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This is a website designed by the Swedish armed forces to encourage and foster team work.  You can join a team of three others on line, or copy and paste a link in to your IM in order to get three friends involved.  The aim of the game is to keep the game running for as long as you can by passing certain tests presented to you individually and as a team.  It can run for less than a minute or – as you increase your ability to work together – for as long as it takes.  Perhaps the best thing about this website is that you can see – if you are quick – what the other three members of your team are doing.  Their mouse movements are visible on your screen, as yours are to them. You are judged on memory, special thinking, multitasking and concentration.

Imagine

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A change in perspective can change everything.  This tells a single story from four different perspectives – which you can flip around as often and as quickly as you wish.  It is the story of a heist at an art gallery.  Only when you have seen the story from all four perspectives can you fully understand what has happened.  Alternatively you may get another story entirely – it is pretty much the luck of the draw.  The flash animation and video integration on this site is quite remarkable given what is being done here.  You could think of this working in a similar way to the TV series 24 but in this case it is you who moves the screens around, not the TV executive.  This is a marvellous example of what imagination can do to push the boundaries of Web 2.

We Choose The Moon

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If you follow mankind’s attempts to explore our solar system then you will love this site.  To coincide with the fortieth anniversary of man’s landing on the moon, this awesome site tracks that forty year history in a marvellous tableau of flash generated scenes.  The visuals of the take off are – literally – out of this world but there is much more to this site than that.  You can tell almost immediately that this has been a labor of love for everyone involved – it is just so meticulously and beautifully done.  So if you have ever wanted to know what it was like to go to the moon you can experience it here – in real time.  Quite simply stupendous.

Dust – in Stereoscopic 3D

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If you have a pair of 3D glasses then you can really immerse yourself in to this site.  Imagine that you are miniaturised and able to see the particles of dust, bacteria and other nasty bits and pieces that inhabit your ducts and vents and you get an idea what this site is all about.  All in all it is a little like becoming your own version of The Incredible Shrinking Man.  Again, the flash in this website is quite astonishing – particularly if you do happen to own a pair of those glasses that you discarded somewhere after you saw Avatar.  Don’t worry if you can’t find them either – you can see this site in bog standard 2D as well. The mites with the moving legs will still make you grimace.

Drag the Model

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This is just good old fashioned fun, but all thanks to the wonderful advances of flash technology.  It is the website of a world famous producer of denim clothing but that is irrelevant when you get to the fun part – you unzip the model’s coat and that leads you to different screens where you can drag him this way and that – and the poor old chap has to follow whatever you do with your mouse.  Only a few years ago this sort of online experience would not have been possible – and it may be fairly mindless.  Do we care?

Snapshots of Provence

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This is simply stunning.  Provence is one of the most beautiful regions of France and – so it can be argued – in the world.  What you get here is a collection of images and sounds beautifully flash driven, which combine to give you a visual and aural feast.  It is not just the fact that the images are gorgeous and the sounds engaging – there are some fabulous scenes of stop motion too.  Plus, you just sit back and marvel at where the internet is heading.  This is seamless and beautifully constructed and a visit to Provence online may just be what you need if you want to get away from it all for a while but cannot leave home. 

Summit of the Summit

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You start at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and plunge to the bottom (as does your scroll bar on your screen).  You can then get back up to the summit following in the footsteps of a group of climbers who went up there to raise awareness for the global clean water crisis.  This site boasts of being the same height as the mountain – almost two thousand feet – and that is how it may feel at times.  The crispness and speed of the site is amazing and you wonder how we used to be entertained by websites before this technology came along (or not). 

Magic Mouse Movements

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If you prefer a flash driven experience that is a little more sedate then try this.  It may take a little while to load but then you get a marvellous lilting melody with lovely plaintive vocals while you position your mouse wherever you want and follow the stream of music.  Just when you think it is just going to be a straight line zooming across your screen then something quite magical happens.  One that you may well want to visit several times, this is a marvellous stress buster.

