Hub - Anchored Backlinks - A Simple Guide (Part II)

I found out that my hub about anchored backlinks is on the first page of Hubpages's best hubs category and that would probably account for the traffic and the high number of comments. And therefore, a good way to get exposure would be to write good comments at hubs that are on the front page of Hubpages.

Nevertheless I still believe that clear and simple information is very lacking on the web.

Read the hub ..... Anchored Backlinks - A Simple Guide

Hub - Anchored Backlinks - A Simple Guide

I wrote a simple guide to anchored backlinks on Hubpages about 1 week ago. It was in response to a request on the best ways you can get anchored backlinks to your hubs. In the guide, I categorized the different ways you can get anchored backlinks into 3 categories:

• Links from your own sites
• Links you can post on other sites
• Links you can get other people to post on your sites

I go into some detail as to how the links in the various categories can be implemented. The information I presented is rather basic, so I was rather taken aback by the response. To date, there have been 23 responses.

Judging from the responses, I think it might be fair to say that while the information on SEO is there for everybody, what is lacking is a clear and simple way of explaining it so that those not in the field can easily understand it.

Could be a good market there, whether or not the subject is SEO.

Read the hub .... Anchored Backlinks - A Simple Guide

Home Based Business - "Sir, Tell Me How To Make Money On The Internet"

"Sir, tell me how to make money on the Internet"

I have received quite a few such emails from my site about home based businesses. In the beginning, I took the trouble to reply properly, trying my best to outline the extremely complicated business that is making money on the world wide web.

Every single time, I did not receive a second email. Quite obviously, the sender was looking for a one paragraph answer that is probably the equivalent of: go to a certain site, sign on, and make money.

In fact, I actually have an email asking about how the sender can join my site! I had to explain to him that my site is an informational site and that I do not run nor promote a business opportunity.

I am an electronics engineer. I was in school for 3 years and it was only after 10 years of working experience that I consider myself worth a few thousands dollars a month to an employer. That's a total of 13 years before I consider myself having acquired some measure of proficiency.

Many online business opportunities advertise results of a few thousand a month after a few short months. No experience is required to pull it off and we may be talking of working only an hour or 2 per day.

All I can say is: "Wake up, people!"

Internet Marketing - Link Bait

Ever heard of link bait? I have heard of it many times but never quite looked up what it meant. I mean, it sounded like some sort of black hat SEO technique and I have no intention of doing anything like that.

I looked it up recently and found that it is actually a legitimate SEO technique. In short, any content that encourages other webmasters to link to you can be considered link bait - hence the term. :)

The following are the more common link baits:

• Great Content. Write great content, or be an authority on a subject, and webmasters will link to you.

• Humorous, Cute Or Weird Content. If your content is real good, you can get a lot of people linking to you from the social bookmarking sites.
  
  
• Controversial Content. Never fails to attract a lot of debate, traffic and hopefully, backlinks.
  
  
• Tool. An online tool is a good way to get a lot of backlinks. Examples would include html checker, calculators to convert from one unit to another, some kind of graphics generator, etc.

If you use your imagination, there are a lot more ways of link baiting than those listed above. In another post, I would list a lot more ideas and that post can serve as link bait. ;)

Facebook - The First Month

My new profile on Facebook has probably been started for about a month. In that month, I have been relatively active on Facebook, adding friends, playing games, starting a group and generally getting a feel of how things work. And I have to say that it is most probably the most prodigious time waster ever invented!

Having said that, it is also a very effective tool for networking, marketing or simply making friends. In fact, many of the features of the apps and games on Facebook are designed with the viral element in mind, and I can appreciate that under the right conditions, a Facebook app can really spread like wildfire.

It usefulness in Internet marketing is undisputed. On Facebook, it is much easier to reach people with your marketing message than with other mediums. And if you are looking to build a list, just start a group and get your Facebook friends to join.

One thing about Facebook is the diversity of the people you encounter. I could start a group related to Internet marketing and invite all my Facebook friends to join. While I might get a response rate of 10% - 20%, that is achieved with minimal resources and effort.

But if I can find an offer which is of interest to perhaps 50% of the people there, and incorporate a viral element, things could get interesting.

Anyway, just thinking out loud. I'm going to continue to explore this new medium and its possibilities.

Facebook - Join Me On Facebook

I finally gave in to the Facebook craze and started a profile. I actually already a profile which I hardly use and I mainly use it for my offline friends. This new profile is for my online friends and anybody else that I might meet online.

