Soon after discussing the use of framesets by newly relaunched LeapFish I received a question from dozen of readers and visitors asking me how they can prevent their website from “being framed” by other websites.

To prevent your website from being from being viewable in a frame of another website you can add the piece of the following code just above tag on your website:

Before you do it you need to really be sure it is what you want it. There are many good websites out there that use frames to view your website- StumbleUpon is one of those good sites.

The above code also relies on whether or not your visitors browser is configured to support Javascript, you would be surprise how many users out there do not enable Javascript support on their browsers.

The above Javascript code “forses” user’s browser to open your page in it’s own window. Before my previous post I have never considered using in on my website and still do not think there are any huge benefits implementing it.

I would like to hear what you have to say. What are the reasons for using the above code? If you don’t recommend to use it – why not?

Of course I would also love to hear about any other way to “kill frames” – please share them in the comments if you know any.Similar Posts:

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A mention by US Today, stream of hundreds of Tweets , mentioned by hundreds of blogs, a “cutting edge” video on youtube- LeapFish.com relaunch can certainly be seen as enormous success, except…

The leading technology blogs continue to give LeapFish.com nothing short of a “cold shoulder”.

All the buzz surrounding the relaunch is focused on how sexy and nice looking the new website is, no one seems to be trying to “flip beyond the cover page”.

I would like to write about LeapFish’s implementation of framesets on their pages that may actually spook an unseasoned Internet user into believing that they are visiting unsecured websites.

If you search LeapFish for “Read Write Web” for example, the website returns nice clean results with the most relevant link in number one position:

Considering the average user expectation, most of us would expect to land on http://www.readwriteweb.com/ – it is however not the case with LeapFish. After clicking the the link you end up on a nice lookng LeapFish page which embeds (via frameset) the content from The Read Write Web and the LeapFish bar at the bottom of the page:

While visitors to The Read Write Web may not care at all. Visitors to websites like Amazon can get confused and and may be led to believe that shopping on Amazon and other websites are no longer secure. Let me show you an example of what I mean. The following shot is of my Amazon account page while accessing the website directly (typing http://www.amazon.com into my browser):

The HTTPS as well as the lock icon are the basic signs by which an average internet can identify whether or not website is secure.

Now the screenshot of the same page but via frameset on LeapFish.com:

Both HTTPS and lock icons are missing. And the URL clearly says you are still on LeapFish.com. Even though I consider myself an above average Internet user, before I logged into my Amazon account via the frameset on LeapFish I had to check the code of the page first:

I wanted to know if my Amazon login info is safe with LeapFish. How many users do you think will do that?

Potential Issues With Google?

AdSense users can tell you how tough Google is when it comes to enforcing terms and condition and how easy it is to get banned. Google Search API TOS do not address the use framesets- so if you know if use of framesets allowed please enlighten me:

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WordPress, being one of the most popular publishing platforms and content management system also is the most frequent target for spammers. Google reacts quickly to identify the hacked sites – as a result your traffic and sales can drastically drop. The good news is that Google will try to make reasonable attempts to notify webmasters about potential problems via Google Webmasters Tools. However if you do not act quickly, it can be truly a devastating blow to your online presence.

So how do you prepare yourself for the event such as your blog being hacked by injecting code into your theme files or even database? Here are the steps that I would recommend to anyone using WordPress as their publishing platform or CMS:

