Yahoo! is a well-known and well-liked search directory, second only to search engine giant, Google, in terms of popularity. Many Internet users enjoy everything Yahoo! has to offer, including its email services. Therefore, even if you do not have a Yahoo! e-mail account yourself, it is likely that many of the people who send you electronic mail do.
Since Yahoo! mail is well recognized, it may have never occurred to you not to trust every e-mail you receive that contains Yahoo! as its email host name. You cannot make the mistake of assuming that simply because a web mail provider is popular, that every one who creates an email account with this provider is trustworthy, or will not engage in spamming activities.
Therefore, if you receive an email from an address that features a Yahoo! subdomain, but you don't recognize the name of the sender, or the message itself appears suspicious, you should find out the identity of the sender.
Why? It could turn out the sender is a spammer, scammer, or someone trying to abuse the system. In this case, the individual along with the email you received should be reported to Yahoo! so they can deal with the troublemaker accordingly. On the other hand, you may discover that the sender is your friend who switched email addresses but didn't bother to tell you.
How can you find out information on the email owner through their address? The most convenient and quickest way is to either search the Yahoo! directory for the address, or use different general reverse email lookups provided by other websites that include the Yahoo sub domain in their directories.
Essentially, what you will find is the more reverse searches you can perform on the mystery e-mail, the better. This is because you will quickly discover that the vast majority of free reverse email traces are limited due to web mail providers allowing their clients the choice of opting information in or out of their directories. Thus, finding useful or any results is not typical.
Therefore, if you really want to learn the unknown email sender's information, you will need to consider paying a nominal fee for a Yahoo email address lookup. You will have more luck at finding the details you seek with a pay search, because the technology tools this service uses is more high-tech than free lookups.
Lindsay has been writing about web applications for 4 years and is tracking the latest trends in web development. You can check out her latest project at http://www.reverseemaildetective.com
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
SEO - How Early SEO Corrupted The Search Engines
The practice of search engine optimization first came into being in the mid 1990s when the first search engines began cataloguing the contents of the Internet. Initially the entire procedure was fairly honest and a fair reflection of what content there was on the web. Sites were submitted to the search engines and a spider crawled the content and then stored the collected data in a database that could be accessed by individuals performing a search.
When a search engine spider detects new content on the Internet it downloads a page where it is stored on the engine’s own server. Once on the server a second program, known as indexer extract information about the page as well as all of the links it contains. This page is then placed into a depository of pages to be crawled at a later date.
At first, the information that ended up on these early search engines came from the webmasters who were trusted to be honest. Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta-tags provided a guide to each page's content. However the corruption of this system began when webmasters abused meta tags by including keywords that had nothing to do with the content of their pages, to artificially increase page impressions for their Website. This of course also increased their ad revenue from pay per clicks and costs per impressions. Greed soon led to inaccurate, incomplete cataloguing of web pages and too many people being led to pages without content or with misleading content when they conducted a web search. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms with the result that understanding SEO has become much more complicated then it ever has been before and will continue to become more complicated.
When a search engine spider detects new content on the Internet it downloads a page where it is stored on the engine’s own server. Once on the server a second program, known as indexer extract information about the page as well as all of the links it contains. This page is then placed into a depository of pages to be crawled at a later date.
At first, the information that ended up on these early search engines came from the webmasters who were trusted to be honest. Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta-tags provided a guide to each page's content. However the corruption of this system began when webmasters abused meta tags by including keywords that had nothing to do with the content of their pages, to artificially increase page impressions for their Website. This of course also increased their ad revenue from pay per clicks and costs per impressions. Greed soon led to inaccurate, incomplete cataloguing of web pages and too many people being led to pages without content or with misleading content when they conducted a web search. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms with the result that understanding SEO has become much more complicated then it ever has been before and will continue to become more complicated.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
SEO - Tips For Making SEO Copy More Personal
The problem with SEO copy (search engine optimized) is that often reads very robotic, repetitive and cold. However so many marketing experts say that you need to make an emotional connection with your reader in order to make sales. This means that you need to find the fine balance between making your copy sound personal and pleasing the search engine spiders and robots.
