| Predict the Winner of this Friday's Pro20 Clash - CLICK HERE.
Find out how to support the Chevrolet Warriors or the Highveld Lions by CLICKING HERE |
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GSFA: Group Sex For Amoebas
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Tips on Social Media Optimization |
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 www.MyPE.co.za: Social
Media Optimization (SMO) is an
effective way of optimizing social media forums such as popular online
social communities like Twitter,
Facebook,
LinkedIn
etc. to get the
much needed website traffic to your website. The popularity of these
Social Media websites is unquestionable as the online world has become
obsessed with the idea of quick and easy networking and making
connection with the world. Therefore, it becomes all the more important
to have an effective Social Media Optimization strategy
in place to
ensure maximum benefits out of these platforms.
A badly directed SMO strategy can spoil the party
for most websites and
instead of bringing fruitful results can lead to a waste of time. Apart
from good out-of-the box strategies which can be developed based upon
individual requirements, some of the following Social Media
Optimization tips can also come in handy for you to embed in your
Social Media Optimization campaigns:
- Not a numbers game - Winning over traffic from Social Media
websites is definitely not a numbers game as is commonly mistaken. It
is not always; the more and the faster we have more friends in our
network, the more effective our strategy.
- Making real connections - For a Social Media Optimization
strategy to be effective one should always focus on identifying your
target audience first and then making real connections. There is no
point going on a marketing frenzy as this will not likely get you any
real connects.
- Participate - To expect participation you must be yourself
involved as far as possible in the activity of your network. In the
words of Mr. Grumpy: "You won’t get till you give". (Ed: Note to self,
I need to stop being known as Mr Grumpy!)
- Be Consistent - Irregular activities on Social Media
websites would do no good to your Social
Media Optimization services campaign.
- Profile - Always have a genuine profile with a real picture
because having a face to the profile would ensure that there is more
credibility associated with your profile and people find it easy and
safe to form a connection with you.
Related Links:
List
Your Port Elizabeth Social Media Profile for free in the MyPE Directory.
Edward Labuschagne
SA SEO
| Mail: info[at]sa-seo.co.za
| Phone:
082 782 8856 | Fax:
086 695 9356.
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| Posted by mype on Thursday, November 12 @ 09:30:00 SAST
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www.MyPE.co.za: At
the recent Port Elizabeth 27 Dinner, held at the Algoa
Bay Yacht Club
Chartroom restaurant, on 27 October 2009 I jokingly asked everyone to
introduce themselves as if they were at a support group meeting; "Hi,
I'm Alan and it has been two hours since my last Tweet" to which
everyone could reply in that sighing, been there, done that tone; "Hi
Alan".
Well, as they say; "There is many a true word spoken in jest". Little
did I realise that we were about to be introduced to a Twitterholic who
describes herself as a compulsive communicator. I though that I had a
problem spending time on the computer 'communicating' (Well, at least
my Longhair says so!). But, I was about to be blown away and left
whimpering like a dog fish at the bottom of a murky ocean.
For the uninitiated, a Twitter Tweet (Search me why they don't call it
a Twitter Twit!) is a shortish message consisting of a maximum of 140
characters posted to a Twitter Account - normally an update of your
activities, a reply to someone or a short description and link to a
interesting topic or article.
After an intro by Yusuf
Moses we moved on to SUPERWOMAN - nayes1982
who
flippantly revealed that she had already posted 10 200 Tweets in the
past SIX months.
Work it out for yourself - Assuming 182.62 days of 8 working hours each
and no time off for the weekends, this equates to a staggering 6.98
Tweets per hour or 55.85 Tweets daily. Assume an average of 80
characters per Tweet and nayes1 982 averages 4 468 characters per day.
Anthony Larter, a Herbalife
Distributor emphasised that many of his
valuable relationships were still face to face ones.
Met with Dave
Coates, whose Port Elizabeth developer Tweets and blog
posts are frequent visitors to the MyPE RSS feed at the bottom of the
index page.
New to the 27 Dinner was Alan
Fogarty who tells me that he got a lot of
value out of our informal get together.
Kristin Britz told us all about his new bizz.co.za
launching on 1
November.
Poor Edward from SA-SEO
had to lose out on his support group intro as
the food arrived. Must say the food was particularly good - the
Longhair and I carnivored out on some fillet steak.
Although smaller than the last 27 Dinners I really felt that I got
something out of this one. Look out for the next one coming soon.
Related Links:
Add
your Social Networking Account to the MyPE Directory for free.
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| Posted by mype on Thursday, October 29 @ 10:11:59 SAST
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Idiot Proof Your Web Site Designer Choice |
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www.MyPE.co.za:
There's a great interest among the Internet entrepreneurs about how to
promote their business on the Web. There's always a quest for new and
innovative ways of promotion that promise greater results at lower cost
and in shorter time. Yet with all the efforts spent on promotion it's
just amazing how many people totally ignore one basic question - is
their website worth promoting? With new computer technologies and
high speed connections a new Internet age has arrived - an age that
redefines the criteria of a successful web site, which must satisfy the
demands of its visitors.
Content is King:
That was the mantra of all web masters for a long time. Just show your
visitors some interesting stuff, give them a better deal - and your
success is guaranteed. The truth is - it doesn't always work that way.
The
content alone cannot win you the hearts and minds of your potential
customers. It's just a part - thought a very important one -
of building your image on the Internet. You can say whatever you want
about yourself on your web site: that your company provides the best
services, the best expertise, the best whatever. But people won't buy
it until you LOOK right to them. That is you look trustworthy and
professional enough for your visitors to believe you. And that's the
point where we come to the importance of keeping your web site up to
your customers' expectations.
Numbers don't lie:
Your web site might not have changed for several years. But the
Internet has been changing. The latest surveys show that people's
online expectations have skyrocketed over the last few years and
they're quick to reject any web site that doesn't keep up. Besides easy
navigation and use, people want and expect a site to load quickly and
to be visually appealing. If a web site doesn't meet their
expectations, two-thirds of respondents say they don't return - now or
ever. They'll visit you and leave and you'll never know.
Having a bad web site means losing customers - plain and simple. When
people see your web site in bad shape they assume that you don't care
about your image or don't have money or resources to maintain it.
What
is a good web site?
A good web site should provide your visitors and potential clients with
a unique experience and leave them with a lasting impression. In many
ways people react to that the same way as meeting a person. Sometimes
the first impression makes all the difference. Ask yourself- would you
place an order via a web site that looks like its owners went out of
business years ago? I guess you'll think twice before doing that.
It takes a lot
of things to make a web site effective but here are some
basics:
- First a good design. Nice clean layout, good graphics work,
color
coordination. Everything is supposed to be in place and, no less
important, in balance. An excessive use of graphic elements, for
example, can ruin your web site's look, besides making it difficult to
download and view.
- Your web site should also be informative. But don't think
that more
information is better. The word "informative" in that sense implies
more "educational" than "descriptive". Educate your website visitors
about your company and its services. Make your content easy to read and
understandable. Don't overwhelm your visitors with technical details or
self advertising stuff or they won't read it at all.
