It is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation (written in CSS). This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentational characteristics, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content. CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices. CSS specifies a priority scheme to determine which style rules apply if more than one rule matches against a particular element. In this so-called cascade, priorities or weights are calculated and assigned to rules, so that the results are predictable.

The CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to Web technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the web as a platform.

Defining The Term Web 2.0

In alluding to the version-numbers that commonly designate software upgrades, the phrase “Web 2.0″ may hint at an improved form of the World Wide Web. Advocates of the concept suggest that technologies such as weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds (and other forms of many-to-many publishing), social software, Web APIs, Web standards and online Web services imply a significant change in web usage. Stephen Fry (actor, author and broadcaster) describes Web 2.0 as “an idea in people’s heads rather than a reality. It’s actually an idea that the reciprocity between the user and the provider is what’s emphasized. In other words, genuine interactivity if you like, simply because people can upload as well as download”.

In the opening talk of the first Web 2.0 conference, Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle summarized what they saw as key principles of Web 2.0 applications:

1. the web as a platform
2. data as the driving force
3. network effects created by an architecture of participation
4. innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of “open source” development)
5. lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication
6. the end of the software-adoption cycle (the so-called perpetual beta)
7. software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of the “Long Tail”
8. ease of picking-up by early adopters

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2

1. Overnight Results

No-one, and I mean no-one, can guarantee good organic search results within 24 hours. It’s the marketing blurb typical of so many black hat SEO guys - ‘Top 10 listing in 8 hours’. In my experience, the big players in search - Google, Yahoo, MSN - all take their time in indexing a site.

Google in particular drags its feet when it comes to new sites - whether you subscribe to the notion of a ’sandbox effect’ or not, a new site will struggle to rank properly for weeks. In most cases, to achieve anywhere close to a site’s full potential will take months of work building good quality links and/or a loyal readership.

This talk of instant results is, of course, utter nonsense - speaking from my experience, any overnight success will not come as a result of organic placements - these, as their name suggests, need time to grow.

Any form of SEO that talks of instant results will likely provide only a short-term boost in traffic - and worse still, will be likely to originate from shady techniques such as spam (of the referrer, comment or plain email variety), and as algorithms to detect this sort of bad behavior becomes more advanced, this sort of promotion is becoming more and more likely to harm your long-term search engine prospects.

In short, if you want to get traffic to your site - don’t look for the quick and instant gratification. Play the long game instead. A site that gathers 10,000 visits in a day and no more after that is worth less than the site that gets 10,000 visits a month through organic means.

2. Placement Can Be Guaranteed

The same guys that guarantee overnight listing also guarantee particular placements - regardless of competition or the quality of your site, you too can take your place on the front page of results. This is bunkum, of course - just as it takes time to improve search engine rankings, there is never any guarantee of placement on the first page.

This of course, applies principally to competitive keywords - arguably, you could take any random phrase, optimize a site for it, and yield #1 position in Google - with the only minor downside being that you’ll get no traffic from those keywords, of course.

For new sites, ranking high is tricky - but to guarantee top 10 for a competitive keyword is foolhardy. Good organic traffic starts slowly and grows with the site.

3. Meta Tags

Even now, nearly a decade after Altavista, Lycos, Hotbot et al were all big search players, some SEO consultants cling to the misconception of <meta> tags to boost site rankings.

Whilst it has been demonstrated that the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and to a lesser extent - MSN) will largely ignore the content placed there, and instead rely on the actual content of the page. There have been too many webmasters with too much spam in their <meta> tags to rely on a small snippet of information these days.

Whilst they do carry a lot of weight with search engines, and it’s usually worthwhile adding the to your pages, laboring over them as though your site’s existence depended upon it is usually misguided. Stuffing keywords in the <meta> tags will hurt your rankings badly, so it’s best to stick to the basics - list your main keywords, a short and well-written description, and that should be all you need.

One place where care should be taken is the <title> tag - this is used very extensively by the Search Engines, and will prove critical to SEO success. Increasingly, though, the <meta> tags are being left behind, and will most likely lose all meaning in the near future.