• Register with Google Webmasters Tools. Not only Google Webmasters Tools can be useful in identifying the attack. You can also use the tools to resubmit your website for reconsideration once your dealt with threat and cleaned up the mess.
• Create Google alerts to notify you of a possible threat. While it is impossible to foresee every possible spam keyword you can create alert for the most common ones such as “viagra” or “port”. How do you create such an alert? Simple. Lets presume your domain is “yourdomain.com” your Google alert the will be for the search query “viagra site:yourdomain.com”. Of course relying on Google Alerts alone is not a good idea.
• Check the code yourself. It does not really take that much- right click your mouth and view the page source. Generally when attack is carried out the code is injected somewhere in common files and will be visible on every page of your website.
• If you modify your theme yourself- keep the back up of the version that includes your most recent updates. It is always good idea to keep a back up of your theme files no matter what.
• Keep the latest back up of your database. I find that WordPress Database Backup Plugin (HT: Andy Beard) – is one of the most useful plugin to have. You can tell the plugin to mail you the SQL file to the e-mail of your choice on a regular basis. I am doing it on a daily basis if you publish many posts per day you can chose for the back up to be made every couple of hours.
• Do not broadcast to the world the version of WordPress you are using. I have seen WordPress theme developers inserting a code that displays the current version of WordPress, most of the time it that code is found in the header.php file loog for the code and remove it. There is no reason for anyone to know what version you are using.
• Keep your WordPress and plugins updated. Current version of WordPress allows one click updates from withing your dashboard- there is really no excuse for us any longer.
• Keep your files in a directory that no one besides you knows about it. You can install or move your WordPres files to a directory that only you will know about- I will try elaborate on it in future especially on how to move your WordPress to another “secret” directory.

I have cleaned several WordPress installations for my friends over the period of last year. The hacker attack can be devastating if your are not prepared to deal with it. And yes it can happen to any one- even to the best of geeks.Similar Posts:

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Within minutes of publishing last post I had a visitor- a very pissed off visitor. Who managed to spew his venom on Bill Hartzer’s blog as well (Bill my apologies for the “nofollow” attribute, I do trust your website- I hate to give LeapFish any juice):

While I can speculate who this “Anonymous” may have been- the only certain fact I know is that he came to read the post via Twitter after an entry was posted in my account that announcing that I have written the post.

There is no point to communicate with anonymous trolls like that. Most of the time they have no interest to hear what you have to say. They can’t contain their anger and spew their venom using bogus names along with bogus e-mails. I find it difficult to describe what do I feel about trolls like that- fortunately there are people out there who have their way with words (HT: Lord Matt) and I can’t agree more!

As sad as it is their behavior cast more shadow of suspicion and does more damage to themselves and the interests they try to defend and the companies they work for. Sad really but from now on……..

NO TROLLS ALLOWED!

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After rather a painful year LeapFish.com- a meta search aggregator site just like Dogpile.com or Mamma.com, is ready to launch what they call it “LeapFish 2.0″- claiming that it will solve the real-time search.

Believe it or not I, of all people, was on of the “few privileged” to view their “test” products. However I could not keep quiet about my discovery:

And of course LeapFish killed that subdomain few minutes after my “Twitter broadcast”. Did they find my viewing of their new product not welcomed? Or is it also possible I “tuned in” at the end of the exhibit of their product to their supporters? I will never find out.

The new design has many flaws and way too many Ajax widgets- it felt as I was looking at the dashboard of WordPress. It will cause a huge load time issues if released as it was seen by me yesterday. Sometimes less means more. The notion that LeapFish will solve the real-time search is a myth to say the least. It is no briner that search engine gurus like Danny Sullivan would never consider LeapFish as contender to solve the real-time search problems.

If you have never heard of LeapFish.com before here is a short history rundown…..

LeapFish launched about a year ago and was given a somewhat cold shoulder by TechChrunch. Instead of trying to appeal to the hearts and minds of the technology and online marketing crowd they were focused on their business more and got caught with their “pants down” by the same TechChrunch. After firing the employee who engage in the alleged click fraud described by TechChrunch, the leapfish CEO still tried to blame TechChurnch for disliking LeapFish:

I am disappointed at this post by you and by TechCrunch. You never contacted us to verify the information you posted or even checked to see what our position was as a company around such behavior before you published. You apparently called in but didn’t make the effort of speaking with someone about this. Frankly put, I find your post’s title and content irresponsible and distasteful. – Ben Behrouzi, CEO of LeapFish (you can find the full text of his rebuttal at http://www.benbehrouzi.org/2009/02/04/leapfish-gets-second-lashing-from-techcrunc/ - apologies to my readers for not providing a click-able link).

Dealing with criticism in an adult matter is not a virtue of LeapFish, instead CEO of LeapFish decided to go on a domain shopping spree – threatening to expose the “real’ Vlad Zablotskyy. I have to say that I am surprised they never threatened to sue TechChrunch- or Michael Arrington just laughed at the threat if they did in fact receive one. However is I was Robin Wauters I would make sure I own forever the .org .net and other variations of his name.