- Another important thing is navigation. Make it easy to
understand. Some
people get too fancy with that, which makes even experienced web
surfers wonder how to get around their web site. Keep it simple and the
web site structure logical- so the visitors can easily go from A to B
and access information they need.
- There are a lot of other issues that you have to keep in
mind, like
personalisation, browser compatibility, and of course search
engine optimization - but we
won't cover them right now.
What you can do
to make your web site better.
- Give your website a critical eye. Encourage your visitors
to send
you their comments and suggestions (at least you'll show that you care)
Ask your friends and relatives if they like your web site. Compare it
to the web sites of your competitors.
- Analyze the results. See what most people do and don't like
about
your web site. Think about how to enhance your strong points and to
eliminate your deficiencies.
- Find the solution. If you can improve your web site
yourself - great!
But don't overestimate your abilities. If you want an attractive, well
designed site that stands out go to professionals- the people with
experience and special knowledge in this field. Let them do that work
while you can concentrate on the most important thing - running your
business.
- If you decided to seek professional help, don't
hurry, use
your God given gift of common sense. Shop around, but don't necessarily
go for the lowest price. Price is a big factor, but not the only one.
You don't want to end up with a cheap web site that you'll have to
change again rather sooner than later. Before striking a deal, do your
homework. Do your best to find out more about the web design
company (or a designer) that you'll work with.
First of all
visit their web site- if you're not impressed, go away. If they can't
do it right for themselves - how they can do it right for you? Second,
ask them to show their portfolio - see what they can do for their
clients. Third, don't be shy to ask for references. See if they work
closely with clients and respond well to their requests.
And always remember - your website is the face of your company. Leaving
it in bad shape can really damage your image and turn away many
prospective customers.
Edward Labuschagne
SA SEO
| Mail: info[at]sa-seo.co.za
| Phone:
082 782 8856 | Fax:
086 695 9356
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| Posted by mype on Friday, September 25 @ 09:35:09 SAST
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SEO and Web Design Go hand in Hand |
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www.MyPE.co.za: If
you are in the process of re-designing your website, SEO should
always remain in the front of your mind as a vital part of the process.
Too often designers and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts clash,
when in reality the two disciplines should always go hand in hand - and
SEO and web design should be talked about in the same breath, from the
beginning of a development.
SEO web design is basically just good website design - after all, if
you build the most 'wow' site in the world but nobody can find it short
of remembering and typing the URL in, what's the point in that?
What Makes Good SEO Web
Design?
- Steer clear of the splash page containing a huge banner
image and a
'click here to enter' - this is becoming less common in website design
and thankfully so, as they pretty much block website spiders. A site's
homepage will be the most frequently indexed page usually, and if it's
a 'fancy' splash page, they won't find your internal pages either as
the linking structure won't be in place.
- Too much image and flash content throughout does not make
for good SEO
web design, as search engines generally can't read this content. A real
problem is if keywords are used within images and flash.
- If a web designer implements a considerable amount of ajax,
particularly for navigation, it leads to a more seamless experience
but, because it is loaded dynamically, it is not searchable via the
search engines.
- There are other numerous basic but key elements that
excellent SEO web
design comprises of, and should be in place from the get-go, such as
using well thought through content and keywords, alt tags for all
images, and fundamentally well-written code, amongst others.
- Every page should have a unique title tag to make clear
to the search engines that each page contains different content.
A Long-Term Relationship:
A well-designed website will improve the user experience and in turn
the site's credibility - from the day it launches it will work harder
to get further up the rankings. If you are a website designer who knows
the fundamentals of SEO or a search professional who knows a good
website when they see one, this will broaden your service offering to
clients.
SEO web design, put simply, takes into account the medium - the
internet. Designers may grumble at SEO restrictions, but they wouldn't
design a glossy, printed brochure for distribution with the pages stuck
together. A badly designed website hidden away on page 8 of the Google
results pretty much amounts to the same.SEO
professionals and web
designers must acknowledge they are in an important relationship, and
in it for the long haul.
Edward Labuschagne
SA SEO
| Mail: info[at]sa-seo.co.za
| Phone:
082 782 8856 | Fax:
086 695 9356
Get More Exposure for
your Social Media Efforts and list them on MyPE: Facebook
| LinkedIn
| MySpace
| Twitter.
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| Posted by mype on Tuesday, September 22 @ 09:50:00 SAST
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Port Elizabeth WWW Applications Conference |
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www.MyPE.co.za: The
11th Annual conference on WWW Applications (ZAwww2009)is currently
underway in Port Elizabeth at the Pine Lodge until Friday 4
September
2009.
The chair of the Local Organising Committe, Darelle van Greunen from
NMMU, graciously allowed me to
attend and cover some of the papers
presented at this conference. Normal plebs can join in the fun at a
small registration cost - pop in to the registration desk in the
morning, chat to Darelle and plonk your Nine Hundred bucks on the table
to join in the fun.
There are four venues each offering presentations under the broad
umbrellas of; e-Commerce, Web Development, e-Learning and Information
& Knowledge Discovery. Each presentation is mostly 25 minutes
long and well structured with a question and answer session.
Just to whet your appetite somewhat my program for Thursday looks like
this:
- 09:15 to 10:00 - Cloud Computing: a relaity check presented
by Eben De Witt from Microsoft
- 10:05 to 10:50 - An OEM Perspective on Web Technology
presented by Ashraf Karodia from VW South AFrica
- 11:30 to 11:55 - The Emergence of CLoud Computing
- 12:00 to 12:25 - Internet Usage in Lower-end SMMEs in South
Africa
- 12:30 to 12:55 - World Wide Web tools enhancing Mentorship
- 14:00 to 14:25 - Top Ranking Commercial web sites - search
engine optimisation versus pay per click
- 14:30 to 15:55 - Search Engine coverage bias in developing
countries
- 15:00 to 15:25 - Fusing Visibility and usability in
designing better website (1)
- 16:00 to 16:55 - Latest trends in web development
Of course this is but a small sample of the wide range of topics
covered with more to come on Friday.
Today I met up with an old mate from a 27 Dinner held last year at ABYC,
Marlon Parker. At that dinner Marlon spoke about the great work that he
was doing using the Mixit Instant Messaging service to help fight
against the scourge of drugs in the Western Cape. Since that time the
counselling service has expanded even more with them servicing around 9
193 subscribers. The 5 counsellors average around 122 conversations per
session and the average cost to the person seeking advice is measured
as less than 1 cent for the initial contact session.
Marlon's fellow associate, Wesley Nitsckie presented the paper and
attributed the growth in the number of users to an insert on Morning
Live Television.
The drug counsellors are all ex drug addicts and gang members and have
taken to their new 'status' in the community like ducks to water,
turning their backs on destroying lives and embracing their newfound
community spirit.