4. Submitting to Search Engines

‘We will submit your site to over 2,000 search engines’. Sound familiar? Of course it does - site submissions to search engines and directories is bread and butter for your average SEO. The trouble is, of course, that the search engine market is very much focused on one principal player - Google - and a few subsidiary search markets (MSN, Yahoo are the foremost). These big 3 will probably account for about 99% of all searches to your site - the other 1,997 will barely get a mention in your referrer logs.

If you can name 10 search engines, you’re doing well - and the big search engines will more than likely know about your site already through backlinks - so the art of ’search engine submission’ seems dubious at best.

By all means, submit your site to smaller search engines - there’s no harm in it at all - but certainly don’t expect any good organic traffic from any other than the major search engines. And don’t believe the hype of ’search engine submission’ software or - worse still - pay someone to use it for you.

5. More Links > Good Links

As everyone who’s dabbled in SEO knows, links are critical to rising up the rankings in organic search. Search Engines have got wiser as the years have gone by, however, and the key these days is relevancy.

The term ‘relevancy’ is thrown around quite often, but it essentially means that it is quality links in the relevant sector that contribute far more to search engine rankings than broad quantities of unrelated links. Having links in areas other than your chosen subject may not hurt - if it’s a high PR link you’ll no doubt experience the benefit, but relevancy looks set to be the defining factor in SEO in the not-too-distant future.

You may be able to quickly and easily assemble a large array of links on a lot of sites, but good links from ‘authority’ sites within the same subject field are worth more in the long term. The definition of an ‘authority’ site is hazy at best, but any popular (and relevant) site should be your target in terms of generating good links.

Conclusion

Of course, there are many, many more misconception in the world of SEO - the industry is full of shysters and people out to make a quick buck from an unwise marketer, and as new trends come along there are always people willing to pay money in the hope of traffic, fame, and fortune.

In reality though, the most rewarding aspects SEO are often the most slow to reward. Building a good site takes time, and if you push things forward too quickly with slightly dubious promotional activity, you are likely to suffer penalties as a result.

 If an offer of ‘instant traffic’ or ‘millions of hits’ seems too good to be true, then unfortunately it probably is.

What is Google PageRank?

Google PageRank (one word) is Google’s measure of the relative importance of a Web page on the Internet. The numbers rank from 0 to 10. The higher the number, the stronger the PageRank.

Is the PageRank (PR) number for the entire site?

PageRank is determined for each individual Web page, as every page on your website has a different PR. The site home page is likely to have the highest PR as it will have the most sites linking to it. Each internal page will have a different Google PageRank. In many cases, the PageRank for a very informative and heavily linked article on an internal page will be higher than that of the site’s home page.

How is PageRank determined?

PageRank is calculated based on both the quantity and PageRank quality of your incoming links. The higher the PR of your incoming links, and the fewer outbound links there are on a page, the more PR is passed to your Web page. For example, a Web page with a fairly high Google PageRank of 6, but divided among many outbound links, might pass along much less PageRank than a PR4 page with only one or two outgoing links. It’s best to consider PageRank transfer on a case by case basis rather than as an overall blanket assessment. The number of variables is simply too high for easy calculations.

Is each inbound link important to the overall total?

PageRank is a form of a voting system. A link to a page is a vote for that page. Higher PageRank pages are viewed by Google as more important. Their votes are given more value by Google — much more value, in some cases. In general, the more voting links, the stronger the PageRank.

Does the number of links from a page make a difference?

The total number of outbound links from a page makes a huge difference in the amount of PageRank transferred to each receiving page. A Web page with ten outbound links sends one tenth of the total available flow to the receiving page. A page linking to only one page sends all of the available PageRank transfer to the next Web page.

How does a page move higher from one PageRank level to the next?

PageRank is represented numerically from a low of PR0 to a rarely achieved high of PR10. PageRank is not a series of equal steps. It is logarithmic in its calculation. In the same way that the earthquake Richter scale is exponential in calculation, so too is the mathematics behind Google PageRank. It takes one step to move from a PR0 to a PR1, it takes a few more steps to PR3, it takes even more steps to PR4, and many more steps again to PR5, and so one. Each level is progressively harder to reach.