But the past is just that- the past. The true test for the company will be the future and in particular next few weeks and months. The first advertisers and investors are about to reach their first anniversary and their credit cards will be charged the renewal fee- it will trigger many to reexamine their “investement” in LeapFish. It would be in LeapFish best interest to have as few disappointed “investors” and “advertisers” as possible, and the only way to do so is to send your advertiser top quality traffic. While they may have been successful in selling their inventory (keywords)- the increase in traffic was and is disproportionately slow. Even the most favorable statistics from Compete.com (showing LeapFish as having almost 500,000 visitors in September)- do not justify an investment of $1,000+. Especially if LeapFish.com indeed has “hundreds” of advertisers in their system. I will do some math about LeapFish statistics in the upcoming posts. I doubt however the launch of their new product will stop the upcoming wave of dissatisfied clients- for LeapFish’s own sake and their future I hope I am wrong. Nor do I think this upcoming launch will bring the necessary volume of traffic to justify the price of advertising. Again I hope LeapFish proves me and other critics wrong for their own good.

If they don’t take drastic measures to purchase or otherwise increase traffic to their site- LeapFish, or at least their business model, will not survive beyond 2009.

Disclosure: Everything written above is my personal opinion and my interpretation of events as I see them. You are free to form your own opinion which may or may not agree with the above post. You are however asked to show some manners (aka “being polite”) if you decide to leave comment below. The comments from LeapFish management will be moderated and may be removed if I find them inappropriate.Similar Posts:

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A while back I wrote an article pointing out one of the features available to webmasters at Google Webmaster Central – ability to set a custom crawl rate. At the time I thought it was an outstanding idea. It is still is a good solution should googlebot visit your site too often causing issues with bandwidth (even though I have never heard of such scenario).

Webmasters however should exercise caution when increasing the crawl rate via Google Webmaster Central. A few weeks ago I was involved in an upgrade of a website with 2000+ pages. One of the side effects of the upgrade was that we ended up with 2000+ new urls. Unfortunately there was no easy way to implement 2000+ redirects on the website. But, since most of the traffic came from PPC campaigns, we decided to let Google re-index the website on it’s own. Exception was of course that we used Google Webmaster Central to implement request for a more frequent crawl by Google. We increased the crawl rate by some 3000% only to receive the following notice a few days later:

Dear Webmaster,

Google has algorithms that determine how much to crawl each site. Our goal is to crawl as many page from your site, http://www.xxxxx.com/, as we can without overwhelming your server’s bandwidth.

For your site, http://www.xxxxx.com/, you have set a very low crawl rate which is preventing us from accessing your great content. We recommend you set the crawl rate option to “Let Google determine my default”, or, if you prefer to maintain a custom setting, increasing the rate.

Thanks,

The Google Web Crawling Team

In fact the Google had not indexed a single URL from the new sitemap. Not even the home page (which is/was the strongest page of the website) was re-indexed. So we followed Google’s instruction and within 24 hours our new pages began to appear in the index.

So if you are thinking of increasing the crawl rate in Google Webmaster Central – exercise caution or you may run the risk of not increasing the the crawl rate enough for Google to do it’s job. Similar Posts:

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Leap Fish CEO Ben Behrouzi has sent several threats to my attorney, accusing me to stalking his employees sending him personal threats, phishing and finally today accusing me to have authored negative reviews on Alexa. Here is the copy of his e-mail:

Karl,

Fake negative reviews on Alexa.com by a fellow that sounds awfully like our friend J

Below you will find a screenshot of 2 reviews starting from the top. The next screen shot you will see the author details of one of the reviews. The authors name is Mark Mark, which obviously is not real, but probably is pointed at Mark Kithcart our Director of Marketing… Lastly, you will find a 3rd screen shot where our friend mentions on twitter that an Alexa negative review was successfully made online. With pride mind you. Coincidentally his twitter remark and the recent Alexa negative review took place within 1 hour of each other according to Alexa. And he was the first to report it on twitter? Talk about real time news J Added to the list, clearly he is digging a bigger hole for himself with these back alley mob activities.

