Technology Tips Blog

WildFire - post Social Network updates to all networks from one place!

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:32:00 +0000

As a Lotus Notes head I am happy now to find that I do not have to fumble through multiple social networking sites in my browser or continue on my ongoing search for the perfect all in one solution for posting to multiple networks. Now I have the ability to post updates from the environment I spend most of my day in with more control than I have found in many of the web based applications that I have tried (and believe me that it most of them)

WildFire is a Lotus Notes 8.5 Sidebar Application to Update Status's across a wide range of Social Networks including Sametime, Connections, Socialtext, Facebook, GTalk, PingFm, Plurk, Tumblr, Twitter, Wordpress and more!

Best of all the application is available to deploy for free and the website provides some fairly comprehensive instructions on the set-up process so developers as well as most savy users will be able to get it up and running in no time.

Please check it out. It is great to see such and innovative product come from an Australian IBM Partner too.. Keep up the good work guys..

Download - http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/WildFire
Developers - http://www.isw.com.au/wildfire

Button Design - Creating Call to Action Buttons

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 05:35:00 +0000

Over the 11 years I have been developing and designing websites I have noticed many changes to the ways in which websites have been designed. With the recent driving force of Web 2.0 applications and social media website design, I have found websites have become less complicated, cleaner and simpler for users to interact with. Designs have gone from trying to blow the user away with impressive graphics to simple layouts with minimal colour usage and larger more clearly defined areas, rather than over cluttered websites with too many options for a standard user find easy to use.

Why I am talking about this is because I want to highlight how you should be creating “call to action” buttons on your websites. You will find if you follow these guide lines you will start attracting users to interact with your website more frequently and also increase subscriptions and ultimately improve the performance of your website overall.

When creating buttons that are to sign up users or are to gather user information these buttons should follow these few rules;
1. The button should be of a reasonable size, larger than any of the other navigation buttons or links on the page. A large button has a greater impact.
2. Use a unique font to the rest of your website so that the users eyes are drawn to clicking this “call to action”
3. Use contrasting colour to the rest of your site on the button; something brighter or darker than the rest of your site to help direct the users attention to this button.
4. Positioning of the button is very important. Place it just under some copy that describes the key benefits of your service or product or in an area where the users eye is drawn to based off the rest of the websites design.

Here I have included some links to some websites that have the sort of “call to action” buttons that I am talking about;
http://transmissionapps.com/ - The “Download Now” & “Buy Now” buttons
http://www.filesharehq.com/ - The “Sign Up for Free Trial” button
http://paramore.is/think/blog/ - The “Continue Reading” button on blog

Let me know if you have any other ideas on how to get more “call to action” from button methds that I may have missed..

9 Ways to Instantly Code Faster

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:48:00 +0000

There are a wide variety of tools and techniques which can drastically improve the speed at which we code. Particularly during time-sensitive settings, even a savings of a few seconds per iteration can add up substantially over the course of the month. Here are 9 ways to save time coding;

http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/general/9-ways-to-instantly-code-faster/

Looks great from first impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 05:22:00 +0000

Can't wait to start making good use of this service and add tips hints and additional information using Sidewiki....

in reference to: Share : Master advanced features - Toolbar Help (view on Google Sidewiki)

Multiple domains pointing to the same website

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 23:30:00 +0000

Multiple domains that point to the same site. This is something that allot of people want to do or think will benefit them in some way when they start playing with URL's pointing to their website's. When it comes to attracting more traffic to your website it is something you often hear people talk about. The truth behind that remains to be seen is the fact that domains that contain 'specific keywords' can be a positive SEO factor when it comes to overall exposure of the website for those particular keywords, but this is simply only one factor in determining rankings when it comes to the search engines.
This post explains however how Google looks at this practice and what is the best way to have multiple domains coexisting out there that point to the same website. The truth is you should only have one primary / preferred domain that resolves directly to the website and that this should be getting a 200 response which basically means "The request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed.". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes All of the other domain names should only point to the primary domain using a 303 redirect.(standard URL redirect).
Here is a link letting you know how to post 303 redirects for each of the major platforms;
http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
The reason for this being the acceptable practice is that should all of the domains finally resolve to the same website files/site then you are technically visiting the same website for each URL and this is labelled as 'external duplication' rather than the sticky 'duplicate content' term that we all hear of when first implementing domains for the same website. The 'duplicate content' rule is there for one reason, to prevent people from duplicating their website's and reproducing all of the internet. It is acceptable though to have multiple domains pointed to the same website should you let the search engine indexing bots, be aware of this fact, or if you are not attempting any sort of trickery when it comes to multiple domain use.
There is something I am yet to mention and this is the use of what is called the link 'canonical' property now supported by all of the major search engines. It is basically a format which allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL. It is for use if you are using website URL's to point your users to the same or slightly different pages via the same URL's and will show the search engine bots that you are not trying to trick them into believing that there are two separate website's at the different URL's and works as a notification method almost that there are multiple URL's to be indexed for the same location. It is highly recommended when you have multiple domains pointed to the same website. Here is a great blog post from Google that covers this topic and the syntax.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

Inbound linking strategies explained + Tool to help out

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:09:00 +0000

Inbound linking explained..

