Is Google Still in Love With Squidoo?
Jan 29, 2009 SEO
Although there are already millions of online marketers online, you can indeed learn the power how to get it right, faster than you think would be possible. And even though making money is becoming even more competitive online as time moves on, the internet and its tools are becoming so advanced . . . By applying them the correct way, it is just a matter of “days” before you earn real money . . .
Take Google for example. 83,5% of all people searching for ways to make money online – they do it through the search engines. Google, gets 78% from the 83,5%. That means, other major search engines still only gets a drop into the ocean with 5,55%. That is nothing compared to the KING of search engines . . . This however is not the point. What I would like to ask you is: What would you do if you had known all the SEO-tactics to be able to get into Google within but one week, and to be able to rank in the top 10? That would take like thousands of hours for you to still learn how to do it . . .
Or you could simply just create a lens, and follow the many resources how to create a perfect one within hours. This is a brilliant way of making money far quicker than you could imagine. That is with Squidoo.com.
Just do a search within Google for very competitive search terms. You will immediately note and oftenly find that there would be a lens (blog) from squidoo, featured in the top 10, sometimes out of a lot of millions of search results. But guess what? What is significantly even more overwhelming, is that these squidoo lenses would have less links than its competitors would have most of the time! This is exactly what is getting many online marketers’ to scratch their heads. In spite of the fact that they have more links, sometimes thousands of high backlinks, they do not get ranked up as high as the squidoo lenses would. This leads to the question: Is Google still in love with squidoo? For years, Google have loved Squidoo. Previously a Squidoo lens (blog) was able to get into a search engine far much faster than any blogging interface could, and could appear on the first page of a Google search in no time without any major effort! This could have been 3 times as fast as the biggest blogging interface WordPress.com. Today, though, Squidoo.com have become regarded as a spam haven because of this fact, and thus Squidoo lenses don’t rank up high instantly as previous times . . . But it is still doing far much better than other blogging sites would do. If one can only think about the many traffic one can get from a squidoo lens: traffic would equal potential customers . . . And potential customers would equal money, right?
by:Jason Jumat
Italics – When you should use them
Jul 31, 2008 SEO
The purpose of italic typefaces is to aid comprehension by separating off certain words and phrases from their surrounding text. But when exactly should you use italics?
The basic purpose in typesetting a story or article for a book, newspaper or periodical, for print or online, is to enhance understanding of the text and thereby make the reading an easy, pleasant experience.
Roman type is the straightforward, upright type we read everyday in our newspapers, magazines and books, and on our monitors.
Italic is the ‘handwriting’ equivalent of whatever roman font we are reading. It has a sloping cursive quality that reminds us of the manual writing we learned in primary school.
Bold type is roman or italic font that has been emphasized by thickening and making it darker than the surrounding text.
The question is: when should we use which version of a particular typeface – roman, italic, or bold? The answer must focus on the reader’s needs and the reading experience.
It is obvious that for most copy the roman version of the chosen font should be used. This is because, having an upright face, it is the easiest to read and it is what readers expect.
Because the bold version of a font makes text stand out strongly, it is used for highlighting important words, phrases and sections. Thus headlines, decks and subheads set in bold will, along with pull-quotes and other tricks of the typesetter’s art, provide the casual scanner with clues as to what your article or story is all about. The judicious use of bold in this way will induce him or her to read the main story.
Bold however is too strong to be used, except very occasionally, within body text. To set off words from surrounding text is the main function of italics.
So when should you use italics exactly? Here’s a sort of check-list, a mixture of accepted practice and my personal opinion.
Most of these when-to-use-italics rules apply equally to words in body copy, head-lines and captions, and whether you are typesetting books, articles, stories or web-pages.
[1] The names of ships and aircraft; eg: The Caribbean Cruiser sank yesterday. This is the oldest when-to-use-italics rule. It allows the reader to quickly grasp what is being referred to in the message.
[2] The titles of poems; eg: As You Go Dancing by James Stewart is famous among the literati of the Arabian Gulf. This is another very traditional use of italics that enables quick reader-uptake.
[3] Foreign words; eg: We turned left and found ourselves in a cul de sac. Another very traditional use of italics that makes for quicker reading.
[4] The titles of books, newspapers, articles and stories occurring within a sentence without further explanation; eg: The Saturday edition of the Limerick Leader was always on the streets by Friday afternoon.
However titles that appear within larger works are not italicized but are set off in quotation marks; eg: ‘An Irishman’s Diary’ in the Irish Times is sometimes interesting.