The following two images Behrouzi is referring to in his e-mail:

image001
image002
image003

Ben, I have always put my name to everything I ever said about your companies. And in my opinion they are crap. I do not need Alexa to tell you that, Ben. So go ahead sue me, but for goodness sake stop harassing me and my attorney!

Update: If my memory serves me well, there were few other bloggers who, after being encouraged by me left reviews with Alexa. Alexa have since removed those reviews as well. Similar Posts:

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I am not a huge fan of Alexa traffic statistics. For the smaller sites Alexa’s statistics are completely irrelevant. For the last few months I have been helping a friend of mine with their website – TheChocolateBelles.com. Alexa is showing that site to have less traffic than Go-Beyond-MLS.com. The reality however is that The Chocolate Belles receives 20 times of traffic comparing to the traffic to this blog.

One of the way to improve their relevancy is to get more people to use their toolbar. So the move to allow Facebook and Twitter users to share their statistics with their friends and followers maybe in the right direction. After all Twitter and Facebook are among the most popular websites today:

Alexa recently re-introduced site reviews has not attracted needed attention and have indeed become a place for shameless astroturfing for some but mostly a place for the irrelevant rant and plain spam for others.

Introduction if the new sharing widget will definitely spark a lot of attention and traffic. But will Alexa statistics be anymore relevant? Time will show.Similar Posts:

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Not so long ago Janet Meiners Thaeler graciously agreed to write a guest post for my blog. She was extremely busy writing her book and I would understand if she declined my invitation to write a blog post for Go Beyond MLS.

Today I am happy to let you know that Janet’s Book is now available on Amazon.com and it is available in print and in digital format for Kindle users- I Need a Killer Press Release–Now What???: A Guide to Online PR

Who may be interested in Janet’s Book?

If you are the owner of small to mid-size business and would like to learn the power of online press releases you need this book. This book will teach you how to capture attention of news publications and deliver online visibility your business needs.

Janet has written hundreds of press releases for businesses across spectrum of niches, you can follow her work at http://www.newspapergrl.com/ and I hope you seriously consider using her services the next time you are ready to write a press release.Similar Posts:

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Links

A Brief Tale Of Sleaze- LeapFish should take Rob Shore’s advise and never lie to their potential clients.

Three Scams and Rip-Offs to Report – Kit Eliot describes his “encounter” with LeapFish.

Leapfish Review – Is LeapFish.com an opportunity, scam, or just another meta search site?- short but to the point rundown about advertising on LeapFish- needless to say the author passes on the opportunity to advertise or invest in LeapFIsh.

Leapfish: Google Competitor or Flash In The Pan?- i think it is rather funny, or insane, to think that LeapFish can actually be viewed as Google’s competitor. But it sure makes a good headline. Well put article, a must read.

LeapFish Affiliate Program. Can Giveaways Keep It Afloat?- a post by yours truly. I thought it was a mistake to link their affiliate program to the basic function of their website- the search function. Their widgets also contain SEO friendly links back to their website- my conclusion their affiliate program is really a linking scheme to gain rankings in search engines.

Leapfish is a scam…maybe?- Patrick Sullivan Jr is offering his opinion about leapfish. The blog have attracted number of comments- well worth reading.

LeapFish Sucks- a take on LeapFish by Cole Pannell- a web designer and a SEO professional.

LeapFish.com advertisers beware – yet another account of dealing with LeapFish sale people.

Leapfish.com is it worth it? A rip off? Let the numbers do the talking.- the numbers indeed can do the talking, something LeapFish is terribly afraid of.Similar Posts:

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A while back, hen I’ve heard about development of LeadPress, I was both happy and skeptical about the final product. Happy because a dear friend of mine was the mastermind behind the project. Skeptical because I knew very little how the final product will look like. All I knew is that LeadPress will be based on WordPress, my favorite blogging and content management software. Of course the question I had about the future LeadPress was how can it benefit mortgage professionals versus just using your own WordPress installation.