Almost every website owner wants high organic rankings in Google, Yahoo and Bing for specific keywords, relevant to the content on their website. When taking on the task of building quality inbound links to you website, apart from having to have the most relevant and interesting content on your site, it is extremely important to have links from a balance of paid directories, industry specific websites as well as blogs and from social network user profiles of people, or businesses, that are specialists or experts in the area your website. Search engines aren't silly and the guys that work on improving them aren't either. Using services that claim that they will add a link to your website in 1000's of directories, may create inbound links to your site, but if the majority of the directories are barely relevant to your websites content, then they are of little benefit to your websites ranking and in some cases can be of detriment, most probably due to the fact that the search engine will pick up a sudden huge surge in inbound links from the same old directories and work out that these inbound links are not links to a website with valuable content but an attempt to try and push your website up in the organic search results by using an automated service.

Generating inbound links to your website / blog from other industry related websites and from people in your industries social media pages is in reality something that is not going to happen overnight. Realistically and ultimately promoting and creating inbound links is an ongoing task that is going to be something that will need to be considered for the life of your website, should you wish to obtain high organic search ranking for your relevant keywords.

What I want to get across in this post is that a search engines aim is to provide the most relevant content for the keyword the user has entered. The service / script that I stumbled across today is an excellent concept, which I can't see why wasn't thought of earlier. I believe its development was inspired by the concept that approximately 6% of page views generate some sort of user interaction. This interaction could be leaving a comment, copying some of your content for reference or 'retweeting' your latest post. Now if a user is copying and pasting some content from your site, this obviously tells you that what they have copied is something this user is interested in and most probably going to end up on a relevant page somewhere on the web. The user may just be copying the content for a document of theirs but in the social web culture that we are current living in there is a big possibly your content is going to be pasted on a blog, in a comment on someone else's blog or on a social networking site that will generally relevant to you website industry and quite possibly a resource of information relevant to your website. Now this type of inbound link is one that will make a difference in your search engine ranking. From tests I have done over the years with search engines and how there complicated and sensitive algorithms work, this is why as soon as I saw this service I got excited. Having a script that can automatically create an inbound link to your website from a website that is relevant is going to take at some hours I spend building up relevant inbound links to my website and implementing this script on your site can help you out too! In my opinion this little bit of script has made my day.. hopefully that doesn't sound too sad..

Here is the link to the service called "Tynt" - http://tynt.com/ - It literally takes a couple of minutes to create an account and about the same time to install the code on your website if you know web programming languages. If you don't it's not a huge problem, it may take a bit longer to get working on your site, but there are instructions of how to install the script provided.

If you want to see how it works just select some text in this blog post, copy it, open up 'notepad', or better still 'tweet' the selected text and you will notice that under the pasted text is a link to this blog. Enjoy any SEO enthusiasts out there. Hope you will share the same enthusiasm I had when I first stumbled across this service. Please stay posted if you are into SEO as I have a few more posts in coming weeks that reveal some further SEO strategies I use.

Full Version Free - Limited Time - WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:51:00 +0000

I have been using free Video Converter's and an assortment of tools for quiet a while now, have tried a few pay versions, but found no real advantages in the paid versions of the software of this type. Well my mind has been swayed slightly, well converted for the moment, only because for a limited time a fully featured Video Converter is temporary available as download for free. "WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe" is current available with lifetime upgrades until the 16th March for free with a promotional License Code. The main functions of the Video Converter software are;

- Support Multi-track HD Video (M2TS, MKV, BDAV, and HDTV)

- Convert HD and SD Video (Built-in 160 video codecs and 50 audio codecs - inc - AVI, MP4, MPEG1/2, OGG, WMV, FLV, MOV, etc.)