This technology is now being used by Port Elizabeth based company Debt
Restructuring Services as a first line in debt counselling and
restructuring.
Dr. Wallace Chigona from the University of Cape Town's Department of
information services presented the findings of his masters student,
Tarreyn Pietersen, on the uses and gratifications of social network
sites by South Africans. Tarreyn studied a sample group of eight users
of Facebook.
With over 300 major Social Networking sites on the internet covering in
excess of 200 million users it was found that in excess of 734 000
South Africans subscribe to Facebook and use it mainly to communicate
with friends that are not personal every day friends. A 9.4% internet
penetration is seenas the major stumbling block to even more
spectacular growth in the uptake of South African's to the major Social
Networking Sites.
It was found that of the Facebook users 53.5% are female, 46.5% male
and 77% of users are between the ages of 13 and 30. Most users accessed
the site for an average of 20 minutes a day from their places of work
and most used it to check messages only.
The ZAwww2009 conference ends on Friday. Contact Darelle van Greunen on
082 564 2356 for more info.
ZAwww2009 Images.
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| Posted by mype on Wednesday, September 02 @ 21:02:35 SAST
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Guest House Booking Scam by 'Anthony Philips' |
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www.MyPE.co.za: The
'annonyminity' of the Internet seems to bring out the worse in some
people, from the benign to the downright sneaky. The accommodation
and tourism sector is one in which it is accepted practice to accept
online
bookings and payments and the sharks are forever circling looking for a
piece of the action!
One of the Guest Houses listed on MyPE
forwarded me the following
correspondence showing the method used by one of these lowlife sharks.
The initial contact e-mail:
From: Anthony Philips
To:
undisclosed-recipients
Sent:
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 1:29 AM
Subject:
RESERVATION
Hello
I like to make a reservation in your facility for 2 double rooms for my
clients who are coming for vacation in your country.They are just 2
couples.
Mr & Mrs Gemijez
Mr $ Mrs Bilqees
Arrival date: 10th November 2009
Departure date: 18th November 2009
Number of nights: 8 nights
Number of Guest: 4
pls get back to me with your rates and total cost if rooms are
available so that i can give you my credit card details for a
deposit payment.
Best Regards,
Anthony Philips
email = anthonyphilips_1@yahoo.com.hk
Lets have a quick look for the first warning bells in the above e-mail:
- It is sent to undisclosed-recipients - indicating a bulk
mail to many
recipients
- It refers to a holiday in 'your country' and not a specific
town
- It does not mention the name of the Guest House
After a return e-mail to 'Anthony Philips' from the Guest House in
question, confirming room and meal rates and availability the following
e-mail was received by the Guest House Owner:
Hi
Thanks for your reply. I apologise for my late response. I am
glad to tell you that the price is acceptable by my clients and they
are willing to make a deposit payment immediately. Due to their
acceptance,I have concluded payment with them also.
I have been instructed to pay you for your services and provision of a
language translator whom would be able to translate every word to them
because they are Swiss.
I have arranged this with a linguist who is willing to undertake these
responsibilities on their behalf.. He would be with them throughout
their stay with you.
I will send you my credit card details when I receive your confirmation
email so that you would charge as agreed/authorized by my
clients.However upon the receipt of my credit card, confirm you will
charge as follows: Take the cost of your services plus 6450euros for
the Translator from my card.
Then deduct your deposit and send the balance of 6450euros to the
Translator.I really need you to make the charges for the Translator as
he does not have a POS machine. Confirm this and provide me with the
following:
Your full name/address/Telephone. Looking forward to your reply.
Regards
Anthony Philips
Again let's unpack this
e-mail and identify some of the warning signs:
- No mention of additional accommodation space required for
the Translator
- Then the pitch - the translator does not have any means of
receiving
money, despite the fact that he/she earns nearly a R100 000.00 for 8
days work. Yea Right!
- Why does 'Anthony Philips' need the Full Name, address and
Telephone
Number of the Guest House Owner - this is easily found on the Guest
House Owner's web site or e-mail letterhead?
- The sender is using a free e-mail address
- No web site or Social Networking site details for 'Anthony
Philips'
- A quick Google for 'Anthony Philips' reveals that it is a
Scam, see:
Enquiries and Emails Scams - Beware!
- Looking at the e-mail on the above site one can see that
'Anthony
Philips' is quite consistent - the & for the names of his
second set of clients is once again a $ - silly boy trying to be clever!
My BEST advice - if you feel at all uncomfortable with any online
transactions then suggest to the person that you need to pay that you
use a service such as Escrow.com.
Internet fraud costs victims millions
of dollars each year. Escrow.com protect both the buyer and seller with
a simple, 5-step trust process.
Think with your head and not with your heart.
Related Links:
Port Elizabeth Guest House Accommodation
- contact
numbers.
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| Posted by MyPE on Sunday, August 30 @ 12:48:45 SAST
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Are Internet Directory Submissions Still Accepted as Good SEO? |
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www.MyPE.co.za: Most
webmasters know that high rankings on Google and other modern search
engines can only be achieved if a website has both optimized web page
content and good inbound links.
While it is relatively easy to optimize the content of a website, it is
more difficult to get good inbound links. A relatively easy way to get
inbound links is to submit websites to Internet directories.
But do these Internet directory links still have value when it comes to
search engine rankings? Can you increase the position of your website
in Google's search results by submitting your site to Internet
directories?
A case study:
MyPE tested three pages that were orphaned within the normal navigation
structure of MyPE.
These three pages were created to provide valuable
content to search engines.
The three pages were submitted to some high quality paid directories
and targeted free directories.
About 45 days after the paid directory links went live, the web pages
had increased visibility on search engines. Visits and conversions also
increased and tracking indicated that at least 50 percent of the
results could be attributed to the directory links.
The final results that were attributed to the directory link building
included:
* a lift of traffic to levels that other highly visible site pages
receive within 90 days
* an increase in monthly conversions for the business line of 45
percent year-over-year
What does this mean for your website?
Getting links from Internet directories should be a fundamental part of
any search engine optimization strategy. You should submit your website
to all big Internet directories and to Internet directories that cover
your niche - i.e. If your site is Port Elizabeth focussed, submit it to
MyPE which has both free and paid for options from
R20.00 per month.
IBP's
directory submitter can help you to submit your website as
efficiently as possible to all important directories.
Links from Internet directories are only one way to get links from
other sites. If you want to outperform your competitors, you also need
links from websites that are related to yours. Links from blogs will
also help.
IBP will help you to get these links.
Don't forget to optimize your website content before building links.
The better your website content has been prepared for search engines,
the better the links to your website will work.
Related Links:
Axandra
Desktop SEO Software | MyZA | MyPE Business
Directory | MyCapeTown Business Directory.
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| Posted by MyPE on Tuesday, August 18 @ 15:47:15 SAST
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Is That Listing Really Worth it? |
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www.MyPE.co.za: All I
seem to be doing lately is raging. I have had a number of people mail
me to ask my opinion on the value of a listing on yet another web site
that lists Port Elizabeth businesses for free, and as premium (paid
for) listings.
