Story about simplify blog SEO and Blog Traffic

A considerable portion of my consulting time has recently revolved around the optmization of corporate blogs (or the addition of blogs to revamped sites). As usual, I find a pattern emerging in the strategies that need attention and the pitfalls that must be avoided. So, rather than charging $400 an hour to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here on the blog (business part of Rand fights with open source Rand, but loses, as usual).

1. Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)
   The right blog CMS makes a big difference. If you want to set yourself apart, I recommend creating a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users. In most cases, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad will suffice, but building from scratch allows you to be very creative with functionality and formatting. The best CMS is something that’s easy for the writer(s) to use and brings together the features that allow the blog to flourish. Think about how you want comments, archiving, sub-pages, categorization, multiple feeds and user accounts to operate in order to narrow down your choices. OpenSourceCMS is a very good tool to help you select a software if you go that route.
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2. Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain
   Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot. From worst to best, your options are - Hosted (on a solution like Blogspot or Wordpress), on a unique domain (at least you can 301 it in the future), on a subdomain (these can be treated as unique from the primary domain by the engines) and as a sub-section of the primary domain (in a subfolder or page - this is the best solution).
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3. Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind
   First and foremost, you’re writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. A great way to do this is to write the post and the title first, then run a few searches at Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see if there is a phrasing or ordering that can better help you to target “searched for” terms.
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4. Participate at Related Forums & Blogs
   Whatever industry or niche you’re in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that’s already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention. A great way to find out who these people are is to use Technorati to conduct searches, then sort by number of links (authority). Del.icio.us tags are also very useful in this process, as are straight searches at the engines (Ask.com’s blog search in particular is of very good quality).
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5. Tag Your Content
   Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. I actually recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you’re targeting. There are other good places to ping - del.icio.us and Flickr being the two most obvious (the only other one is Blogmarks, which is much smaller). Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a “bump” towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon (which requires that you download the toolbar, but trust me - it’s worth it). You DO NOT want to submit every post to these sites, but that one out of twenty (see tactic #18) is worth your while.
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6. Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)
   There’s something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there’s an easy solution - don’t offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you’re upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity. Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site (and thus, its worth), so play to your strengths and keep your obscurity private.
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7. Don’t Jump on the Bandwagon
   Some memes are worthy of being talked about by every blogger in the space, but most aren’t. Just because there’s huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they’re already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you’re launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related).
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8. Link Intelligently
   When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide. Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there’s a fine line between overlinking and underlinking. The best advice I can give is to think of the post from the standpoint of a relatively uninformed reader. If you mention Wikipedia, everyone is familar and no link is required. If you mention a specific page at Wikipedia, a link is necessary and important. Also, be aware that quoting other bloggers or online sources (or even discussing their ideas) without linking to them is considered bad etitquette and can earn you scorn that could cost you links from those sources in the future. It’s almost always better to be over-generous with links than under-generous. And link condoms? Only use them when you’re linking to something you find truly distasteful or have serious apprehension about.
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9. Invite Guest Bloggers
   Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowedging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers. Just be sure that you really are getting a quality post from someone that’s as close to universally popular and admired as possible (unless you want to start playing the drama linkbait game, which I personally abhor). If you’re already somewhat popular, it can often be valuable to look outside your space and bring in guest authors who have a very unique angle or subject matter to help spice up your focus. One note about guest bloggers - make sure they agree to have their work edited by you before it’s posted. A disagreement on this subject after the fact can have negative ramifications.
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10. Eschew Advertising (Until You’re Popular)
    I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That’s not to say that contextual advertising can’t work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don’t get me wrong - it’s unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you’ll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don’t. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they’re sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don’t want that limitation while you’re still trying to get established.
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11. Go Beyond Text in Your Posts
    Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occassional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs. Even if you’re having a tough time with non-text content, think about how you can format the text using blockquotes, indentation, bulllet points, etc. to create a more visually appealing and digestable block of content.
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12. Cover Topics that Need Attention
    In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it’s particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you’re virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.
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13. Pay Attention to Your Analytics
    Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don’t get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies. Feedburner is great for RSS and I’m a personal fan of Indextools. Consider adding action tracking to your blog, so you can see what sources of traffic are bringing the best quality visitors (in terms of time spent on the site, # of page views, etc). I particularly like having the “register” link tagged for analytics so I can see what percentage of visitors from each source is interested enough to want to leave a comment or create an account.
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14. Use a Human Voice
    Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it’s most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you’ll be in a good position to succeed. It’s also critical that you maintain a level of humility in your blogging and stick to your roots. When users start to feel that a blog is taking itself too seriously or losing the characteristics that made it unique, they start to seek new places for content. We’ve certainly made mistakes (even recently) that have cost us some fans - be cautious to control not only what you say, but how you say it. Lastly - if there’s a hot button issue that has you posting emotionally, temper it by letting the post sit in draft mode for an hour or two, re-reading it and considering any revisions. With the advent of feeds, once you publish, there’s no going back.
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15. Archive Effectively
    The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a “noindex” in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.
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16. Implement Smart URLs
    The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you’ll find on the page. I don’t like the 10 hyphen, lengthy blog titles that are the byproduct of many CMS plugins, but they are certainly better than any dynamic parameters in the URL. Yes - I know I’m not walking the talk here, and hopefully it’s something we can fix in the near future. To those who say that one dynamic parameter in the URL doesn’t hurt, I’d take issue - just re-writing a ?ID=450 to /450 has improved search traffic considerably on several blogs we’ve worked with.
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17. Reveal as Much as Possible
    The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that’s usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit. Make a decision about what’s off-limits and how far you can go and then push right up to that limit in order to see the best possible effects. Your community will reward you with links and traffic.
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18. Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait
    Not every post is worthy of making it to the top of Digg, Del.icio.us/popular or even a mention at some other blogs in your space. Trying to over-market every post you write will result in pushback and ultimately lead to negative opinions about your efforts. The less popular your blog is, the harder it will be to build excitement around a post, but the process of linkbait has always been trial and error - build, test, refine and re-build. Keep creating great ideas and bolstering them with lots of solid, everyday content and you’ll eventually be big enough to where one out of every 20-40 posts really does become linkbait.
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19. Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days
    If you do have linkbait, whether by design or by accident, make sure to capitalize. When you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer, your depth of understanding and let visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait “bump” faster than a blog whose content doesn’t update for 48 hours after they’ve received a huge influx of visitors.
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20. Create Expectations and Fulfill Them
    When you’re writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who’ve come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don’t ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic. That’s not to say you can’t take a vacation, but you need to schedule it wisely and be prepared to lose RSS subscribers and regulars. It’s not fair, but it’s the truth. We lose visitors every time I attend an SES conference and drop to one post every two days (note - guest bloggers and time-release posts can help here, too).
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21. Build a Brand
    Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member. Exclusivity, insider jokes, emails with regulars, the occassional cat post and references to your previous experiences can be offputting for new readers, but they’re solid gold for keeping your loyal base feeling good about their brand experience with you. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it’s very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you’re building a new blog, or building a low-traffic one, I highly recommend writing down the goals of your brand and the attributes of its identity to help remind you as you write.