- Support Blu-ray, M2TS, BDAV (BDAV, TrueHD, M2TS, MPEG-TS A/V)

- Multi-Core and Hyper Threading (Multi-core CPU and Hyper-threading, which can offers you up to 5x‐15x real time converting speed)

- Support HD-Camcorder Video (convert your HD-Camcorder videos MOD TOD MTS to most popular video formats, so that you can burn it to DVD)

- Make Website Videos (use to make videos for YouTube, Myspace Video, Metacafe)

- Easy to Use with Professional Setting and Optimized Profiles

- Extract Audio and Images from Video (Extract audio tracks and save as MP3 music file. Extract single frame as JPEG or BMP picture.)

- Automatically Fix Incorrect Video Data

- Support Both Portable Player and Console Player (iPad, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PS3, PSP, X-box, Zune, PDA, Blackberry, Nokia, Android, Zen, etc.)

Check the website for full details on the software;

Win X HD Video Converter Deluxe

Now if you download and install it before the 16th March 2010 and use the Licence Key provided below, then believe me you are not going to regret switching from the current suite of tools you probably currently use get the same functions that this Video Converter offers in a single fast loading, memory resource friendly, stable and fast video conversion software. Glad I got my copy for free anyway before the 16th of March as its a breeze to use and does everything you need in the Video Conversion area. As far as i'm concerned this is very generous of them and a top piece of software for all levels of users. Approx 7mg download - Enjoy.

http://www.winxdvd.com/hd-video-converter-deluxe/

WINHCD-GIVE-AWAY-2010

Best Looking Wallpapers i'v seen in a while

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:54:00 +0000

This has to be one of the best wallpaper links I have ever stumbled across. The link below contains the most stunning themed wallpapers for

your desktop that I have found to date. I just had to share it. Anyone with any other links to

wallpapers sites that they know about that are free and offer similar quality as an art enthusiast I would be grateful to be given a chance to check them out. Just a short post but great post for wallpaper lovers.

By the way you don't need to sign up for the site and click the "Submit" button to get access, just click on the splash page image. Hope you like.

http://www.desktopography.net/

Follow the on Twitter - https://twitter.com/aeiko_

Requesting your users to update their website profile

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:36:00 +0000

A common practice among many website that I use is that on the odd occasion they request that you update the original information that you provided to the website. I don't know about you, but anyone email asking me to update any information makes me suspicious. There are so many spam emails going around these days that every time I receive an email that requests that I update my account details or requests information, whether they be legitimate or not always raises my suspicion as to its origins and motives. Could it be the launch pad of some sort of phishing attack or something along those lines.

I believe that website owners and developers need to put their heads together devise a set of new standards for the process requesting users to update their account details or other information that may be required! Even if the email comes from a legitimate site that looks well formatted while also coming from and email address, such as accounts@munchit.com.au, these days it just isn’t worth taking the risk of responding to these emails with so many tricks that the data thieves and hackers out there use and have up their sleeves.

A practice that I am going to adopt in the future with the process of requesting information updates from users, is to send them an email providing information that on a certain date the website will be requiring some additional information. Stated in the email it will state that an “sms” will be sent to the user (Already captured during sign-up). The "sms" will inform the user that an email has been sent to them on that date which will contain a link to the website. Also provided in the "sms" will be a confirmation code uniquely used to identify the user. When the user checks their email and clicks the link they are taken to a page where they have to enter the code before the fields required to enter their log in details are revealed. Once the log in is complete the user will be directed to the page that will capture the new information that the site owner requires.

I believe this more structured and secure approach that although will require a bit more development effort and cost it is something that would be worth implementing. I think users would generally feel happier about providing the additional information to the site as they would have previously been notified that they were going to receive an email of this nature.

Let me know if you think this is a feasible automated approach to dealing this common suspicion around these types of email requests? Can you think of any other innovative ways to reassure users that updating information and collecting new information from the user to use on the website is a safe process?

and / and - Which is for what?

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:14:00 +0000

A question that has been bugging me all day today when I was conducting some SEO work today was is the <strong> and <em> tag any different to the <b> and <i> tag. The conclusion I have come to after researching the topic is that you use the <strong> and <em> instead of <b> and <i> tag when you are trying to emphasize keywords on a page as readers treat the two tags differently. They achieve the same visual effect however the <strong> and <em> tags are "logical" tags. This means that they are for when the developer wants to add emphasis to particular words or phrases. A reader for a user with disabilities may say the word louder for example. The <b> and <i> tags are for visual layout effects on a page and do not have the same effect on a reader or add any weight to your keywords in the search engines. I suggest when crafting a page and that if you want to format something purely for visual effect then you use the <b> or <i> tag, as they will reduce you page size very slightly, hence increase load time. This post by Nikki Pilkington also states that there is no effect in the SEO world.

