
That’s definitely the most cost-effective way to get some traffic usually from your area and country!

I have been doing some sort of a little experiment over the last months which only recently has shown its very good results.

I was telling my website to some friends and told some of them to promote it if they like it. Well those who were not interested at my articles, unfortunately didn’t ever come back. Though there were some who not only liked my posts but also promoted it too!

So just by referring to some good friends(i thank them all) i managed to get in the top 1000 of websites my country’s internet users visit, according to alexa.

Right now i get around 20 visitors daily that are from my country and my area. Couldn’t hope for something better as that way i didn’t spend any money at all and got a good amount of traffic. Though mouth-to-mouth advertising is not enough itself to get you traffic and visitors. Quality and attractive content is needed to keep the interest on and visitors coming back!

I would also suggest to use the mouth-to-mouth advertising method to targeted traffic(only people that may have some interest in your articles/content) because they’ll be the ones that will share your link and visit again

So what are you waiting for? Give it a try! Start with your best friends and hopefully you;ll get a good result yourself too!

While surfing the net lately i had the chance to check TNX.net, a new text link ads system i’ve heard a lot about. Everyone was speaking about it with the best words and i couldn’t not to give it a try!
Since my curiosity to learn if they really are that good didn’t let me sleep at night i visited their website. From the first glance i knew they were professionals. The site had a clean design, the network stats(which are actually quite impressive!) and the advantages for webmasters & advertisers were all at the front page and all necessary links such as FAQs were located at a very visible position.

I was also impressed by one tool they had at the index page -The Income Calculator- , which allows you to predict your earnings as a publisher should you join their ad network! It’s located on the left side of their page!

But let’s focus on more important things

TNX.net idea is based on TNX points. TNX points can be bought by advertisers for money and converted to text ads. With the offers inside TNX network you can get one text ad for as low as 1 TNX point and with 1000 points costing a bit more than 1 dollar i have to say i’ve never seen such a cost-effective way to advertise before! Discounts on the price of TNX points are available should you buy a large quantity of points!
As regards advertisers, they actually earn TNX points for the links they place on their pages. TNX points can be converted for money or even better! You can directly buy text links for you website! Isn’t that great? You earn points(the amount of points you earn depends on the site you have) and convert them to advertisments of your website!

Let’s take a look at some features of TNX.net

For Advertisers

Are you a webmaster looking for an easy way to improve your rankings on search engines? Would you like millions of non-reciprocal links to your site?
Then i guess, TNX.net is made for you!

Let’s have a look at the most important advantages advertiser have by using TNX.net system:

• The best prices! Unlike other competitive services, TNX.net offers by far the most economical and affordable advertising you may ever see! Text links starting from 1 point!
• Although it’s not 100% guaranteed, based on averages,you will improve your rankings inmajor search engines(yahoo, google etc).
• You can choose the websites you want to advertise on! That way you ensure your ad is not placed on a website or in a spot that’s non-visible.
• There are visitors who never click on sponsored ads just because they are “sponsored”. Through the TNX.net system there is no way that a text link ad can be identified as a paid one, neither from visitors nor from search engines!
• New advertisers can get some points as a sign-up bonus and test the system for free! What is more, are you a SEO specialist or consultant? You can get 50% discount!

You can check the complete Advertisers’ FAQ clicking here!
These things really impressed me, so i moved one more step forward and tried them as an advertiser! I was amazed with the ease of setting your own ad campaign and the 3-step wizard they offer!

To begin an ad campaign you will have to follow 3 simple steps. In the Step 1 you put the name of your ad campaign and choose the website categories(niche) that fit you most. You are even able to set GEO-Targeting!
On the next step you determine what will be diplayed on your text ad and the link priority.
Moving to step 3 -that’s my favorire one- you order the number of links you want and you choose websited that you;d like them displayed. Pagerank and other necessary information is included of course!

So that was all! Your ad campaign has been set in a few minutes!

For Publishers/Webmasters

Looking to monetize your website pages? Yes, you read it correctly, i wrote pages and not page! At TNX.net i saw something amazing that really made me love them! You can place text ads in every single page of your website which means you can maximize your profit very easily! I honestly believe that they are worth a try just for that innovative feature they offer!

But let’s have a look at the most important advantages a publisher would have:

• You can sell links in all your pages and not only in the main one..!
• You sell your links to thousands of advertisers, which means it won’t be long before you earn a profit.
• “Copy-Paste” ad code installation, even a newbie can sell links in his site
• Automatic sales and no public lists of advertisers, your privacy is protected!
• Just 12,5% commision for transactions!
• Totals control over the ads displayed in your pages! You can remove the ones you don’t like!

I again moved one more step forward and wanted to check how it works for publishers and tried to install the code and sell links(just to experiment). Again everything was easy! You just install one of the codes offered(Static code, Static code cached at our server and Perl offered at the moment) in the pages you want text ads to be displayed and wait to be approved. Approval takes usually 1-2 days(that’s considered fast) and when everything is done you start earning TNX points!

You can check the Publishers/Webmasters FAQ clicking here!

Don’t know about you, but i visited their website for fun and now i am going to use their service for good. I didn’t actually expect such services to exist in the net but i was proved wrong! They have a support forum and support via tickets exists too! My suggestion, give them a try

Finishing this very interesting review i will include some network stats which will be one more reason to join TNX.net ! Look at this!

Ah, i almost forgot to mention it, you are able to get 5000 quality links for FREE from TNX.net Just take a look at this.

