Independent Digital

Google XML sitemaps

A sitemap is a file containing information about a web page. When a search engine crawls the website, it looks for a sitemap and if there is one, it reads it. The information in this sitemap makes it easier for the crawler and also lets it gather more accurate information about the website. Sitemaps supplement information that the crawler will get from the website but does not guarantee that web pages will be included in search engines.

The Google XML Sitemap plugin generates a XML-sitemap compliant sitemap of your wordPress blog in a format supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

Plugin features:

• Available for all WordPress versions since 1.5
• No PHP skills or file changes needed
• User interface to customize all parameters like priorities etc.
• Available in many languages
• Generates a sitemap automatically for all types of WordPress pages
• Calculates a priority for each post, based on the number of comments
• Notifies Ask.com, Google, MSN Live Search and YAHOO about changes via ping
• Includes a WordPress filter for other plugins which can add their pages to the sitemap
• Generates a static XML file as well as a zipped version
• ?and many more!

Plugin homepage http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/

All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack optimises you WordPress blog for search engines.

Some of its features:

• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Automatically generates META tags
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
• For Wordpress 2.3 and higher – just install, it works out-of-the-box.
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• You can fine-tune everything
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.
• Available in many languages

Plugin homepage http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Akismet anti-spam plugin

Approximately 91% of all comments are spam. Akismet strives to remove the hassle of comment and trackback spam and is free for personal use.

Plugin homepage http://akismet.com/

WordPress.com Stats

WordPress.com stats gives you just the stats you need as a blogger, clearly and concisely. It collects information about your pageviews, which posts and pages are the most popular, where your traffic is coming from, and what people click on when they leave. It’ll also add a link to your dashboard, which allows you to see all your stats on a single page. All the processing is done at WordPress.com so your host will love you for that. It?s also the fastest stats system around.

Plugin homepage http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

Check out these useful posts on WordPress plugins you will find useful.

• WordPress Codex and Forum searcher plugin
• WordPress plugins you have to have

Need help with WordPress?

OTHER TYPES OF SPAMDEXING

Mirror websites

Mirror websites are websites with similar content but using different URL’s. Some search engines give a higher rank to results where the keyword searched for appears in the URL. So the more URL?s containing the keyword, the greater the chances of getting ?hits?.

URL redirection

Taking the user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g. Using META refresh tags, Java, Javascript or server side redirects.

Cloaking

Cloaking refers to any means used to serve up a different page to the search-engine spider than will be seen by human users. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. Cloaking is an attempt to mislead search engines regarding the content on a particular web site. It can also be used to trick search engine users into visiting a site based on the search engine description which turns out to have substantially different, or even pornographic content. However, cloaking can also be used to ethically increase accessibility of a site to users with disabilities, or to provide human users with content that search engines aren’t able to process or parse. It is also used to deliver content based on a user’s location; Google itself uses IP delivery, a form of cloaking, to deliver results.
gs and guest books where automatic programs can add spamming links to user edited pages.

• see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
• see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
• see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
• see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
• see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

USING WORLD-WRITABLE PAGES

Some spammers use sites such as Wikis and blogs that can be edited by users, to post links, etc in the comments.

• Spam in blogs

Any site that accepts visitor comments is a target. Spammers place keywords in the hyperlinked text of the inbound link. Guest books, forums and blogs are particularly vulnerable and are often victims of drive by spamming where automated software creates nonsense posts with unwanted and irrelevant links.

• Comment spam

Comment spam is a form of link spam and occurs in web pages that allow user editing such as in Wikis, blogs and guest books where automatic programs can add spamming links to user edited pages.

• Wiki spam

Spammers edit the Wiki pages and add their spam links which are usually unrelated to the Wiki content. Wikipedia has implemented a nofollow value for the ‘rel’ HTML attribute. Links with this attribute are ignored by the Google’s PageRank algorithm. Hopefully this will discourage this type of spam.

• Referrer log spamming

Some websites have a referrer log, which shows which pages link to that site. Robots are then used to access many sites repeatedly with a message or specific address given as the referrer. That message or internet address then appears in the referrer log. Since some search engines base the importance of sites by the number of different sites linking to them, referrer-log spamming may be used to increase the search engine rankings of the spammer’s sites, by getting the referrer logs of many sites to link to them.

• see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
• see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
• see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
• see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
• see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

LINK SPAM

Link spamming is having links purely to boost the websites page ranking. This is because of the search engines link based ranking algorithms such as Google’s PageRank algorithm which gives a higher ranking to a website with more other highly ranked websites linking to it.