Now that LeadPress is live, I am certain it will become an ultimate solution for lead generation for mortgage professionals. LeadPress is far from just another WordPress. While it uses the flexibility and power of WordPress it is specifically designed to meet the needs of mortgage professionals.

Video Tour of LeadPress

Watch the video tour of some key features of LeadPress.

With LeadPress you are in control of your website’s lead generating capabilities and no third part lead generating companies get a piece of the action.

Disclosure: I am an active affiliate with LeadPress. If you sign up with LeadPress using the links in the above portion of this post, I will receive a commission for referring you to LeadPress. If for some reason you would not want me to earn this commission, here is direct link to LeadPress: http://leadpress.com/Similar Posts:

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Have you ever considered allowing your client to schedule appointments with you? In search for such solution for my and for my friends and clients websites I came across Appointy, a Florida based startup. You can see the implementation of Appointy scheduling feature on my other website where I allow clients to reserve my interpreting and translating services online.

While Appointy offers an easy integration for WordPress websites via a plugin, their system can be implemented just on about any website through an “ifame” code.

Appointy comes “PayPal ready” allowing you to charge a fee for the appointment at the time of scheduling- either full amount or partial. You are of course free to not charge your clients for appointments, as it would be the case with most real estate agents I know. But if you would like to prevent “no shows”, you might want to implement a minimal fee refundable at the time of the appointment.

Currently Appointy offers four different plans:

• FREE plan- this basic plan has some limits and you have no option to charge your clients for the appointment at the time of scheduling. Appointy also will inject some ads into your calendar – hey they need to pay their engineers and developers.
• PLUS plan comes at $9.99 per moth and is ad free but it does not allow you for branding nor accepting pre-payments.
• PRO plan will set you back about $19.99 per month- the plan I am looking forward to use. You can brand your calendar and accept pre-payments with this plan. This plan includes e-mail marketing tool that allows you to send different e-mails to confirm, remind or even cancel the appointments. The best thing of course that when you sing up for Appointy, you get to try this plan absolutely free for 30 days.
• Finally the BUSINESS plan wich comes at $39.99 is the top level plan from Appointy. I would recommend this plan for businesses that have several staff members accepting appointments, the plan allows a separate logins for administrator and for the staff.

If you are looking for a solution that would allow your clients to book an appointment with you right on your website, Appointy should be given frist consideration.

As I have pointed out, I am using Appointy myself, although I am only beginning to test many of it’s features and probably have not seen yet what Appointy can really do for my business. I will report on the results about one month from now, so stay tuned.Similar Posts:

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I have always been a huge fan of Google Local Business Center- a free way to drive foot traffic to your business. When you list your business with Google Local Business Center, you business is likely to show up alongside a Google map for certain search terms. Let say you need to find a dentist in Jackson, NJ- all the listings along the map are result of dentist offices taking advantage of Google Local Business center. I have written in the past how a friend of mind noticed increase of visitors to her shop after we listed her business in Google Local Business Center.
I also wanted to see more statistics and reporting inside the Business Center account. My wishes have finally came ture. It appears that Google is now providing some insightful statistics for your business’ local ads and coupons associated with your listing. Just go to your account and you should see a link to your report as shown in the image to your right.

The port shows the graph of impressions and actions associated with your business:

If you are a business owner and are looking to drive “foot traffic” to you store or business location you should definitely look into taking advantage of Google Local Business Ads- it is absolutely free!Similar Posts:

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If, over the period of last few days, you noticed a sudden increase in the number of subscribers to your blog reported by Feedburner, there is a simple explanation – now Feedburner includes the number of subscribers to your Friendfeed:

For many bloggers, especially the ones that are active on FriendFeed, this can translate into a significant increase of readership.

For many blogs out there, the number of subscribers is an important factor in determining the price for advertising and the value of the blog. Needless to say the Feedburners decision to include FriendFeed subscribers may help to diminish the value of readership on blogs.

For example two days ago the number of subscribers shown for Go Beyond MLS was in 90s – today that number is 326 which includes the subscriptions to my FriendFeed.