http://nikkipilk.sc10.co.uk/blog/2008/09/30/tip-49-the-bold-and-the-beautiful/

Improve Your Businesses Wireless Security

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:25:00 +0000
A business wireless network should be a network that is safe from hackers and unauthorised users. Here are some steps to secure your network from such intrusions;

Create a Wireless Security Policy
Create a policy that specifies who can use the network, and how to protect the network This is one below is taken from a Cisco template I found on a website;
- Acceptable use policy, to specify what types of network activities are allowed and which ones are prohibited.
- E-mail and communications activities, to help minimise problems from e-mails and attachments.
- Antivirus policy, to help protect the network against threats like viruses, worms, and Trojan horses.
- Identity policy, to help safeguard the network from unauthorised users.
- Password policy, to help employees select strong passwords and protect them.
- Encryption policy, to provide guidance on using encryption technology to protect network data.
- Remote access policy, to help employees safely access the network when working outside the office.

Educate your Employees
Educate your employees and get them involved in protecting the network. Use informational posters and training about security, passwords, and privacy to help you keep your business information and communications secure.

Secure the WLAN
- Use strong encryption: When you install your network, set up the strongest wireless encryption you can. WEP encryption is adequate, but WPA and WPA2 are better options.
- Secure communications: Encrypt data that travels on the network, and authenticate users to be sure you know who is using the WLAN.
- Change the default network name to something that is hard to identify so it is unrecognisable.
- Use MAC address control lists combined with encryption to restrict user access.
- Be sure that management ports are secured with non default names and passwords.
- Hide the access points to prevent tampering.
- Use video surveillance cameras to monitor your office building and site for suspicious activity.

Protect Your Company from Outside Threats
Protect wireless devices with the same security you use for the your company network. (i.e. firewalls, VPNs, and antivirus software)

Protect Your Wired Network from Wireless Threats
Install wireless intelligent protection switching (IPS) devices to prevent unauthorised, "rogue" access points and other wireless threats.

Review of Untangle UTM

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:25:00 +0000
Recent open source start-up Untangle has launched one of the first open-source unified threat management software platforms (UTM) for network security, targeted at small to mid-sized businesses. The Untangled Gateway Platform was built around more than 30 open source projects, including SpamAssasin, ClamAV, and Snort, and competes with proprietary systems from SonicWall, Barracuda and WatchGuard, among others.
Untangle is aimed at SMB appliances and is geared toward 250 users or fewer, and is meant to work on one server although not released as an enterprise product it is targeted at SMB’s who previously may have used a combination of open source projects.
There is an enterprise-scale version slated for a 2009 release with the free version including a spam, virus, spyware, phish and attack blocker, as well as a web filter, protocol control, open VPN, intrusion
prevention, firewall, router and web reporting.
The paid version of Untangle includes active directory integration and advanced policy management, as well as remote access portal and configuration back-up.
Pricing for up to 10 users is US$25 a month, and it's double for up to 50 users. From 51 to 150 users it will cost US$150 a month, and for more than 151 users US$250 a month.
For more information go to
http://www.untangle.com/

Technology Tips Blog - Update - Dec 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 01:38:00 +0000
Just a quick post to let you know that I have been moving around some of the page elements and navigation on the website to make it easier for readers to get around and discover the content on the blog. Moving the tag navigation closer to the top of the page I thought made sense as it makes it easier to find relevant topics on the website as well as adds the ability for users to subscribe via email to new posts, become followers of the blog and bookmark post on social media websites. Please sign up as a reader as a form of your appreciation for updated tips and site content. Just to let you know I have a guest called James Kambourian, a good friend of mine and a network administrator with management skills who will be featuring some posts in coming in the coming months and if I get a good response to his posts then I he will become a permanent feature on the site, so I will appreciate your feedback in coming months. Over Christmas time I will also be giving away some copies of software to some lucky readers so please leave comments on the blog as these are your entries into the draw for the software. Im still striking a deal with the software provider though as to how many copies they will be providing me so I will keep you posted on this one. It is likely to be a piece of software that has been featured on the technology tips blog recently though just to let you know.

Search engine optimization and web site marketing summary

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:27:00 +0000
Search engine optimization and web site marketing is about making small modifications to parts of your web site and performing a number of actions. When the task is viewed as a whole it might seem like allot to take in and complete. To make this task easier for you to complete I have broken down each important elements I consider important to web site SEO and marketing. If you follow and complete the following actions on your web site you should notice a considerable difference to the ranking in the search engines and an increase in traffic.

