Online Punch

The Shortest Distance to Your Home Town Enterprise is Over the Internet

Combine two dynamite online methods for bringing your business to the attention of buyers - Local Search and widely posted articles you write. Doing both gives you a jump on your local competition, plus additional credibility and exposure to your market.

Local Search occurs by adding a geographic term is added to a search engine query. Instead of results comprising millions of pages, only businesses within your specific area are included. For example, entering Florists + Boston only returns Boston florists - a small pool of available choices.

Geographic terms can be town, state, region, zip code, etc. Results appear on both a list and map, so the most convenient stand out. Today, nearly 40% of search engine queries ask for Local Search information - with that number increasing rapidly. 70% of buyers go online to conduct research before they buy, even from local merchants. So the impact is considerable.

Articles Deliver Credibility and Links

When you write articles and post them widely to Internet directories and ezines, your knowledge is spread to thousands of readers. Sites displaying your articles link back to your website. That encourages readers to seek you out. Links also increase search engine rankings, which push you higher on the results lists. Capture all the benefits http://www.promotewitharticles.com/benefits.html that come with writing articles.

You’re Not Competing Against the Whole World

The widespread assumption dictates shooting to be on first page results if you can (most searchers don’t look past the first page). That all depends. If you’re competing against every other business and website out there, that’s true. And your odds are slim. But you don’t need to - only the ones competing for the same customers you are.

Besides, sophisticated search-engine optimization strategies or tracking methods are beyond the needs or skills of most small businesses. There’s a danger that SEO demands can easily pull an owner away from their brick-and-mortar priorities.

There’s a well-known joke about two men being lost in the wilderness, who come to the attention of a bear. One man stops long enough to put on his running shoes. His friend scoffs, “You really think you can outrun a bear?” He replied, “I only have to outrun you.”

When it comes to Local Search, you don’t have to outrun all the other enterprises that do what you do. You only have to outrun the ones in your local market. Those likely to show up in the same Local Search results you do.

Consider all the plumbers who could show up in a Local Search for:
Plumber + “your town”. Visualize three groups:

1. Those who won’t appear in the search because they’re not listed in the search engine data bases. See if your business is included in those databases at http://www.localsearchresources.com/listed.html

2. Those who appear in the results, but who have done nothing further. They won’t show up in all the search results they could have.

3. Those adding specific information for search engines, website visitors, and their local customers: a) enhance their website, b) provide search-engine-relevant information on their pages, c) provide easy-to-find information that Internet users are looking for.

#3 lets you outrun the other guy. Your articles help you to do that, too. Of those who show up in your search results list, how many are likely to have such additional information (and keywords) for the search engines to draw upon? Your information seems more complete and relevantleap-frogging you to the front.

Adapt Your Articles for Your Neck of the Woods

The usual method for getting better search engine rankings is to post articles widely to article directory sites and ezines interested in your topic. That’s how the game’s played for e-commerce topics, or products and services with a national reach.

But that’s not primarily what you’re after as a small business operator. Certainly, you’ll benefit from links from other posting sites and links to your website. But you’re interested in reaching the people who live in your area. They’re the ones you want to read your articles and be moved to come to your place of business. Your priority is to build relationships on the local level.

So also post your articles to websites or portals in your community. They may not have high page rank, but they have access to your local customers. And links among local enterprises help to support each other and the local economy. Aso, print off a stack of your articles for handouts in your storefront.

Write your articles differently. Mention your town in your title or keywords. Make sure your signature file (sig) says your town and state. Use examples that are specific to your town or region. “Choosing roses that can thrive above the tree line.” Refer to landmarks or make geographic references that the locals will recognize. The search engines will pick up some of those references, and they’ll boost your Local Search prominence.

Learn to Make the Most of Local Search Exposure

The easier you can be found online, the more ways you appear in Local Search results. It’s here for the long term, bringing customers to your door who don’t respond to your other marketing methods. Articles and Local Search awareness will build on each other, and you’ll gain a tangible edge in your local market.

