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It’s becoming common knowledge that a web site needs to be linked to from other web sites in order to rank well in the search engines. Therefore it’s important to monitor how many inbound links your web site has, and how many are being added as time goes on.
To check the inbound links going any of your sites or blogs click here. Enter your domain name(s) and email address and then click send results. The results will be sent to you (without any additional spam), showing you the inbound links in the following search engines:
AllTheWeb Â
AltaVistaÂ
Google  Â
MSNÂ Â Â
Yahoo!   Â
This is a quick and easy way to see how your site is progressing.
Technorati Tags:Â Inbound Links Tool
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I never used to take meta tags very seriously, until I stumbled across a series of tags that seemed to actually make a difference with my web page indexing. I found this meta tag combination by complete fluke.
I was building a site for a friend and he had chosen a particular template online. I used his template and was surprised to see how well his site was doing in search. I had optimized his site exactly the same way I had optimized my sites in the past, but his was doing much better. I eventually tried using the same meta tags that his template had. It worked.
So now I use the meta tag pattern below for all my static sites and my blogs.
To get the meta code I use for static web sites, right click here and select “Save target as..”
To get the meta code I use for Wordpress blogs, right click here and select “Save target as..”
Technorati Tags:Â Meta Tags
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When you create a page or post for your web site (or blog) it’s important to make sure the URL is also good spider bait for the search engine bots. Make sure you title your page around the main keywords you want the traffic on. This is also know as “Pretty Links” or “Pretty URLs”. For example:
(h)ttp://www.yoursite.com/your-great-article-title-with-your-desired-keywords-in-it.htm
For a static web site I would title the page with dashes, so that the URL ends up the URL example above. If you use a Wordpress blog there is a way to make this happen automatically when you make a new post.
You may have noticed that all the pages of your default Wordpress blog have URLs that look like something like this:
(h)ttp://www.yoursite.com/?p=15
The above URL is not ideal for search engine indexing, so there is an easy way to change all that. Follow the instructions below to change your URLs (permalink structure).
Download this file (1.htaccess.txt) right click the link and select “Save Target as…”. Download to your computer and then upload it into the root directory of your hosting server. Should be the same place your Wordpress index.php file lives.Â
Once you have the 1.htaccess.txt file uploaded to your server, change the file permissions to 777 (see our video tutorial on how to change file permissions click here)Â After you’ve successfully change file permissions, change the file name from 1.htaccess.txt to .htaccess.
Once you have done the above, login to your Wordpress blog and click options and then permalinks. Choose one of the permalink options. (I suggest using the Date and name based choice, or a custom choice of your choosing) Then click the Update Permalink Structure button at the bottom/right of the page. That’s it. Now your URLs will be search engine spider friendly, using the title and the main keywords of your post in the web page address. This automatically changes all the URL addresses of your blog, so you want to do this when your first start your blog. Â
Technorati Tags: Affordable SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Friendly URLS