Best of luck to all you bloggers out there. It’s an increasingly crowded field to play in, but these strategies should help to give you an edge over the competition. As always, if you’ve got additions or disagreements, I’d love to hear them.

from http://www.seomoz.org/blog/21-tactics-to-increase-blog-traffic

There’s all sorts of buzz about blogs lately and yet so many companies are still wondering what to do about it. In fact, there are a tremendous number of business blogs that are not realizing much of their potential visibilty on the web. Why? Because they’re not optimized.

This is very much the same scenario that occurred with web sites in the late nineties. Back then I worked with a company that sold web sites - lots of them. But after getting the site up and running, the traffic didn’t come by itself. So we figured out optimizing for search engines and that was the start of my SEO career. Blogs can generate traffic without search engines, but WITH search engines it can be even better.

With blogs, there exist as many or more optimization opportunities to optimize as with a web site. While most blog software is more search engine friendly out of the box than many web sites, the opportunities for blog optimization are readily available. For our SEO and blog marketing consulting service, we have a very long list blog optimization tactics to employ. For this post, I’ll focus on a short list that can make a difference for any blog.

Why optimize your blog?

• Increase rankings of the blog on BOTH regular search engines as well as blog/RSS search engines
• Increase traffic to the blog from multiple sources such as social search (Yahoo MyWeb, Google Personalized Search) and social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, Digg, Furl or Blogmarks)

A blog is just a website that uses a content management system, so most standard SEO tactics apply. There are also optimization tactics specific to blogs.

Consider keywords when writing your blog post titles. Some blog software allows plugins that can suggest keywords. Otherwise, you can use Google Suggest or one of these free keyword suggestion tools: Digital Point, SEO Book or Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Keywords should NOT determine your content (unless it’s an AdSense blog).
Optimize the template. Make sure post titles appear in the title tag and append the title tag (hard code) with the most important phrase for your blog.