Create unique, accurate page titles
- For your home page list the business name and the main focus areas of your site. (i.e. business name - main focus1 - main focus2 - physical location)
- For other content pages list the business name and the main focus area of the page.
- Note that the contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results as a link.
- The title tag should not contain any of the words Google disregards. These are words like 'and', 'not', 'a', 'the', 'about' etc which are too common for Google to take any notice of.
- Use your main keywords in your title.

Use the "keywords" meta tag
- The page's keywords meta tag should contain short concise keywords relating to your site content and contain no more than 250 characters
- Keyword information influences what keywords you site appears under in the search results.
- Use unique and relevant keywords that relate to your pages title, meta description and page content.
- Keywords should be unique for each page
- Weight is given to how near your keyword is to the beginning of your keywords list.

Use the "description" meta tag
- The page's description meta tag should be a sentence or two or a short paragraph of approximately 250 characters.
- Description information appears under a page's title and above a page's URL in a search results.
- If your site is listed in DMOZ then the page description from here is sometimes used.
- Write a description that informs users of the pages content and contains keywords relevant to your page.
- Descriptions should be unique for each page.

URL structure of the web site
- Create descriptive categories and file names for the documents on your web site.
- Create URL's that you can remember from memory and friendly to read.
- URL's to pages are displayed as part of a search result so include keywords to name folders and relevant pages.
- Create a simple directory structure
- Never have more than one URL for your home page.
- Provide one version of a URL to reach a document

Web site navigation is important
- If you have enough pages around a specific topic area create a page describing these related pages (e.g. root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)
- Create a naturally flowing hierarchy making it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site.
- Use mostly text for navigation by controlling most of the navigation from page to page through text links. This makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site.
- Use "breadcrumb" navigation - A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page. This create more keyword links on your pages and improves useability.
- Put an HTML sitemap page on your site and make the link to it a text link so that it will be indexed easily. Make sure that is easy to find for users.
- Create an XML Sitemap file to your page and submit to Google and Yahoo.
- Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL as you don't want users browsing your directory structure. You can add an index.html page in each directory to forward the user to a formatted page containing links back into the body of the web site.
- Have a useful 404 page that has a customised look and feel

Be aware of the Google Sandbox and Supplemental Index
- The Google sandbox is part of the Google indexing algorithm that considers the age of a domain.
- Do not expect high listing in the search engines for more than 6 months even if you are doing everything right as older domains are favoured.
- If you site is in the supplemental index this means that your site has been classified as a site that contains duplicate content
- Simple Way To Probe Google's Supplemental Index - site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked

Offer quality content and services
- Creating compelling and useful content that will influence users on your web site so that users will link to your pages.
- Encourage users to link to you site through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means.
- Use relevant language for you target audience.
- Write easy-to-read text and stay organised around the topic.
- Create content primarily for your users, not search engines and make the content relevant to the title and description of your page.
- Do not create duplicate web sites with the same content, these sites decrease your site ranking as search engines do not value content that is duplicated
- Content throughout a site should not also be duplicated.
- Aim to keep content duplication to a minimum; make sure that at least 70% of the sites content is original.
- To give you an idea of what keyword density to use, if you have less than 250 words on the page, just use one keyword and use it no more than three times total.
- To target specific keywords in your content bold the first keyword and italicise the second or third use of that keyword.
- Keep your content fresh and updated to keep bringing Google bot back to your site on regular intervals.

Include an RSS Feed
- Create an RSS Feed associated with your site or product
- It is vital that you take advantage of this technology to get your content broadcasted across the web and around the world.

Include anchor text on you links
- Choose descriptive and concise anchor text.
- Format your links so they're easy to spot on the page. (i.e. make they a different colour to the body text, preferably blue as this is the default colour for a link)
- Think about anchor text for internal links too and keep the anchor text consistent when linking to these pages.

Use rel="nofollow" for links
- Setting the value of the "rel" attribute of a link to "nofollow" will tell Google that certain links on your site shouldn't be followed.
- Using this attribute will allow you to prioritise which pages are indexed.
- Use this attribute on outbound links to other web sites that are not that relevant to your websites content.
- To nofollow all of the links on a page, use "nofollow" in your robots meta tag.

Include heading tags and format the page appropriately on each page
- Use <h1> for your main topic and <h2> for the sub topics included on your page
- Use headings sparingly across the page. (i.e. One use of <h1> tag and a few uses if <h2> tag)
- Use bullets where possible as visitors can quickly scan them. Search engines also prioritise bullets instead of long paragraph text.
- To maximise the results for your keywords optimization efforts focus on one or two keywords only per page.