Copyright 2005 Off the Page

–Dr. Lynella Grant An expert in Yellow Page ads and Local Search. Stand out online and offline, so you capture more Internet-savvy buyers for your brick and mortar business. Free resources http://www.localsearchresources.com 719-395-9450

If the sliding glass doors in your home are more than 10 years old, you might notice that they are becoming harder to slide open. This problem is even more common on aluminum frame dual pane doors. The reason is because the doors are heavier due to the dual pane glass, but many of the aluminum units did not use stainless steel rollers. So, in many cases, the rollers get rusty from moisture and they start to bind.

In order to replace the rollers, you have to remove the sliding panel from the opening. In most instances, the fixed panel must be removed in order for the sliding panel to come out. There is a simple way to determine whether or not your fixed panel has to come out as well. If the slider is on the inside track and the fixed panel is on the outside track, you have to remove both panels, because the slider will only come out from the outside. There is a lip on the bottom of the track inside your house. That lip keeps water from coming in. Unfortunately, that lip is also too high to lift the sliding panel up and over. So, you have to remove the fixed panel first, then lift and swing out the slider from outside. If you are one of the few people who have a slider on the outside track, then you can lift your slider out without removing the fixed panel.

But, let’s assume you need to remove the fixed panel first. Here is what you do: Remove your screen door if you have one. The screen door will have two rollers on the bottom. Lift one end of the door frame with one hand while using a flat screwdriver to lift the roller off the track. Do that on both sides, then take out the screen door and set it aside. Now, look for a metal piece on the bottom track that runs from the bottom corner of the fixed panel all the way across to the bottom of the side jamb that has the door lock hardware. If your door is really old that piece might be missing. If you have one, you can pry it up from the track. It is snapped in place even though it looks like it is a part of the track. Once you have that piece removed, you want to look inside the house where the fixed panel is against the wall jam. Look for screws holding the frame to the jam. They usually have one near the top and bottom corners, and one near the center. Remove these screws and put them where you won’t lose them. Now, you should be able to pull the fixed panel out of the side jam. There is a very good chance that it will be stuck. If it is, grab the center rail near the bottom and lift up as hard as you can. If you feel the panel go up, pull it back down. Do this a couple of times, then try to pull it out of the side jam again. This usually loosens it enough to pull it out. If it still won’t come out, you will have to put a thin screwdriver between the fixed panel frame and the side jam and pry while a helper pulls the panel away from the jam. Once you get it free of the side jam, grab the fixed panel side rail and have a helper grab the other rail. Lift the panel up into the top track and swing the bottom out of the bottom track. Remove the panel from the top track and set it aside with the screen door.

Now, you can try lifting the slider up and out, just like you did with the fixed panel. If the slider won’t clear the bottom track, you need to do a couple of things. First, look to see if it’s the old rollers protruding from the bottom that is preventing the door from coming out, or if the actual bottom of the door frame is hitting the track. In almost all cases, it will be the old rollers. But, if the opening is 8′ wide, sometimes the wood header that runs across the opening has sagged just enough to make it tight in the center of the opening. If it’s the rollers, you need to adjust them all the way up into the door. Look for a hole on the bottom side where you can put a phillips screwdriver and find the adjustment screw. Then turn that screw counterclockwise as far as you can. Do that to both sides, then try lifting out the door. If you are still getting stuck, have your helper lift one side and pull outward while you try to pry the frame and roller over the track. If you get one side out, have your helper hold that side with his or her foot to prevent it from going back in while he or she lifts the other side for you to pry free.

Once you get the slider out, almost all rollers are held in place by the same screw that holds the frame corners together. So, you need to set the panel on one side, remove the screw in the corner, flip the panel over, remove the screw on the other bottom corner. Now, you can take a rubber mallet or the wood handle of a hammer, and tap the bottom frame off the glass. This will give you access to your rollers. Take a close look at how they are inserted into the door frame. In fact, it’s a good idea to only remove one roller to bring with you to match for the new ones. Then, when you get back home, you can use the roller that is still in place as a guide to installing the new ones.