Example: ” Interview with Brett Tabke - Online Marketing Blog”
Online Marketing Blog is included on every blog post title tag automatically.

Also use the blog post title as the permalink. If you’re using keywords in the blog post title, then they will occur as anchor text in the permanent post link. While you’re at it, just make the post title a permalink.

Make it easy for your blog readers to subscribe and include RSS feed subscription buttons or “chicklets” in a side bar or on a dedicated Subscription Info page. Here’s a handy RSS Feed Button creation tool.

Optimize Categories. When you create categories for your blog, be sure to consider keywords in the titles. When you post, be sure to default to a general category that is relevant no matter what the post is about. Choose multiple categories on each post when appropriate.

Social bookmarking sites can be excellent sources of traffic to your blog, so be sure to make it easy for readers to bookmark your blog posts. You can do this by adding some code to your blog template for each of the major social bookmarking sites. Here’s a tool for social bookmarking links. Here’s another tool that uses icons instead of text links.

Submit your blog to RSS and Blog directories. Also submit the blog to regular directories such as (DMOZ, JoeAnt, GoGuides, MSN Business Central, etc) that have categories for blogs.

Ping the major RSS feed and Blog search engines each time you post. This can be configured with blog software such as Movable Type or WordPress to work automatically. If you’re using Blogger.com, then you can do this manually with Pingomatic or Pingoat.

Comments and Trackbacks - Be sure your blog software is configured to send a trackback ping to blogs that you cite within your posts. Pay attention to press releases distributed by PRWeb. If you cite a release, and ping the trackback link, the press release will in turn link to your blog. This is better for driving traffic than for link popularity.

Make useful comments on other blogs. Your name will be linked to the blog url that you enter. Do NOT make comments that offer no value to the blog post. Do NOT use keywords in the field for your name, use your name or blog name.

Offer RSS to Email. Almost 30% of our blog traffic comes from readers that perfer to read blog posts via email. There are several free services available for this including: FeedBlitz (what we use), Squeet, Zookoda (this one is more for using blog posts as a weekly newsletter), RMail and Bloglet.

No matter how many optimization tactics you employ on a blog, there is no substitute for quality content. Blog optimization is only as effective as the quality and usefulness of the content you’re optimizing.

from http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/03/blog-optimization/

By Laura Milligan

Though the general Google site is often touted as the number one search engine online, college students sometimes need more specific tools to help them uncover quality information on the Web that they can use for class projects, research papers, and even job and apartment searches. This list features a huge variety of search engines that can be useful to students, including tools that find photos, sound effects, summer internships, health and medical information, reference guides, and a lot more.

Extracurricular

Search blogs, games and even forum postings for non school-related information and fun.

1. Bloglines: The search engine on Bloglines can find “billions of articles” and posts going back to 2003 from blogs, comics and more.
2. FindSounds: Web workers and procrastinating students can use this search to find sound effects in all kinds of file formats, channels and resolutions.
3. Nicado: This free search helps you find e-mail addresses and phone numbers for old friends and out-of-touch family members.
4. Omgili: Type in a subject or keyword to find forum posts and discussions on the Web on the same topic.

Quick Answer Guides

Head to these search engines when you have a specific question that needs to be answered quickly.

6. Answers.com: Type in your question to this search box or answer other users’ questions about politics, automotive issues, TV shows and pop culture, health, technology and more.
7. AskMeNow: Use this site to do a quick Wikipedia search from your mobile phone.
8. Lexxe: Type in your question to this search engine, which pulls answers from its database of URLs added by users.
9. Powerset: Powerset is another question and answer search engine that searches Wikipedia articles
10. AskWiki Beta: This semantic search engine finds answers to your questions in Wikipedia articles.

City Guides and Travel

Get to know your college town a little better, or plan a vacation or study abroad trip with these search engines.

11. Google Local: Many don’t realize that this popular site is also a search engine. Find local businesses and addresses here.
12. MSN City Guides: Click on a city to get started or type in a general location or activity to let this search engine find fun things for you to do in your area.
13. Aardvark Travel: This site helps you in “sniffing out travel sites from around the world.” Browse by location, type of vacation, travel activity, flights, hotels and other topics.
14. Kayak.com: This aggregate travel search engine finds the lowest air fares, cruise vacations, car rentals and hotel stays available through the Web that match your travel requests.
15. Ask City: Search special events, entertainment guides and maps for your city on this site.
16. Mobissimo: Search MobiDeals or enter in your travel information to let this site find attractive airline tickets, hotel reservations and car rentals.
17. Trabber.com: Trabber.com searches 31 different websites to bring up cheap flights based on the schedule you submit.
18. Local Search Guide: This mega search engine connects you to local maps and directions, businesses, phone numbers, movie times and weather information.
19. Search.Travel: This beta search engine finds information on travel deals and transportation, events and activities to do in the location you search, and more.