I remember that I listed MyPE as a free link on this particular web
site a while ago and for the life of me could not find the MyPE listing
until my good mate at Imagio, Glen, pointed out exactly
where I could
go to find it.
Looking at the listing once again I, for the life of me, cannot
understand why I even bothered, as it is buried in the search function
and does not even link back to the MyPE web site - what a waste of time
and effort. All I succeeded in doing was giving away my e-mail address
so that I could become the potential victim of yet more spam.
If you want to save yourself the effort use these handy tips BEFORE you
consider listing your business or web site on any of the myriad
directories available - all eager to bamboozle you with smoke and
mirrors and take your money with empty promises and a kick up the arse
if you query anything:
- Check out their web stats on Alexa.com
- Do a site search using Google.com
- Check their backlinks using Yahoo Site Explorer
Web Stats using Alexa.com
Alexa will show you a heap of info about a web site:
- Traffic Rank - The overall estimated amount of traffic to
the web site
ranked according to the web site's position.
- Reach - The estimated number of internet users worldwide
that visit the
web site.
- Pageviews - The number of pages viewed on the site for a
given period.
- Pageviews/User - Average number of pages viewed per visitor.
- Bounce % - The percentage of visits to the web site that
consist of a
single page turn.
- Time on Site - The daily time that a visitor spends on the
site in
minutes.
- Search% - The percentage of visits to the web site that
came from a
search engine.
You can also compare your target web site with four other web sites.
Alexa has graphs for the top 100 000 web sites in the world and also
ranks the web site by geographical positioning as well. MyPE's
Alexa Statistics.
Site Search using Google
When considering whether to list your business, have a look at how
other listings perform and whether thay have made it into the Google
Index by using the Google site search command as follows:
Choose a listings that is at least more than one day old then go to
Google and use the following command: Business Name site:sitename.co.za
- Here is an example of Google Site Search of MyPE for a business that
was listed on MyPE on 11 August:
Compu Till
If you cannot find the business then choose the oldest listing you can
find and do the Google Site Search again.
If you cannot find that business then RUN, run like mad from your
target web site.
Yahoo Site Explorer
Backlinks
A link back to a web site is a vote of confidence or refferal for that
web site so it stands to reason that the more people who vote for that
web site or refer to it the higher the level of confidence that you can
have in it.
Here is an Example for the Backlinks to MyPE from Yahoo Site
Explorer.
If there are no backlinks then Run, Forrest, run.
Other factors to take
into consideration:
Did you learn about the directory through an unsolicited e-mail? If you
did then shame on you for even thinking about listing.
How does the directory drive and retain traffic to the directory? Is it
just a directory looking for your money or does the directory have
loads of relevant content with lots of links back to relevant
categories and
search results from within each article?
Look at the level of advertising on the web pages - too much smacks of
desperation and no thought to the user experience.
Is there a social networking component to the directory promotion?
Are there contact details?
There are a myriad of other factors that also come into play - I am
available for a consulting session should you wish to get
a leg up on
the competition and run your own linking campaign - Contact
Alan HERE.
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| Posted by MyPE on Wednesday, August 12 @ 16:15:52 SAST
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What is Social Media Optimization? |
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www.MyPE.co.za:
Social Media Optimization (SMO) is an online method of publicizing
through
social media like Facebook and Twitter,
online communities and community websites like MyPE. It's a way of
promoting a
particular site by using RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging and
incorporating functionality like images and videos.
But Social Media Optimization has some rules, or rather, guidelines.
These guidelines include - increase your linkability, make tagging and
bookmarking easy, reward inbound links, help your content travel,
encourage the mash up, be a user resource, reward helpful readers, know
how to target your audience, create and update your content, be real in
your content or work, develop a SMO
strategy and finally make social media optimization a part of
your daily process.
Social Media Optimization in a way is related to search
engine marketing. Though both
of them are fairly different in their aspects, they are both good
practice as the objective is same. If we go by the word of Wikipedia,
then social media optimization is an online tool or a platform which
allows people to share opinions, experiences and thoughts with each
other. The best examples of social media optimization include blogs,
message boards, discussion forums, podcasts, wikis and vlogs.
The whole sole idea of Social Media Optimization is good in promoting a
particular site indirectly. Things like blogs and discussion forums
prompt a reader to read and pass his views in form of comment, thereby
generating interest in the subject thus increasing the popularity of
the site which is indirectly linked to the blog or message boards.
Social Media Optimization has gained popularity over the last few
years. Social Media Marketing is a way of complimenting SEO. It's a
time consuming process, a process which is complimentary to field
marketing. So, when someone talks about SMO, in one way they mean that
your goals regarding your site will now be defined in comments,
ratings, links and will be carefully managed and viewed giving better
results.
Edward Labuschagne
SA SEO
| Mail: info[at]sa-seo.co.za
| Phone:
082 782 8856 | Fax:
086 695 9356
Get More Exposure for
your Social Media Efforts and list them on MyPE: Facebook
| LinkedIn
| MySpace
| Twitter.
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| Posted by MyPE on Wednesday, August 05 @ 07:18:10 SAST
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www.MyPE.co.za: In a previous article
I talked about business
blogs and how it can benefit the reach of a business
online.
The culture of blogging is slowly evolving in businesses. The
term 'business blogs' is now seen in the marketing campaigns
of many businesses. A blog can be used as a tool to communicate
with or provide knowledge to customers and employees. A business
blog is a proven and efficient method of communication for many
businesses. But what is equally important in creating a blog is
maintaining and updating it on a regular basis.
Quality of the content: The volume or size of the content is not
the primary method of making a blog successful. If that was the
case, then all the estinmated 40,000 blogs that are posted each
day, might be popular. It is only those blogs that contain
quality and unique content that achieve their desired result of
reaching more readers and potential clients.
The success of a business blog is determined in terms of web site
traffic that returns. Quality content helps the blogger to keep
his blog alive and grow. And, the blogger must have a clear idea
of the time commitment required in publishing on a blog. Regular
publishing to a blog can be scheduled on a daily, weekly, or
monthly basis, but the content and comments received on the blog
must be updated frequently to keep the blog active.
Managing periodicity in blogging: There will be many experiences
in a life of an average person that strike him with an
inspiration to write a blog. There are no restrictions on the
time or place that inspiration strikes to write a post for
personal blogging. But, for a business blog, the time commitment
in creating and regularly posting content is crucial.
Whenever you are hit with an inspiration that you think would be
good to include in your business blog, note it down. It is good
practice to set a certain time aside to accumulate all those
thoughts into publishing on your blog. As a business person
regular posting doesn't just keep your blog active, it also
reflects positively on your commitment and discipline as a
trustworthy business person.
Interactive blogging to engage customers: It may be wrong to
assume that you have to write your business blog formally and
with a corporate voice, and it may affect your blog adversely.
