Web Design Discussion

If you wish to rank well for your web site you need to study your competitors. The top ranked sites have often been around for years and have built a lot of incoming links from a variety of sources.

How to analyze the links of the top 10 web sites:

1. Find the top 10 web sites in Google

Google is the most popular search engine and returns the most web sites for a search, therefore websites that rank at the top in Google are well worth analyzing. Do a search on Google for your most completive keywords and make a list of the top 10 websites on the page. Do the same for less competitive keywords, particularly if you did not get enough information from the previous exercise.

2. Analyze each of the top 10 websites in your industry

Here is a list of the type of searches you can do to find web sites that may link to your web site that may be related to yours and share the same keywords:

“Suggest link” +”keyword”

“Suggest a link” +”keyword”

“Suggest site” + “keyword”

“Suggest a site” + “keyword”

“Suggest URL” +”keyword”

“Suggest a URL” +”keyword”

“Add link” +”keyword”

“Suggest an URL” +”keyword”

“Add a link” +”keyword”

“Add site” +”keyword”

“Add a site” +”keyword”

“Add URL” +”keyword”

“Add a URL” +”keyword”

“Add an URL” +”keyword”

“Submit link” +”keyword”

“Submit a link” +”keyword”

“Submit site” +”keyword”

“Submit a site” +”keyword”

“Submit URL” +”keyword”

“Submit a URL” +”keyword”

“Submit an URL” +”keyword”

“favorite links” +”keyword”

“cool sites” +”keyword”

“cool places” +”keyword”

directory +”keyword”

directorys +”keyword”

directories +”keyword”

“your location” +”add url”

“your location” +directory

“your location” +”submit site”

“recommended links” +”keyword”

“your location” +”suggest a site”

3. Find directories your competitors have submitted to

Do a backlink check on competing sites. You will often find a number of specialized directories where your competitors have submitted a link to. After compiling a list of these directories from a few top ranked web sites, submit your own web site to these same directories. This will help increase the number of incoming links to your website and boost your search engine rankings.

Resource

To find the backlinks for competing web sites or your own, enter.. link:http://www.domainname.com in the Yahoo search box. It will find the links within your web site (internal links) and the web sites that are linking to yours (external links).

Reciprocal link exchanges must be well thought out otherwise your web site may get penalized.

I did not place reciprocal link exchange at the top of my list because link exchange has been abused to produce link schemes. This is where site owners have generated thousands of links from unrelated web sites.

Search engines have begun to ignore web sites that participate in any type linking whose purpose is just to gain high search engine rankings and does not serve the benefit of visitors to your web site.

When to exchange links

You should only exchange links with websites that compliment your own. For example if I sell camping equipment I may exchange links with sites that offer good places to camp.

On the other hand, if a gambling site offered several hundred dollars to place a link on your website, should you participate?

Well, the money would be tempting but it could result in Google penalizing your site. It will then take years to get your high rankings back.

Procedure

a. Create a links or resource page

This page should provide all the relevant resources visitors go to for information not included on your site.

b. Place the link from the site you wish to exchange links with on your site first.

Make sure you include appropriate link text within the link ie if the site is on “best hiking trails in Maryland” include this in your link text. Under the link should be a brief description of his site.

c. Send an email to the site owner.

Outline all the benefits of exchanging links with you, and that you have already placed his link on your site (include the address of the link page). Make sure his link is featured prominently on the page.

d. Provide the HTML code of your web site link

Include the exact HTML code of the information you want placed on his site, so he can just copy and paste it into his own. It should include a brief description of your offer and the URL of your site should contain anchor text.

e. Wait for a response

If you don’t get a response within 3 days try sending your request again 2 more times. If there is no response, remove his link from your page.

Tip

Some site owners delete any link exchange request automatically so this task can be very time consuming. An alternative method to this is to offer a well written article that can be placed on their site or in a newsletter. You may get a better response and you won’t have to ask for a link back.

Internal Linking is another great strategy for increasing link popularity

This refers to the links within your web site.

1. Repair broken links

Make sure you don’t have any broken links within your site otherwise the search engines won’t be able to access all your pages. Ideally all pages should be found within 3 clicks of your home page. If not, your visitor may lose his patience and click elsewhere.

