March 14th, 2010
What is a link farm?
If I own 10 websites and link them all together do I own a link farm? Will my competition report me? What if all 10 have unique content? Let’s extrapolate that over 200 websites. What if they all have unique, valuable, content but also have links between each other? See where the problem comes in? Many individuals and companies own 10, 20, or maybe hundreds of websites. If someone reports you for owning 20 websites that all link to each other at what point or through what checks are they considered a farm? What if they are all on the same IP address or registered to the same individual or company? We can only hope that content value and link purpose is a big consideration when judging a group of web sites as a farm. It would be great if we knew the answers but Google, for fear of aiding “the bad guys” rarely goes into detail. The best I can find from Google is this Link Schemes article at Google Webmaster Central. I saw a comment once where it was suggested one ask himself “Would I be doing this if the search engines didn’t exist?”. Well, yeah! How else would anyone find my other 50 websites if there was no search engine.
What about link swaps?
Are SEOs moving away from link swaps? One thing I can see in some search results reports is that Google has made some headway with link swaps. In some niche markets I monitor, I see some top sites losing position, sites that counted heavily on link management software for the past few years to build thousands of inbound links. I hope the decline in position for sites that use blatant, irrelevant link swapping continues but it must be done with consideration for context, content, and value of the swap. To penalize a two way link swap just because it is two-way goes against some of the finer points of valuing links. If I link to my local Chamber of Commerce and then join that Chamber at a later date will I be penalized because they now link back? If so then that becomes a real issue. I know search algorithms have evolved but maybe sometimes we need to remind the brainiacs of the simple and obvious.
New attempts to cheat the system.
A new practice I see with some big SEO agencies is 3-way link swaps between those in their portfolio. I’m not talking about a few clients who know each other and trade links. As far as I can tell these are large numbers of 3-way link swaps being managed with an application. It’s a genius idea for these big companies with 100 or more SEO clients where they can manage links without any two-way trades. I was able to detect this because of their public portfolio pages but imagine the really bright ones that don’t offer a portfolio page. If they keep the swaps between relevant markets then this might just be the one that works. Once they build a reputation of “page one results” then it becomes perpetual and they could really dominate the SEO field with this tactic. One caveat for their clients is that once they stop paying that marketing company they potentially lose two dozen or more quality links. It’s a little scary for the little guys (me).
Remember, Bing Search is not too far behind, if it doesn’t work with Google then it won’t be long before it doesn’t work with Bing.
What do you think, do link exchanges still make sense? Have you noticed some high-tech link farms? Should we report SPAM to Google?
Tags: Bing, Google, Link Farms, Link Swap
Posted in Link Building | No Comments »
March 9th, 2010
Guess what? WordPress rocks on Windows Server 2008 and IIS7. Congratulation to Microsoft for the effort. If you didn’t know Microsoft created the FastCGI component to address previous performance issues with PHP on Windows. At the same time Zend worked to make PHP more stable on Windows. The two combined to make reliable and high performance PHP on Windows. FastCGI support is now built in to Windows Server 2008. There is plenty of documentation available for setting everything up manually but let me tell you this, don’t waste your time. Microsoft is really getting serious about PHP on Windows. They have created the Web Platform Installer 2.0 and that’s all you really need. Once you install the Web Platform Installer you can run it and choose to install applications like WordPress and Joomla. The installer checks to see if you have the necessary components, if you don’t then it downloads and installs them. This includes PHP, MySQL, and the application, like WordPress. It also installs an IIS URL ReWrite module so you can have pretty permalinks for your WordPress Blog. For novice or inexperienced Windows server admins I recommend you let the Platform Installer take care of everything for you.
For advanced users I will warn you that, at the time of my last install you could not change the default install path for MySql or PHP. This is easy to get around, just download and install PHP and MySql before you use the Platform Installer for the first time to set up WordPress. The Platform Installer will recognize your installations. Happy Blogging.
Almost forgot, here is how you create 301 redirects on Windows Server 2008 (and server 2003 with IIS6) if you are migrating from an existing site to a CMS platform.
Tags: IIS7, Joomla, MySQL, PHP, windows server 2008, WordPress
Posted in Web Hosting, Web Platforms | No Comments »
March 4th, 2010
Your markup should have meaning. Markup your content appropriately (e.g. put your address and phone number in the address element) and it becomes much more readable to search engines and other software used for data extraction. Using only div and span elements leaves much to be desired, semantically speaking. These elements are certainly indispensable, however, there are some cases where there are more meaningful elements to use. For example:
- Use
h1 as your page title; use h2 and on appropriately as sub-headings on the page. This provides an outline of your document.
- Use lists (
dl, ol, ul) instead of manually placing numbers or bullets.