Many successful business blogs interact with their target
audience. The succesful ones have a passion in them that
encourages the readers to read and return as well as delivering
your message in a simple and straight manner.
The number of blog visitors is increasing daily, simultaneously
with the number of blog posts. This provides a tremendous
opportunity to leverage businesses through blogging.
SA-SEO is
giving away 20 FREE blogs to Port Elizabeth based businesses. If
you are interested in this offer please feel free
to contact me.
Edward Labuschagne
SA SEO |
Mail: info[at]sa-seo.co.za | Phone: 082 782 8856 | Fax: 086 695 9356
Port Elizabeth based Blogs | List your
Blog on MyPE.
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| Posted by MyPE on Wednesday, June 03 @ 17:02:47 SAST
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www.MyPE.co.za: Blogs
are easy way to communicate with the customers, and employees.
From past few years, blogs are continuing as one of the effective
channels of communication when compared to other advertising channels.
Blogs for business can help to strengthen relationships with targeted
audiences. A blog can help in many ways, from a business perceptive.
There are two reasons I decided to target small businesses. Firstly,
Port Elizabeth consists mostly out of small to medium size businesses
and secondly as SA-SEO is a small
business too and I have personally dealt with the pros and cons
blogging. One thing I can however say is the pros far outnumber the
cons if you start right and keep on doing it right.
Reasons why a small
business needs blogging:
Small businesses need to be more effective in building a potential and
loyal customer base when compared to large businesses. Blogs help in
increasing the consumer base.
* Building customer relationships: Blogs are very helpful to increase
the brand loyalty in customers by engaging with them through blogging
on their favorite topics. Regularly updated blogs can help businesses
in making readers visit the website on regular basis. This may steadily
enhance the business opportunities of the organisation. Blogs became
easy and effective medium to make the customers to join in discussions,
providing tips, insights, etc., about the products and services of many
businesses.
* Blogs at workplace: Employees can write their opinions, views, and
recommendations for any developments in the business. Blogs helps small
businesses for effective cross-functional communication with employees.
Companies can create internal blogs within organisations where project
members and employees update project information along with reports
without having to waste time on interaction and responses for minor
updates.
* For brand awareness: Small businesses can easily update their recent
achievements in products and services in blogs and can create awareness
to customers about them. With regular reading of blogs, customers get
to know the latest developments in the business. Blogs help small
businesses to create brand awareness for the products or services they
offer.
* Better communication: Blogging for small businesses facilitate an
increase in the integrity of the organization with the easy
communication process between customers, employees and the management.
Blogs are also created to attract the readers of targeted markets.
Companies update their respective blogs frequently with opinions and
reviews of customers along with new achievements in their products and
services, and make them visible to almost everyone online.
* The seo
benefit: Inter-linking
between your blog and your website content is a great way to increase
the reach of your business online and also provides the readers easy
access to content related to the posts.
Blogging enables the small businesses to stay in business, to connect
with its customers and clients. This can indirectly help to increase
their sales. Blogging can make your customers relate better to a
company on a personal level. Blogging is a great way to set your
company apart from the group of small, and home based businesses
throughout the Internet.
In the next article I will talk about how to maintain a successful blog
and I will also tell you how you can get your own free business blog
for your company.
Edward Labuschagne.
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| Posted by MyPE on Monday, June 01 @ 16:17:39 SAST
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Wolfram Alpha Will Give You Answers |
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www.MyPE.co.za: I
just love trying out new search 'assistants' and other internet gadgets
so rushed to try WolframAlpha which has been a long time coming.
There is one main reason why I try these new search assitants and web
sites; To see if they have ranked and listed MyPE and Port Elizabeth
and if their information is accurate. Of course I also like to help the
creators and ensure that they have all the facts required.
Imagine a search 'assistant' that rolls Google, Wikipedia and Ask (used
to have Jeeves, but now just Ask!) into one handy facts package and you
have the gist of WolframAlpha.
WolframAlpha
is backed by Stephen Wolfram,
a noted scientist and author of the Mathematica computational software
and book, A New Kind Of Science. WolframAlpha bills itself as a
"computational knowledge engine." Basically it is a service designed to
provide you with direct answers, rather than refer you to pages that in
turn may hold those answers.
 WolframAlpha explain
their engine as follows; "Wolfram|Alpha's
long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately
computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all
objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and
make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything.
Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other
systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be
relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries."
As WolframAlpha is built using Stephen Wolfram's Mathematica
Computational Software and
has received lots of hype over the last few months I am sure that he
has sold many copies - all the power to you, Stephen.
The collection of this data which, at present, contains 10+ trillion of
pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic
capabilities for 1000+ domains is not an overnight process. Users who
search for something specific and come up empty handed, as when I
searched for MyPE and got this message; "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what
to do with your input. Did you mean myles". Such users can then opt
to help broaden the WolframAlpha knowledge engine by filling
in a form,
volunteering or becoming an expert.
Making it easier to use WolframAlpha is a
large number of desktop
gadgets, browser toolbars and search engine add ons.
Actually using WolframAlpha is quite fun and I have produced a couple
of screen shots of queries made - click on each query to see an image
of
the result:
All
Query Results.
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| Posted by MyPE on Saturday, May 16 @ 13:35:14 SAST
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The Power of Article Marketing |
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www.MyPE.co.za: There
are many ways to market your business on the
Internet, and using search engine optimised articles has to be one of
the "keeper" strategies for getting pre-qualified 'natural' search
engine traffic to your web site.
Now, I'm sure you've heard all this before, "people search the Internet
looking for information. People just don't search the web to buy your
products or services!
If you truly understand this search "path" then you understand the meat
and potatoes of how the web works, it's an information resource for
people.
Search engines need content to be able to rank web sites, so that they
can continually get searchers BACK to their engines. The more searchers
they have searching for relevant content on a search engine means more
revenue for that search engine hence the mind blowing success of Google.
This is why blogs and RSS have become the "buzz". Blogs and RSS make
the content "fluid" - meaning that the content changes often. This
means that the search engine bots love these technologies, visit more
often, and then rank the content well, but only if the blog articles
are keyword optimised.
To see how this works go to any news site. News sites have a volume of
ever-changing content. For example MyPE gets spidered
(visited) by the Google bot every 10 seconds. This basically means that
Google is madly in love with MyPE.
Why? Because of MyPE's ever changing content, they go to where the
good, and changing content is more often.
The SEO aspect of article writing:
Think of SEO as "filing". What I mean by
this is that good search engine optimisation strategies help the search
engine to "file" your content appropriately. Good keyword analysis
gives you the information to enable the search engine bot with the
'right' filing.
There are no smoke and mirror tactics here. Your Mother was right when
she told you that 'telling the truth is always better in the long run'.
This principle especially applies to good SEO practice.
Now, how do we take this concept of "fluid", search engine optimised
content and turn it into a Links IN bonanza for your own web site (thus
sending your rankings through the roof over time, so to speak)?