2. Make your links search engine friendly.

If you are linking to a page on “camping stoves” use the anchor text: camping stoves instead of writing “click here.” Include targeted keywords in your anchor text. This will give your web page more authority on the subject.

3. Link to less popular pages

Within a web site are pages that receive a lot of traffic (ie home page) and some that are less popular because they are more deeply located within your site. Link to these pages from the popular pages. This will help build their link popularity and also bring traffic to them.

4. Create a site map

A site map consists of all the links on your web site. Typically it’s located in your navigation bar. Search engines love site maps because they can crawl all your web pages from the site map page. It also helps your visitors to quickly navigate your whole web site.

5. Prevent link leakage

Don’t link out to many sites from one page as this will result in link leakage. Google and other search engines place more authority on pages that have many incoming links (compared to outgoing links). Only link to web sites that compliment your content. This enables visitors to read more information when visiting the links you provided rather than leaving your site and doing their own research..

Tip

You can keep visitors on the web page containing the outgoing links by opening them in a new window.

Building links to your web site is one of the most effective strategies for attaining high rankings in the search engines however it can be a long slow process if not done correctly. Search engines determine the popularity of your site by the number and quality of sites that link to yours. The greater the number of incoming links the higher your rankings.

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Recently I was asked by a client if I could optimize their flash web site so they could get high rankings in the search engines. All pages of this web site were flash pages. This means no HTML pages except for a few links interspersed throughout the site.

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When adding video capability to your web site keep in mind that not all files work for all browsers and all types of computers. The best method is to use the Flash FLV video format because it works in most browsers and is compatible with both PC and MAC computers.

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Many site owners make the mistake of getting links from web sites not related to their own. They try to get as many links as possible from any person that wants to exchange links.

This is big mistake.

Your site will most likely lose its rankings and/or be banned from the search engines.

Why?

This is because search engines want to produce focused, relevant results to searches. It still doesn’t happen often enough because you still get results that are not related to your searches.

What is Link Optimization?

This means creating, finding links and content that have high value. If your web site has high quality content, other site owners will want to link to it automatically. If you have a new web site, you will want to find high quality sites that can link to yours. These are usually sites that have been on the Net for years, have high rankings and get a lot of traffic.

Link value

The quality of the links pointing to your site is superior to the number of links. However if you get a large number of high quality links from other sites that is better than just having a few.

Example:

An article on “link optimization” gets placed on a web site that has a PR (page rank) of 7 whereas your web site only has a PR value of 2. The PR7 site will get found faster, indexed faster, and receive better search engine exposure (higher rankings) than the PR2 web site.

Explanation

The link in the resource box of your article links back to your web site. The high ranking web site passes on its authority to your web site thus increasing your own “authority” and with time, your overall rankings.

A Note about Page Rank

Your site’s Page Rank can be viewed by observing the green line in the Google Toolbar. Sites that have a high PR(ie PR 6-10) will generally rank higher than sites less than PR6. Google claims PR is not significant anymore however the Google web site has a PR value of 10.

Search Engine Optimization Services

Herman Drost is a SEO specialist. He offers search engine optimization services that are based on the total number of pages to be optimized, competitiveness of the keywords targeted, actual SEO work required to optimize the site for those search terms, and the estimated time necessary to acquire a competitive search engine position.

In Part 1 (points 1-8) I discussed How to Install Master Form v4

Part 2

How to Configure Master Form v4 and its Associated Files

9. Create a web form

The form can be placed on any domain you choose. Here’s an example of the html code in a quote form for Unit Coins

<.form method="POST" action="http://www.isitebuild.com/cgi-bin/MasterFormV4.cgi".>
<.input type="hidden" name="subject" value="QUOTE REQUEST for UNIT COINS".>
<.input type="hidden" name="requiredfields" value="realname,email".>
<.input type="hidden" name="emailfields" value="email".>
<.input type="hidden" name="emailtemplate" value="/unitcoinsemailtemplate/feedback_email.txt".>
<.input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.unitcoins.us/thankyou.shtml".>

Note: remove periods for the above code to work.

Explanation

First line - this is the URL of where the master form located on your server (where it’s processed)

Second line - the subject of your form (what will appear in the subject line of the confirmation emails)

Third line - these are the fields that visitors are required to fill in. If not they will receive an error message and won’t be able to submit the form.