I know you have heard it many times but I am still going to say it anyway.

Please join me on Facebook. This is the link to my Facebook profile. :)

Hub - True Faith

Back about 25 years ago, I had a remarkable experience in a little room on the 3rd floor of Bravo Company. During some recent discussions about God and faith at HubPages.com, I thought back to that experience. Although the experience I had was not a religious one, I realised that that must be what true faith should feel like - an unshakeable belief in something that can stand any test.

Read more....True Faith

SEO - Firefox SEO Tool Problem

I wonder if anybody is having any results from the Firefox SEO Tool plugin that I talked about yesterday. It happens rather inconsistently but when it does happen, the 2 lines generated before each site of the search engine result disappears. It seems to happen with Google.com but not with Google.com.sg. Checked out some sites but can find any such problem mentioned. Seems that at one point, about 3 years ago, there was a problem with country specific Google search engine.

Anyway, I didn't look too hard as I found a solution by accident. When the problem happens, look at the top menu of the web page where it says "Web", "Images", "Maps", News", etc. Click on "Images", and then click back to "Web". That should get the plugin working. At least, it works for me.

And if it still doesn't work, you did enable the plugin, didn't you? ;)

SEO - Firefox SEO Tool

Just found this great plugin for Firefox that's very useful if you are doing any kind of SEO work. For starters, when you search on Google, it gives you the page rank of each site in the results. So basically, you go to Google and do a search for your keyword. When the result is displayed, you can tell, at a glance, the kind of competition you have for your keyword.

In addition, it also gives you a bunch of other information like:

• The number of links pointing to the domain and to the page.
  
• Its Alexa page rank.
• The number of pages from the site that are cached in Google.
• The number of times the page has been bookmarked on Delicious.
• And much more.

In addition, when you visit a website, you can right click on the page and pull up all the preceding info about that page in a window. And if you are looking to build backlinks to your site. the plugin will highlight all links that are nofollow on a website or blog.

It's a dream come true. It makes the post I made about the Page Rank Tool seem so outdated.

And the only drawback? You gotta be running Firefox. With all the major browsers having generally the same features, that shouldn't be too big of an issue.

Checkout the plugin here.

Blogger Categories

Perhaps this post should be titled "Blogger Categories - Not!". I have started with blogger a few months ago. Since then I have also tried Wordpress. Overall, I am quite happy with blogger, finding their interface much more user-friendly than Wordpress. I can't comment more than that as I have only used them at a very basic level and is only now looking into a little bit more detail.

I started on the web some years ago, and I remember my first website. It was called NewbieLand.com. I registered it with Network Solutions but it never went online. Never having a good eye for color and design, I got so bogged down by the site design that I eventually lost interest. I wish I have saved the design. It could probably go down in history as the world's ugliest website. :)

Anyway, things are different now with website templates and website builders being freely available. In fact, I am actually going to use blogs as a website. They have ready made templates, easy to use back end interface, and a content management system. Of course, there are issues regarding images, and programming, but as I don't do too much of those on my sites, that is something I can live with. And I'm sure I can figure out a workwround should the need arise.

Anyway, I can have the website, which can be accessed through the static posts. This can be done through categories, or through pages, in Wordpress. In addition, I can also have a blog on the same site, which can serve as a blog, or serve as an update of the main site's content, or a myraid of other uses.

Using blogs software to develop websites is such an improvement over the usual way. It saves a lot of time, and the blog software provides so much more functionality. Recently, I designed a site in days, and the only website design I had to do was to select the template and modify the template's setting's. I did not even have to write a line of html code!

Having said that, I would like to complain about the lack of categories in blogger. While I am working around it - see the "Categories" on the right - as this blog is meant to serve as a blog and a website, it would really make my day to have categories built into blogger. :)

Site Review - Easy Money Making Ideas

I was expecting just another "make money while you sleep" site. While these types of sites are entertaining at best, they don't do that much to your pocket book. If anything, they tend to have the reverse effect.

Easy Money Making Ideas is not exactly an accurate description of the site. There are no long list of easy money ideas. Nor do you see any recycled reports about chain letters and pyramid schemes. Instead, the webmaster focuses on a select few ideas which can yield good income if done diligently.

The ideas contained in Easy Money Making Ideas are not that easy. But among the money making ideas that really works, and can yield very good money if pursued consistently and over the long term, the ideas on this site can really make you easy money.