Web Strategy Blog

Project Fridays: Domains and Web Hosts

This is the second part in our on-going series, Project Fridays, where we guide you through on how to run and manage your own niche portal. We also use this opportunity to discuss our niche portal projects, and use them as examples throughout. Last week we discussed web portals in general and how to begin choosing a topic for your own niche portal. This week we will begin to cover getting your portal up and running.

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Project Fridays: Niche Portal Beginnings

Today marks the beginning of a new series of blog posts I plan on touching on every Friday - I call it Project Fridays. Project Fridays will follow the progress of the many in-house ventures here at Insidedesign. We have a small network of various websites, both successful and not so, and this series will grant us the opportunity to share their progress with our readers. I will also take the liberty to use this as a platform to inform and teach on the subject of running your own portal or niche website! A learn by example if you will…

This week, we discuss our newest venture - a Starcraft II portal…

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fire eagle Launches

For some time now, Fire Eagle has been in a closed beta open only to some 50 developers. However, today marks the general availability and launch of Yahoo’s new location sharing service Fire Eagle. Here is how Yahoo! describes its new server:

“Fire Eagle is a site that stores information about your location. With your permission, other services and devices can either update that information or access it. By helping applications respond to your location, Fire Eagle is designed to make the world around you more interesting! Use your location to power friend-finders, games, local information services, blog badges and stuff like that…”

To those familiar with Twitter, the concept is very similiar: You post similple updates to the service (location information), and it acts as a distrubutor of that information to any that requests it (ex: location status on a personal website or blog). With the help of already developed applications, it makes spreading your location updates on other services, like facebook, easy. With the Yahoo!’s embrace of developers via an API, multiple tools, and documentation resources, you are bound to see the capabilities and prevalence of this new service explode.

To top it off, like most cool new social services, Fire Eagle is completely free. There is even Fire Eagle Mobile, granting you the ability to update your location via your cell phone with one click! Sounds scary, but this is a lot of fun for people - not mention useful. But, what about this privacy? And why would Yahoo! offer such a service for free?

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Death to the Link Brokers

Photo by Fishmonk.

In addition to the recent commotion on jobs that wont exist in the future, I would like to add Link Brokers to that list. From a professional search engine optimizer stand-point, these guys are worthless and offer nothing valuable to my clients. There are many reasons as to why you should stand clear of these guys, but I will cover three:

1. Obvious
2. Quality
3. Over Priced

But before I jump right in and discuss these reasons, lets look at the history of the link brokerage industry.

The link brokerage industry was built on the fact that building incoming links to your website will help boost its position within search engines. With the increasing popularity and understanding of SEO, many companies have sprang up to help those that are searching for incoming links (these could be SEO companies, an in-house SEO specialist, or just someone trying to do it themselves).

For example, Text Link Ads was founded in 2003 by Patrick Gavin and Bill Fish later to be acquired by MediaWhiz in late 2006. Among others, Text Link Ads is by far the most popular. As an advertiser, you submit your contact details, budget, and a brief description of what you are looking for. A link broker is then assigned to your account, and which he/she will try to match you up with related websites that fit your overall strategy and budget. You even have access to their inventory for custom control. Sounds great right? Not really - its actually garbage. Here’s why…

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25% Off Business Listing at AllBuziness.com

Photo by Andrew Beierle.

For those that follow our Twitter Feed and message me via Twitter, you will be able to take advantage of a 25% discount for any business listing purchase at AllBuziness.com. Once I receive your message, I will contact you for all your link details and will send an invoice via PayPal with the discounted price.

AllBuziness.com is a popular online business directory that allows business professionals to find the business resources they need to be successful. Traffic for AllBuziness.com comes from many business related searches and business websites. Join today to reach a wide range of professionals searching for products and services.

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Insidedesign: Now In Twitter!

WOW, it has been a long time since we have updated the blog - and I apologize to anyone who still follows this thing! Insidedesign has been amazingly busy and clients always come first. Fear not! We are in the process of closing up two major projects and will soon have more time for items like our blog. In the meantime, you can follow us via our new Twitter feed!

Check us out on twitter now!

What is Twitter you ask?
Think of Twitter as a blog, but a blog that only allows you to post in short 140 character updates. It’s fast, it’s easy, and more people are starting to catch on! You can learn more about Twitter and get started here.

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Protect Yourself for Free! The Top 5

People ask me all the time, “How can I protect myself on the Internet?” and “How much does it cost?”. Well, to answer the second question - you can protect yourself for absolutely nothing! And to answer the first question, let me share with you the top 5 programs you should be using right now!