Shopping Search Engines

Find customer reviews, product information and shopping sites with these search engines.

20. MySimon: This fun site lists shopping specials and gift ideas for holidays, and it lets you search within a specific category or conduct a general search.
21. Shopzilla: Shopzilla is super easy to use. Enter in the keywords or product description for the item you’re shopping for, or browse the categories on the right, to bring up results from online retailers like Amazon.com.
22. DealTime: DealTime is a comparison shopping search engine that has information on flowers and gifts, computers and technology, home and garden items, cars, music and movies, sports equipment and a lot more.
23. Google Product Search: “Search for stuff to buy” on the Google Product Search, which connects you to everything from beauty and fashion items to DIY home improvement shopping to gifts and furniture.
24. Kelkoo: Shop by category or answer the search question “What are you shopping for?” to find product information and deals on all kinds of items. You can also search by brand or store to narrow down the search.
25. PriceGrabber.com: Conduct an advanced search by shopping different categories or type in exactly what you’re looking for on PriceGrabber.com.
26. MSN Shopping: This comprehensive site lets you first browse by category to narrow your search or type in keywords to bring up something more specific.
27. ePublicEye: This online shopping search engine specializes in finding safe, positively reviewed e-commerce sites. It also offers information on safe online shopping tips and online scams.
28. BizRate: Compare prices of clothing items, household appliances, gifts, accessories, technology and more when you use this search engine.

Business

Business students and those interested in staying current on business news and trends can take advantage of these niche search engines to help them prepare for class and life after graduation.

29. Bloomberg: Bloomberg.com connects you to business news through its search engine, breaking news articles and market data updates.
30. ThomasNet: ThomasNet’s dedication to “connecting industry” results in this broad search tool, which lets users browse categories including products and services, as well as search for specific companies or brands.
31. IFACnet: Accountants can use this search engine for industry news and “access to global resources and information.”
32. Nexis: LexisNexis users can use this business search to find legal resources, industry news and information about other professionals and organizations.
33. Business.com: Entrepreneurs and business students can browse categories like software, startup, transportation, jobs, office management, real estate and health care to “quickly find anything for [their] business” and find a job.

Academic and Reference

Find reliable and authoritative sites here to help you with homework and class projects.

35. Librarian’s Internet Index: This site brings together “websites you can trust,” on subjects like media, law, communications, consumer research, health and more.
36. Scirus: This scientific search engine claims to be “the most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web” and indexes over 450 million science-related resources.
37. Google Scholar: Search journal articles, abstracts, academic papers and bibliographies, and other scholarly publications here.
38. Intute: Social Sciences: This division of the online search tool Intute connects you to quality information about government policy, geography, law, economics, anthropology, business management, social welfare, psychology, politics, women’s studies and more.
39. CiteSteer: Computer science and IT students can use this “scientific literature digital library.”
40. Online Journals Search Engine: Find indexed science materials and resources on this site.
41. Google Books: Search classic literature, non-fiction books, poetry, short stories and other books at Google Books.
42. Research Crawler: Type in your keywords in the general search box or use the Research Quick Links to find articles, textbooks, RSS feeds, podcasts and more to help you with your project or paper.
43. Translation Crawler: This directory has sites indexed for sign language, education, interpreting and more.

Social Media and People

User-generated content and user-driven sites like these often result in more relevant search results for you.

44. wink: wink is “where people find people.” Search by location, name, interests, school or any other category to help you reach old friends and family members.
45. Sproose: This user-driven site can perform a Web search or video search.
46. similicio.us: Discover similar sites when you copy/paste a URL into this search engine.

Multisearch

These search engines offer more than just ordinary searches. Enjoy using features like shared searches, saved memory and specific search options.

47. Trexy: Trexy can help you “blaze search trails” by saving your search memory, share your searches with the Trexy community, and add a TrailBar button to your toolbar for fast searches.
48. MsFreckles: MsFreckles can search the entire Internet or just pages from the UK. You can also filter your search by file type, search several sites at once, only search through certain domains, search only blogs, or choose other advanced options.
49. Clusty: Use Clusty to search the Web, news sites, images, Wikipedia or blogs.

TV, Video and Radio

Look up video clips for class presentations or discover new radio sites and web streams through these search tools.