Here are the things you
need to consider:
1. Ensure that the link for your article is on a web page hosted on a
unique IP address, this however is a problem on shared hosting servers.
2. Ensure that the link for your article is on a web page that has a
unique, wholly independent set of backlinks.
3. Ensure that the link is on a web page that is relevant to the topic
of your own web site.
You see, it's not just a matter of having your articles on just any
article directory. Your articles need to be in a category (and
preferably a specialist directory) that is within "theme'. In other
words you would never post your article on 'looking after your cattle
dog' on a directory that is focused on Financial Management.
In addition to placing your articles on article directories one can
also run your articles on press release service sites, and of course
there are RSS strategies (but that's a whole other story, and another
article).
Edward Labuschagne
| 041 3711 685 | 082 782 8856 | www.SA-SEO.co.za.
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| Posted by MyPE on Wednesday, April 15 @ 14:51:39 SAST
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www.MyPE.co.za: As a
webmaster you receive many emails a day from sites ranging from "Viagra
Knowledge Today" to "Karli's Humongous Boobs" and even "Nigerian Get
Rich
Quick Rip-Off" all assuring you that their web site is a 'perfect fit'
for a link exchange. Some of them even offer a 'three way' link
exchange which, to me, always borders on the slightly risque!
Of course these guys are using automated tools that either scrape
e-mails or tools that are just on the slightly wonky side in
application and data gathering. Then, once they have got their sweaty
paws on a couple of thousand e-mail addresses, they fire off a generic
shotgun style mail saying wonderful things about your site like; "I
really think a three way linking strategy between 'Karli's Humongous
Boobs' and 'Dinosaurs in Ancient Times' (your site) will help to
increase traffic ......" or "I just visited your web site and
I think
it is wonderful".
Normally these e-mails are personally addressed to you as follows: "Dear
Webmaster", and contain a call to action along these
lines: "If you
don't link back to my site then I will remove your link" -
ooooh I am
already quaking in my boots!
However entertaining this shotgun approach is, it also becomes highly
annoying but, there is light at the end of the tunnel. As these lazy
morons do not contain more than two brain cells to make up a threesome
they also are prone to copy one another's work and their formulaic
e-mails make it easy peasy to create a spam filter and never see the
link requests come in.
But, the question remains, as an ethical webmaster searching for great
links to your web site, using the rifle approach, you want to know with
reasonable certainty that the web site you want to link back to you
will actually entertain your request. Remember, your goal is to get an
index page CLEAN link that DOES NOT have a NoFollow, NoIndex
attribute chained around it. (The
previous 3 supplied links all reference Google Search Engineer Matt
Cutts' Blog)
Will He or Won't He?
The best indicator of whether a web site WILL link back to you or not
is to check and see if that web site actually does link out to OTHER
web sites or not.
You also need to know what TYPES of web sites your targeted web site
links out to. This will also give you a very good indication of the
type of content to submit to your targeted web site.
Remember that the 'stature' of a web site in the eyes of any search
engine is also measured on the number and type of links that the web
site has. A simple example; If your targeted web site has 'Dinosaurs
in Ancient Times' as it's subject matter and links out to 'Karli's
Humongous Boobs' and other sites NOT related to the content then you
could probably get a link but it will not be WORTH much at all.
In order to
determine 'Will He or Won't He?' you need to know two main
things:
1. The number and type of links TO your targeted web site.
2. The number and type of links FROM your targeted web site.
Basically the
above two will show:
1. The people wanting to be friends with your targeted site.
2. The sites that your targeted site wants to be friends with.
How are you
going to get this information? There are Search Engines
that do these tasks for you, but, some do the inlinks well and some do
the outlinks well so we are going to use two search engines for that
task:
1. Yahoo does inlinks well - MyPE Example
2. MSN Live Search does outbound links well - MyPE Example
The basics of good internet citizenship are whether a web site shares
knowledge by linking out to web sites of interest to their own
visitors. In a way looking at a web site's outgoing links is a really
useful way of checking that web site's standing as a good internet
citizen or not and is a really good indicator of that web site's
personality.
Take Google as an example - most people agree that Google is a model of
good internet citizenship and just looking at Google.co.za's OUTBOUND
LINKS
as opposed to Google.co.za's INBOUND LINKS
we learn an important lesson when we see the number of OUTBOUND
LINKS on
Google.co.za far exceeds the number of INBOUND LINKS.
On top of that, Google is a
money making juggernaut - a strong lesson here for ALL webmasters
to make sure that they link out to relevant web sites and be
FREE with their linking as it will come back to you eventually in
buckets.
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| Posted by MyPE on Thursday, April 02 @ 15:59:42 SAST
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Any Link or Listing is not Always a Good One |
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www.MyPE.co.za: The
process of link building is not just one of numerous SEO
strategies that are employed on the World Wide Web today; in fact, it
is crucial to the success of any website trying to compete in the
online world.
Why Are Back
Links So Important To The Success of a Website?
For starters, having relevant, reputable sites linking back to a site
is one indication of the success and popularity of that site in the
eyes of the general online public. And as long as these incoming links
are from a quality source then the website's page rank will improve,
thus improving its location within online search results, as well.
Practical Backlink Examples: MyPE | SA SEO
What Defines a
Quality Back Link?
There really is no true definition or standard to be used in
determining whether or not a site can be considered high quality. What
is known is that the more popular and well-established sites will
obviously be of the highest quality, though it can sometimes be
difficult getting your link posted with them. You'll also want to
consider the relevance of the websites that are providing you with back
links, too. If these sites have content that is similar to yours then
they are likely to be more beneficial when compared to some random,
off-topic website.
When adding links to directories like
MyPE
it is crucial
to place the listing in the correct category as the search engine will
associate your site with it, and lets face it you do not want to be
associated with the wrong categories.
Now for the
downside.
Adding your site to the wrong sources will end up damaging your ranks
and importance to search engines. Don't think because you are paying
for a listing or link that you are getting a quality link. As important
as it is for your site to be well optimized
it is equally important for the site you want your link to appear on to
well optimised. Out of personal experience and talking to various
people I know that many have fallen victim to paid link inclusion that
do not deliver any results or visitors and damage the playing field.
Edward Labuschagne
| 041 3711 685 | 082 782 8856 | www.sa-seo.co.za.
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| Posted by MyPE on Tuesday, March 31 @ 14:09:31 SAST
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Why Is Keyword Research Important To SEO? |
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www.MyPE.co.za: Like
the foundation for a building, there is one aspect of Search
Engine Optimisation (SEO) that is more important than any
other. Without this foundation, you may be wasting all your time and
resources. Proper keyword research should be the basis of your
optimisation.
Why is Keyword
Research Critical?
Keyword research determines which keywords you should be targeting with
your SEO efforts. Most people think
that they know which keywords they should target. Instinct can be a
great resource, but it can also be misleading and is almost always not
enough. For example, "search engine optimisation" gets an estimated
16,000 searches a day while "search engine marketing" gets an estimated
8,800 searches a day. If your gut tells you to target "search engine
marketing", you may get great rankings, but it would only get you half
of the traffic that you could have had if you had targeted and ranked
well for "search engine optimisation". There are also keywords that you
may not be able to rank well for without a lot of time and significant
amount of link building regardless of how well you optimize your site.