First of all never pose yourself an expert or a guru if you are not one. People can usually tell that you aren’t within the first paragraph or so of an article, especially if it is peppered with keywords and not much quality content. This type of content is easily identifiable as it is based on old-fashioned direct sales marketing techniques. Once people see those long sales letters on sites, they know it’s snake oil salesman time. It is better to connect with them on a one to one basis rather than in an imitation of some hotshot copywriter from the 1970s.
Never use the royal "we". Stay away from phrases like "We here at Search Engine City promises to deliver you the best copy” instead make it more personal by using the "you or your" form as in: "You are certain to find a keyword analyzer that is perfect for that special someone at here at Search Engine City.”
Another tip is to try and identify with your audience in some way. For instance if your audience is a bunch of affiliate marketers, refer to the practice of creating blogs with affiliate links as bum marketing which is the nickname for it. Try to write in the niche language that they are used to. Of course if you truly are an expert in your niche then writing this type of SEO enriched, yet user-friendly copy will not be difficult for you at all!
First of all never pose yourself an expert or a guru if you are not one. People can usually tell that you aren’t within the first paragraph or so of an article, especially if it is peppered with keywords and not much quality content. This type of content is easily identifiable as it is based on old-fashioned direct sales marketing techniques. Once people see those long sales letters on sites, they know it’s snake oil salesman time. It is better to connect with them on a one to one basis rather than in an imitation of some hotshot copywriter from the 1970s.
Never use the royal "we". Stay away from phrases like "We here at Search Engine City promises to deliver you the best copy” instead make it more personal by using the "you or your" form as in: "You are certain to find a keyword analyzer that is perfect for that special someone at here at Search Engine City.”
Another tip is to try and identify with your audience in some way. For instance if your audience is a bunch of affiliate marketers, refer to the practice of creating blogs with affiliate links as bum marketing which is the nickname for it. Try to write in the niche language that they are used to. Of course if you truly are an expert in your niche then writing this type of SEO enriched, yet user-friendly copy will not be difficult for you at all!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Understanding Organic SEO
In the old days of the Internet, there were no SEO Consultants, automated systems, or all that high technology stuff. A few years ago, in fact, the term "Search Engine Optimization" did not even exist! Website owners struggled with ways and means to get the much-needed hits to their website (never mind if it was not targeted) to hopefully generate the needed revenues. Those were the days of IBM (or "It’s Best done Manually) and Organic SEO.
Organic SEO still refers to the processes and strategies that are undertaken to optimize a website so that it gets good relevance ratings based on the keywords that the site is responsive to. The only difference between Organic SEO and the SEO we now know is that Organic SEO is a manual process vs. the current automated processes of page submission and alteration that characterizes “modern” SEO. Organic SEO focuses on promoting websites on the Natural search engine results also known as organic results in contrast with sponsored links (Pay-Per-Click/PPC). Organic SEO, if you really think about is a "purist" approach to website optimization because nothing is a "black box". As an expert in Organic SEO, you know optimization; you don’t just blindly trust it.
Organic SEO is based on a clear understanding of fundamental concepts, including:
• Search engines and how they work
Obviously, you cannot practice Organic SEO if you don’t even know how the first two letters of SEO (i.e., Search Engine) works. A search engine is a web site that provides the visitor a list of recommended websites to go to, based on a specific keyword or keywords. The rank of a website is statistically determined by what is termed as "key word density" or the ratio of keywords to the total number of words of content in a website. Inbound links and their relevance is another factor that determines your rankings. The gatherer of this statistical data is what is called a "spider" or "spider bot", which is a program whose function is to count the number of times a keyword appears in a website through a process called "crawling".
• Search Engine Optimization
You can’t have Organic SEO without the SEO part, which stands what Search Engine Optimization. SEO’s main goal is simple: bring as many visitors to your website as possible by exerting influence on the search engine to position your website as close to the top of the list as possible. As a result of having more visitors, it is hoped that your website will generate business for you. This result is every Organic SEO practitioner’s clear measure of success.