Optimize your images for search engines
- Use the alt attribute to describe the image including a keyword where relevant (note: do not bother doing this for images that are used a spacers etc)
- Make the image file name relevant to the image including a keyword where relevant.
- Use brief, but descriptive file names and alt text.
- Store images in a directory of their own.
- These tips make it easy for images search engines to include your images.

Use of robots.txt
- This ensures that relevant sections of your web site are indexed.
- Use secure methods for sensitive content. (i.e. Logon mechanisms as robots.txt will not prevent users from accessing confidential material included on your web server)

Inbound and outbound linking
- Try to get as many links as possible to your web site from other sites listed in the search engines.
- The quality of your inbound and outbound links far outweigh quantity.
- The oldest method of gaining inbound links is to request them.
- Find the highest page rank sites linking to your site and your competitors' sites and try to get additional links from these web sites.
- Run monthly link campaigns and snatch up the best identified web sites.
- Run regular checks on what pages are still linking back to your site. Also make sure they did not move you from a high page rank page to a lower one.
- Eliminate any penalised sites you link to as this has a negative effect of your search engine rankings.
- Check your search engine ranking and your competitor's for each of your keywords every week. Do this for Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alta Vista at the minimum.
- One of the most effective methods of gaining back links is to provide an article for other companies to use containing links to your web site.
- Use PPC advertisements to achieve inbound links to your site.
- Linking to yourself from other sites that you might own is an acceptable practice. Don't set-up web site that simple link back to yourself though.
- Add a button to your site such as "Add This" so that users can use social bookmarking sites to link back to your web site.

Promote your web site in the right ways
- Include a blog about new content or services.
- Use social media sites to promote your web site.
- Putting effort into the off-line promotion of your company or site can also be rewarding.
- Reach out to those in your site's related community.
- Add your business to Google's Local Business Center this way your site will be added to Google Maps.
- Press releases are one of the mainstays of any marketing program and work wonders to drive large amounts of traffic.
- Create an affiliate program (This means that the affiliate - the person who placed your link on their site - gets paid a small percentage of any sale made)
- Avoid link farming, duplicated content, cloaking, spamdexing, and other attempts to fool search engine crawlers as this will get your site penalised.

Use web analytics services
- Get insight into how users reach and behave on your site and make common navigation paths easier on your web site.
- Discover the most popular content on your site so you can further improve these areas.
- Measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site.

In future blog posts I have decided that I am going to go into more detail for some of these specific areas covered. These future posts will explain how to complete each of the items listed in each of the main areas of SEO and marketing, so stay posted. If there are other areas that you believe I have missed on this list let me know and I will amend the post as I would like to include everything that makes for a successful web site.

TwitterFox - Firefox extension

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:18:00 +0000
If you have not heard of Twitter yet it is a micro blogging tool that allows you to write 140 characters at any point in time. For more details on it please read my previous blog post which will give you some background on what it is. Well I have been using Twitter now for quite a few months and enjoy its ability for me to post useful comment and sometimes not so useful comments off to my followers. Something that I have found very useful is a Firefox extension called TwitterFox. This is the primary method I have been using it to post my tweets and interact on Twitter. If you live inside the Firefox web browser then TwitterFox is a great way for you to post, receive replies, direct messages and generally keep updated on the people that you are following. The extension is very lightweight and adds a tiny icon to the status bar of Firefox. I have been through quite a few bits of standalone pieces of software as well as a number of other Twitter downloads including the majority of the ones listed on the Twitter website (http://twitter.com/downloads) and found this one to be the fastest and most reliable. The URL to the extension is below;

http://www.naan.net/trac/wiki/TwitterFox

Firefox Wallpapers Galore

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:21:00 +0000
Firefox users, lovers and fanatics will love this link. The link below is to the most comprehensive listing of Firefox themed wallpapers for your desktop that I have found. Anyone with any other links to wallpapers that are not on this page please post away. This is just a short post but as you can see from the page I give a big shout out to Nikesh for putting this page together.

http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2008/07/100-firefox-wallpapers-that-will-blow.html

Speed up your page load times with a simple trick

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:49:00 +0000
Here I have for you a simple image trick to make your pages load faster. This might sound simple but it is something that i notice allot of web developers overlook when adding images to pages, whether it is because they are lazy or just didn't think about it, this is a fact. Every time you web page loads the browser looks for the width and height of an image. This is specified through the attributes width="236" & height="657" which allows your browser to instantly know, through your HTML / XHTML code, how big the image is and where to place it. What happens behind the scenes now is that you browser will load your page text before the graphics. If your graphics do not have width and height attributes set then as the browser reads the HTML / XHTML and gets to one of the images with no attributes, it causes the browser to have to perform a function to work out the actual size of the image, which hence slows down the load time a little bit. So the trick to making you pages load quicker is to make sure that all of your graphics, even the small transparent gifs and bullets have a width and height set. After some testing that I have done on a dial up connection you can really notice the difference. Give it a try.