Does increasing the content change the Google PageRank?

Adding fresh content doesn’t provide a direct impact on Google PageRank. The transfer is entirely dependent upon inbound links to the page. On the other hand, providing interesting, informative and theme relevant content will attract many natural one way links to that page. A fresh infusion of PageRank arrives with each link.

How does theme relevance affect Google PageRank?

Theme relevance refers to how related to one another is the subject matter of two interlinked Web pages. If both pages discuss tigers, then they are highly theme relevant. It’s thought that Google may be implementing a system of Topic Sensitive PageRank, designed to pass along varying percentages of available PageRank based on theme relevance. The more closely related the pages, the higher the PageRank amount transferred.

How does my PageRank increase?

PageRank increases in a geometric manner similar to the earthquake Richter Scale. For example, it is harder to go from a PR4 to a PR5, than it was to reach the PR4 from a PR3. In a similar fashion, it’s even harder to get to a PR 6, than it was to get to PR5 from PR4, and so on up. Each level requires increasingly more high value incoming links than did the previous level.

How can I find out my Google PageRank?

PageRank is displayed in increasing amounts of green on a gauge on the Google Toolbar. The Google toolbar can be downloaded for a PC at http://toolbar.google.com. The toolbar also displays a sampling of the page’s inbound links, but is not considered a reliable indicator of current PageRank. There is no Google Toolbar currently available for a Mac. Google maintains the true PageRank internally, and the toolbar display is generally agreed to be very inaccurate.

How soon do the backlinks and PageRank show up on my Google Toolbar?

It often takes two full monthly updates for all of your incoming links to be discovered, counted, calculated and displayed as backlinks. Even then the PageRank displayed on the Google toolbar is outdated. Google maintains the correct PageRank internally at their own computers. The green line shown on the toolbar is often very outdated, and very possibly entirely incorrect.

Do all of my backlinks get displayed along with the PageRank?

Google only shows the backlinks it has found and calculated for your pages that have a PR4 or higher. All links are included in the tabulation, however. Like the PageRank display, the backlink display on the toolbar is very misleading, and under-represents the total number of i

Do low level PageRanks help my website’s PR?

All incoming links count towards your total, but lower level PRs (0-3) don’t count for much of that total immediately. They will probably add more PR later, however, as their own PRs increase, making all inbound links valuable. Keep in mind that theme relevant links from theme related pages provide more power in Google and the other search engines than unrelated higher PageRank links. Always remember that PageRank is only one factor in the search algorithm.

Should I exchange links with low value PageRank pages?

PageRank should not be your primary concern for link exchanges. Benefits to your readers of discovering new and interesting blogs and websites should be your first concern. The PR is simply an added bonus, and the PR may rise over time. A PR2 could soon be a PR7.

Can a lower PageRank page drain and reduce my PageRank?

Lower PageRank pages don’t reverse or drain PageRank. The flow is always one way, from the sending to the receiving page. Linking to a lower PR page won’t lower your own PageRank. An exchange between two theme relevant pages might even raise each other’s PageRank. Google’s linking system, in its most basic form, is designed to reward linking to other sites, but not for establishing artificial linking schemes to trick the search algorithm.

Are 60 outgoing links to another Web page too many?

No, as Google is only concerned with pages of over 100 outgoing links. Google considers overly linked pages to be link farms, and they are penalized as such. Your site will not a experience a problem, although each page linked to your page will receive only very small amounts of PR flow.

Can my PageRank go down?

PageRank can decrease if you lose some important links that are no longer linking to your site. PR loss can also occur if some of your linking partners also experience a drop in their own PR, possibly setting off a chain reaction of lower PageRank all through the immediate linking network.

Does PageRank leak away from a page through outgoing links?

PageRank leak is a controversial topic that has both supporters and detractors. Supporters of the PageRank leak theory point to the fact that PageRank is transferred from page to page, resulting in a slight loss to the sending page. As a result, constant work to keep adding new links is required to maintain the existing PR level. The opponents of the leak theory believe that failing to send out links will harm the page, as some SEO experts believes Google downgrades pages that fail to transfer PageRank. They also believe that outgoing PageRank will return in larger amounts to the generous linker than ever flowed to outside Web pages.