50. veoh: Find millions of online videos by searching this site.
51. blinx: blinx digs into the Web to find “over 26 million hours of video” and bring up relevant results.
52. ZippyVideos: This beta search engine is also a media sharing site, so you can upload your own videos as well as search for others.
53. Radio-Locator: Search for over 10,000 different radio stations and 2,500 web streams from radio stations all over the world.
54. Pandia Radio Search: This massive search site offers a radio search too.
55. Radio Directory: The radio directory search on this site can connect you to radio stations’ web sites and radio information from all over.
56. altavista: Use this video search to find MPEG, Quicktime, Avi, Windows Media, Real, Flash and many other types of videos.
57. Truveo: Truveo lets you search for videos from different web sites. You can also browse categories like Most Viewed Today and Highest Rated.
58. Snipp.TV: Find video and audio content from this easy-to-use beta search engine.

Medical Students and Health Search

This list will not only help medical students research authoritative journals and publications, college students wanting to do more than just Google their symptoms can find health advice and medical resources by using these search engines.

59. Entrez: Search life sciences publications and research materials here.
60. PubMed: This search tool is sponsored by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.
61. Healia: Healia claims to be “your guide to healthy decisions.” Search the Web, PubMed, or the Clinical Trials option.
62. PubGene: Find biology and genetics materials by searching this tool.
63. Healthline: With Healthline, you can “search the Web’s best health sites.” Browse topics like ADD/ADHD, heart disease, depression or allergies, or type in your own symptoms.
64. OmniMedicalSearch.com: This site has been named a Top 5 Medical Search Engine by About.com and is lauded by The Washington Post. Search the Web, images or forums to get connected to quality health and medical information.
65. MedNets: Medical students can try out this tool, which searches databases, journals, books, jobs and medical societies. You can also customize the engine for your particular field, like internal medicine, dentistry, family medicine, nursing, pulmonary and others.
66. American Hospital Directory: Find a nearby hospital fast by typing in your telephone area code, zip code, city or state.
67. DrKoop.com: Research your symptoms, access a health encylopedia, or take advantage of the Web search engine powered by Healthline to find all kinds of health information.
68. MedicineNet: This organized search engine displays your results according to different categories, like News, Symptoms, Procedures and Tests, and Medications, so you can quickly find the most relevant results.

Law Students

Law students gain access to court rulings, history and political sciences resources, and other law material here.

69. MegaLaw.com: Here, you can “look up law sites on the web” without having to search multiple times.
70. FindLaw: Find attorneys and answers to your law questions by searching here.
71. History Crawler: Find history references and more on this site.
72. Meta-Index for U.S. Legal Research: Search judicial opinions, federal regulation, legislation and more on this site.
73. World Law: Search opinions, news legislation, lawyers and law libraries from all over the world.
74. CataLaw: This search engine can find information and resources about all types of law, including consumer law, sexual harassment cases, family law, banking, criminal law, cyber rights and much more.

Metasearch and Megasearch Engines

The following search engines work extra hard to bring you information from other search engines at the same time, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and others.

75. Dogpile: Find information from “all the best search engines” here.
76. Excite: This metasearch engine also shows you the latest sports scores, stock ticker, featured games and videos, and more.
77. Mamma: Mamma is “the mother of all search engines,” and she can search the Web, news, images, video and the Yellow Pages.
78. HotBot: This search engine can pull information and material from Yahoo!, IyGO.com, and MSN.
79. MetaCrawler: “Search the search engines” with MetaCrawler, a tool that lets you search filtered, family-friendly material or access unfiltered results.
80. Info.com: Info.com retrieves information from Google, Yahoo!, LiveSearch, About.com and Ask. You can also choose to search the Web, Research, News, Images, Video, and other options.
81. Myriad Search: This search engine searches four different engines, but only if you want it to. You can choose to require information from a particular engine or exclude the engine altogether.

Photos, Images and Visual Search Engines

Make your search a more visual experience by checking out these tools.

82. Kart00: This visual metasearch engine displays results like a map with mini preview images of the sites themselves.
83. Grokker: Grokker searches Wikipedia, Yahoo! and Amazon Books, and then displays your results in an outline view or a map view.
84. Picsearch: Use Picsearch when you need to add images to a project or presentation.
85. Fagan Finder: This site outlines different search engines, photo sharing sites or stock photography sites so that you can find everything from clip art to medical images to photoblogs.
86. Netvue: Netvue is a no-frills image search engine that brings up animation, graphics and photos.

News Searches

College students need to stay current on business, technology, cultural and political news, so use these search engines to guide you through homework discussions, projects and more.