I would have been pleased with such increase of the number of subscribers if Go Beyond MLS was the only blog I author. Unfortunately majority of FriendFeed subscribers tend to gravitate around SageBlogger.com as well as my other blogs. But for the most part the interaction remains within FriendFeed itself.

Id don’t find the new numbers to be accurate nor helpful. Do you?Similar Posts:

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As of today you can subscribe to Go Beyond MLS using Amazon’s Kindle, or try it out for 14 days – the free trial.

If you would like to know how to publish your blog to Kindle as well, visit Kindle Blog Publishing for details. It takes about 10 minutes to set set your blog and once approved, Kindle users can subscribe to your blog using their device.

Now, am I going to get any subscribers? Very unlikely, but of course I would be grateful to anyone who would consider subscribing to my blog that way. I know however many outstanding real estate blogs that probably can end up with hundreds if not thousands of users. Giuve it a spin, it’s does not cost you anything and can bring some extra cash into your pocket.Similar Posts:

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If you followed my blog lately you know that a friend of mine, Trace Richardson is faced with anonymous coward who posted false and defamatory information about Trace’s company LeadPress on Ripoffreport.com.

I would like to thank every one who linked to my articles from two weeks ago, linked to Trace’s websites and online profiles, stumbled, mixed, propelled, tweeted, retweeted and otherwise tried to promote posts about Trace’s predicament. Thanks to you you we are beginning to see some results – http://tracerichardson.com/ now ranks number one on Google for “Trace Richardson” and rightly so!

Trace however still can use your help. In my previous post I listed a code which you can copy and paste into your articles. Please consider helping Trace. Do not let a fellow blogger to be attacked by these faceless cowards!Similar Posts:

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It has been long time since I have reviewed a real estate website. When I was contacted by Crossroads Realty to review their website, I knew that I have an opportunity to offer some spotlight to another New Jersey business. But I also hope that suggestions I am about to offer will be welcomed and used to improve their website and their Internet marketing efforts.

Website’s usability – user’s prospective…

When you visit Crossroads Realty’s website, it is hard to be confused as to where you are. You know immediately that you are on website of a real estate firm. It is very easy to search for properties or if you prefer you can search real estate agents.

Crossroads Realty website offers visitors to register a user account where they can save and organize the listings they are interested in- good feature for those of us whose browser’s favorites are miles long.

If there were any improvements to be made to the website, I would highly recommend adding additional “sharing” channels for visitors to use. Currently visitors can share listings with their friends via e-mail.

But there is no option to share listings (or agent profiles) on social networking website like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and many others. There are many solutions that will allow you sharing the content of your website on social networking website- ShareThis, AdThins, AdToAny just to name a few. Most of these solutions offer a simple “copy and paste” implementation.

Marketing, SEO/SEM suggestions…
The current state of traffic.
Quick comparison to another local real estate websites reveals that although Crossroads Realty ties with Diane Turton Realtors – it has some catching up to do with Gloria Nilson’s website:

Pay Per Click advertising…
It appears that Crossroads Realty has reduced pay per click advertising budget in October 2008:

Incoming Links…
Search engine optimization requires a long term effort and dedication. But it of course has a potential to bring great results. One of the first thing I look analyzing a website is the amount and quality of incoming links. Comparing to the other two above mentioned real estate websites (Diane Turton and Gloria Nilson) Crossroads Realty has half the number of incoming links (source: Yahoo! Site Explorer). Use online press release distribution services such as PRWeb.com can help to increase incoming links as different publishers may feature company’s press releases.

In addition I would recommend that Crossroads Realty would start a corporate blog and increase presence and interaction on social media websites. Crossroads is poisoned well against the competitors, improving on certain aspects of online marketing can dramatically improve their visibility and reach online.