Places like Home Depot, Lowes, and Ace Hardware carry about 80-90% of the rollers out there. So, you should be able to find them. However, let’s say this just isn’t your lucky day, and you can’t find your rollers anywhere. You are going to have to have them ordered. Bring the roller to your local glass shop. If you’re lucky, they will have them in stock. If not, they can order the rollers, but you won’t get them for about a week. Don’t panic. Just go home and tap the bottom frame back on the door panel, but leave the corner screws out. You can even leave the roller out that you removed. Lift the door back in place, install the fixed panel but don’t snap the bottom piece back in, and don’t install the inside screws. Then, from inside the house, lift the slider and pull it closed. You don’t want to drag it if you left the roller out. It will scrape the bottom track. Just lift it enough to take the pressure off, and close and lock it.

When Your new rollers come in, take everything back out and install the new rollers. Adjust the new rollers all the way up before putting the door back in. That way, the new rollers won’t interfere with you lifting it back in place. Adjust the new rollers down until the door slides good and locks. You want to be sure there is an equal gap at the top and bottom when the door is about an inch from closing into the side jam. You can adjust the rollers to make this dimension even. If you can get the job done by a professional for $50 or $60 including parts, it might be worth hiring someone to do it. But, in high population areas such as Los Angeles, it’s common to pay $100 in labor only. Then they mark up the cost of the rollers, and you could wind up spending $130 for a job that you can do yourself for about $20.

John Rocco has been installing replacement windows since 1978. To learn more, visit How To Install Windows

Allergies (Type I Hypersensitivity) are actually a malfunction of our immune system that triggers our body to become hypersensitized and react immunologically to typically non-immunogenic substances. The substances that cause our bodies to become this way are called allergens.

In 1906, Viennese pediatrician, Clemens von Pirquet, first coined the term “allergies” after he observed that certain symptoms of his patients might have been a response to outside allergens, like dust, pollen, or certain foods.

Signs and Symptoms

You know your allergies are starting if you experience swelling in parts of your body. This is called local or systemic inflammatory response, caused by the presence of allergens. For instance, if your allergies affect you in the nose, you will experience swelling of the nasal mucosa (allergic rhinitis). During this condition, you will probably find yourself performing the “nasal salute” more than necessary as itching of your nose will induce you to wipe your nose in an upward direction.

On the other hand, if the allergies hit you in the eyes, redness and itching of the conjunctiva often follows. Other common signs of allergies are wheezing and dyspnoea, bronchoconstriction, and sometimes outright attacks of asthma. You may also experience various rashes, such as eczema, hives, and contact dermatitis.

Systemic allergic responses are more serious compared to local symptoms. Depending on the severity of your response, allergies can cause cutaenous reactions, bronchoconstriction, edema, hypotension, coma, and even death.

Hay fever is actually one example of minor allergies caused by airborne pollen. But aside from environmental factors, allergies may also be triggered by medications.

Why do we get allergies?

Our immune system is a well-trained and disciplined bio-weapon that protects our bodies from harmful substances. Its mechanics is so amazing that it can identify and destroy many foreign invaders. However, as amazing as our immune system is, it makes mistakes sometimes. And so we have allergies, which, as we mentioned, results from a hypersensitive immune system.

The hypersensitized immune system misidentifies an otherwise innocuous substance as harmful, and then attacks the substance with a degree of ferocity that is greater than required. As a result, we experience problems that can range from mildly inconvenient to uncomfortable to total failure of major organs of the body.

How does the immune system go into a hypersensitized state?

There are actually several ideas on this. Some schools premise that allergies are almost always triggered by protein. Certain persons have faulty genetic codes so that their lymphocytes or the white blood cells (the stuff that your immune system is made of) are unable to property distinguish between the threatening and the non-threatening proteins.

So, for example, when you ingest protein from shellfish, your lymphocytes think that the substance is trying to invade the body. As a result, they produce large amounts of antibodies which attach themselves to mast cells and basophils throughout the body. This is known as the sensitizing exposure and this is the very reason why you suddenly develop allergies.