87. News Lookup: Find news stories from all over the world, or just search a particular country or news topic.
88. Google News: On this site, you can “browse 4,500 news sources” for up-to-the-minute information.
89. AlltheWeb: Use the News search tool on this site to find relevant stories from newspapers, TV stations and other news sites.
90. Yahoo! News: Search sports, entertainment, business, technology, world and U.S. news here.
91. Ananova: In addition to providing a comprehensive news search, this site also posts the day’s top headlines on the front page.

Jobs and Real Estate

Turn to these search engines to help you with your search for a summer internship, your first apartment or a job post-graduation.

92. Hotpads.com: Find homes and apartment listings for sale or for rent around the country with this tool.
93. RightMove: This UK-based site will direct you to properties for sale or rent, including vacation homes and properties in places like France, Spain and Bulgaria.
94. Juju: This easy-to-use job search engine lets you type in a keyword and location. You can also search by company name.
95. indeed: indeed is a metasearch engine that lets you perform one keyword and location search to find listings from all over the Web.
96. Simply Hired: Search over 6 million jobs posted on the Web in industries like customer service, accounting, transportation, software, paralegal, PR, government and others.
97. Dice.com: Technology students and professionals can search for jobs on this site, which connects to more than 86,000 listings.
98. trulia: This smart search engine finds homes for sale by zip code or city and state. You can also find movers, moving tips and more on this comparative shopping site.
99. WhereToLive.com: WhereToLive.com is “the real estate search engine,” letting you search homes on an interactive map.
100. Internship Programs: Look for internships after you log on to this “internship search engine.”

from http://www.collegeathome.com/blog/2008/06/19/100-useful-niche-search-engines-youve-never-heard-of/

If you check your backlinks on Google you will often find that there are links to a URL like www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com and different links to searchenginepromotionhelp.com. Even though these may point to the same content these are 2 different domains (NOTE the www in the first URL).

You can improve your page rank on Google by having all variations of your domain name point to one domain, doing this concentrates your incoming links and page rank on a single domain.

This article explains how to redirect a domain using the htaccess file.

Make All URLs Point To One Domain

Here is a way to use the .htaccess file on Apache servers so that all URLs resolve to just one domain. Here at Search Engine Promotion Help I want to use the fully qualified domain name www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com for all URLs. Here is the content of our .htaccess file which makes this happen:

The first line turns the RewriteEngine on so the following code will work.

The second line is TRUE if the host is not www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com. The \ character is required to “escape” the . character. (The [NC] flag means to ignore case.)

The third line is TRUE if host is not an empty string.

The fourth line is executed if the previous two conditions return TRUE. This line says to redirect permanently to the fully qualified domain name (www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com). The L flag means this is the last rewrite directive, the “R=301″ flag says to redirect to the rewritten URL permanently (HTTP response code 301).

Test The Domain Redirection

Go here to test your 301 domain redirection , if you have setup the redirection correctly the response code will be 301.

You can see this rewrite code in action with the following URL: http://searchenginepromotionhelp.com. When you click on this URL watch the address bar in your browser’s window, you will see the URL quickly change from http://searchenginepromotionhelp.com to http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/

This .htaccess rewrite also works if the incoming URL uses my IP number so this URL also is handled correctly: http://65.18.203.170/

Redirection Conclusions

See Search engine friendly URL redirects for details on how to use a 301 redirect for page or directory redirection

This redirection is intended only for sites where you can edit your htaccess file, for more detailed information see http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html

from http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/articles/search-engine-problems/domain-redirection.php

I have found a way to use URL redirection to make very easy money. This technique is perfect for those that want to make an extra buck or for those that want to multiply this system and make some serious cash. First, you need to sign up for a few affiliate programs (I recommend http://ClickBank.com and http://CJ.com). These companies will give you a commission for every sale made through your link.

Find a few products that look appealing and get your affiliate link for them. If you are having problems finding your affiliate link, then contact your affiliate manager. Now you need to create a list of keywords for each product. Use SeoBook(http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/) to find some keywords and how many times each one has been searched. I recommend finding about 4-5 keywords and focusing on only them.

Now you will need to create redirections for each of your affiliate links. I use http://7P6.net because they allow me to edit the title/description/keywords and track where my visitors are coming from. Plus, their ads are very minimal and they have a Links Bar that becomes a very important tool when using this tactic (more on that later). Be sure to include some of your keywords in the url, and use slashes to space out the keywords. Example: www.some-keywords-here.xxxx.net.

