It looks like there may be trouble in paradise. The relationship between Google and China seems to have hit a speed bump and may completely disintegrate altogether. China’s communist views are the heart of the issue. A country reputed for dictating to and oppressing its people, China values censorship over free speech and control over human rights. This not only doesn’t sit well with most Americans; it’s become a thorn in Google’s side.

Google Takes a Stand

In the aftermath of an investigation due to hacking and snooping by the Chinese government, Google is responding to China’s demand that the search engine filter and remove links they find to be offensive or against their agenda. Basically, the Chinese government wants to call the shots and wants to keep it’s citizens reliant on and believing in them without the influence of outside sources that will bring doubt into their minds and make them see the light.

Too bad for China. They’re looking in the wrong direction if they want help from America, let alone one of America’s biggest corporations, to achieve their quest for turning people from human beings into robots with little thought of their own. Americans won’t stand for it, and neither will Google.

A Question of Human Rights

In a country like the U.S, where human rights and freedom of speech are viewed as the most valued of ideals, it’s appalling to see what China is doing. It’s nearly beyond comprehension to imagine living in a place where every thought and action is not owned by the individual, but by the government, under the guise of “what’s best for the people.” Let that happen in America, and our government would have a case of mass hysteria on it’s hands. It just wouldn’t fly here.

That’s probably why Google has vowed to stop censoring search results in China and is now threatening to pull out of the country altogether. Google is still considering their next move and is still upset by what they see as a threat to the company. This is a situation that is not likely to end with happy faces all around. China is sure to lose.

It seems that the Chinese government has become accustomed to success and has taken it for granted for far too long. In a day and age where technology means everything and Google is leading the way all over the world, how will this affect China? Not having the support of Google or access to the company’s products is sure to have some impact on China, it’s government and the function of commerce.

The Future of China

While it’s sad to see a country so lost in an oppressive way of thinking they call progress and a real shame to see them lose a valuable tool of technology, the Chinese government only has themselves to blame. Google’s not at fault. Their an American company sticking to American values. Kudos to them! Still, the whole situation leaves one to ponder what the future might bring for China.

Will losing Google now open their eyes and eventually lead to their adopting of a more progressive and people-centered government? Will they someday follow the example America has set before them? Only time will tell. For now, China will simply have to live with the consequences of their actions.

If you’ve been studying search engine optimization recently, then you probably know that having a lot of backlinks for your site is one of the best ways to improve your site’s search engine rankings. If you’re not familiar with backlinks – a backlink is a link to your site from another website. When a site places a link to your site on one of their web pages, it is indexed by the search engine as a backlink to your site. The more backlinks you have, the more popular your site appears to be in the search engines.  Therefore backlink building is one of the fundamental aspects of search engine optimization, and it should practiced by anyone trying to bring more traffic to their website.

Building Backlinks

There are many ways to get backlinks for your site, and most of them are time consuming and bring very little results, despite an inordinate amount of work. If you want to be successful building backlinks, then you’ll need to focus on quality instead of quantity. It would be better to have 10 backlinks on sites that are relevant to your niche and receive a lot of traffic, than to have a large volume of backlinks from sites that are completely irrelevant and/or low in traffic. If you want to reach success with your backlinks, then you’ll need to make them manually instead of trying all of the shortcuts that will only result in low quality backlinks which will not significantly improve your search engine ranking. When it comes to building backlinks you have two main options – you can seek the help and permission of other site owners by doing link exchanges, social bookmarking and advertising, or you can build the links yourself.

Paid Linls

A good way to build your backlink count is to offer other site owners a position on your site in exchange for a position on your site. This way both parties benefit and both parties save time and money. Try to find sites that are relevant to your site and then contact the owner and ask them if they would like to do a link exchange with you. Usually the site owner will not hesitate to put your link on their website, as long as your site is clean and does not appear to violate Google’s terms of service. Many times site owners do not want their link placed on a site that could be conducting illegal or immoral activity, and just as you would like quality backlinks, so would they.