More information can be found in http://www.health-00.info

Joel Dresse is the Webmaster of www.health-00.info, an informative site on health, breast cancer, exercise, weight loss and more subjects related to medicine.

It’s the most important day of your life: don’t let the memories disappear. Even the whole process of planning a wedding will bring a smile to your face years down the road, as you recall the madness of picking a motif and how something as simple as whether to order a rum or buttercream cake would keep you up at night.

So how do you preserve these moments, despite the crazy schedules, the general anxiety, where every day becomes a blur of talking to wedding suppliers and fitting the dress?

First, keep a diary or a blog. Promise that you’ll write even just 10 sentences a day, about what you did, what you chose, what you hated on sight. If you’re not in the mood to wax poetic, even jotting down a list will preserve some of the day-to-day memories. “1. Had lunch with my bridesmaid 2. went to the salon to try out another hairstyle.” You get the picture.

Consider buying a scrapbook where you can stick on swatches, receipts, photos from your makeup trials, cards. If you don’t consider yourself a “crafts” person, many scrapbook stores sell kits that pretty much make it as easy as “pick-and-stick”.

Make a time capsule for your future kids. Put in pictures of you and your fiance, a few love letters, a letter to them, and a letter to each other which you’ll agree to open on your 10th wedding anniversary.

Everyone wants to know the big secret to driving traffic to their website. Every day I see an article or an ad talking about driving people to your website. Driving traffic to a website has become the “holy grail” on the internet. People are realizing that ‘if you build it, they won’t come… unless you give them a reason’. Website traffic just doesn’t happen by itself. Your website is just one of many millions on the web and people rarely just stumble upon your site by accident.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. You can
buy traffic from vendors that will pummel your website with hits from automated programs. This will increase your hits but will it increase your bottom line? Probably not. You can set up blogs that spider (connect to) your website increasing your traffic count. Does this drive users to your website? Only if your blog is sointeresting that people are reading it. There are thousands of blogs posted on the internet and your blog is just a needle in the internet haystack.

Another trick is to create RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for your website and subscribe to other RSS feeds. This again will increase your hit count but will do very little to drive potential customers to your website unless you’re providing valuable information. Tricks will increase your hit count but do very little todrive potential customers to your website.

A better way to buy traffic for your website is by using pay-per-click with Yahoo and Google. You identify the most common keywords associated with what you’re offering and bid on those keywords. This can be a costly option if you’re bidding on popular keywords but it’s a reliable way to generate highly targeted traffic. In my next newsletter I’ll go into more detail about using pay-per-click advertising.

The best way to generate traffic for your website is to provide
quality content that will solve your customer’s problems. People search the internet for information that will solve their problems. Write and post as many articles as you can on your website.If you don’t have time to write articles or can’t write then hire someone to write the articles for you. You can have quality articles written by freelance writers at www.elance.com for practically nothing. The articles should be relevant to the problems your customers are experiencing and to the services you provide to solve those customer problems. Remember, it’s all about providing solutions to your customer’s problems. Check the “How To” Articles section on my website at www.valiss.com for more information about your website
content.

The bottom line is that you can’t trick people into finding your
website. You must provide valuable information that solves your
customer’s problems. Your customers don’t come to your website
to read your blog about how you spent the weekend. They’ll come
to your website if they know they can find a solution to their most pressing issues. Keep your content fresh and relevant to solving your customer’s problems and in no time you’ll have plenty of visitors to your website.

Next time I’ll talk about how you can use pay-per-click to generate targeted traffic and not spend a fortune.

Ted Prodromou spent over 25 years in the computer industry working for IBM, Digital, and Cellular one. Today he’s the owner of Valiss IT, a consulting firm that provides small business coaching and marketing help. He’s also a certified personal and professional coach.

Ted has created and led many coaching workshops and today is helping small businesses automate their marketing with his latest coaching program, “Attract Clients While You Sleep”. For more information visit http://www.valiss.com/specials.

Some people doubt that commission stealing is a
problem.

It is.

Clickbank have taken steps to plug the leaks in their
system according to Allan Gardyne’s latest newsletter.