In addition, there are keywords that other people will use to search
for what your site offers that you would never even think of. So, in
addition to letting you know which keywords are more popular, the
research can also provide new keywords to target.
Optimising your website without first doing keyword research is like
trying to pick apples from a tree without first checking to see if
there are any apples on it or if the apples are within your reach. You
could end up putting in a lot of effort but going home with little
fruit from your labor. So it's a key component of search
engine optimisation.
So What is
Researched?
There are two main aspects to keyword research. The first is
popularity, how often are keywords actually searched for.
Unfortunately, Google, Yahoo, and MSN don't share the actual number of
searches for specific keywords; however, there are a few tools online
which are generally thought to be pretty accurate and Google does offer
a free tool that gives the "approximate" number of searches for some
keywords.
The second aspect to keyword research is competition research.
Competition research starts with analysing your web pages to determine
how competitive your site is both in general and for specific keywords.
This is sometimes referred to as page strength. I should note that
there are really two aspects to page strength, the general strength of
a site and the specific strength of a page within the site. For the
sake of simplicity, in this article I will use "web page" for both. The
next step is to examine the keywords themselves to see how competitive
they are. This is sometimes called keyword difficulty. Determining
keyword difficulty is done partially by examining how competitive the
pages are that rank well for this keyword, though other methods can be
helpful as well. This can be tricky for two reasons:
1. No one other than the search engine designers know how each search
engine determines how competitive a site or page is and the search
engine folks aren't talking.
2. Each search engine has a different way of determining how
competitive a site or page is. So, even if you could figure out one, it
wouldn't necessarily be so with the other search engines.
Despite these difficulties the search engines do give us some general
information about what makes web pages competitive and determines page
strength.
Without good keyword research, your search engine optimization efforts
will be like firing a gun into the dark. You may hit something, you may
not. You may choose keywords that are not searched for or keywords that
are way too competitive for your site at that time. It's best to know
what you need to target.
Edward Labuschagne
| 041 3711 685 | 082 782 8856 | www.SA-SEO.co.za.
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| Posted by MyPE on Monday, March 30 @ 12:56:33 SAST
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www.MyPE.co.za: In
terms of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
of your Port Elizabeth based
web site you will hear many SEO professionals ask you for the keywords
that describe your business or that lay out your Unique Selling
Proposition.
In my experience not many people have a good grasp of what exactly
their keywords are.
For example Guest House owners will go on about how comfortable their
rooms are, extoll the virtues of Port Elizabeth and surrounding area
but not really have a full understanding of just why their guests
choose to stay at their Guest House in preference to one of the
hundreds of others available.
These Guest House keywords are the words that people will type into one
of the search engines in order to find the accommodation that fits
their lifestyle, expectations and pocket.
Naturally all guest house
owners want to appear on the first page of search engine results for
one of two terms; Accommodation
Port Elizabeth and Guest
Houses Port
Elizabeth.
But, the person looking for accommodation will normally use
one of the above terms to get a broad overview of what is available,
they do
not make a decision based on their first keyword search, rather they
use that search to help them narrow down and find the accommodation
that is most suitable for their needs.
Subsequent searches may include ones looking for specific
price ranges,
specific
amenities, whether pets
are allowed or even specific
suburbs.
For a newly established Guest House web site the keywords to target are
those that highlight their Unique Selling Proposition as the climb to
the first page for the more popular general terms is a long one that is
largely based on the trust that Search Engines place in a site and the
greatest indicator of trust is that of age - the longer a domain has
been in existence the greater the trust that is placed in it.
I use the following analogy to help web site owners narrow their
keywords down:
Imagine you are walking
along the road and on the top of a mountain you
see a prospective client, you rush to the top of the mountain to tell
this prospective client all about your business, when you arrive at the
top of the mountain exhausted and out of breath, you realise that you
only
have enough breath left to blurt out FOUR or FIVE words to tell this
person about your web site. What four or five words do you use?
This
will be your keyphrase.
Those words that you use must also appear in all of the directory
listings and adverts you place on the web.
Then, when you rank well for that first keyphrase, you need to run up
the mountain again and blurt out another different set of words for
your next keyphrase and so on in the process.
There is a desktop SEO Software aid available that will check your
rankings for your chosen keypharses and compare your web site to
others. Axandra is
available as a free trial download.
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| Posted by MyPE on Monday, March 02 @ 08:38:20 SAST
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The Difference Between SEM, SEO and Internet Marketing |
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www.MyPE.co.za: I
like to keep up to date with all the latest SEO or SEM
services around the globe and read posts from different forums and
blogs on a daily basis. However it occured to me whilst reading today,
that the different SEO services or professionals are becoming somewhat
blurry. What I mean is that SEO
consultants are claiming to be able to offer services more in
line with that of a search engine marketer or an internet marketer.
I wanted to take some time to explain the three areas in a traditional
sense in an attempt to bring some clarity to an already cloudy
industry. This hopefully should help those reading know exactley
what SEO services they are receiving
and those they are not.
Search
engine optimising is traditionally got to do with on page
factors, by this I simply mean things that are physically done on the
website. A search engine optimiser is concerned with making your web
pages as search engine friendly as possible. This will include fixing
broken links and amending orphan pages or faulty redirects. A search
engine optimiser should also look at your pages content and ensure the
correct tags are been used ie. meta, css, h tags and alt for images.
They may even, but should venture into keyword research and ensure the
keyword weight and density of your pages is the most effective.
A search
engine marketer is slightly different and is more concerned
about off page matters and the primary concern should be with how your
site links to the rest of the online world. They should focus on social
bookmarking, article marketing, search engine and directroy
submissions. All this in attempt to attract more links and
therefore increase your page rank and index ranks.
An internet
marketer is more business focused and will explore
advertising options, press releaces, PPC systems and paid exposure.
They will attempt to build up your business as a brand as well as
bumping you up the listings. They should be able to advise you on
affiliate programs and email marketing as well as highlighting any
other elements of online revenue you could take advantage of. When
advised about any of these make sure you ask questions and also
investigate the options yourself before saying yes to just anything.
SA-SEO
services consist of all the above however there are many firms that
only deal partially with the above and because of that your results
will not be as profound. Always make sure you know what you are getting
from an online marketing package and be very suspicious if the package
is surprisingly cheap. Cheap packages usually equal poor quality. All
services will be a great investment and it will be up to you to decide
what your business needs the most.
Edward Labuschagne | 041 3711 685 | 082 782 8856 | www.sa-seo.co.za.
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| Posted by MyPE on Monday, February 23 @ 14:51:07 SAST
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Do You Actually OWN your .co.za Domain? |
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www.MyPE.co.za: Just
this morning I have come across two businesses that, according to the
Uniforum Domain Registrar, do not actually own their own .co.za domain
names. A domain name is the name you type into your browser to get to a
web site, e.g. www.MyPE.co.za.