Jim Carrey

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The actor’s website is just as odd as you might expect, given the range of roles he has pursued over the year.  It really goes against anything you might expect from a Hollywood star but if there was one whose website was going to be different then it is Carrey.  It pushes the boundaries of what the internet is able to deliver at the moment, too, in terms of how flash can be used to enliven and animate.  This is an intuitive site with no clear leaders – you have to pretty much guess where to go next.  However, when you do click on something be patient while the page loads – this website is quite an extraordinary feast of visuals.  Keep your eyes peeled.

Lascaux

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The Lascaux Caves contains some of the most exquisite prehistoric cave paintings on the planet.  Unfortunately they are no longer open to the general public for fear that the continued exposure to our moist breath will destroy the delicate paintings.  Step forward the French Ministry of Culture and Information who allow us in to the cave to explore – if only virtually.  Using state of the art flash animation, this tour will not disappoint the history buff in you.  It is also a strangely peaceful experience and so perhaps a good one to end with here.

Postscript

We appreciate that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. So, if you find nothing here you like, you may on these other sites.

10 Wonderful Websites With Which To Waste Time At Work

How Do They Do That? Nine Mind Blowing Flash Animations

Wow!  Ten Awesome Interactive Wesbites

When Flash Goes Evil. 10 Online Nastimations for your Perverse Pleasure

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Mafia Wars – to those not part of the close to thirty million users of the online multi-player game the term may be nothing more than a passing reference to a time in history or one of the multitude of movies made about these clandestine organizations.  Yet to those involved in the game itself it can be one of several things.  Firstly it can be just a harmless way to spend a few hours.  Those a little more involved may find themselves taking the role play seriously.  Others could be seen as being in danger of complete addiction and revolving their life completely around the game.  Which category do you fall in to?

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Categories.  That’s what it seems to be all about and I wish I had looked in to the three player categories before I started playing the game.  There were three choices – Maniac, Mogul or Fearless.  Each has a different recharge time, so for example the Manic recharges every three minutes (in terms of energy you are given in the game which is important as you can’t really do any mafia jobs without it) whereas the Mogul receives money from property bought six minutes earlier than the hour allotted to other categories.  The Fearless mafia on the other hand have a health recharge time of three minutes instead of the usual five.

The Neo

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This should really have given me a clue as to the players involved.  Yeah, categories. They seem to fall in to three.  There are people who join up to MW, last about three days and then give up because they find it too boring (what?), get picked on way too much by stronger mafias (often their friends in real life which could be seen as funny) or they have commitments which get in the way.  In other words, they have a life.  They are akin, in my mind, to people who might take the occasional drug for social reasons at a party but then are able, somehow, to keep away from them in other aspects of their life.

The Multi-User

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Then there are those who play every now and again, perhaps every few days or so.  Sometimes this is because they cannot play it at work (blocked by the network, as it were) or because the game is not sufficiently engaging enough.  Quite probable too is that they are also involved in other online gaming experiences such as Farmville and spread their time over various games.  These gamers seem to me pretty much like addicts who like to spread their addictions out – a little cocaine here and a sniff of marijuana there as it were.

The Addict

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Then there are the addicts, those who spend most of their lives within distance of a PC or a laptop, who somehow manage to circumvent the system either at work or at school (poor firewalls if you ask me) and seem to be always available to help in a war or take advantage of any offers that you have to give them.  These are the equivalent of complete and hopeless crack addicts, whose every moment is given over to looking for and finding that next fix.

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What are you?

Please keep in mind that this is a humorous piece – and if you play Mafia Wars you may not fit in to any of these categories – wholly.  But be honest with yourself.  Which one do you fit in to?  There is a comment section at the end of this article – please feel free to add your own!

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Now, with or without fitting in to the above categories, there is another category of player which will either be a definite fit or not.  In Mafia Wars, you get Godfather Points at various times when you get to a higher level.  These points can then be exchanged for goodies such as new weapons with which to fight (otherwise unavailable) and boxes of surprise gifts.  You can also exchange them, on occasion, with much need items such as untraceable cell phones and computer set-ups – vital if you want to get to a higher level.

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Player or Pay Player?