- Use
address for any contact information on your page, including physical address, email address, phone numbers, and whatever else you would consider to be contact info.
- Use
table on data best represented in rows and columns. Use thead and th to markup the column headings and tbody for the data itself.
Check the HTML spec for additional meaningful elements and get to work! 
You can use the W3′s handy Semantic Data Extractor tool to test your new semantic web site to give you an idea of how it would be seen by software.
That does it for now. See you next time! Until then, read SEO and Validation.
Tags: Data Extraction, Semantic Markup, Semantics, Tips, Web Standards, XHTML
Posted in Web Standards | 2 Comments »
March 3rd, 2010
Hola! It’s been a while. I’ve got another gripe, and this time it’s with Flash embed code!
Most of the embed code I see for Flash movies is invalid, usually containing the non-existent embed element or some-such. Even the code provided by YouTube for embedding videos contains embed. This can easily be thrown out and will—probably most of the time—instantly make your code valid.
Here’s an example (in XHTML) of a valid Flash embed that works in at least IE6+, Firefox, and Safari:
<object data="flash.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="320" height="240">
<param name="movie" value="flash.swf" />
</object>
That’s all there is to it. Adjust the parameters and add additional param elements as necessary. If your Flash movie requires variables, just add an extra param as follows:
<param name="flashvars" value="arg1=foo&arg2=bar" />
If you place additional elements inside the object element, it will act as a fallback, displaying if the Flash plugin isn’t installed. For example:
<object data="flash.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="320" height="240">
<param name="movie" value="flash.swf" />
<img src="fallback.jpg" alt="Flash Didn't Load!" />
</object>
That’s all for now. Happy coding!
Tags: Embed Code, Flash, HTML, Markup, Tips, Validation, W3C, Web Standards, XHTML
Posted in Web Standards | No Comments »
February 18th, 2010
I see a lot of complaints from SEO and Internet Marketing agencies about the hoops they jump through to get Windows Server admins or hosts to create 301 redirects for clients. It is really not difficult at all. I decided to outline the steps so the next time one of you has an issue with a web host you can just copy this info and send it to them or link to it 
That might make them feel pretty dumb, but it will get the job done.
IIS6:
Redirect a single file.
- Open IIS Manager and locate the website
- Right click the file you want to redirect and choose properties
- Change the selector to “A Redirection to a URL”
- In the “Redirect To:” box type the new URL
- Put a check in “A permanent redirection for this resource” (this results in an HTTP status code of: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently)
That’s it!
Redirect an entire domain name – website.
- Open IIS Manager and locate the website
- Right click the Website you want to redirect and choose properties
- Select the “Home Directory Tab”
- Change the selector to “A Redirection to a URL”
- In the “Redirect To:” box type the new URL
- Put a check in “A permanent redirection for this resource” (this results in an HTTP status code of: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently)
OPTIONAL: Check “The exact URL entered above” if you want all pages redirected to the home page of the new domain rather than relative pages in the new domain.
IIS 7:
Redirect a single file.
- Open IIS Manager and locate the website under sites
- Right click the website and choose “switch to content view”
- In the right hand pane locate the file you want to redirect
- Right click the file and choose “switch to features view”
- Important! Verify that it shows the correct file name at the top of the screen
- Under the IIS section open “HTTP Redirect”
- Put a check in “Redirect requests to this destination” and type in the new URL
- Change the status code to “Permanent 301″
- Click Apply (this results in an HTTP status code of: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently)
That’s it!
Redirect an entire domain name – web site.
- Open IIS Manager and locate the website under sites
- Important! Verify that it shows the correct website name at the top of the screen
- Under the IIS section open “HTTP Redirect”
- Put a check in “Redirect requests to this destination” and type in the new URL
- Change the status code to “Permanent 301″
- Click Apply (this results in an HTTP status code of: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently)
OPTIONAL: Check the “redirect all requests to exact destination (instead of relative to destination)”
New in IIS 7:
For those that understand XML and the web.config file you can add a line similar to the following in the <configuration> section rather than using IIS Manager:
Domain redirect:
<system.webServer>
<httpRedirect enabled=”true” destination=”http://www.my-new-site.com” httpResponseStatus=”Permanent” />
</system.webServer>
File Redirect:
<location path=”my-old-file.htm”>
<system.webServer>
<httpRedirect enabled=”true” destination=”http://www.new-domain.com/my-new-file.htm” exactDestination=”true” httpResponseStatus=”Permanent” />
</system.webServer>
</location>
—
* copy and pasting the web.config examples could result in the wrong quotes which will cause an error. Re-type your quotes.
Tags: 301 redirect, IIS Manager, IIS6, IIS7, web.config
Posted in Web Hosting, Web Platforms | 3 Comments »