Building Link Farms

Perhaps the best way to build a solid network of links that would be most beneficial to you would be to have a network of websites that all link to each other, with one main website being the focus. These are called link farms, and they are the most profitable form of backlink building. The reason why link farms are far more profitable than any other form of backlink building is because you are the only person benefiting. Since all of the sites belong to you, you’ll be maximizing your chances of keeping visitors viewing your web pages. Instead of clicking away to another website, your visitors will be traveling through a maze of your own websites, not only giving you a substantial amount of quality backlinks, but also maximizing the profit made from each visitor.

Warning: Before building a link farm you should know that Google does not like link networks from the same IP address. In other words, you’ll need to make sure each site is hosted by a different IP address. One of the ways you can do this is to build blogs and micro sites on web 2.0 properties like Squidoo or Hubpages. There are tons of these sites online, and each one is hosted by an IP address that is different from your site. You could also purchase Class C IP addresses from your hosting company in some instances to have all of your own websites hosted on different IP addresses.

Finding the right domain name is often a difficult process that involves intense brainstorming, as well as the annoying procedure of trying to find a name that is available and suitable for your website. Once you have found a good domain, it is even harder to find another good one as the number of premium domains is quickly dwindling. In fact, there are barely any premium domain names available online today, as the market has become so saturated, and is expected to become even more saturated as we progress into the 21^st century.

Experts predict that all .com domains that are shorter than 7 letters and are relevant to a popular keyword will be gone by the half way mark of the 21^st century. This means that a good domain name is like prime real estate at the moment, and even though domains cost less than houses, their value is steadily rising despite the scare that the market experienced in the early 2000’s. If you are having trouble finding a good domain name for your other websites after being successful with one domain name, then you may want to consider using a subdomain. Subdomains are also excellent for search engine optimization.

Subdomains and Search Engine Optimization

The reason why subdomains are perfect for search engine optimization is because they are actually viewed as their won website by search engine crawlers. This means that each subdomain receives it’s own page ranking in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Another distinct advantage of subdomains, is that you do not have to pay for another domain name registry or an extra hosting account. Instead you can simply use your existing domain name and establish an entirely new web presence with your subdomain.

Subdomains and Sub Niches

A great way to use subdomains for search engine optimization is to create subdomains on your site that are relevant to a main keyword or industry. Within each sub domain  you could place content that focuses on that keyword. For example, you may have a primary domain name that is called “highqualitywritingtools.com.” To further capitalize on this niche, and to enhance your search engine presence through diversification, you could open up several sub domains for free that pertain to a variety of sub niches such as: “ballpens.highqualitywritingtools.com” or “compositionnotepads. highqualitywritingtools.com”. By creating subdomains on your main niche site that target long tail keywords, you;re generating extremely targeted automatic traffic for your site.

Subdomains and Backlinks

Another advantage to subdomains is that each subdomain is considered to be another site in the search engines, which means you can link your subdomains to each other, and then link them all to your main site to build a backlink farm. This kind of internal link building, if done correctly, is a great way to get your site(s) indexed in the search engines quickly, and to get a higher page ranking with little effort. Remember that the most important aspect of backlink building is quality. Simply setting up a bunch of subdomains for the sole purpose of setting up backlinks is not going to benefit you, in fact it would prove to be detrimental to your site’s page ranking. Instead, you should make sure each page is populated with relevant and high quality content. Then once the site is populated with content you can begin building a proper link structure that interlinks all of your sites into a traffic generating network.

Many webmasters have resorted to using hosting multiple domains to increase their business’s outreach. While using multiple domains to diversify your traffic stream may seem to be an appealing option, the same outcome can be reached using a single domain. How you may ask? Well, with each domain you have the option of creating sub-domains. In this article we will discuss how sub-domains can accomplish the same results as multiple domain hosting, with no additional monetary investment.