Change file types in Vista - Using Types

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:54:00 +0000
Have you noticed that the functionality to associate file types with a program has been dropped in Vista from the explorer menu "Tools" > "File Types". Well there is a way to give you back the control that you are used to with a program called Types. It is a is a free and lightweight configuration utility for Windows Vista and XP that allows you to edit program associations, icons, context menus and other properties of various file types displayed in Windows Explorer programs in Vista. You can still use Vista to change what programs open which file extensions. For example by clicking on "Start" > "Default Programs", or by right clicking on a file and clicking "Properties" and on then by clicking on "Change" on the "General" tab. Types however allows you to full control of editing file types and context menus and many other properties. It is definitely worth a look at and is in my mind ones of the most powerful freeware file extension managers out there as changes are made instantly with a quick refresh click. It is definitely an improvement on the inbuilt Windows file extension management options.

http://types.sourceforge.net/

Google Chrome - New Google Browser

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:59:00 +0000
Google have released a new browser called Google Chrome. The best description I have found of the new browser in in Wikipedia. At the same time Mozilla have released Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 and Microsoft have released IE 8 Beta. I have been on a bit of a downloading spree lately getting the latest versions of the browsers and and testing each of them. As always my favorite if Firefox simply because of the extensions that it offers and as a web developer I cannot live without the Web Developer toolbar and Firebug. But let me not get led astray. Google have a browser now and although it is in beta stage is is very quick when loading pages that rely on JavaScript and AJAX. I have tested it on a number of websites that use allot of AJAX and the browser works very nicely as it has been designed to. I have read a number of reviews that back this up http://null-logic.net/blog/2008/09/02/javascript-performance-comparison-with-chrome/ for one and http://goit-postal.blogspot.com/2008/09/chrome-first-little-test-with-highly.html . Google Chrome is defiantly a browser that will in the future go head to head with IE, FireFox , Safari and Opera however at the moment it is only early days so it is way to early to tell the extent that this browser will take a share of the market. For the moment I will be sticking to FireFox however I have noticed that it does perform better with allot of the Google apps that I use so I may find myself switching between the two when preforming different types of browsing. Interesting features that it offers is that you can browse incognito. This means that pages you view in this window won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved. Another feature that it offers is that if a tab crashes then the whole browser does not crash only the tab with the problem will close. Other new features include a new JavaScript Engine called V8 is in use, better performance through compiled JavaScript as it is compiled into machine code and not necessarily always interpreted. New JavaScript VM which has a better garbage collection included to preserve memory and browser tabs or new browser windows run in dedicated threads. I am still finding out more information about the browser as it is only new so if anyone has any interesting points to raise about the browser please post your findings and opinions of Chrome.

Google alerts to build back links to website

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:01:00 +0000

Building back links is essential for your website to rank high in the search engines. Finding relevant websites to request back links from can take time and research. I have found a great way though to located relevant websites to build these back links from which is free. If you have a Google account then you can setup Google alerts to send you links to websites and blogs that have published freshly content that matches the keywords that you are looking for. To do this visit http://www.google.com/alerts and enter the keywords and interested in and your email address and you will be sent alerts of and new web page that publishes content that contains those specified keywords. You can visit each of these websites, that Google alerts has provided you a link to, check that this website is relevant and if they offer the ability to publish press releases or links on their website, then offer them as link to your website. This can be added in the form of a link swap on their links page, a link embedded in some content that you provide the website that links back to you website or a back link in a comment on one of their blog post s’. Make sure that you leave relatively quality comments on blog posts though or you will find that they will not publish your comments.

I have found that this is a great way for me to build back links to my website as on a daily basis I am provided with a list of websites that have published content that related to my keywords. Over time also you get to see which websites are the ones that publish content the most that relate to your keywords so you can work out whether it is worth forming a relationship with these websites to add a permanent link to you site. If anyone else has any great ways of building back links please leave a comment.