• Viral Marketing
This is an important concept to understand if you are serious about becoming a good Organic SEO expert. Viral Marketing is a strategy to exponentially increase the number of visitors to your website from a small base that you have developed from your initial Organic SEO strategy. An example of Viral Marketing is to offer visitors to your website an opportunity to generate income from their own website by simply putting in your website’s link on theirs so that when people visit their website, then there is a good chance that they will visit yours. This strategy is certainly a handy component of the arsenal of a practitioner of Organic SEO.
• Optimized Domain Names
One of the simplest concepts to understand, yet also one that is not as easy to implement. Getting a keyword-rich domain name is every Organic SEO consultant’s dream because it carries so much weight in the relevance scale. If you domain name is exactly what you are selling, you will be able to smoothly sail on without much of a problem in the rankings. The problem, of course, is that there is a very high likelihood that the “good” domain names already belong to someone, and this makes an Organic SEO specialist life more difficult.
• Keyword Research
This is the first step on the list of to-dos for an Organic SEO practitioner because it plays a major role in determining your optimization strategy. Since it takes months for any optimization strategy to take effect, an Organic SEO expert’s efforts will be wasted if he makes the mistake of optimizing a website based on keywords that are not as popular as he assumed.
Becoming an Organic SEO specialist is not an easy task at all because it requires a deep understanding of the fundamentals that those utilizing automated systems take for granted. There is a major advantage, however, of Organic SEO vs. the “lazy man’s” SEO: A clear understanding of the concepts allows you to analyze SEO situations more accurately and come up with strategies that are more appropriate and responsive to your website’s needs. Understanding Organic SEO by Moe Tamani
Organic SEO still refers to the processes and strategies that are undertaken to optimize a website so that it gets good relevance ratings based on the keywords that the site is responsive to. The only difference between Organic SEO and the SEO we now know is that Organic SEO is a manual process vs. the current automated processes of page submission and alteration that characterizes “modern” SEO. Organic SEO focuses on promoting websites on the Natural search engine results also known as organic results in contrast with sponsored links (Pay-Per-Click/PPC). Organic SEO, if you really think about is a "purist" approach to website optimization because nothing is a "black box". As an expert in Organic SEO, you know optimization; you don’t just blindly trust it.
Organic SEO is based on a clear understanding of fundamental concepts, including:
• Search engines and how they work
Obviously, you cannot practice Organic SEO if you don’t even know how the first two letters of SEO (i.e., Search Engine) works. A search engine is a web site that provides the visitor a list of recommended websites to go to, based on a specific keyword or keywords. The rank of a website is statistically determined by what is termed as "key word density" or the ratio of keywords to the total number of words of content in a website. Inbound links and their relevance is another factor that determines your rankings. The gatherer of this statistical data is what is called a "spider" or "spider bot", which is a program whose function is to count the number of times a keyword appears in a website through a process called "crawling".
• Search Engine Optimization
You can’t have Organic SEO without the SEO part, which stands what Search Engine Optimization. SEO’s main goal is simple: bring as many visitors to your website as possible by exerting influence on the search engine to position your website as close to the top of the list as possible. As a result of having more visitors, it is hoped that your website will generate business for you. This result is every Organic SEO practitioner’s clear measure of success.
• Viral Marketing
This is an important concept to understand if you are serious about becoming a good Organic SEO expert. Viral Marketing is a strategy to exponentially increase the number of visitors to your website from a small base that you have developed from your initial Organic SEO strategy. An example of Viral Marketing is to offer visitors to your website an opportunity to generate income from their own website by simply putting in your website’s link on theirs so that when people visit their website, then there is a good chance that they will visit yours. This strategy is certainly a handy component of the arsenal of a practitioner of Organic SEO.