Disclosures: I briefly worked for Diane Turton Relators in the past under the management of Margaret Ann Cesta -currently the office manager of Crossroads Realty in Brick, NJ.Similar Posts:

• Diane Turton, Realtors- NJ Website Review.
• Pay Per Call- Phone Leads over the Internet.
• Great Website but no visitors?
• Working With Hittail Suggestions: Short Guide For Real Estate Agents
• Your Website Is Useless If It Has No Visitors: PPC Advertising and Real Estate
• New Jersey Realtors Are Beginning To Use Pay Per Call

A while back I have written a post about a friend of mine Trace Richardson, who had been subjected a to vicious attack on RipoffReport.com. Due to the nature of Ripoffreport.com and the ability to post anonymously, it is difficult to come to conclusion who is behind these attacks. But it doesn’t really matter who is writing these posts about Trace on Ripoffreport.com. What matters is that any one can be subjected to such underhanded attacks. It is still wonder to me that no one used Ripoffreport.com to post false allegations about my interpreting and translating business. But to be completely honest I see it coming and will not be surprised at all to see the allegations popping up after I publish this post.

Some of the complaints posted on Ripoffreport.com are aimed at LeadPress, a company founded by Trace. The interesting part of it is that LeadPress has not yet officially launched and as far as I know there is not a single paying client as of today. Yet the lies about Trace continue to be posted on Ripoffreport…

The unfortunate effect that Ripoffreport.com benefits from is it’s ability to rise in the search engines. Since Rioffreport.com does not provide a way to address the false accusation, the only other option that we have to our disposal is to try outrank them for the keywords they are ranking.

I would like to thank Matthew Brown (aka Lord Matt) who wrote about Trace Richardson on his blog after my first post with the call to link to Trace’s online profiles.

If you would like to help trace, use the code provided below in this post to links to Trace’s profiles and pages. I have chosen these particular pages about Trace around the Interned because I feel they have the best chance to beat Ripoffreport. Feel free to copy and paste the code when you write a post, but if you think there are other pages that can be brought to the top of the search results fee free to link to them as well. Here are the links:
Trace Richardson on LeadPress

Trace Richardson on BrokerScience

Trace Richardson on Google

Trace Richardson on Twitter

Trace Richardson on YouTube

Trace Richardson on Flickr

Trace Richardson on Diigo

Trace Richardson on Tumblr

Trace Richardson on Vimeo

Trace Richardson on FriendFeed

Trace Richardson on IntenseDebate

Trace Richardson on MyBlogLog

Trace Richardson on Naymz

Trace Richardson on Technorati

Trace Richardson on Delicious

Trace Richardson on Digg

Trace Richardson on Facebook

Trace Richardson on LinkedIn

Trace Richardson on Bebo

Trace Richardson on Pandora

Trace Richardson on Blip.FM

Trace Richardson on Blip.TV

Trace Richardson on Virb

Trace Richardson on ActiveRain

Trace Richardson on Disqus

Trace Richardson on Yelp

Trace Richardson on DailyMotion

Trace Richardson on Plaxo

Trace Richardson on Seesmic

Trace Richardson on StumbleUpon

Trace Richardson on Pipl

Trace Richardson on Vator.tv

Trace Richardson on Last.FM

Trace Richardson on Viddler

Trace Richardson on Zillow

Trace Richardson on Trulia

And here is the code, again please feel free to modify the code by adding the links that you think will help Trace:

Trackbacks that did not show via bot communication :
LeadPress get’s bad press, it’s fake and I think I know why.
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• Moving To IntenseDebate

Guest Blogger: Cole Pannell

Website: The Banson Pro

Title tags are arguably the most important on-page SEO factor for any web page. When utilized properly, they can really help to boost your site in the SERPs. But when they are abused or used wrongfully, the impact could be fatal.

For those of you who don’t know, a title tag is the actual title of a document or web page. It is the text content contained within the section of the HTML code. You can always tell the title tag of a webpage by looking at the upper-most bar of your web browser window, as the title of the document will always be shown there.

Also, title tags give the actual “name” of any web page that is displayed in the search engine results pages or SERPs. Not only are they read by the human reader, they are also read by the search engines as well.

As a general rule, you want to use no more than 70 characters for the entire length of your title tag (spaces included). And you will want to use no more than 2 keywords in any title tag. It is very important not to keyword-stuff your title, like many webmasters do. But we will get to that in a minute.

Using too many words can actually dilute the keyword effect of your title. So try to keep the “filler” words down to a minimum. Try to use basic symbols (dash, underscore, comma, or the pipe symbol “|”) to break-up your title, instead of words like “the, and, of, by,” etc.