Sub-Domains

A sub-domain is a secondary domain to your main domain. An example of a sub-domain would be subdomain.domains.com.In this example, “domains.com” is the primary domain, and “subdomains.domain.com” is the sub-domain. You’ve probably noticed that many websites have a support sub-domain setup for customer support purposes. The reason why sub-domains offer the same advantages as multiple domain hosting, is because the search engines view these sub-domains as separate websites. Sub-domains can have their own separate search engine ranking, thereby allowing you to capitalize on a wider range of keywords for your niche, much in the same way multiple domain hosting would.

Dominating Your Niche with Sub-Domains

Sub-domains give webmasters the ability to create multiple websites within a single domain. Each sub-domain is then centered around a particular keyword, thereby improving the search engine ranking of that particular sub-domain, and ultimately your entire website. Remember that sub-domains are seen as independent websites by search engines, which means that any links that point to your main website from your sub-domain are seen as backlinks! Backlinks are links that point to your website’s URL from other websites. Using sub-domains to create backlinks for your main website is a good way to create what is known as a “link farm”. The SEO benefits reaped from using sub-domains is almost unlimited, as you can have as many sub-domains as you’d like, each one focusing on a particular keyword. For example, if your niche is “electronic pets”, then you could create several sub-domains called “ElectronicDogs.ElectronicPets.com”, or “ElectronicHamsters.ElectronicPets.com”. Now whenever an individual searches for “electronic hamsters”, your site stands a good chance of receiving a high page rank!

Using Sub-Domains Correctly

Using sub-domains to boost your site’s search engine ranking can be a very simple task, as long as you use a bit of common sense when doing so. The key to using sub-domains correctly is to make sure each sub-domain is very relative to the main domain. Meaning you want to make sure your sub-domain is relevant to the niche of your main website. Creating a sub-domain centered around electronics attached to a main domain that concerns dog grooming would obviously not be beneficial.  Setting up sub-domains only takes a minute or so for each one, and most web hosting services allow you to set up sud-domains at no additional cost. For this reason, you should not be afraid to experiment with sub-domains to see what works best for your particular situation. Try gathering 20 relevant keywords t your niche and then set up a sub-domain for each individual keyword. The setup links to your main website on each sub-domain and place relevant keyword rich content on each sub-domain. Wait one week and check your search engine results. The key to enhancing your search engine optimization abilities is to practice with trial and error.

It seems as if the entire world has shifted their focus towards Google and has forgotten about the once ever-so popular Yahoo. Although Google has taken over the search engine industry, there are still a huge group of internet users that use Yahoo loyally, and excluding them form your marketing campaign can be extremely negative towards the growth of your online business. Even if 90% of your traffic is coming from Google, are you willing to throw away the other ten percent due to an oversight in your marketing venue?

You may be under the impression that all search engines follow the same rules when ranking websites but this is simply not true. Yahoo’s search engine standards vary slightly from that of Google’s so it is important to consider the difference when designing your website. The best approach is to build a website that appeases all of the major search engines, including Yahoo. The following information will give you an idea of what Yahoo is looking for.

Link Organization

When it comes to indexing of your website, Yahoo’s crawlers pay extra attention toward the internal structure of the site. Google focuses more on external links such as backlinks, which also matter  for Yahoo optimization, but not as much. In fact, it is possible to have  high ranking site in yahoo with hardly any backlinks! However if your site has  a disorganized internal link structure, then you are going to have a very hard time making it to the top page of Yahoo’s search results. This means you’ll need to devise a site map and submit it to Yahoo for maximum success.

Anchor Text

Instead of simply posting URLs, it is best to use anchor text containing keywords. Anchor texts that contain keywords will enhance your Yahoo SEO efforts by double. Make sure the keyword used in the anchor text is relevant to the page you are linking to.

Keyword Optimization with Title Tags

Of course this trick works with all search engines, but it is extremely important in Yahoo. By putting primary keywords in the main title tags of your web pages, you’ll find that many of your pages gain a very high page rank quickly. Yahoo pays very close attention towards tags of all sorts including meta tags.