• Optimized Domain Names
One of the simplest concepts to understand, yet also one that is not as easy to implement. Getting a keyword-rich domain name is every Organic SEO consultant’s dream because it carries so much weight in the relevance scale. If you domain name is exactly what you are selling, you will be able to smoothly sail on without much of a problem in the rankings. The problem, of course, is that there is a very high likelihood that the “good” domain names already belong to someone, and this makes an Organic SEO specialist life more difficult.
• Keyword Research
This is the first step on the list of to-dos for an Organic SEO practitioner because it plays a major role in determining your optimization strategy. Since it takes months for any optimization strategy to take effect, an Organic SEO expert’s efforts will be wasted if he makes the mistake of optimizing a website based on keywords that are not as popular as he assumed.
Becoming an Organic SEO specialist is not an easy task at all because it requires a deep understanding of the fundamentals that those utilizing automated systems take for granted. There is a major advantage, however, of Organic SEO vs. the “lazy man’s” SEO: A clear understanding of the concepts allows you to analyze SEO situations more accurately and come up with strategies that are more appropriate and responsive to your website’s needs. Understanding Organic SEO by Moe Tamani
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Monday, August 18, 2008
What a Search Engine Optimization Firm Does
Before going into what a Search Engine Optimization firm does, let us first define what “search engine optimization” or SEO is. In “brick-and-mortar” terms, SEO may be compared to placing an advertisement in a medium that caters largely to a particular market segment, e.g., medical journals, fashion magazines, adult cable channels, etc. so that there is a high probability that whatever products or services you offer is what that particular viewing, reading, or listening market segment needs. The “agent” for this type of advertising is the advertising or marketing firm which, when related to cyberspace is the Search Engine Optimization firm.
SEO is the set of activities and strategies implemented (either by yourself or through a Search Engine Optimization firm) that influences a search engine’s “spiderbot” to give your website a high relevance rating which translates into a high ranking in the list of keyword relevant websites. Since it is a targeted approach, the success rate of an SEO strategy (measured in terms of average business per visitor also known as conversion rate) that a Search Engine Optimization firm implements should be higher than, say, online advertising (which may attract more visitors but will include a big share of “just looking” hits, thus resulting to a lower average business per visitor). This ultimately results to lower cost per sale since the resources required to service the visits (which will go down in terms of quantity but increase in terms of quality) goes down.
What does a Search Engine Optimization firm do in order to achieve its objective of ethically optimizing your website? One Search Engine Optimization firm may apply a different set of SEO strategies versus another Search Engine Optimization firm, but they both focus on one aspect: the search engine keyword or keywords. Essentially, the keyword is the major rating criterion of a relevance rating; i.e., how often it appears in the website or content. Although more sophisticated discernment algorithms are being implemented by the search engine’s “spiderbot” to weed out unethical practices (e.g., embedding keywords in articles or content that do not have any logical connection), the keyword density still the key.
Some of the strategies that a Search Engine Optimization firm employs are as follows:
• Keyword Rich Domain Names
This is the most “no brainer” strategy that a Search Engine Optimization firm could employ, yet is one of the most difficult to implement. The proposition of this strategy is that the best way to get a high ranking for a keyword relevant site is to embed the keyword into the domain name. For example, www.recipes.com will obviously get top ranking when the keyword “recipes” is used in the search box (as a side note, if you are looking for recipes, you might even just skip the search engine altogether and instinctively enter www.recipes.com ). The problem with this strategy, of course, is that these domain names are probably owned by someone else already, in which case, the Search Engine Optimization firm could embed the keyword in a longer domain name like, e.g., www.mothers-recipes.com or www.home-cooked-meal-recipes.com , which, when combined with other SEO strategies could potentially even outrank www.recipes.com .
• Content Optimization
In this strategy, the Search Engine Optimization firm ensures that the content is ethically filled with all the relevant keywords to which the website is responsive to. This is accomplished by framing the advertising copy around the keyword and making it appear as many times as relevancy allows, including the keywords in the text articles, etc. The Search Engine Optimization firm has several ways of determining the possible relevance rank of your website based on the level of content optimization.