So, what is the category?  Quite simply – are you a player or a payer player?  Zynga, the company that created the game offers players the ability to exchange real dollars with Godfather Points.  The rates of exchange may seem low but can quickly be spent and then the inclination is to spend a few dollars more to get what you need to rise among the ranks.  This of course is what Zynga wants – the whole Mafia Wars experience is simply an exercise in extracting money albeit in exchange for an exciting, compulsive gaming experience.

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So, do you play or do you pay play?  What sort of player are you?

And – whether you play the game or not, there is a final category I would like to point out.  What is Mafia Wars at the end of the day?  How do you file it yourself?  Is it a harmless way to pass the time or is it an addictive, social life destroying monster that eats in to your life and gobbles you up before you notice?  Your comments greatly appreciated!

Oh – and if you are wondering who created the bulk of the wonderful art used in this article – then visit darkpatator at his Flickr stream.  Zynga – give this guy a job now!

1. Keyboard Whale Song

   
   all images are screenshots by the author

   You may need to turn your speakers off and don a pair of head phones in order that you do not give your colleagues a fright with this one. Simply use your keyboard to construct a love song to a whale. That’s all there is to it – but of course the added extra is that you get to have an orchestra play your song for you. The concept may be basic but the results are a great deal of – albeit pretty mindless – fun. In a similar way to those pesky Facebook games, this website will have you glancing at your watch and wondering where the time went.

2. Soap Box Racer

   

   If there is – whatever your gender – a boy racer inside you just longing to get out but work just gets in the way of the real thing, then why not take a look at this site? You will be able to construct your own customized soap box racer here, and then pit it against opponents from all over the world. Then you can also design your own circuit on which to race and chart your progress from novice to expert. You may get to the top of the racing community but be warned – this will take some time. A lot of time. OK, all of your waking time. If the words obsessive and compulsive mean anything to you, perhaps you should avoid.

3. Water, Water Everywhere

   

   Do you know what is the largest source of drinking water available on the planet? The Great Lakes – and this interactive website covers – exhaustively – every aspect you can think of to do with them. If you want to know the history – it is there. If your mind is enquiring about invasive species then you can find extensive information here. Your green credentials can be improved by the information beautifully presented here about pollution. Put it this way, by the time you finish with website you may be sick of the sight and sounds of water but the day’s work time will have passed by peacefully enough. Quite simply, this is a stunning site by which you will be entertained for hours – if not days.

4. We Choose The Moon

   

   This site celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing – and boy does it do it in some style. If you are interested in space exploration then you will find this site both entertaining and educational. The whole mission is recreated in real time with the help of some stunning flash animation which makes it quite an experience. Each step along the way is covered and as the mission itself took several days, you know that work can be safely put on the back burner with this irresistible internet experience.

5. Join the Swedish Army

   

   Yes, Sweden does have an army and this recruitment website is aimed at getting those big blond boys and girls in to uniform. That said, it’s a lot of fun for those of us in no danger of being recruited in to the Nordic armed services. You enter a test environment and discover if you have what it takes to join the army. It is all very science fiction and huge fun – and should keep you away from that paperwork and filing for quite a while, thank you very much Sweden.

6. The Eternal Moonwalk

   

   The idea of this website is very simple but the end result is strangely compulsive. Web denizens are invited to submit their own right to left moonwalk in a tribute to the late Michael Jackson. These are then linked together in a continuous, often silly but hugely mindlessly entertaining way. As tributes to the late king of pop go this is one of the more inventive. There is no talking, just a continual and never ending stream of people doing the moonwalk to a Billy Jean type backing track. Thousands and thousands of people. And, if you taking a liking to any you can add them on to your Facebook or Twitter space.

7. Take a Virtual Tour of New York

   

   The name says it all really. Full screen, spectacular, dizzying – just wonderful.

8. M Night Shyamalan

   

   He may have gone somewhat off the boil in terms of his movies but the official Shyamalan website has certainly got what it takes in terms of intriguing content to keep your mind off work for a while. This is a genuinely creepy experience – you use your keyboard to navigate your house around the film maker’s creepy virtual mansion and discover his darkest secrets as you go along. Of course, if you know his films, you know you can anticipate a few surprises. Chilltastic.