You will be using this url to earn commissions from your list of products, and the majority of your visitors will come from search engines. So, the search engines will need something to read, right? Therefore, you will need to edit your url Title, Keywords, and Description. Obviously, you can’t do this with your regular affiliate links. But you can do this with a good url redirection service like 7P6.net. So get on there and include your 4-5 keywords on the Meta Tag forms in your account.

So, once you have your link created, submit it to MSN, Yahoo, and Google. Here are the direct submission links:

http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Don’t worry about any other search engines! Focusing on these will provide you with the most hits. The other search engines will eventually pick up your page anyway.

The last part of this process is to get incoming links to your site (ie: you need other sites linking to your url). The easiest way to build your links is to get on as many forums that allow advertising and post your url on their site. Make sure that you use your keywords in the link. This will directly improve your search engine rankings. And don’t forget to use different keywords for each of your postings! Post as much as you can before moving on to the next product. The more posts, the better your search engine ranking. Also, using the link in your signature can help.

Another way to build links is to find link partners (ie: people that will exchange links with you). But it has been impossible to do this with a traditional url redirection website - until now. The redirection service that I use - 7P6.net - allows me to add other peoples links directly to my url via a Links Bar. It helps me build my search engine rankings when I’m starting a new url. And, if I get a decent search engine ranking, it allows me to sell a few extra links on a ‘per month’ or ‘per year’ basis via Paypal. This is just a bonus and it is not required to make money with this tactic.

There are a few things to keep in mind when exchanging links. You will find that most of the people you ask will reject you or not even respond. This is all part of link building and it works this way even if you have your own domain name. Be persistent and polite and you will get some link partners. And if you can’t get any link partners for a few of your urls, it is likely that you will still rank in the search engines just by posting on forums.

There are two things that make this tactic so effective:

1. You are showing them the home page instead of a sales pitch website or blog.
2. People that view your site will bookmark your redirection page instead of the company page. So when they re-visit, you will still get your commission!
3. It doesn’t take much time to create a url. Then you can easily create more and more to recieve a regular flow of commissions.

Here is a real life example:

Lets say I want to promote ink cartriges. The first step would be to create ‘cheap-ink-cartriges.7p6.net’. Notice the use of keywords in the title and the slashes used to space out the keywords. Next, submit your link to MSN, Yahoo, and Google.

Then I would make a list of 4 specific ink cartrige keywords: ‘buy ink’, ‘buy ink cartriges’, ‘cheap ink cartriges’, ‘cheap printer ink’.

Here is what I would fill out on the Meta Tag forms (notice the use of keywords):

———————————————-
Title: Buy Cheap Ink Cartriges For Your Printer
Keywords: buy ink, buy ink cartriges, cheap ink cartriges, cheap printer ink
Description: The best website to buy cheap printer ink cartriges.
———————————————-

Next I would add my link on forums that allow me to advertise. Remember, the more posts, the better your search engine ranking.

Here is an example posting:

Here is the best website to URL=http://cheap-ink-cartriges.7p6.net buy cheap ink cartriges /URL .

One thing to keep in mind is that it is 10X easier to get hits from MSN and Yahoo than to worry about Google! Also, Be Patient! It takes time to get listed and while you are waiting, you need to be creating more pages. More pages = more money. You may not make millions doing this, but this is some easy automated money and you can work as little or as much as you want.

TIP: Create multiple urls to promote a single product. This way you can focus on more keywords and get more hits to your affiliate link!

You can also make money by creating a website on a free host and promote multiple products in a single category. It is still recommended that you create a different redirected url for each page on your site to receive the most search engine traffic. You could also monetize your url with Google Adsense and Adbrite by using a free host and a redirected url for each page.

I hope you decide to use url redirection to make some cash. This is one of the only 100 free ways to make money online. Good luck.

Short note about the author

If you have never set your preferred domain to either with www or without www, then it might cause problems with search engine indexation, search engines might split your backlink count. The following methods showed you how to redirect a web page:-

1) Set a 301 Redirect

The best way to solve this problem is to set a 301 redirect, but I have never tried before as I have little confused about the coding of 301 redirect.

2) Install Enforce www. Preference Plug-in

Install and active the Enforce www. Preference plug-in, it will redirect your URL to http://www.domain.com when we enter http://domain.com.

3) Use Google Sitemap to Set Preferred Domain

Login Google Sitemap, under tools > set preferred domain. There are 3 options for you to choose as below, select one of them as you wish.

Option 1: Display URLs as www.blogging-secret.com (for both www.blogging-secret.com and blogging-secret.com)

Option 2: Display URLs as blogging-secret.com (for both www.blogging-secret.com and blogging-secret.com)

Option 3: Don’t set an association.