Search Engine Optimized URLs

Make sure all of your site’s URLs contain relevant keyword. If you are using a good content management system then this step will be done automatically. A good way to optimize URLs to be search engine friendly is to place dashes between words on key phrases. For example, instead of using the URL “ example.com/lookatthislink” you could use the URL “example.com/look-at-this-link.” Using this simple trick will boost your search engine ranking in Yahoo greatly.

Quality Content

Yahoo places a high priority on the quality of the content. This means that stuffing your content with keywords and writing about anything will not work, in fact it will be very detrimental towards the ranking of your web page. To be successful ion Yahoo you’ll need to use quality content with the correct keyword density and placement.

Social bookmarking has become one of the best ways for website owners to draw attention to their site exponentially. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of social bookmarking; think Digg or Twitter. Any social site that users can place a link to a certain page on is considered a social bookmarking site. People use these sites to share information or media that they find to be useful or entertaining with their friends and family. These sites make browsing the web a fun and exciting experience because people can find out what is new and interesting without trying to find it themselves. By placing your site on a social bookmarking site, you’ll not only receive direct attention to your site immediately, but you’ll also receive search engine optimization benefits as well.

The Connection Between SEO and Social Bookmarking

Proper search engine optimization requires the use of many methods combined in a collective effort to bring as much traffic to the site as possible. The more traffic your site gets, the more popular it appears to be form the perspective of a search engine. Therefore website popularity is almost like a snowball effect, as the popularity builds the page rank rises and it becomes a progressive traffic generating cycle. Social bookmarking lets you expose your site to a wide group of people, many of which run their own blogs, which are indexed in the search engines just as regular websites are. If someone links to your site on their blog, they are creating what is called a backlink for your site. The more live backlinks your site has on the internet, the more popular it appears to be, and the more favoritism it will receive from the search engines. Perhaps the most important connection between search engine optimization and social bookmarking is that your site can receive popularity before it is ever indexed in the search engines, which ironically is an excellent way to get your site indexed!

Utilizing the Full Power of Social Bookmarking

Since there are so many social bookmarking sites online, it would be foolish to target only one of them. However submitting your link to each one manually can be a time intensive process. Fortunately there are ways to accomplish this without wasting time completing repetitive menial tasks. You have two options; you can outsource the work to another person, or you can use an application that will complete the task for you with very minimal input. The first option is almost self-explanatory – simply hire a freelancer, tell him to sign up to as many social bookmarking sites as you’d like, and then tell them to make a post about your site. You can also pay many freelancers a few pennies each to visit your site and vote it up using the social bookmarking buttons on your site. The second option is a bit more tricky but costs less and is equally effective if done correctly. Simply find an application, or have one made that will complete the aforementioned task automatically. You can find out about applications like these at online forums or by doing a simple web search.

Final Thoughts

While social bookmarking sites are a great way to market your site, they are also inundated with other marketers and spammers, so it is important to remember that this is a numbers game. The more amount of work you put int, the more results you’ll see. The key to improving search engine optimization with social bookmarking is consistency.

The art of search engine optimization is made to seem like rocket science by many SEO “experts”. However, the truth is search engine optimization can be learned by anyone with an hour or two of extra time per day. Successful search engine optimization can be achieved by focusing on only two aspects of page ranking; high quality backlinks and correct keyword usage. To master the two aforementioned attributes all that is needed is  bit of persistence and the following knowledge.

Domain Name Keyword Usage

One of the easiest ways to gain page ranking for your site is to choose a domain name that is close to or identical to the targeted keyword.  For example, if your targeted keyword is “ basketball goals,” then it seems the best name you could possibly have would be basketballgoals.com. However many SEO experts note that search engines give credit to sites with dashes between words, so if your primary option was taken, you could also choose the domain name basketball-goals.com instead. The most important thing to remember is that your sites name should be memorable.

