Hey readers, found an excellant video today that explains why we have mixed perceptions of link building.

Check it out:

Ever find yourself submitting searches in google just for the sake of trying to find the correct spelling of a word? I do! It seems nowadays that google can be used for just about anything…

Well anyway, i was struggling with finding the correct spelling of the word “definitely”. So i pulled up google and typed in my best try, “definetly”. Oddly, google didn’t display the usual: “Did you mean…blank?”. Instead, i found that the first site on the results was a D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y.com, and the description of the link read: “How to spell definitely”. When i clicked it, i was brought to this site:

The text read:

The correct spelling is definitely.

Not definately.

Not definatly.

Not definantly.

Not definetly.

Not definently.

And certainly not defiantly.

The correct spelling is definitely.

On the bottom right side was a link that said “buy the mug”. I don’t know if this site was just a joke or a brilliant marketing scheme! But ill tell ya, it sure gave me a good laugh!

Kudos to the guy who made this site!

Today I would like to write a review for a product I am using called “Visitor Frenzy”.
Visitor Frenzy is a simple program that allows you to stimulate referrals coming from your site to other websites. This, accordingly, will boost your website traffic through two ways:

1. Webmasters will see your link at their traffic stats page and click on it.
2. Many websites show ‘Last referers’ on their website. This may also generate temporary backlinks.

I first heard about VF from a user on the all too popular Digital Point Forums. I only payed 5 dollars for the product (even though I probably could have gotten it free for writing a review), and I have to say that I am very impressed with it. After using the program for a couple days i saw a definite increase in visitors coming from all over the web. I am sure there are other programs that perform similar functions to Visitor Frenzy, but this program is cheap, simple…and it works!

Let me tell you how it works…

After downloading the package, extracting the files, and installing open up the program and it will bring you to this screen:

As you can see, the default referer and user-agent should be changed to match your own site’s. The referer feild is what Webmasters will see at their traffic stats page, and will most likely click on. It is also the link that will be displayed for websites who display “last-referers” on their site. Enter your domain here, but be sure to include the http://.

Now that you have filled in all the proper information, you now need to load a list of domains to send HTTP requests. Let’s try loading one of the lists provided in the package (5klist.txt). Simply click on the “Load List” button and open the file (5klist.txt).

The following image is what Visitor Frenzy will look like with the URL list loaded.

**Note that these lists are simply .txt files with rows of URLS in this format: www.example.com or example.com. The list CANNOT contain: http://.

Now that you’re list is loaded, and your ready to start sending your requests. Simply click start! The program usually takes anytime between 1-5 seconds to complete the request per each URL:

Sometimes the program gets stuck on a URL. When this happens, click the “Skip This URL!” button and Visitor Frenzy will ignore the URL, and continue with the list (as shown in following image). Getting stuck on a URL is rare and most likely occurs when the URL is unavailable. Fortunately, it occurs so rarely that you don’t need to sit and watch the whole process through to make sure the program doesn’t get stuck.

This list of 5000 URLS typically takes about an hour to run all the way through. If you want a fast way of generating your own lists you can download silverwolf’s domain grabber.

Download the windows version here.

Running the domain grabber is pretty simple. Just type whatever keyword you want into the search feild, and domain grabber will compile a list of domains from that keyword:

Notice i searched for the keyword “blog” and i got a bunch of blogging sites. If you want to search a keyword phrase, you’ll need to make it into one word. For example, If i wanted to search “free website templates”, i would search “freewebsitetemplates” instead.

After domain grabber completes the list, simply export the list it as a text file. Then all you need to do is get rid of all the “http://”s (because Visitor Frenzy won’t allow “http://”s). This can very easily be done with notepad. Just click edit–>replace, then type in “http://” in the “Find What” feild. You doen’t want to put anything in the “Replace With” feild since we don’t want to replace it with anything. After getting rid of the “http://”s, you can now save your .txt file and load it with Visitor Frenzy!

I have to say i am amazed at the price this nifty little program was ($5 for me). It woulden’t be a suprise to me if the creator of Visitor Frenzy decided to charge more in the future. On the site i tested (obviously not example.com) my google analytics showed a boost of 25% visitors within the first few days! I acheived these results by running the program once a day with the free 5k list. 

Overall, if you can get this product for the same price i payed ($5) then i would not hesitate to buy it.

I give it a 4.5 out of 5, Great!