You may also be interested to take a look at these posts from TNX.net at DigitalPoint forums, they are worth to see! Actually it was these posts that assured me that i have to do with pros. The first post is this, and the second one this.

So, what are you waiting for? Don’t miss the chance, Sign Up with them! I did it, you can do so too!

Take Care!

Today, we’ve come with an article a good friend of mine, Jani posted and gave me the priviledge to share it with you! It’s a tested technique and Jani says most times working. So, if you are interested to attract more search engine visitors take a look at this!

Hi all,

I want to share my own technique to attract search engine visitors. It may be too simple for you but I am happy with it

Step # 1

Use google analytics and take 3 months record for your site. Know how many visitors you got from search engines.

Step # 2

See the top 5 keywords that people typed and reached to your website.

Step # 3

Now put those 5 keywords in 5 forums where you are active.

Result: It will make those 5 keywords MORE stronger, and your site will come up in the search engine rankings. Well, I think so

This technique is working for me. I am using 5 top keywords in 5 forums and I am seeing increment in search engine trafffic.

Hope this will help you too

Why not to give it a try? It seems promising !

Special thanks for this advice to Jani, owner of linksbucket.com

Take Care!

404 page, a page that website owners certainly don’t like being loaded to any of their visitors..but how would it sound to you, if you optimized that page, to bring your visitors back in your homepage or a specific page you may want? Wouldn’t that be great, instead of a having your visitors annoyed that they didn’t find what they want, forward them to a page of your choice?
Wouldn’t it certainly be a lot better to have a more user-friendly 404 error page instead of the “bad”-ugly- default one?

Take advantage of that opportunity! Make your “404 page” a valuable tool for your website!

Below are some tips, on how to optimize your 404 page to achieve the above results:

1) Add a “catchy” title for the 404 page. Would be nice to include the 2-3 basic keywords of your website. For example, i would put GlobeIRC | The webmaster help blog as it contains the name of my website, and it’s main purpose(webmaster help blog)

2) Add some text in the 404 page where you will apologize for the inconvience(that they didn’t found the page they wanted). Make sure not to have a lenghty text, 250 words would be ideal. Also, make sure to include your basic keywords inside that text -no more than 3 times-
A sample text could be: Thank you for visiting GlobeIRC.com, it seems however you have found a missing page. If you are looking for top webmaster resources, SEO tips and a lot more then you are at the right place!

Below you can add a button/link to the homepage, the sitemap or something else you may want(e.g About us)

3) That’s totally optional, add the standard navigation system(bar,menu etc) in the 404 page. Having easy navigation to the other pages of your websites through an Error page is certainly something few people may have!

4) If you have the knowledge(and the time) customize your 404 error page to match the entire style of your website. Use same stylesheet, colors etc to make it look as a part of your entire website!

That’s some tips! Hope you like them!

Take care till next time!

Content, a 7-letter word yet the most important in Internet.
It’s the content of a website that attracts the visitors, lists you in the search engines and actually brings visitors back. All SEO efforts are useless(no matter how much money you may spend) if you are not in position to provide quality content at your website.

So, today we are going to give some guidelines on writing quality content and publishing it in a correct-yet attractive for our visitors- way.

First of all do a keyword research

You could wirte an article of 5000 words but you would make it boring and few would be willing to read it. Make sure to put the “catchy” words inside, words that will hook the visitor in the article(and as a result the website).
Remember thar most times you refer to a specific audience, so include what they want to read. As an example let’s take this article i am writing now.
I want to inform authors and articles writers about some guidelines to follow so i make sure to use the words SEO, writing guidelines and some similar ones(can’t reveal my secret weapons,hehe!).
There are lots of online tools that can help you determine the right words for your website/article/content.

The correct length of a page/article

I mentioned above that writing an article of 5000 words, just from its size can’t attract visitors.
But how many words is considered satisfactory yet not lenghty and dull? You must write at least 500 words and a maximum of 2500(personal limit).
What is more, we must always remember that when we write an article about lots of products, each product must have its own page.
Do not do that regular mistake, to include reviews of 2-3 products in one page. That’s annoying fr the visitor who would like to see everything organized and each product stand-alone.

The level of detail in an article

How many details should we provide when writing a review or introducing a product?
That’s been a question most authors mught have had at least once. The answer is simple. Give as many details as necessary and make sure to use some “tricks”.
Let’s explain what i stated above.
Supposing you write a review for introducing a new mobile phone. That mobile phone is available in 3 colours(blue, black, white) as well as in combinations of blue-white, black-white and some others.
Most times you will start typing: XXX Mobile phone is available in black, blue and white as well as in color combinations of blue-white, bla bla bla
What was wrong above?
Starting writing about all the colors combinations. You don’t need to refer on every single one! You could however state the color combinations stuff in another catchy way.
At least me personally, would be more attracted to keep reading and take a closer look to a product if it was a middle sized review(500-800 words) and the above statement could be: XXX Mobile phone is available in black, blue and white as well as in some trendy color combinations. Or ok, if not trendy another word that could replace all the color combinations.

Someone would say, if we did so in every part of a review(the colors of the mobile phone, the technical information etc) we may miss refering some important things.
Trust me, the above technique can be used on similar occasions as the example above and it only makes the review less in size and the article more attractive. I used to write some reviews about gadgets(GPS etc) for a local survey company and i know these tips from first hand

So, that’s for PART 1 !

Hope i satisfies your expectations a bit. We didn’t refer a lot to SEO but all the above tips can aid you with the SEO campaign. In part 2 there’s gonna be a lot more SEOing

Take Care till next time!