Is it important to have good PageRank?

Yes, as PageRank is part of the Google algorithm that determines where your blog or website will appear in the search engine results. Higher PR pages, especially for competitive keywords, will often be listed higher, but high PageRank is only one of about one hundred determining factors in the Google algorithm. It is not by any means the most important factor in search engine rankings.

Has the value of PageRank to the Google algorithm remained constant over time?

The importance of PageRank has declined over time as well, so chasing PageRank is less important than adding theme relevant inbound links. Keep in mind that relevant on-page content of your blog or website is even more important than PageRank. If adding more PageRank remains a priority, strong content will attract high PageRank theme relvant links in its own right.

Has the possible new link dampening filter affected PageRank transfer?

It’s thought that newly acquired inbound links are dampened by a Google filter that lowers their link popularity and Google PageRank flow, despite their theme relevance. New links are only able to pass along a percentage of their available linking power, with that percentage increasing gradually over time, as the link ages. Eventually, the entire potential PageRank and link popularity value becomes awarded to the receiving page. The purpose of the new link filter is apparently to lower the benefit of freshly purchased links to their buyers.

Should I make PageRank values an important factor in my linking program?

PageRank concerns should be very low on the list of linking priorities for any website owner. Far more important is linking to pages that offer quality and useful content for your site visitors. Taking care of their needs should have a much higher priority. Also to be given more consideration is providing interesting and informative content on your own site. High quality content will attract inbound links in a natural manner. Those theme relevant links will bring along link popularity value, and of course an additional boost of Google PageRank. Even the lower PR value transfers add up over time, as PageRank is cumulative. The more incoming links, the better, and content is key to attracting them to your Web pages. The Google PageRank will arrive as part of the overall package.

From MYNIC’s website:

The objective of this event is to provide a platform for all communities to have an online presence and learn the benefits of having a .my domain name and a website. They will also be given tips on how to develop an effective website that will enable them to showcase their products, businesses and services to the global community.

One thing i would like to highlight is that participants will get to enjoy 1 year FREE “.my” domain name registration. Terms and conditions apply.

So do drop by if you can and say hello.

Below is a list (we all love those lists don’t we?) of the most common mistakes marketers make with their Pay-Per-Click(PPC) advertising campaigns.

1. Bidding Broad - It’s important to not be lazy when setting up that campaign of yours. Every industry has their giant keywords that bring the most traffic but there are many more variation of keywords that are being searched. The more you focus on the “long tail keywords”, the less you’re going to pay per click. Furthermore, your ads will be ranked higher if the keyword is closer matched. Take your 100 keywords and make them into 200 by just looking at your own web statistics for exact keyword variations people use to search for your product.

2. Fighting for #1 Spot - Most of the time (from my experience), being #1 ad in paid search results is not the brightest strategy, especially if you’re paying a lot per click and the keyword is broad. I found that one of THE best ranks in paid search is being #3 (top left side for Google). Look, most people do research before they buy online. Being #1 could mean that you’ll attract visitors who might have not used the right keyword for their search or ones that are just starting their research and thus … you’ll be remembered last when they are ready to buy.

3. Avoiding Geo-targeting - Even if what you sell works all over US or world, people are still more keen on using a local provider or at least a company that recognizes “their state”. It’s just a psychological thing. Google and other search engines allow you to geo-target your PPC ads by state. Create 50 ads and drop in the state name inside the ad. You will surely get a higher click through rate (CTR) and thus a lower CPC. Furthermore … right from the start, your visitor will know that you “recognize” their location.

4. Losing Relevance on Landing Page - Whatever you say in your ad … repeat it on the landing page where you’re taking the visitor! If you are advertising an 80% sale in your ad, you can be sure that people are looking for it when they land on your landing page. If they don’t see it … they leave. It’s kind of like a scent they pick up on when they read your PPC ad and look for when they land on a page you take them to.