The official Visitor Frenzy site: http://www.visitorfrenzy.com

If you would like to immediately purchase Visitor frenzy, go here.

Wordpress is an extensible CMS with a rigid framework. This rigid framework has several major advantages:

1) Backward compatibility between versions
2) Easy to design and install new “install-and-click” themes.
3) Greater reliability
4) Greater stability (add-on plugins and modules can introduce security flaws)
5) Easy to learn and administer
6) Easier to develop new plugin-extensions
7) Easier to customize, with PHP code

The big disadvantage of Wordpress, is that the application has to fit within Wordpress’s framework (just look at the themes and you can understand the framework).

Joomla is a step up from Wordpress in flexibility, since there are some substantial modules that have been developed (e.g. jReviews, community software, etc), using the Joomla development libraries. If, and only if, you can use one of these off-the shelf modules, as is, then it makes sense to use Joomla. However, by moving to Joomla, you have to except all of the issues associated with the hodgepodge of developers and modules out there, e.g.:

1) Much more bugs
2) Very little backward compatibility (Joomla 1.5, is a virtual mess for user and developers who have to rewrite their modules)
3) More unpredictability (e.g. security, reliability)
4) A more difficult CMS to understand and use because of the messiness of the architecture

Drupal is sort a much more malleable CMS, that is designed around a building block approach. The Drupal architecture lends itself toward customized a CMS application that really fits the users flow and needs. However, a developer needs to learn about the modules that are available, and know how to effectively use them. Experienced database developers will readily recognize the value of modules such as Views (which filters and presents information), while HTML/CSS designers may not understand the power of such building blocks. But if you understand the product, it gives you lots more control over your user interface and flow, making it a good alternative to coding in PHP/MySQL (it provides, what is called, a higher level of abstraction compared to PHP).

There are other CMS products such as MODx that provide even greater flexibility, but as you get more flexibility, you are also approaching the same level of development knowledge as would be required for PHP coding.

Let’s first define what is a ” Google ban”? There are two things this consists of:

* When your site has dropped from Google index and does not show any more for its target keywords.
* When your IP has been blocked and you cannot use Google search for some time.

Both issues are rather unwanted. The first one is applied to your site when it doesn’t suit Google webmaster guidelines. The second one is applied to your IP address when you perform aggressive amount of queries to Google at a time. Fortunately, you can easily avoid both types of Google ban following the below rules. Let’s first deal with website ban:

1. Make your site available. Always use reliable hosting service with good uptime (no less than 99.5%) and fast response time. If Googlebot comes to your site and cannot access it, your site may drop.

2. Provide unique and relevant content. Fill your website with fresh unique content that is relevant to your website theme and is interesting to your visitors. Write your content for humans, not for search engine bots. If you post a duplicate content on your site, Google may exclude it from its index.

3. Don’t use spam methods to promote your website. Never use doorways, hidden text, auto-generated keyword-filled pages, cloaking or any other spam techniques. Remember, we all use Google for search. Don’t dump a trash at Google’s index.

4. Carefully build links. Not every inbound link is good. Take care of websites linking to you. Don’t participate in link farms. Try to get links from relevant or close theme websites. Do not ever spam forums, guest books or comments with your links! Outbound links are important too. Pay a close attention on what sites do you link from your website. Do not link to sites that use spam techniques, because this may result in your site ban.

5. Make your site crawlable. Provide a way for Googlebot to index the whole your site. Create sitemap, if you use JavaScript or Flash links - duplicate them with plain text ones. Make sure your server correctly handles errors, like 403, 404, redirects and so on. Check for broken links and HTML errors with a HTML validation tool.

6. Avoid using domains with bad history. Do not use previously black listed domains for your site.

How to avoid IP ban?

7. Do not use unauthorized software to check web ranking. Google restricts usage of software that sends automated search queries to Google. Actually, to be 100% sure your IP won’t be banned - do not check your web rankings at all.

8. Use Google API. If you really need to check the rank of your site in Google, try to use software and tools that can work via Google Web API. Google API is the only legitimate way to perform automated queries to Google.

9. Limit the amount of searches. If the accuracy of Google API search results is not enough for your purposes and using the natural search is crucial for you, try to limit the amount searches with some reasonable number. If you check web rankings, don’t check first 1000 results, reduce the search to first 30-50 results. This will give you an adequate picture of your current standings and won’t stress Google much as well.

10. Use Google for its main purpose. Use Google for search only and you never get your IP banned.