9. Simple Machines

   

   Some of the best and most enjoyable sites on the internet were originally designed for children. So it is with this with this Museum of Science and Industry site which heightens the learning experience through interactivity and really, really cool graphics. Your helper is the delightfully cute Twitch who, if you feed him enough and use your keyboard in an intuitive way will help you build a variety of machines. Building machines equals a lot of time. Work can wait.

10. Energy Lab

    

    How much energy can be contained in a bottle? Who can say but it would be a really, really good idea if you didn’t touch it. No, really, don’t touch it. Too late! Although this particular website may be on the short side in terms of length of experience it really does show what can be done when the internet and associated media technologies are pushed to the limit.

Well, Zivity is a new social networking site – with a slight difference. Certainly, it is generally agreed that any new social networking site would have to have something different to offer. The market is well and truly soaking wet in terms of saturation. Plus, a lot of people are now saying that the Facebook bubble has burst and bored netizens are leaving it in droves in search of the next big buzz.

So what will be new about Zivity and why is it causing such a buzz? At the moment, subscription is by invite only – and so the sight has an air of exclusivity about it. Always a clever marketing tool, that exclusivity has drawn a buzz around it. However, Zivity’s new plan is to be the first large scale networking sight to charge a monthly subscription to its users.

Doomed already to the fate of the dinosaurs? The owners of Zivity are confident that they will have plenty of subscribers. In fact they are fairly sure that they will have enough to make a big fat profit very quickly. They scent that the end is in sight for the “one size fits all” mentality of MySpace and Bebo. Time to diversify the whole concept.

So, how will they get the subscriptions? Certainly, one thing they are boasting about is that the site will be free of advertising. The recent Beacon shenanigans over at Facebook have proven that the tide is turning against intrusive advertising – and most people don’t want the rest of the world knowing what they have bought recently, particularly their nearest and dearest.

But is that enough to get the bucks rolling in? Hardly! The secret weapon in the Zivity arsenal will be nudity – and lots of it. Yes, you guessed it, sex sells and the guys at Zivity know this only too well. Every single successful form of media has gone through a pornographic phase, so why not the social networking site? There is a kind of sense to it.

I hear a general cry – “But that is so old hat, we have Xtube and its peers to cater for our moments of e-depravity!” Yes, but this one will be different. People will be able to join up – very much like all the other social networking sites out there and make new “friends” again in a very similar way. The difference will be that they will be given the opportunity to vote for their preferred pictures and sexy poses. The models and photographers will then be rewarded financially, according to their popularity. Kind of like “Hot or Not” except it will cost you (and remember, Hot or Not was sold for twenty million dollars!).

For “people” joining, read “men” as the pictures that can be voted on will be exclusively of women. Members will be able to post up pictures of their own, er, members, too however, safe in the knowledge that because of the site’s lack of advertising their own nude images will not be sold on. It is an idea that seems to be catching on. With its air of class and the invite only policy, Zivity has a waiting list of over thirty thousand.

If it still does not seem like an idea that will catch on, think again. The founder of Zivity, Scott Banister, has a long history of success in Silicon Valley. His previous ventures have been purchased by the likes of AOL and Cisco. Plus the company was announced this week that as well as the initial investment of one million dollars (from Banister and his wife) an additional seven million dollars of investment had been secured from the VC organization BlueRun Ventures. This Venture Capital group has been responsible for bankrolling PayPal among others.

They insist, also, that Zivity will not be porn – but rather a mix of the burlesque and the pin-up. The real idea is that the men joining Zivity will form a “relationship” with the models by voting for them and that their appreciation, through this system, will satisfy their needs – as well as those of the photographers, models and owners (albeit very different needs). Is there a real market out there for this sort of site when by a few clicks the average internet user can access images that are much more “hard core”?

Zivity’s aim is to attract two million members. Only time will tell whether they have created a new niche or bought in to a smelly quiche.