5. Getting Rid of Fraud Networks - Every paid search engine, be it Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, has a network to which they distribute your ads. Unfortunately, many of these networks are fraudulent and do not refer quality traffic. Look into your web statistics and find domain names that bring you traffic with a high bounce rate. Usually it will be around 90%. Google allows you to drop these domains into a “negative excluded sites” folder while Yahoo and others make you call them to address the problem. Doing this will prevent you from paying for garbage traffic.

6. Being Boring - I still see marketers go online, search for a keyword, look at the advertisers (competition) and create ads to fit in with the “community”. Silly right? Unfortunately, very true. Anytime you create a paid ad you MUST look at what is already being said by the advertisers and come up with something unique and yet relevant. It’s a tough one but you have to identify what is unique about you and why people should buy from you. Just make sure that it’s what your target market wants and cares about.

7. Using Telephone Numbers - Using a telephone number within your PPC ad is an eye catcher … that’s all. Not many people will pick up their phone and dial your number if they see your ad. So what you’re doing is just wasting space that can be used for a good message. Tests have been done and this was proven quite a few times … get rid of that phone number in the ad.

8. Not Bidding for Your Name - If your competition is targeting your company name as a keyword I’d suggest taking legal actions (if applicable). In our company we send out those legal letters at least every other month to a competitor. If you’re in a different situation … bidding for your keywords will mean more traffic and another real estate space devoted to you on that search results page. I’d even bid for the company name if there were no competitors at all. You will pay around 0.05 to 0.10 cents per click and see the amount of searches (impressions) that are done for your brand name. A little of extra statistics that shows you the possible growth of your company.

9. Lack of Affiliate Control - The company name is usually the highest converting keyword. Your affiliates know this and advertise under your company’s name in paid search. What happens is that not only do you now have to pay your affiliate for the sale “they” brought in, but you’ve already paid your due with your own advertising methods for that customer to know your name before the search. Be sure to prevent your affiliates advertising in paid search for your company’s name. All they are doing there is collecting the cash from your own advertising.

10. Not Separating Content Match from Search Results - This is a mistake 101. Yes it takes time, but any campaign should separate their regular search advertising from content match. This will allow you to get better reporting, set different cost per click, different budget and overall have a cleaner look at both of these campaigns. Just separate into 2 campaigns. Both will have same keywords but one campaign will be created only for “search” and the other one for “content match”.

11. Ignoring the Seasonal Copy - It works. Including a seasonal discount or a “holiday special” in your ad copy is a great way to increase your CTR and get more sales. Furthermore, your ad will clearly stand out from the rest. Make it a Christmas special, Spring special, Summer blow out, etc. Make it relevant to “today”.

12. Lack of “Exact Tracking” - You must be able to track every visit to your site from PPC advertising by the exact keyword, campaign and ad group used. To do so you can set variables (yourcompany.com/?keyword) or integrate your PPC campaigns with your website analytics software. This is the only way you can really calculate the effectiveness of every keyword you use to get traffic.

13. Paying for Negative Keywords - Google and other search engines allow you to report keywords for which your ads should not be shown. If you’re paying for “broad match” keywords, you’ll see a lot of visits from people who’ve typed your keyword with a word “free” or “stock” or “jobs”. Do you want to pay money for visitors who’re looking to pay $0 for what you sell? Do you want to pay money for visitors who are researching stock info on what you sell? Be sure to use that “negative keyword folder” to get rid of these worthless clicks.

14. Mistaking CTR with conversion rate when testing ads - We love to test and that’s great, but what should marketers look for when choosing which ads to keep and which to delete? Looking only at the CTR (click through rate) is a false indication of a better performing ad. If you add a word “FREE” to your ad, you’ll see a jump in your CTR but what good will it do?

15. Not Using Keywords in Ad Copy - This is a simple one. Put keywords into your ad copy for which you are serving the ad. Not only will your ad be more relevant but the keywords in it are going to be bold.