Fourth line - shows that the email fields are hidden. This prevents spammers from accessing your email.

Fifth line - this is the location of the email template you need to create for the form results to be sent to your email. Place this file on the same server as your Master Form Files.

Sixth line - this is location of your thankyou page, where you send visitors after they submit the form.

The other lines of your form will include the form fields and submit button. Make sure you do this correctly otherwise your form will not work.

10. Create an email template

To get the form results sent to your email inbox, Master Form V4 reads an email template file. Therefore you need to create this template, upload it to the same server that contains your Master Form files, then create a place holder in your form for it to work ie <.input type="hidden" name="emailtemplate" value="/unitcoinsemailtemplate/feedback_email.txt".> (remove periods before tags)

Once generated, the email is sent.

An email template file is a plain text file containing the entire email, including the email headers.Master Form V4 is told where to find the email template file by a hidden field in the form named emailtemplate. If you don’t want the form submission to generate an email, just omit the hidden field.

Using the email template, you can format the emails the way you want to receive them (or have them sent), with the data you want to see arranged in the way you want it. Make sure the fields are identical to the ones you have in your web form.

Here’s an example of the contents of an email template for a simple feedback form:

From: [[email]]
To: webmaster@example.com
Subject: Someone used the simple feedback form!

This was submitted:

Name: [[name]]
Email: [[email]]
Comment:
[[comment]]

11. Create a thank you page

This is the page that is sent to your visitors after they have submitted the web form. It confirms they have filled it out correctly.
You can also use this page to send special offers or promotions ie a free ebook, report or download. Create a placeholder for it in your web form.

Example
<.input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.unitcoins.us/thankyou.shtml".>
(remove periods before tags)

12. Create an error page (optional)

Master Form v4 can generate an error page when it encounters an error during form submission. A generic error page is displayed if you don’t specify a custom error page.

Place the line below in your error page template (this could be a simple html page)

[[ERROR_MESSAGE]]

Create a hidden field to tell Master Form V4 where to find it.

Example

<.input type="hidden" name="errorpage" value="http://example.com/busyfeedback_oops.html".> (remove periods before tags)

When your visitor incorrectly fills out the web form, he will automatically receive this custom error page. You can write anything you want on this page this inform your visitor what happened.

13. Upload all files to your server

Master Form files are uploaded to the domain where the form is processed ie <.form method="POST" action="http://www.isitebuild.com/cgi-bin/MasterFormV4.cgi".> (remove periods before tags)
This includes your email template ie unitcoinsemailtemplate/feedback_email.txt

The web form, thankyou and error pages are uploaded to the domain where you want the form located.

14. Test your web form

Fill out all the fields of your web form and submit it. You should immediately receive the thankyou page (or error page if you made a mistake) and receive the form results in your email inbox.

Conclusion

Master Form v4 is the most secure form I’ve found on the Net. It will also allow you to create database files for your records and create multi page forms. Purchase your copy of Master Form v4 NOW and say goodbye to form mail spam.

Master Form v4 is the best form on the Net to use for security because it has anti-hijacking code built-in plus auto-submission protection against spammers. It also allows you to:

Block IP addresses by people that misuse your form
Ban words and phrases that are inappropriate or are commonly used to spam forms.
Define the maximum data size to limit the amount of information submitted.

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Do you get a lot of spam from the subscription or contact forms on your web site? This is becoming a serious problem for a lot of site owners but I have found a way to stop it completely.

Example of form mail spam

A client of mine has an e-commerce site that takes orders through a contact form. He began receiving multiple orders per day. At first he was excited because he thought he was getting lots of orders. Then he discovered they were all false emails. Obviously

s more secure than Jack’s form mail. It also allows you to hide your email address in the script and not place it in the form of your web site. It also did not stop form mail spam because anyone can submit it with a false email address.

Solution - Master Form v4

Benefits

• Anti-hijacking code built in.
• Notifies you of hijacking attempts.
• Allows you to create multiple forms for any number of web sites.
• Ready made templates that can easily be placed on your site
• Easy to customize to suit your needs i.e. create as many fields as needed
• Block IP Addresses that are sending spam
• Block auto submissions - stops robots from automatically submitting forms with false emails

Resources

Master Form Overview
How-to Articles on Master Form

Stop form mail spam now and get a copy of Master Form v4