• v Get your kids to read more.
• v Improve their grades in school, and their technology skills.
• v Prepare them for life in the workplace, helping ensure their success.
• v Subscriptions are available in 3-month intervals, rather than being stuck with a year-long bill if something should happen.
• v Good spelling, grammar and reading comprehension come only with practice; Smarte-Lit.com gives kids the practice in an eco-friendly, storage friendly way.
• v Smarte-Lit.com involves no paper, so it’s kind to the environment.
• v Subscriptions are reasonably priced.
• v Discounts are available for teachers.
• v Personalized stories are available; all lifestyles, religious/spiritual paths are welcome.
• v Not just Dick and Jane stories, the stories here are all original and entertaining for young and old alike!

Visit Smarte-Lit.com at : www.Smarte-Lit.com today! You’ll be glad you did!

There has been a technology revolution in the last decade. Kids and teens are all over the Internet, texting, using smart phones to surf the web, and posting to social networking sites like Face book and MySpace, as well as constantly Tweeting to their friends.

There has been a decline in children’s language arts and reading scores with the explosion of new technology. Kids know what OMG!, or, Tweet or BTW means, but they cannot spell properly. They can read a text faster than they can read a full, proper sentence. Technology use like this can help advance their careers when they grow up, but only if they can speak and write well, as well as use technology.

Smarte-Lit.com is here to help. Kids need to be able to read and write as much as they need good math skills. Yet, it is difficult to get many kids to pick up a paper book. Rather than waiting for them to pick up a book or a Kindle (made by Amazon), bring the stories to them. For less than the cost of one paper book that your child probably will not read, you can have four stories sent to them by email each month! Parents choose the email address the stories are sent to, so they can see what their kids are reading.

Reading is so very important to a child’s success in school and life. Putting the stories in front of them weekly almost guarantees they will read them, and by practicing their reading skills with full proper sentences, their grammar, reading and language arts skills, as well as their spelling, will improve.

Try this service by getting only one story, or a short, three-month subscription. If your child does not improve his or her grades in school, or does not like the service, you don’t get stuck with a full year of the annoyance of getting something in your In-box you don’t want.

In these uncertain times, Smarte-Lit.com offers subscriptions in three-month intervals, and discounts for multiple accounts. Schools get discounts, as well, upon receipt of proper credentials. For special occasions, birthdays, and holidays, parents can also have a personalized story sent to their child. No space is taken up in the home with something else for Mom or Dad to pick up, and children improve both their reading and computer skills. Smarte-Lit.com is also kind to the environment. No paper means no waste in our landfills, and plenty of trees for everyone to enjoy.

You can’t beat this offer! It is a unique and interesting gift that children will love, and it will help them in school and life. All you have to do is check your email, read the stories yourself to see what your child is reading, and then either bring the child to your desk to read, or forward the story to their email account. Teachers can use the stories as enrichment for reading skills, or to help a struggling student with his or her reading skills. Kids love personalized stories, and stories about kids who are like them. Smarte-Lit knows this, and writes according to information given by the parent who wants a more personal touch to their child’s reading experience.

Go to: http://www.Smarte-Lit.com and see for yourself today! You won’t be disappointed.

1. Social Networking

In the world of the internets every seems to use Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Twitter etc…. Theres in fact so many of these websites it is a mystery why peoples brains haven’t exploded yet due to having to remember 500 different websites, let alone their usernames and passwords for these sites.

How Can It Destroy The World?
And thus we have the Facebook status bar, or the Tweet as it is referred to on Twitter. While it’s true that many people humiliate themselves on these sites by saying irrelevant things such as:

“Bob is in a bar, looking at Susan. But she is looking at Pablo. Bob is married. Pablo is not.” (Source)

The internet can take this an make it much worse than this. Presenting the future. Not only will you still be able to make a fool of yourself in front of your friends all over the internet, but you will eventually be able to do it in real-time. Then you’ll be thinking “wait I never intended to tweet than” and that will be tweeted too making you look like the grandma whose never used a computer before.