Keyword Density

As mentioned earlier, keywords are one of the most important factors of search engine optimization.  However, the way the keywords are sued are just as important as the keywords themselves. Keywords should be used at a density of 3-5% of the total content. Keyword optimization is best achieved when the keyword is used in the beginning of the text, in the middle and within the last twenty five words of the content on the page. Keywords should also be used strategically within the design of the website, as in title tags, meta tags and anchor texts.

Simple HTML Coding

Search engines index the internet using crawlers, which comb your website for content. These crawlers do a good job of indexing text coded in basic HTML format but cannot effectively index Flash and Javascript content. Therefore, keeping your site encoded with simple text initially will let your site receive a higher page ranking.

Optimizing URL Extensions and Linking

Using keywords in URL extensions is also a good way to target search engine queries. Make sure you separate the extensions with dashes as we mentioned earlier. You also want to get a lot of incoming links from other websites, particularly sites that are authoritative in your niche. However before you being searching for backlink opportunities from other websites, it is a good idea to link your site together internally. The more internal links you have pointing towards your homepage, the better your chances are of the homepage showing up in search engine queries. Using a site map to index your internal links is a good way to optimize your site as well. It is important to submit your site map to Google once you have finished making it.

Most people never go through the experience of dealing with a cyber attack, so they assume that it is not something they should worry about when setting up their online business. If you’ve been operating a personal computer, then this is probably the reason why you’ve never been targeted. Hackers tend to attack networks and computers that are of value to them, so don’t be surprised if your “longstanding immunity” to attacks suddenly diminished after your online business begins to thrive. One attack in particular that you should be aware of is the infamous inference attack. In an inference attack, also known as a SQL injection, the perpetrator inserts an SQL code into a form to gain access to crucial information that is stored in on of your website’s databases. While this may sound like something that only happens to small business owners, it actually happens to large corporations as well. In fact, in recent years this kind of attack has resulted din millions of dollar in fraud. To protect yourself from an inference attack, heed the following tips.

Encrypt All of Your Site’s Data

If your website frequently exchanges sensitive date such as credit card numbers or bank information, then you’ll want to make sure all of your website’s data is encrypted with SSL or TSL. Keeping your data encrypted ensures that in the event of a security breach, the intruder will not be able to use the encrypted information to their advantage.

Use Secure Web Applications and Forms

Although there are many useful web applications available, many of these tools represent the biggest security risks for companies.  This is because hackers use these applications to gain access to the back-end of your website. Therefore, you should be very cautious about which web applications you use in the administration of your website. Make sure all applications and forms used are designed with secure code.  You should also make sure your website’s users do not have the capability of sending SQL queries, as this is how most hackers execute inference attacks. Avoiding malicious code input from hackers is the first line of defense in preventing an inference attack. You should also avoid using dynamic queries. Dynamic queries allow hackers to send and receive SQL information over the internet in plain text, therefore these queries present a substantial security risk. Many experts recommend avoiding the use of dynamic queries altogether.

Execute Updates Regularly

Keeping your operating system and website updated is an important part in maintaining the security of your online business. Many people don’t realize that maintaining the security of their website is a full time job that needs to be tended to daily. For this reason most security companies update their software as soon as a vulnerability is recognized.  To avoid an inference attack, or any other attack, you should keep you website and operating system updated, and make sure you are ware of any new developments.

Your site’s page rank is the way Google labels your sites popularity. The higher your page rank, the higher your site will appear in search engine results. All search engine optimization efforts are aimed primarily at increasing page rank value. One of main techniques Google uses to establish your page rank is assessing the number of backlinks there are for your site. Backlinks are links on other websites that contain your site’s URL. The more links there are on the web pointing to your site, the more popular your site appears to be.

Blackhat vs Whitehat

There are two schools of thought in the search engine optimization world; blackhat and whitehat. Blackhat techniques are considered unethical by many, and they are generally used by people who want  to get things done quickly without a lot of work. While blackhat techniques do work, and have given many success, whitehat techniques are seen as being more acceptable by search engines. Whitehat techniques are straightforward, by-the-book methods that also work, but require more manual work and persistence to succeed.