If you’re an affiliate and not subscribed to Allan’s
newsletter, you’re missing the best newsletter in the
field…it’s free… http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/

I’m glad ClickBank are moving in the right direction
because I had a commission deliberately stolen from
right under my nose!

How do I know?

Easy.

I’m the ONLY affiliate for a product I endorsed
recently.

But, when I sent my announcement, a sale appeared from
a SECOND affiliate username.

The person had changed my affiliate link to their own
so that they could pocket the commission I was due.

That’s bad karma folks.

Even if stealing commissions was the easiest thing in
the world to do, it still doesn’t make it right.

About the Author

Internet home business opportunity advice and help from
someone who’s been online since 1997…. Neil Shearing of
http://www.scamfreezone.com

Since the beginning of Internet there is a need to index the Web
and many robots are built for this purpose. You already know
that famous Google bot which is indexing the Web to keep track
of urls and build a scheme out of it (link popularity
algorithm…).

There are not so many way to scan a website but some pages of a
website might not need to be crawled for any reasons such as
privacy…

A Standard for Robot Exclusion has been created and now
robots from search engines or others look forward the robots.txt
file before starting to scan a website. This file tells the
robots which links are allowed to be scanned and which links
shouldn’t be indexed.

A good resource about the robots.txt file is at this address:

http://www.robotstxt.org

The site publishes information about Web robots, you may be
interested by this site if you plan to create your own Bot or
learn more about their history.

Practice You may have noticed from your server logs the
presence of the robots.txt request from an ant, it throws a file
not exist error when you don’t have the robots.txt file. If you
just want to clean this from the log files then you need to
create this robots text file even if you make it empty.

The structure of this file is pretty simple, you can disallow
agents, you can disallow parts of your websites or only few
pages… Or you can deny everything or allow everything.

Here is an example from http://www.robotstxt.org:

User-agent: webcrawler Disallow:

User-agent: lycra Disallow: /

User-agent: * Disallow: /tmp Disallow: /log

The Webcrawler Bot can go anywhere. The second paragraph
indicates that the robot called ‘lycra’ has all relative URLs
starting with ‘/’ disallowed. Because all relative URL’s on a
server start with ‘/’, this means the entire site is closed off.

The third paragraph indicates that all other robots should not
visit URLs starting with /tmp or /log. Note the ‘*’ is a special
token, meaning “any other User-agent”; you cannot use wildcard
patterns or regular expressions in either User-agent or Disallow
lines.

Validator Once you are done with your robots.txt file you should
test it by using a robots.txt validator, there is one at this
address: Searchengineworld, robots check. The Searchengineworld
website provides also a more complete tutorial about the
robots.txt file.

Notes - The use of this file may reduce bandwidth consommation
by robots on your server. If you did disallow few pages, - It
also cleans a little bit your log files (1 line less by bots
scan), - The most important point is that this file is
recommended by Bots for duplicate websites. As you may get
penalties when you have duplicate sites, a solution is to deny
access to one side.

Specific Each Bot may act a little differently, so it’s advised
to check faqs from every bots to learn more about their indexing
behaviour, for instance for the Yahoo slurp Bot, you can check
this Url: Yahoo Slurp Index.

The Msn bot: MSN Bot The Google bot: Google Bot

Here is a database of webrobots : Webrobots

Warning There are hackers who search the robots.txt files for
directories and files which should not be scanned, they are also
called ‘bad robots’.

The solution is to either not mention the links and directories
to avoid or to put them in a special place where you add an
additional server protection.

Future of web agents Web agents job is becomming more and more
complex as the web grows, although technology is improving,
connections get faster and faster, cheaper and cheaper, cables
are getting busier and busier though.

There are heaps of websites geting online everydays and the web
agents must perform relevant indexing, do you remember the time
Google was crawling a new website in 1 day ?? I guess no !

I would not be surprised Web agents start to implement a kind of
selection and automatically avoid websites which are not HTML
valid… My advice: follow the rules, test your site, make it
conform with today’s search engines guidelines…

The robots.txt may help those agents understand your site, so
use it, that will reward you later.