2. MMOs Destroy The World

While the scenario that is described on that page is an event with a high plausibly should such an event occur, like climate change there are far more issues the can destroy the world in the present than in the future.

How Can It Destroy The World?
Presenting the ABC Keyboard:

Image Source

After all who wants to relearn the alphabet to learn to use a QWERTY keyboard? Not only will the world be typing slower but if you look carefully there are keys that will automatically type out LOL and CYA with the push of a button. And to think that we as humans can find ways to out do our own laziness.

3. Presenting Anonymous

No, we are not here to condone anonymity for there are many of use who feel that it can be used as a force for good. Thus, allowing the human race to purge itself from its various sinful cults of greed and power (aka. Scientology). However, don’t get your hopes up because due to the anonymous nature of anonymity we can also act in secret.

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How Can It Destroy The World?
While there are many noble Anonymous Groups, such as the one trying to bring down the Scientological menace. Anonymity can still be used for evil purposes. Thus, presenting the internet scam where a person asks you for millions of dollars in exchange for a service. Only later do you realise that you’ve been scammed. It seems the L. Ron Hubbard isn’t the only person who can be a successful con-artist.

4. Internet and DRM

Can you imagine if the public library was invented today, how much complaints literary publishers would have about their works being loaned out for free? This of course happens with digital books, but look on the bright side! At least publishers are finally making back their money.

How Can It Destroy The World?
So for now libraries are still a safe haven for those who love to read books with no additional costs to their yearly taxes. Sadly, thanks to internet companies like Amazon, books are now being sold digitally, and there is less of a need for an actual book store. So its not only illegal immigrants taking aways the jobs of the working class but its also the internet. Its only a matter of time before the police knock down you door to remove the book you bought from your property.

By Joseph Parish

I would be hard pressed to provide a complete course in link building in such a short amount of space such as this, however I would like to present a few basic fundamentals to you in order to get you started down the SEO road.

We have all heard about the importance that both Yahoo and Google search engines place on links when determining site rankings. One can think of links as individual votes and the more of these links that you have the higher you end up in the rankings.

When venturing around the net we find several types of links. The first type being the “internal link”. This link is nothing more then a link on the same site to another page of the site. An “external link” on the other hand will navigate you from one website to another. When your site is being linked in this manner to another it is known as a “backlink”.

With this under our belt we can now progress to the four types of links involved in SEO work.

1. The first one is a URL link. This type of link is nothing more then a link to another site.
2. The most common type of link found on the net is the “Text Link”. These are also referred to as static links and are nothing more then a word or phrase that when clicked on will take you to another site.
3. The third type of link is the “Image Links”. Just as they say these are links where one clicks on the image to be transported to another site.
4. Lastly we come to the “Dynamic Links”. These links are usually constructed in a particular programming language such as JavaScript. Although these types will also take you to another website they may also have other functions as well.

As an SEO professional you should be able to easily recognize each of the above stated links.

Links provide the proper navigation needed by both human visitors as well as search engine spiders to allow either a visit or to index the page. When search engines index your page they gather various bits of information concerning your website and list it within the confines of the search engine database. This allows others to request information from the search page and in return receive links to your site.

You must understand how a search engine functions to be able to manipulate them. When a search engine indexes your site it will follow the links you have listed to travel from one page to another. Search engines do not follow “dynamic links” and as a courtesy to the website it does not follow the html links which are coded as “do not follow”.

These “do not follow” tags are usually embedded within the sites meta tags. The meta tags are bits of information which are intended solely for the search spiders and not for human visitors. To view meta tags select “view source” in your browser.

There are several types of links that you would want to get. These are “One-way links” and “Reciprocal Links”. A one way link is just what it indicates. It is a link to you but no return link is required whereas the Reciprocal link is one where you link back to the site that provided you with a link. To a search engine the one way links are the more valuable ones, however, both links have their own value based on the relevance towards your site, the text associated with the link, the authority of the website which is linking to you, etc.

An important point to be brought up here is that you can have links which have no value what so ever to the search engines but still manages to delivers hundreds or possibly thousands of visitors to your site.

