Monthly Archives: March 2010
Social Networking and Internet Marketing Services
With so many social networking websites popping up all over the internet, some of the internet marketing services are feeling the brunt of this increase in social networking. Internet marketing services have long depended on people to come to their services because most people do not have the means to complete this type of optimization; however, with the many social networking websites providing a form of search engine optimization through link building, some internet marketing services have began to lose business.
When one take a close look at the many social networking websites, he or she will realize that they are essentially nothing but a way to build links all over the internet. Although these are not always business links, they can be, which is where the internet marketing services and professional seo services are losing their worth.
Because of the social networking websites, many people have learned what the concept of link building is by building friends networks. Friend networks are a simple way in which people link like minded ideas over a network.
However, one can also create a business website on the social networking websites and advertise their businesses by linking them to other websites on social networking websites. By linking one’s business with other friends, he or she will gain exposure over many other categories because the business is exposed to other friends. Your website is essentially amplified by adding it to other websites, which is ultimately what one is doing when he or she engages link building through his or her own website outside of social networking.
Are SEO Experts necessary?
This has become a driving question over the last few years and especially now that internet search engines have tightened their reins as far as allowing access to their many search parameter, algorithms, and criteria. Many are wondering what the search engines will be looking for now that link building and many other forms of search engine optimization is being left behind. SEO experts will always be in need because none of these parameters will every truly die although they will only be a small fraction of the importance they used to be.
When online search engines began to get tired of the constant abuse they were finding with the aspects of link building and key word stuffing, the online search engines began to change their game. SEO experts were once allowed access to their programming algorithms and criteria which searched websites looking for the most relevant search results. Now, online search engines, especially the more widely used search engines, have pulled the plug on their files.
Online search engines will in the future incorporate more heavy parameters and many think that the online search engines will be able to actually see content in some formulitic manner. Many are saying that websites that didn’t normally have a chance at getting recognized by the online search engines may very well get their chance within the next few years. The internet is becoming more about quality than quantity.
5 Drupal Modules Any Website Owner Must Have
The Drupal CMS (Content Management System) is a great base for any kind of site. You can use it to start a blog, an e-commerce site, a membership site, a forum – anything you want, really. There are hundreds of modules available and the simplicity an openness of the code makes it very easy to create your own modules and functions.
The CMS is easy to update and is quite stable, the only current drawback being that the themes are a bit on the ugly side, due to the coding method being a mix of programmer and designer languages, and not separate as on other platforms like Joomla. Creating your own theme is the only way to get it right, as there are few free and good themes available. But this problem is slowly becoming a thing of the past, as more and more design companies come up with great, cheap or even free Drupal themes that can be easily customized and used for any number of projects.
Views. It is almost impossible to create a good, multi-functional site in Drupal without this module. Traditionally, Drupal has hard-coded the way nodes, categories, lists and tables are presented, and this module allows you to change them however you want. You’ll need it for almost any task – from creating a more customized front page (including personalized home pages for different users) to providing different views of your articles and displaying all sorts of lists, summaries and blocks.
WYSIWYG. By default, Drupal does not come with an integrated WYSIWYG (or visual) editor. You have to install one manually or edit all the pages by inserting all the needed code and tags by yourself. This is terribly inconvenient, hard and slow even if you’re an experienced programmer. The WYSIWYG module allows you to use any visual editor you like (for example, TinyMCE or FCKEditor) and is very easy to install and start using.
CAPTCHA. With the number of spam online nowadays, you absolutely must have some sort of protection, or your site will be overrun with thousands or spammy comments, trackbacks and links, which is very bad for your ranking and user experience. Captcha is a very common and efficient method of protection, and this module will allow you to integrate it on your Drupal site. The module is constantly updated, so any software that manages to crack the captcha will quickly be rendered obsolete and inoperable, provided you update your modules regularly.
Bad Behavior. This module is another type of defense against spammers and hackers. It acts a lot like a firewall, scanning incoming requests and denying those that seem suspicious (coming from known spammer IP’s or through proxies, for example). You can set the level of sensitivity (setting it too high can lead to normal users being denied access and a high server load, so you’ll have to find the best setting for your site). It’s a must have module for any site, and along with the above Captcha module, it will filter 99% of all spam (the remaining 1% being spam comments from real people hired to do that).
XML Sitemap. This module is an indispensable tool for SEO. It gives you the possibility to create sitemaps (automatically or manually) for search engines to index. Creating sitemaps ensures that the SE’s will index all of your pages, and do it correctly. It is really a must have, especially if you have a lot of pages and nodes published and linked all over your site.
The above modules (that’s the right word for plug-ins or extensions in the Drupal community) are must have for almost any website, and you don’t have to worry about them being incompatible – they’re 95% compatible with any other modules you might have, and if one of them doesn’t work, you can just delete it via FTP and the site will resume normal operation, nothing will be changed.