A good title tag should follow a similar format to this: “keyword1 | keyword2 | company name” or “company name – keyword1 – keyword2”. If you have more than 2 keywords you are targeting (as well do) then you should create separate pages and implement unique title tags for those pages and keywords.

Please remember to include the company name or actual website name inside of your title tag. This is for the benefit of the human reader, whereas the keywords are more for the search engines. You can place you company name either before or after the keywords, as shown in the above format, just as long as it is included.

So let’s take a look at a couple examples of what good title tags should like. Instead of giving you examples base on theory, I’m going to base this entirely from real-world, cold-hard facts and evidence.

Look at the site: bransoncanyon.com.

The title tag reads “Branson Real Estate – Branson Missouri Homes for Sale – Branson Canyon”. Obviously, the primary keyword for this website is “Branson Real Estate” and the secondary keyword is “Branson Missouri Homes for Sale”. Branson Canyon is the actual name of the company.

This is a perfect example of an effective title tag – for both SEO purposes and for the human reader. It has good keyword placement and also clearly shows the website for the human readers.

Also notice how it keeps the filler words down to a minimum. Using something like “Branson real estate and Branson Missouri homes for sale here at Branson Canyon” is not as effective as the existing format using the “|” symbol to break apart the words. It also would have been just as effective to use “Branson Real Estate, Branson Missouri Homes for Sale – Branson Canyon” (or any other variation that utilizes a symbolic naming convention).

What evidence do I have to back this up? I was actually hired by Branson Canyon to do the SEO work for them. Before I started, they were at position #53 for Branson Real Estate and position #26 for Branson Missouri Homes for Sale (both in Google). They now show up at position #19 and #17 for the same keywords, respectively. And at the time of this writing, it’s only been 3 weeks! And they will continue to rise as the SEO campaign progresses.

Granted, I also built about 50 in-bound back-links for their site and used the same keywords for the anchor text. But that’s a different topic for a different day .

Now let’s turn to a good example of how NOT to use a title tag.

Check out: bransonwestrealty.com. This lame is using exactly 471 characters in his title tag. And it’s definitely one of the worst cases of keyword-stuffing I’ve seen yet.

His title tag reads “Branson West Realty | BRANSON + REALTY + BRANSON MISSOURI REAL ESTATE + Branson West Real Estate + BRANSON + MISSOURI + VACATION + INFORMATION + PACKAGES + Tri-Lakes Area-Reserve Branson Vacation Packages-Cabins, Condos, Motels, Hotels, Music Shows, Area Attractions and Information-BRANSON MO Nightly Rentals-Branson Missouri Attractions-Vacations + Golf, Lodging, Show Tickets – Branson West, Missouri -Branson Real Estate Locator–A Service of Branson 1 Realty-Welcome”.

If you visit his site, you can clearly see that there is something wrong with this dude. There is no real content on his site. It’s just a bunch of junk links. Also, if you view the source, you can see that he is using 5349 characters for his description tag (it’s recommended to use only 150) and he has 332 keywords in the keywords tag (out of a recommended 10).

This is blatant and disgusting abuse of meta tags in general. Not only is he harming himself in the eyes of the search engines (his SERPs suck) but he is also being unfair to his visitors.

This type of “SEO” can have seriously detrimental effects. The search engines can penalize you or even ban you from the index for pulling stunts like this. And it will NOT help you in the least bit.

To summarize, let’s go over the key points again:

• Use short, descriptive title tags (less than 70 characters).
• Always include your company name or the official name of the website – you are not only writing for the search engines but for humans as well.
• Use no more than 2 keywords for each page’s title.
• Title tags should be unique for each page in your site.
• Use common symbols instead of filler words.
• Do not keyword-stuff
• Don’t be a lame

Remember that effective usage of title tags is only 1 piece to the SEO puzzle. But when properly implemented, you will be well on your way to seeing your site rise to the top.

Thanks for reading!

-Cole Pannell

www.thebransonpro.com

If you enjoyed this post by Cole here are few more you might enjoy The Power Of Backlinks and Finding The Right Keywords For Your Niche.Similar Posts:

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