• Meta-Tag Optimization
All websites use HTML in several parts of the website’s program. In the body of the HTML program are areas that the programmer uses, among other things, for remarks (e.g., to remind him what the code is all about). The content of these areas (called meta-tags) do not have an impact on how the website looks but is “crawled through” by the search engine’s “spiderbot” all the same. Because these meta-tags play a factor in the website’s relevance, a Search Engine Optimization firm will normally embed as many keywords as ethically allowed to into them.
In selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm that you will use to optimize your website, be sure to put a heavy premium on its experience and reputation. Also, avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that engages in unethical (and illegal) practices just to increase the number of visitors to your sites. Avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that is vague about how it is going to optimize your website. If it has nothing to hide, then it should be transparent as to what it is supposed to do. If you heard about a Search Engine Optimization firm through spam mail, do not even consider it. If the Search Engine Optimization firm charges you a low price without any clear specifics as to what it will do, walk away. Finally, make sure to canvass your requirements before selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm you will use. What a Search Engine Optimization firm does by Moe Tamani
Promote youe website on Google Yahoo! MSN
SEO is the set of activities and strategies implemented (either by yourself or through a Search Engine Optimization firm) that influences a search engine’s “spiderbot” to give your website a high relevance rating which translates into a high ranking in the list of keyword relevant websites. Since it is a targeted approach, the success rate of an SEO strategy (measured in terms of average business per visitor also known as conversion rate) that a Search Engine Optimization firm implements should be higher than, say, online advertising (which may attract more visitors but will include a big share of “just looking” hits, thus resulting to a lower average business per visitor). This ultimately results to lower cost per sale since the resources required to service the visits (which will go down in terms of quantity but increase in terms of quality) goes down.
What does a Search Engine Optimization firm do in order to achieve its objective of ethically optimizing your website? One Search Engine Optimization firm may apply a different set of SEO strategies versus another Search Engine Optimization firm, but they both focus on one aspect: the search engine keyword or keywords. Essentially, the keyword is the major rating criterion of a relevance rating; i.e., how often it appears in the website or content. Although more sophisticated discernment algorithms are being implemented by the search engine’s “spiderbot” to weed out unethical practices (e.g., embedding keywords in articles or content that do not have any logical connection), the keyword density still the key.
Some of the strategies that a Search Engine Optimization firm employs are as follows:
• Keyword Rich Domain Names
This is the most “no brainer” strategy that a Search Engine Optimization firm could employ, yet is one of the most difficult to implement. The proposition of this strategy is that the best way to get a high ranking for a keyword relevant site is to embed the keyword into the domain name. For example, www.recipes.com will obviously get top ranking when the keyword “recipes” is used in the search box (as a side note, if you are looking for recipes, you might even just skip the search engine altogether and instinctively enter www.recipes.com ). The problem with this strategy, of course, is that these domain names are probably owned by someone else already, in which case, the Search Engine Optimization firm could embed the keyword in a longer domain name like, e.g., www.mothers-recipes.com or www.home-cooked-meal-recipes.com , which, when combined with other SEO strategies could potentially even outrank www.recipes.com .
• Content Optimization
In this strategy, the Search Engine Optimization firm ensures that the content is ethically filled with all the relevant keywords to which the website is responsive to. This is accomplished by framing the advertising copy around the keyword and making it appear as many times as relevancy allows, including the keywords in the text articles, etc. The Search Engine Optimization firm has several ways of determining the possible relevance rank of your website based on the level of content optimization.
• Meta-Tag Optimization
All websites use HTML in several parts of the website’s program. In the body of the HTML program are areas that the programmer uses, among other things, for remarks (e.g., to remind him what the code is all about). The content of these areas (called meta-tags) do not have an impact on how the website looks but is “crawled through” by the search engine’s “spiderbot” all the same. Because these meta-tags play a factor in the website’s relevance, a Search Engine Optimization firm will normally embed as many keywords as ethically allowed to into them.
In selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm that you will use to optimize your website, be sure to put a heavy premium on its experience and reputation. Also, avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that engages in unethical (and illegal) practices just to increase the number of visitors to your sites. Avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that is vague about how it is going to optimize your website. If it has nothing to hide, then it should be transparent as to what it is supposed to do. If you heard about a Search Engine Optimization firm through spam mail, do not even consider it. If the Search Engine Optimization firm charges you a low price without any clear specifics as to what it will do, walk away. Finally, make sure to canvass your requirements before selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm you will use. What a Search Engine Optimization firm does by Moe Tamani
Promote youe website on Google Yahoo! MSN
Sunday, August 17, 2008
What’s Best: Blogging Traffic Or SEO Traffic Generation?
I’ve heard it said, and even seen it written, that blogging is better than SEO for getting traffic. Are blogging traffic or SEO traffic generation techniques better for you, or does it not really matter?
Actually, a lot depends on you and which you like best: blogs or traditional websites, and also what you want the traffic for. I also wonder why the distinction is being made, since anybody serious about internet marketing and getting plenty of traffic, will use both. There is really no need to choose one or the other. However, when I hear such arguments I get the feeling that it is more academic than which provides the more traffic. Feelings, however can be wrong, so it is worth discussion.
When you think about it, the type of traffic you get from a blog could very well have different needs and interests to those that reached your site after carrying a search on Google or Yahoo using specific keywords. OK, you can get to blogs from search engines also, and through the use of keywords, but if you are looking to buy something you wouldn’t normally log onto a blog, would you?
Let’s say you wanted the best price for a gross of Titleist golf balls, you wouldn’t visit a blog site. Similarly if wanted to discuss their benefits, you would go to a blog or a forum. Sometimes it gets difficult to tell the difference these days, since blogs are becoming increasingly more interactive, but you get my general drift. I hope!
With a blog you can advertise whatever you want to, and the same is true of a website. However, you are more likely to make a direct purchase from a website, and to seek information from a blog. Hence, the traffic you get on a blog are information seekers and those on your website may also be looking for info, but might also be wanting to make a purchase. So right away we can kind of separate blog readers from website visitors.
It’s not a well defined separation, but bloggers tend not to be looking for something different to what a search engine user is looking for. If you have a blog on your website, your blog page will be likely to attract prospects that will tend to be more regular visitors than those that are checking out your website. If the latter don’t respond to your opt-in form, you will be unlikely to see them again, but a visitor to your blog page might return frequently.
However, to return to the question: what is better, blog traffic or SEO traffic, as long as each is free it doesn’t really matter I would have thought. I suppose that it could be argued that the SEO traffic is more focussed because they have used your specific keywords to get to the page they landed on ,and blog traffic could come from ezines and other sources that are perhaps not specific to any product you are selling. Me, I would accept any traffic no matter where it came from, and quite frankly once the traffic gets to your webpage it is up to you to convert it to sales.

The difference between the two is that if you don’t make an immediate impact with the SEO visitors, you could be struggling to keep them returning to your website, but you are likely to have more time with the bloggers, since they tend to keep coming back to the blog. The SEO visitors might register with your opt-in page, but that only allows you to keep in contact with them, and you still have to try to induce them to return to your website.
On the other hand, the blog readers need no such inducement, since they visit your site each time you publish a new posting. That is assuming that your blog is on your own website, and not on the blog server as many (perhaps most) are.
Perhaps I am completely on the wrong track, but I will keep tabs on it and report on my website what my findings are regarding blog traffic and SEO traffic, and whether or not one tends to buy more that the other. It is useful to know, since for a website that is designed to sell products it can determine whether or not it is worth having a blog on your site or keep trying to improve your SEO.
That is a big decision to make, and if it could make the difference between success and failure then it should be determines mathematically and scientifically rather than by conjecture and opinion. It is scientific testing that frequently makes the difference between those that are successful in internet marketing and those that fail.
So, is blogging traffic or SEO traffic generation the best? Who knows? I hope to know shortly though, and I will share it with you on my site when I finish my testing. What’s best: Blogging traffic or SEO traffic generation? by Peter Nisbet
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