The domain name is then resolved to an
I.P Address by the various Domain Name Servers connected to the
internet.
It has become normal for web designers and hosts to register domain
names on behalf of their clients with Uniforum, to then pay the R50.00
per annum domain name registration fee and in turn charge their clients
and add on an administration fee ranging from R25.00 to R250.00 per
domain.
In a sense, this is a good thing, as the domain name is then kept
current by a dedicated person or company.
What I have a problem with is that some people who do this on behalf of
their clients do it in such a way that the domain name does not
actually belong to the client who pays for the domain. Let me explain:
When a change in e-mail, other contact details or a move from one
hosting company to another is required by a business (e.g. www.MyPE.co.za) then the new hosting company or web designer
sends a
Domain Update request via e-mail to Uniforum. Uniforum in turns then
sends Update Requests to the e-mail addresses that they have on file
for the domain. Have a look at the MyPE
Domain Registration and you will see that any
such mails will be sent to each of the THREE different 'guardian'
addresses; that of the Registrant (2l), the Admin (4g) and the Tech
(5g) contacts. When the 'guardians' receive said e-mails they must
reply with an 'accept' or 'deny' within 24 hours. If one 'deny' or no
replies are received then the domain details are not changed.
How do you check your
.co.za domain details?
1. Go to http://co.za/whois.shtml
2. Type in your domain name (without the www. or .co.za)
3. Click Enter
A full record of your domain will be displayed with historical info
from date of registration. At the very least your e-mail address should
appear as one of the domain 'guardians'. If not, then I suggest that
you take it up with the person who did the registration on your behalf
i.e. the e-mail address on line 0b or 2l of the registration document.
Have a look at the registration details for Trinity Cottage to see a
'correct'
registration that protects Trinity Cottage and not the person
doing the
registering.
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| Posted by MyPE on Tuesday, February 03 @ 09:57:50 SAST
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Your site may need a re-design in the right direction |
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www.MyPE.co.za: You
may have a beautiful website, it may win awards for excellence in
design, but unless the designer has taken into account the principles
of Search
Engine Optimisation (SEO),
you may need to consider a redesign. You may have an old website, it
does its job, it tells people about your company, but it's slow and the
content, it's a bit out of date. In both cases, you definitely need to
consider a redesign.
Both websites will struggle to get the volume of traffic that they
could receive. The new well-designed site may get traffic for those
looking specifically for that site, but anyone using a keyword search
for your product or services won't find you.
The older site with out of date content loses out because the Search
Engines think (due to the lack of fresh content) that the site is
dormant or dead. Both of these websites could receive great traffic and
a potentially lucrative increase in business, but without consideration
of SEO, they won't get any share of that possible
income.
So what should one look
for in a site that might need a redesign?
All Flash:
Although there have been significant advances in Search Engine
technology and they are beginning to read some flash, a site that's all
flash is likely to be dreadful for Search Engines. They will be pretty,
but the Search Engines won't rank them highly because the content is
essentially unreadable. But what about major corporations that rank
highly but have flash-only sites? These sites have such a high rate of
linkage that their flash content probably doesn't matter, unless you
can compete with a major corporation, an all flash sites is a no go.
Frames:
Frames in your website make it difficult for search engines to index
its pages. What's more, human visitors really struggle with frames,
they're difficult to read and it's hard to get an impression of the
site. Some browsers don't even support frames, meaning your site is
entirely unreadable for those potential customers.
Splash Pages:
Web designers using splash pages really make a visual impact on the
visitor. Imagine the entire webpage as an animated page, straight out
of a cartoon. Very impressive. Unfortunately, from an SEO point of view, they're horrible. Splash pages
generally contain little or no text content; have no links and full of
flash and other software which the Search Engines still find difficult
to assess for a ranking. You may impress with your Splash Pages, but
kiss goodbye to many potential customers.
Slow Loading:
Very simply, a slow loading page puts off both human visitors and
search engine crawlers. Human visitors may not have the patience to
wait for the pages to load and search engines almost always rank the
faster loading pages above the slower ones. If your site has slow
loading pages, they need replacing.
Out of Date Content:
First, the Search Engines will simply ignore this site as if it no
longer exists. It may have been ok in the past to leave your content
for months without updating it, but these days, it will soon slip off
the radar without regularly updated content. What's more, nothing puts
off a human visitor more than out of date content.
If your site contains any of the above SEO
problems, you need to implement a redesign; it's costing you money.
Edward Labuschagne
| 041 3711 685 | 082 782 8856 | www.SA-seo.co.za
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| Posted by MyPE on Wednesday, January 21 @ 04:30:00 SAST
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| | Random Photographs from the MyPE photo Gallery.
Click the photo to see image
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| | There isn't a Biggest Story for Today, yet. |
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| | Wednesday, January 14 | | · | Successful Search Engine Marketing |
| Friday, January 09 | | · | Port Elizabeth Events Calendar |
| Tuesday, January 06 | | · | Web Site Clean Up Time |
| Sunday, December 21 | | · | Add MyPE to Gmail |
| Thursday, November 27 | | · | The Proof is in the Pudding |
| · | Virile Or Not? |
| Tuesday, November 25 | | · | Your chance to Comment on Google Results |
| Saturday, November 22 | | · | Is Ranking Still Relevant? |
| Monday, November 17 | | · | Social Media and Your Search Engine Optimisation Strategy |
| Friday, November 14 | | · | DIY SEO |
| Thursday, November 06 | | · | Link Love - Also Known as Back Linking |
| Friday, October 17 | | · | SEO Myth 10 SEO Requires a 1 Year Commitment on my Part |
| Thursday, October 16 | | · | SEO Myth 9 - Only Work with Companies That Give you a Guarantee |
| Wednesday, October 15 | | · | SEO Myth 8 - I Shouldn't Aim for the Most Competitive Keywords and Phrases |
| Tuesday, October 14 | | · | SEO Myth 7 - Content and the Correct Keyword Density will Make my Site Rank Well |
| Monday, October 13 | | · | SEO Myth 6 - I Need Only Optimise my Home Page for Keywords |
| Friday, October 10 | | · | SEO Myth 5 - Hiring an SEO specialist In House is cheaper |
| Thursday, October 09 | | · | SEO Myth 4 - PPC (Pay per click) is more effective than organic SEO |
| Wednesday, October 08 | | · | Myth 3 - SEO is too expensive |
| Tuesday, October 07 | | · | Myth 2 - You Should Submit Your Site to Search Engines Weekly or Monthly |
| Monday, October 06 | | · | SEO Myth 1 - All Meta Tags are of Equal Importance |
| Friday, October 03 | | · | SEO Myths That Make the Good Guys Look Bad |
| Sunday, September 28 | | · | I Also Want a Lumina! |
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| World Front Page from IOL |
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