4) Configure Through Wordpress 2.3 and above

I’m using this method now. Login your Wordpress (http://www.domain.com/wp-admin), click on Optional tab, and then choose General option, you will see Wordpress address (URL) and Blog Address (URL).

Just change it to http://www.domain.com if you want your domain name appear http://www.domain.com when we enter http://domain.com, vice-versa.

Free Domain Name is not free registration name when you buy the web hosting program(Not promotion on hosting sale).I mean it really free domain name,free all your life.I open google.com and key”Free Domain name”.The 1,480,000 results show on the monitor and  i think how i manage this large pool of list .I decide to explore the first ten page and focus on the free domain name.I found the interesting list of free dot name as i show(No banner,No ads,No pop-up)…Free URL Redirect service

1.www.yourname.co.nr
2.www.yourname.co.cc
3.www.yourname.uni.cc
4.www.yourname.maxximum.org
5.www.yourname.euro.st
6.www.yourname.c-o.in
7.redirect100
8.www.free-url-redirect.com
9.weblias.com  
10.grassroots.org

The other keyword is Free URL Redirect and you will see the 3,690,000.The URL Redirect service is provided for free and they affect on the Search Engine Ranking.It’s look more convenience and free of charge but they have the disadvantages

What are the Disadvantages of Free Url Redirection?

Of cause, Free Url Redirection services have some disadvantages as well as the url redirection technology itself does. We list the worst of them here:

(1) Most free url redirection services implement forced ads into users websites. So, you have ads implemented by your free webspace provider, and also ads by free short url provider.. Uhh

(2) Cookies DOES NOT work with Redirection services. So, if your website uses cookies and they are important for your website to work, you’d better not to use ANY url redirection service (unless they offer Full DNS Support)

(3) Most Free URL Redirection services have an “Inactivity Limit” the peroid of time allowed for your website to be inactive (nobody visits it). If you exceed this limit, on one sunny beautiful day you can find your free short url to be deleted for inactivity.

(4) Though most of the free url redirection services do support Meta Tags, free short urls are not usually indexed properly by search engines like Google.com, Altavista.com, etc. It happens becouse of the limitations of Url Redirection technology itself.

What is Free Url Redirection service?

Free URL Redirection service is also known as Free Short URL service,

or Url Redirect, Free Url Forwarding, Free Redirects, Subdomain service, URL Redirections, Free Short Subdomains, etc.

Free URL Redirection services provide their clients with FREE and usually short, catchy and easy to remember web address for their web site that can be used and accessed world wide

And clients can redirect (point) this free URL (web address) to ANY existing website and access this web site through the short URL (short web address) provided, no matter where their website is actually located/hosted.

What for do I need a Free Url Redirection service?

As you are here, you maybe already have a web site being hosted by your ISP or by a free hosting provider. And when you publish a website on the web in such way (free of charge), you usually face several BIG “problems”:

(1) free web addresses are usually long and difficult to remember, something like this one - http://members.your-hosting-provider.com/~username/;

(2) free webspace providers are usually not very reliable and do not offer useful features, so you probably often change your web hosting providers, and thus your website addess always changes as well;

(3) it is not always possible to obtain a paid domain name, but everyone wants his/her website to look proffesionally

Free Url Redirection services help to solve these problems by providing a short, easy to remember, proffesionally looking, catchy, permanent web site addresses, something like http://www.username.aaa.aa

It doesn’t matter where your website is hosted, you can always access it with the free url provided by such service. Usually, it is also very easy to re-point your free short url to any other website hosting provider you like.

Basicly, Free Url redirection is a FREE alternative to a PAID domain name

SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Firms that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus, while others take a more broad and general approach. Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization (since so many of those elements intertwine).

This guide is designed to describe all areas of SEO - from discovery of the terms and phrases that will generate traffic, to making a site search engine friendly, to building the links and marketing the unique value of the site/organization’s offerings.

Why does my company/organization/website need SEO?

The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines - Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves (although AOL gets nearly 10% of searches, their engine is powered by Google’s results). If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search - people who want what you have visiting your site. Whether your site provides content, services, products, or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all Internet users. Search queries, the words that users type into the search box which contain terms and phrases best suited to your site, carry extraordinary value. Experience has shown that search engine traffic can make (or break) an organization’s success. Targeted visitors to a website can provide publicity, revenue, and exposure like no other. Investing in SEO, whether through time or finances, can have an exceptional rate of return.
from Beginner’s guide on SEOMOZ.ORG