Thanks for reading, i hope this article has been useful for some
of you.

“Don’t forget to remember me.” In today’s hustle and bustle world, making people remember is very important and it is a must to have something that they will remember you by.

The competition is fierce making it necessary to have all possible avenues explored and tools utilized. Making the right choice is vital for one’s success. The use of brochures is an effective way of promoting your business. They serve as a tool for communication between you and the reader, giving them an idea of what it is that you have to offer. But a poorly designed brochure will only prove to be a waste of time, money and a lot of paper. A well-designed brochure, on the other hand, is a formidable weapon in today’s cutthroat market. Creating the right one is required for the successful promotion of your company.

The first thing to do is to ask yourself what it is that you want to relay to your target reader. Your brochure should be tailor-made for your intended audience for them to be able to relate to what you are trying to say. Think of it as giving your Pop a pant and not a skirt. Next would be the layout of the brochure itself. This aspect requires good planning. You need to have a good cover page that includes information like the name of your company as well as a photo or other information that you may deem important. People are likely to read more if the reading material is attractive. Moreover, the sentences included in the body must be straightforward. There is no need for fancy words but just a direct to the point narrative with the use of powerful words that ought to capture the reader’s attention. Proofreading will also have to be done to avoid occurrence of misspelled words and wrong grammars. It certainly is not attractive for a brochure to have incorrect words and sentences.

Colors also play a big part in making brochures. Make it a point to use colors that are pleasing to the eye. I think you’ll agree that it’s not good to read something with a glaring bright yellow background and a neon green text. Try to put yourself in the shoe of the person who is going to read your brochure and you’ll understand. Finally, all these factors come down to one very important thing. Paper. Choose high-quality paper when you finally have to print your brochure. Remember that the quality of the paper you use will speak a lot about you and will help people make impressions about the truth of what you have been saying.

The brochure you provide will leave an impression more lasting than you can imagine. How well they perform will depend on how good you planned, designed and produced your brochure. If you’ve done your homework then there’s no need to worry.

About the Author

For additional information and comments about the article you may log on to http://www.printingquotesonline.com

Spider’s Big Catch
(From the book Spider’s Big Catch)
Gary E. Anderson
www.abciowa.com

When I was in college, Spider McGee, Charlie Fox, and I loved to fish off the log boom in the river near my house on summer afternoons. We’d sit and talk about life, drink hot chocolate, and occasionally catch a fish or two. But one day, Spider yelled, “Hey, I got something, and it feels big!”

Catching any fishof any sizewas always a surprise, but hooking something big was reason for genuine excitement. As Spider began to reel, his pole bent almost in half.

“This thing is a monster,” he said, the drag on his reel screaming.

After twenty minutes or so, he’d gotten it close enough to the boom to get a glimpse of his catch. It was a snapping turtle.

“Ah, man, that’s too bad,” said Charlie. “I thought maybe you had Old Granddad there, for a second. Cut the line and let him go.”

“Are you crazy?” said Spider. “That lure was given to my dad by his grandfather. It was hand-carved in Norwayand he doesn’t even know I borrowed it! I gotta get it back.”

“Well, how’re you gonna do that?” I askedand was soon sorry I had.

“I’ll just bring him up to the edge of the boom, and you guys reach out and grab it,” Spider said calmly.

Now, I’m dumb, but I’m not stupid.

I said, “No, no, noyou bring him to the edge of the boom, and then I’ll try to pry the lure loose with a stick.”

“OK, that’ll work,” said Spider.

As Spider struggled to bring the turtle close to the edge of the boom, Charlie handed me a long stick. I reached out, and the turtle’s jaws instantly clamped down on the stick. I lifted him out of the water, and we headed toward the bank.

Once on shore, we set the angry turtle on the ground, but he refused to let go of the stick, the lure still dangling from the corner of his mouth. I reached out with my tennis shoe to nudge him in the back, and instantly learned several interesting things about snapping turtles. First, they’re not as slow as you might think, second, they’re very agile, and third, they’re well-named.