In short, the more sites which link to you the better you will fair with the search engines. Building links can be very time consuming but well worth the effort. This is all we have time for now but it provides you with a starting point to center your efforts on. Good luck.

Copyright @2010 Joseph Parish

www.wordwriter.info

By Joseph Parish

Anyone familiar with SEO principles quickly realizes how valuable link backs are, however, in the same sense one must fully understand that there are certain mistakes that should never be made when requesting them.

1. The number one mistake which I continually see from the many requests I receive is that the link back fails to match the subject content of my site. I would be doing my readers a grave injustice if I linked to a site with a different type of category then what my sites major concern was. As an example, If I have a survival site, I certainly would not feel comfortable linking to a website which contains adult centered material. As an SEO professional do your homework before making your request. Keep the topics relevant to the site.

2. Always address the request to a person. As an example if I receive a request for a link back addressed to webmaster my first thoughts are that this person has mass produced this email and sent it to a considerable number of people. When requesting links keep it personal and address the email appropriately.

3. Avoid being picky and don’t force a desired anchor down my throat. Don’t demand a front page link. Let’s face it you are asking me for something for free therefore do not be so demanding. If you want me to provide a link to your site don’t dictate to me the text to be employed for I have a right to word it as I see fit. On the other hand, if you are willing to pay for this link then by all means feel free to specify a particular page or location as well as how you want it to appear in the listing.  

4. Never include trite statements such as “Please don’t let me down!” or similar expression. When I see one of these lines in an email I start to roll on the floor from laughter. In cases such as these I deliberately try to let the person down with a large “No thank you – I am not interested” type of reply.

5. Prior to sending your email out at least run a spell checker over it. Spelling and grammatical errors tend to detract greatly from the overall effect of your message. These appear very unprofessional and let’s face it why would I want to send my visitors to a website that would reflect unfavorably on me. Proofread your work several times before you click on that send button as it will save both of us from an embarrassing situation.

When I receive requests containing errors such as those above my first thoughts are that this person should never be involved in the SEO business in the first place. It is obvious that he does not know the first thing about building back links to a site.

Would I give people who commit these mistakes a link from my site? No, I would not. So if you want a link beware of making certain mistakes when you request this service from a webmaster of a site. Treat the person with respect, be polite and above all keep your attitude professional. Isn’t that exactly how you would want to be treated?

Copyright @2010 Joseph Parish

www.wordwriter.info

By Joseph Parish

There’s one search engine that has been around for a good many years now but few people are even aware that it exists. This search engine is the open directory project known as DMOZ.org. Often times this search engine is referred to as the mother of all search directories.

Over the recent years the DMOZ directory has dropped drastically in popularity and can usually be found in a negative light by many of the webmasters who express criticism at the difficulty of getting included in the listings. The original intent for DMOZ was to establish a directory for the people and one which is created by the people. It was suppose to be the answer to the closed Yahoo directory. 

Many of the DMOZ users have become critical of the “for the people” philosophy and the use of this directory has continually be declining. It is so bad that DMOZ figures show sharp declines in visitors and page views over the last seven years. They have failed to exceed three million visitors in one month since reaching their peek at 15 million in March 2003.

When mention is made of search engines the word Yahoo or Google quickly surface but little is mentioned of DMOZ. A major point that is often overlooked here is that DMOZ was not intended to replacing Yahoo or Google. It was created to compliment them. You can find all sorts of information on the web and the broader the topic is the more useful it is for a researcher using DMOZ.

The largest complaint against DMOZ is not the material that it can provide to the masses but rather from those who are submitting sites for review. The usual claim is that DMOZ fails to provide an effect means of submitting sites. It is not unusual to find that authoritative sites are omitted while those sites containing mediocre content are readily available.

It is generally extremely difficult to get a DMOZ link and this has been a great factor in its decline. In all, the database has a good foundation however more effort needs to be expended in allowing the sites to be listed. If you as an SEO professional can get your website listed on DMOZ by all means do so for hopefully in the future it will bring itself up to par with its competitors.

Copyright @2010 Joseph Parish

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