Link spamming includes:

• Link farms

Involves creating tightly-knit communities of pages referencing each other, also known humorously as mutual admiration societies

• Hidden links

Putting links where visitors will not see them in order to increase link popularity. Highlighted link text can help rank a webpage higher for matching that phrase.

• Sybil attack

A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs known as spam blogs.

• Spam blogs

Also known as splogs, a spam blog, is complete fake blog created exclusively with the intent of spamming. They are similar in nature to link farms.

• Page hijacking

This is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites.

• Buying expired domains

Some link spammers monitor DNS records for domains that will expire soon, then buy them when they expire and replace the pages with links to their pages.

• see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
• see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
• see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
• see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
• see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

SPAMDEXING

There are 3 forms of spamdexing.

In this article, I will cover CONTENT SPAM

Content spam includes the following:

Keyword stuffing

Keywords are repeated within the page so as to raise the keyword count, variety and density of the page. It increases the likelihood of the page being found by a web crawler. However, most modern search engines are able to recognise stuffing. Also, large webpages are truncated, so that massive dictionary lists cannot be indexed on a single webpage.

Hidden or invisible unrelated text

Keywords and phrases not related to the page are disguised by making them the same colour as the background, using a tiny font, or hiding them within the HTML code. However, hidden text is not necessary spamdexing as it is also used to enhance accessibility. Search engines can ban website for having hidden text on some webpages.

Meta tag stuffing

This practice involves repeating keywords in the META tags and using meta keywords that are unrelated to the site’s content.

Gateway or doorway pages

These pages are stuffed with keywords and phrases and contain very little real content. These pages serve no purpose other than to rank highly in the search engine results. A doorway page will generally have “click here to enter” on the page.

Scraper sites

These sites are also known as Made for AdSense sites and are created by ?scraping? search-engine results pages to create ‘content’ for a website. The content on these sites is unique and is merely an amalgamation of content taken from other sources, often without permission. These websites are generally full of advertising or redirect the user to other sites.

• see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
• see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
• see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
• see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
• see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

SEO

Search Engine Optimization are the steps taken to improve the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via the search results for targeted keywords. The higher the site appears on the results page, the more traffic that site is likely to get. Those trying to optimize a website need to consider how the search algorithms work as well as which keywords people use to do a search. Once this is known, they then need to design the site in such a way that the coding, presentation and structure all work towards optimizing the site for search engines. They will also make sure that the site contains unique content, that this content is easily indexed by the search engine robots and that the site is user friendly.

Other, less acceptable methods include Black hat optimization or spamdexing. These use techniques such as keyword stuffing and link farming. Black hat optimization may cause that the website is excluded from the search engines index. So beware.

Search Engine Optimizers are the people that do the optimization.

SEARCH ENGINES

Search engines are an information retrieval system which help find information stored on computers. Google is a well known search engine which searches for information on the World Wide Web. There are many more.

ALGORITHMS

Algorithms are a list of instructions for completing a task from its initial state to its end state. In terms of search engine algorithms, they process the search according to a definite set of instructions which make up the algorithm and terminate with the search result.

SPIDERING

A web crawler, also known as a web spider or web robot is a program which browses the World Wide Web. This process is called web crawling or spidering. During this process, a copy of all the visited pages is created and later indexed. It is the index that search engines consult when doing a search. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a website, such as checking links or validating HTML code. They can also harvest email addresses which are then used for spam. So don’t have your email address anywhere on your website pages where the crawler can read it.

CONTENT

Web content includes the graphics, photos, video, animation, text and sound content that makes up the users experience when they visit a website.

BLACK HAT

A black hat is a person who compromises the security of a computer system without permission, typically with malicious intent. A black hat is also known as a cracker and generally tries to break into information systems.

WHITE HAT

A white hat is a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of computer systems and is as skilled as a black hat. A white hat is also known as an ethical hacker. A white hat generally focuses on securing information systems.

NOFOLLOW

Nofollow is a non-standard HTML attribute value which instructs search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. Its aim is to reduce the effectiveness of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing.

SPAMDEXING

Spamdexing uses a number of methods to manipulate the likelihood of website content being indexed by search engines. Usually this takes the form of cramming keywords into the META keywords tag, or repeating keywords in the body of the page or even within the URL. Many search engines check for spamdexing and will remove transgressing pages from the index.

• see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
• see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
• see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
• see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
• see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

By Simplifying The WEB

Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=153276&ca=Internet

By David Bain

Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=146001&ca=Internet