16. Not Calling Google - Ok, I am not a fan of being a “rat” or telling on someone, but my friend … when it comes to business and playing fair, you have every right to raise a flag when you see a competitor engaging in bad techniques. You’ll notice some of your competitors creating multiple accounts and having 2 ads simultaneously on the Google PPC results page. Google has a policy against this. Call Google and let them know if your competitor is doing anything that’s against the rules of the search engine. You’ll be amazed how quickly they take care of the problem.

17. Avoiding Brand Name Keywords - It is unfortunate, but many companies do not take advantage of their competitors. How do you do this? Bid on their brand / company name. Think about it … anyone searching for your competitor could easily be your customer instead. Why not have your ad show up under that keywords? What if they are still shopping around? What if they are searching for your competitor’s name because they saw their TV or radio ad. Bottom line is, bid on your competitor’s brand names. Most of the time the ROI on those keywords is excellent. If you get a “legal letter” from the competitors and it holds water, I’d suggest comply with it.

Feel free to let me know if you have more to add to the list.

1) Content Network Placement Report

One of the reasons that many advertisers have been hesitant to use the Content Network is the limited information about where their ads appear. The Placement Performance Report for the Content Network opens the curtain for a very revealing look at that data. Among the stats you can see for each page your ads are shown on are the URL, impressions and clicks, CPC, and conversion data.

Anyone that is already using the Content Network has to take a close look at this sort of information. If your reports look anything like mine do, you’ll start excluding irrelevant sites from your campaigns (or reporting them for using hidden text to target keywords not at all related to the site) and start site-targeted campaigns for those that are providing a good ROI. This is a terrific improvement that was sorely needed for the Content Network.

2) Search Query Report

Another new reporting feature that looks promising is the Search Query Report, which lists the search queries that triggered your ads. If you’re using broad match and phrase match within your ad groups, then all you have seen previously in the AdWords reports is the aggregated data for the associated keywords. The new Search Query Report breaks down that data into specific keyword variations for which your ads appeared.

Like the Placement Report, this is another attempt at transparency from Google; unfortunately, it’s not nearly as useful. In the reports that I’ve run, I’ve seen a significant number of impressions listed as “All other queries” rather than the actual query text. According to Google, this is done for “queries that don’t meet [their] privacy and volume requirements.” But I see plenty of queries with just 1 or 2 impressions that have the actual search query listed in the report. And in my server log files, the referrer info shows the keywords used for many of those that Google lumps into “All other queries.” Google’s reason for aggregating the data doesn’t quite make sense to me.

In any case, because the information currently provided by the Search Query Report isn’t quite as thorough as it could be, it’s still important to mine your server log files to extract the keywords yourself.  But Google’s report can help you supplement that effort, especially with the conversion data.

3) IP Address Exclusion

Have you ever had an annoying competitor that kept clicking on your ads regularly? Or maybe you like to use the Search Network but you don’t particularly like getting traffic from AOL. Well, now you can use the IP Exclusion Tool to prevent up to 20 IP address ranges per campaign from seeing your ads. I think this feature may get limited use, but those that do use it will find it extremely useful.

4) Ads Customized to Your Search History

You may be surprised to learn this, but Google is now customizing ads based on your search history.  If you search your own keywords frequently to check up on your ads, you may have noticed that the ads often do not appear in the position where you expect them. The reason for this is that the AdWords engine is taking into account your search history and the ads you clicked, and then trying to show you ads that it thinks will interest you most while giving less weight to ads you don’t really want.  For example, if you’ve been served a few dozen ads for eBay for a variety of different search queries and you haven’t clicked on a single one of them, then you will probably see the position of eBay ads dropping as you continue to perform more searches.  This customization sounds a lot like personalization of organic results, doesn’t it? I believe there are some difference between the two, but there are certainly some similarities also.

The easiest way to get around the customization feature is to use the Ad Preview Tool, which will show you the ads unchanged. Another way is to remove the ‘PREF’ cookie for google.com from your browser. Interestingly, whether or not you’re logged in to your Google account is irrelevant to the way ads are customized. That behavior seems to indicate that ad customization is tied to your cookie rather than to the web history of your account.

Have any of these new features made a difference in the campaigns you manage for yourself or for your clients?