Recuva - Restore files that you have deleted

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:11:00 +0000
Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware Windows utility that can be used to restore files that you have deleted from your computer. It comes from the makers of CCleaner so you can trust the product developers. It can be used to retrieve files that have been deleted from memory cards, mp3 players as well as the recycle bin. If you have been hit with a virus that has deleted files then you can use the program to locate the files that have been deleted and restore them to their original location. I have only just started playing with the program and ran a few tests and it seems to work quite well. The interface is quite easy to use so it can be used by all levels of computer users with a relatively good understanding of a computers file system. It is in beta phase so it may have some bugs, but I am yet to find any. If you have deleted a file or need to recover lost data then give it a try. You can find it at http://www.recuva.com/.

Reader for iPhone by Google

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:40:00 +0000
There is now a even better version of XHTML version of Reader by Google for mobile devices available at http://www.google.com/reader/i/ .This version is aimed at the iPhone as it is aimed at mobile phones with advanced browsers. It is designed to offer many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. You can scan the headlines for news items that catch your eye and then click to expand the headline. You still have all of the available features such as staring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place. Check it out at http://www.google.com/reader/i/.

Twitter - another web 2.0 fad?

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:06:00 +0000
Twitter, another Web 2.0, hyped up buzzword, or is it. I had reluctantly been watching it for a while then decided that I would have to check it out seeing though I am a web developer and it could possibly have some positive implications on my work. Let me explain, for those that don't know. Twitter is a micro blogging tool that allows you to write 140 characters at any given time of day or night for any given reason. You can do this via web widget, browser, SMS or one of many other methods.

When I first heard about Twitter, I simply couldn't see why anyone would use it. Now, after using it for about a month, I most definitely can see how and why it can benefit businesses or individuals. I can now follow other web developers and see what they are doing as well as companies that I am interested in (i.e Apple etc) via their company employee's or via a website that follows a particular topic. See check my profile to see the feed that the Twitter is providing me with everyday. http://www.twitter.com/subske . By following people, businesses or what ever maintains the twitter account, I get some inside information about what they are thinking, writing, doing etc. It inspires me to keep working on and can be interesting at the same time to find out what people are doing online everyday.

I can also see that for businesses it can be used as a communication tool to let others know what their business is doing and where they are tracking with each item that the business is working on. In a way you can build hype up around products that you are launching and use it to promote things that are in the pipeline. I can understand why allot of large businesses would be scared of this however smaller businesses can now build up hype about what they are bringing out and provide their customers a feed of information about anything they propose.

Finally, one other thing you can do with the tool is to embed your twitter feed into your website or blog. It can be used to generate addtional content on your web page or blog for the search engines to run over, as they tend to love fresh content. I will probably be implementing my Twitter feed on my blog pretty soon, I just want to use it for a bit longer before I do so.

Free Top Level Domains

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:20:00 +0000
If you are looking at acquiring a top level domain for your website then before you make a purchase I should highlight that you actually have a couple of other free domain registration options. Firstly there is the .tk domain which is quite old which can be registered at http://www.dot.tk/. Then there is a new top level one which I have just found named .co.cc which you can register at http://www.co.cc/. The dot .co.cc seems to be fairly new so jump onto it as you can pickup quiet a nice domain name for free at the moment. I have just registered three new domains there which are the following, http://www.munchit.co.cc/, http://www.tdixon.co.cc/ and http://www.subske.co.cc/. I was going to keep going and register more but decided that I should leave some for the rest of us out there. If anyone else has any ideas about free domains out there please leave a post so that we can have some sort of list here of the free domains available out there. I would also be interested in anyone who has setup a website with one of these domains to leave a post with their URL so I can check out what people are using these domains for. Happy domain registering.

Link Tiger - Broken link finder

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Dixon) — Sat, 10 May 2008 05:10:00 +0000

Link Tiger is an easy to use broken link finder that can be used for free if maintaining a single website with no more than 1000 links contained throughout your website. As a website developer it can also be used to maintain more than one site with more links however a licence fee is required in this case. Link Tiger allows you to locate the broken links on your website so that they can be fixed before the customer has time to see it. From my experience with the product it is very easy to use with the summary page providing you with a list of broken links on your website that is really easy read. The page then provides you with the ability to click on the broken link item listed while the software locates and highlights the broken link on the page, so that there is no searching through the page trying to find the link. It is a very useful online service that I recommend that you use if you are concerned about having broken links throughout your website. Broken links can have an effect on your search engine rankings as well as be a bit of a turn off for your website visitors so it is important that you fix them if they appear on your website.

http://www.linkfinder.com/