Comodo AntiVirus FREE
Offering pay-for quality for free, Comodo AntiVirus free version offers everything you need to battle viruses, under most circumstances. Including:

• Constantly protects with real-time On Access scanning
• Daily, automatic updates of virus definitions
• Proactive Heuristic analysis intercepts unknown threats
• Schedule Scanning ability
• Low system resource consumption

Learn more and Download Comodo Free Antivirus here

Comodo Firewall FREE
To match your shiney free Comodo Antivirus, why not download the Comodo’s FREE Firewall? It is a great firewall that any computer layman can understand, while offering advanced options for those interested. Check out some of these features:

• Constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks
• Stay protected against new threats via automatic online updates
• Real time traffic monitoring enables you to react instantly to threats and identify bandwidth bottlenecks.
• Constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks
• Free maintenance upgrades

Learn more and Download Comodo Free Firewall here

Spybot: Search & Destroy
Considered by many to be the best Spyware scanner available, Spybot is an essential tool to protecting yourself on the Internet. It comes packed with features and spyware definitions are constantly being updated. Just check out all these FREE Spybot features:

• Removal of known adware, spyware, dialers, keyloggers, trojans, and other usage tracks
• Save removal of threats by shredding them
• Backups of every removed problem
• Integrated update process with weekly updates

Learn more and Download Spybot Search and Destroy here

Ad-Aware Free Edition
While Spybot is a great program for removing spyware and other unwanted tracking items, it is important to have a “layered” spyware removal system. What does this mean? Simply to use multiple spyware scanners to ensure you have removed as much as possible! Ad-Aware does the trick, and it is FREE! Check it out these greate Free Adaware features:

• Incremental Threat Updates
• Full-Feature Quarantine
• Code Sequence Identification (CSI) Technology: precise detection of embedded malware, including known and emerging threats.
• System Restore Point

Learn more and Download Ad Aware Free here

CCleaner
While more of a utility than a security program, CCleaner is an essential tool for keeping your system clean and clear of unnecessary files that could be slowing you down. If you don’t have this program, get it now! Run this program once a week and you will experience your computer running faster! Check out what it can do:

• Clears Temporary files, URL history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, index.dat
• Cleans Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files
• Registry Cleaner
• Temporary files of Third-party applications

Learn more and Download CCleaner here

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ThomasNet: A Model for Directory Owners/Managers

Over at SEO Scoop, DazzlinDonna wrote a rather interesting post on ThomasNet - an industrial industry directory. With a Yahoo! indexation of over 4 million pages, ThomasNet has positioned itself as much more than a directory, but as an information portal.

Not limited to company listings, ThomasNet also focuses on offering supplemental content its demographic needs to conduct business. So whether a user is looking for a manufacturer of a product, or that product’s CAD drawing - the user knows exactly where to go and ThomasNet is able to retain that user.

A key point to the post is that ThomasNet puts the needs of their users first. Implementing a policy termed VSET (read at When Is A Directory So Much More Than A Directory?), ThomasNet has focused on building their directory from the shoes of their users. A huge lesson many amateur directory owners/managers should learn.

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Google Flight Simulator

It seems as though Marco has unearthed an easter egg in Google’s new release of Google Earth, its popular free mapping software. While the new release stunned the world with its addition of mapping the universe, it has also secretly included a flight simulator!

To check it yourself, simply download and load up the most recent version of Google Earth and press CTRL+ALT+A or for a MAC, Command+Option+A. Upon doing so the flight simulator should load right away with a dialog that grants you the options of plane and airport (as see to the right).

You have the option of piloting two planes: the F16 or the SR22. Both are very different and enjoyable rides. Check it out for yourself, but be sure to familiarize yourself with the flight controls! If using the arrow keys is not your thing, you can also use your mouse to steer the aircraft (just click the screen with your mouse to activate).

Note: After you have entered into the flight simulator using the keyboard combination, simply access it again from the Tool drop down menu.

Check out some of the in-game screen shots:

Let me know how you fare at flying! The controls are touchy…

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In Google Students Trust

A recent study held by Cornell University has revealed that students have strong faith in Google’s ability to ranks search engine results based on relevancy. Published in the Journal of Computer-Medicated Communication, the study points out that the student’s “decisions were strongly biased towards links higher in position even if the abstracts themselves were less relevant.” Well, not a very ground breaking statement.

We all understand that users are strongly biased towards higher positions in the SERPs, it shows in our logs! However, and more interesting, the study goes on to conclude:

“While the participants reacted to artificially reduced retrieval quality by greater scrutiny, they failed to achieve the same success rate. This demonstrated trust in Google has implications for the search engine’s tremendous potential influence on culture, society, and user traffic on the Web.”

So, users are heavily biased towards the top listings on Google - even if the provided title and description is not relevant! They trust in Google, and truly believe what is being provided to them is the best results. But what does this mean to a search engine optimization professional? Here are some points that come to mind:

1. General, high traffic keywords bring lots of visitors - a high percentage being low quality and unqualified visitors.
2. Optimize for niche keywords to keep conversion rates high.
3. A high listing in the SERPs is an authority and trust builder with users.

Check out the study, an interesting read for any technical SEO professional.

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