Most search engine optimization experts agree that whitehat techniques are more suitable for people who are looking for long term success, whereas blackhat techniques can bring quick but short lived success. Therefore, in this article we will focus on the art of getting backlinks using whitehat techniques.

Quality Content and Networking

One of the most fundamental ways to get people to link back to your site is by providing interesting and informative content. If your content is useful, then people will want to link others to your site by nature. Many people enjoy sharing information with their friends and family through social networking sites, blogs and forums. A good way to encourage backlogging on your site is to add social bookmarking buttons that give people the opportunity to easily promote your site for you.

It is also a good idea to comment on blogs in your niche, placing a link to your site in each comment. You should also become a member of as many forums as you find that are relevant to your niche. Become a contributing member and place the link to your site in your signature on every forum. This will attract targeted visitors, that are more likely to link back to your site.

RSS and Coding

Make sure you include an RSS feed on your website. RSS feeds keep your visitors updated when new content is posted on your site. This will give each now post much more popularity and therefore a greater chance of generating a backlink for your site. Another useful coding method is to insert a “Link back to me” or “Share this with a friend” snippet on your website.  This will make it easier for your visitors to share your site’s information with others, thereby creating even more backlinking opportunities.

Advertising and Marketing

Another basic way to get more backlinks is to advertise your site to other websites with banners. You should be able to find websites in your niche that have open banner space for a nominal fee. Many times this banner space only costs a few dollars per month. It is best to advertise on sites that are authoritative in your niche, this way you are targeting a specific audience.

Does this scenario sound familiar?

Rita was bursting with excitement when she finished her first official web video. She imagined droves of people happily watching her video and envisioned them rushing to her website to make multiple orders of her new product. Sadly, three weeks later, Rita’s video seemed to be non-existent in the search engines. The video stats revealed that it had only received five views and two of them were hers!

What happened? Aren’t videos supposed to be ranked higher by Google? You hear people raving all the time about how using web video has changed their life (and their wallet). But what is it that those raving fans forgot to mention?

Using web video to get better search engine ranking is very much like using a website for the same purpose. You have to know the rules plus have a strategy that works well for your product and your niche. The web video strategy for a photographer will be very different than the strategy employed by a fitness expert.  Let’s take a look at a few ways to effectively use web video to raise your search engine ranking.

Know Your Market – Have a clear understanding of why people come to your site or tune in to your videos. When one local chef complained that her video viewership was low, a quick look at her video revealed that she had missed her cue. She was not giving her audience what they wanted – she was lecturing on all of her videos instead of cooking!

Develop Keyword-Rich Video Titles – Short, keyword-rich video titles will go a long way in boosting your ranking. A recent Google search using the keyword phrase “singing lessons” gave links to two video clips among the top ten search results. The video titles were very simple but also very keyword rich. One video result included the words “singing lessons” in the title. The second result included the words “learn to sing better” in the title. They also kept in mind that some video submission sites require titles to be 60 characters or less.

Develop Keyword-Rich Descriptions – Great video marketers are excellent at getting their point across with a few descriptive words. Many submission sites require that the video description be 200 characters or less. A good rule of thumb for a business video is that a viewer should be able to read your full video description in about 30-45 seconds. Let your video do the rest of the work. If you tend to be long-winded or just need some practice on saying a lot with a little, read an old classic like “How to Get Your Point Across in 30-Seconds or Less” by Milo O. Frank.

Learn What the Search Engines are Thirsty For – Search engines tend to favor fresh, new content – especially newer media formats. When it gets what it’s thirsty for, the result is usually fast indexing and top ranking on the search results page for your keywords.  A good example of this is with podcasts. If your niche is not yet inundated with podcasters, placing your video on a podcast site could get you a top ranking that will last much longer than one placed on a typical video submission site.

Web video is an effective way to reach your market and improve your search engine ranking. It will continue its rapid gain in popularity as more consumer look at web video before making their buying decision.