[5] Latin phrases used to classify living things; eg: Many people wonder why mankind is referred to as homo sapiens. Another use of italics that has been around ab aeterno.
[6] Where a word is used as an example rather than for its meaning; eg: The word Kennedy is a proper noun. This is neater than setting the noun within single quotes as in: The word ‘Kennedy’ is a proper noun.
[7] For introducing new terms; eg: In Freudian psychology reference is made to the ego, the super-ego, and the id. This is a neat solution to highlighting words that will probably be explained later.
[8] For the subjects of definitions; eg: An odd number is any number that cannot be divided by two. This is useful for the reader as, should he or she wish to refer back to the definition later, a word in italics among a sea of roman letters is easy to find.
[9] For mathematical symbols: eg: The standard acceleration of gravity g is 9.81183 metres per second per second. The symbol does not need to be surrounded by commas or single quotes which would be required if it were set in roman type.
[10] For emphasis; eg: Janice wasn’t the only girl at the party. The use of italics for emphasis is less intrusive than bold and more subtly suggestive.
[11] To indicate a character’s internal reflections in stories; eg: This just does not seem right, Janice thought. However many writers prefer other ways of expressing inner thoughts.
[12] Using a letter or number as a noun; eg: He was vexed because they had left out the d in his name. However many writers would prefer to put a letter or number used in this way between quotes: eg; He was vexed because they had left out the ‘d’ in his name.
That’s about it for the when-to-use italics rules. Except, what should you do if you need to use italics within italics?
If some word or phrase that should be italicised is already within a run of italics, the trick is to switch back to roman type for that word or phrase; eg: I’m in a really weird situation, Janice thought.
This italics-within-italics solution works best when italics are used to highlight internal reflections; eg: Why can’t we just look up Wikipedia for the answer? he wondered to himself.
Of course, you don’t have to follow these when-to-use-italics rules. However most of them are in current use because they do aid reader comprehension.
Tags: Add new tag, HTML Code, SEO
How Misspelled Words Affect Your SEO
Jul 26, 2008 SEO
You may say that SEO Visibitly is just plain wrong! I know the very idea would upset Mrs Garton, my old English teacher, but sometimes using misspellings could be the right thing to do.To explain why optimizing for a misspelling can help increase your website’s traffic we need to take a look at our own search habits. I type fairly quickly, but not very accuratley or should that be accurately, so mistakes, like that one, often occur.
When I’m using a Word processor or my blog account spellcheck takes care of those errors for me.With the search engines there’s no spellcheck, you get exactly what you typed. I guess the same is true for a lot of people searching for information. So, quite often, a phrase like SEO Visibility will be transformed into SEO Visibitly.Keyword Research I did some research using Wordtracker Competition Search Automation and KRA and the results are worthy of note. I found that the phrase SEO Visibility is searched for approximately 167 times per day across all the major search engines.
SEO Visibitly, the misspelled version, is searched for slightly less with around 142 searches, but when we look at the competition for the phrases there’s a considerable difference. Spelled correctly SEO Visibility has 600 competing pages, the misspelled version SEO Visibitly has only 7.
A search using googles ‘operator intitle: gives us a more accurate estimate of pages that have actually been optimized to for a particular phrase and so weeds out the ‘accidental hits’. The search for intitle:’ visibility’ returns 219 competing pages, not a massive level of competition, but take a look at intitle:’seo visibility’ and there are still only 7 pages to compete with. As long as you have SEO Visibitly in the title tag you can’ fail to be on the all important first page of the google search results. The only question is would you prefer to compete with 219 sites or 7 for about the same amount of traffic, I know what I’d prefer!
But what about the Mrs Garton factor? Or ‘can you be a trustworthy source of information if you don’t know how to spell?’ This question touches on the issue of trust, which is especially important for anyone trying to sell a product or service online. The perceived risk is higher if buyers have no personal contact with sellers. So this is a genuine problem that needs to be addressed whenever you use misspellings to bring in traffic.How you do that will depend on the structure and aims of your articles or the copy on your webpages. My own chosen method is to admit my mistake early and explain that I use misspellings to ensure that everyone can find my site. Instead of being a negative, misspellings are a kind of additional service. I don’t have any hard data, but I’m pretty sure a misspelling in the title tag drives off a few really pedantic searchers.
Conclusion In the end, Search Engine Optimization is all about generating targeted traffic. To that we need to be giving people what they’re looking for. By using misspelling we’re aiming to give people what they want and that’s got to be a good idea in any business.