In a heartbeat, the turtle’s neck shot out, reached completely behind him, and bit through the end of my sneaker. Then, spitting out rubber and nylon, he turned and looked at us menacingly.

“OK, we need a new plan,” said Spider.

“And a new pair of shoes,” I added, looking down at my big toe, which was now plainly visible through the hole in my shoe.

“You hold his head down with the stick, and I’ll reach out and grab the lure,” Spider said.

It was an insane plan, but it was still a step in the right direction, I thought. At least, there wouldn’t be any parts of my anatomy at risk this time. I took the stick and pinned the turtle’s head to the ground while Spider got down on his belly and crept slowly toward the angry, struggling turtle.

It was then I learned even more lessons about snapping turtles. First, their front feet can be used a lot like a pair of hands, and second, snapping turtles are much stronger than you might think.

The turtle reached up and quickly pushed the stick away and quickly raised his headnow leaving him face-to-face with a very surprised Spider McGee.

The big guy screamed, which was probably the best thing to do at the time, since it caused the startled turtle to reach up with a front foot, pop the lure from its mouth, and then it whirl around and head back toward the river.

While all that was going on, the lure leapt through the air and finally came to restfirmly lodged in Spider’s left ear. He danced around in pain, but we finally managed to pin him down and cut the line from the lure. Then we packed up and loaded him into the car.

All the way home, Charlie and I would occasionally look back at poor Spider, sitting like a sad puppy in the back seat and wearing what looked like a giant hand-carved, bug-eyed earring. Then we’d look at each otherand laugh.

All that happened more than 30 years ago, and although Spider didn’t know it at the time, he was a trendsetter. He was the first guy I ever knew to wear an earring, even if he’d had to get his ear pierced by a snapping turtle to do it.

I’m pretty sure they have easier ways of doing that nowadays.

© 2004. Gary E. Anderson. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Gary Anderson is a freelance writer, editor, ghostwriter, and manuscript analyst, living on a small Iowa farm. He’s published more than 500 articles and four books. He’s also ghosted a dozen books, edited more than 30 full-length manuscripts, produced seven newsletters, and has done more than 800 manuscript reviews for various publishers around the nation. If you need writing or editing help, visit Gary’s website at www.abciowa.com.

In the old days of world wide web, users preferred to visit web directory to find the site they are looking for. As a matter of fact, Yahoo!, one of the preferred destination for online users, started as a web directory. Nowadays, most online user base rely on search engines too along with link directories, to find what they’re looking for.

When search engines started to become popular, they were heavily relied on KEYWORDs and METATAGs of the web page to determine the topic and relevance of the page. Webmasters discovered that by keyword stuffing into METATAGs and webpage content, they could improve their website position in search results for verious keywords. But search engines are smart!. Search engines caught up to the abuse and decided to ignore the METATAGs and rely instead on text content of web page. Webmasters then started to keyword stuffing in the webpage content, often writing them in the same color as the web page’s background so for webpage visitors as well as search engines that content is invisible.

Again, search engines worked on that area and discovered the trick and decided that the best way to rank a web page’s content and its topical relevance was to rely on inbound links from other web pages. The rationale behind this is that it is much more difficult to influence other people to link back to your website than it is to manipulate your own web page elements. In fact, inbound links are the foundation of Google’s Pagerank algorithm.

There are several ways to get inbound links, among them writing articles that include your bylines with a link to your page, link exchange, and add link to web directory are the poupler techniques.

Listing your sites in good link directories is probably the best way to get quality links that are highly valued by the search engines. Since web directories rely on human editors who enforce strict criteria to list a web site, and since directories organize the information in highly focused categories, they are an invaluable resource for search engines to measure the quality and the relevance of a web page.

In summary, web directories are important not because they generate significant traffic, but because they are given great importance by the search engines to qualify and rank web pages, and to determine their topical relevance.

So the bottomline is, you should definitely list your websites with quality web directory such as www.itsallaboutlinks.com, if you want to increase your chances of success with the search engines.

Paras Shah

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