Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.

So, the next time we get the question, “I’m new to SEO, how do I improve my site?”, we can say, “Well, here’s a list of best practices that we use inside Google that you might want to check out.”

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The first thing that struck me was that there had to be a catch to it. How could the website owners be giving away personal mentoring, an 8 week tutorial, web-hosting, website building tools, and keyword research tools all for just $30 a month? There just had to be a catch. In addition, the email that had led me to this page had promised an active forum where more experienced members could help me out any time I had questions.

For years I had been dreaming of being my own boss, free from daily commutes, corporate rules, and long hours for low pay. I had also spent 2 years online searching to create my own profitable website business — only to be disappointed time and time again.

Now, here I was faced with a website that claimed to be a complete internet marketing university, where I could learn how to be a prosperous affiliate. Could I really get rich and live the internet lifestyle simply by using some radical new marketing methods to make a commission from other people’s products?

Comforting myself with the thought that I could unsubscribe and get my money back if I didn’t like the Wealthy Affiliate Wealthy Affiliate membership site, I pulled out my credit card…and took the risk.

What made me sign up? The copy on the website spoke about how it was not easy to make money online and how it took hard work. They also did not promise instant riches. This absence of hype, this uncensored realism, made me inclined to believe that maybe, just maybe, they had the answers I was looking for in my quest to break free from the rat race.

Since I’m still here at Wealthy Affiliate, you’ve probably correctly guessed that the owners, Kyle & Carson, did not disappoint me. The first month, I was slightly overwhelmed by how much information they offered on the website. Besides the 8 week training, there were additional beginner, intermediate, and advanced level tutorials, ebooks, case histories, and videos. When I did have questions, either Kyle or Carson answered them.

The forum turned out to be a really lively place, too, and I found myself spending a lot of time reading the “stickies.” These were forum posts that were so informative about marketing techniques that the members had voted that they be permanently kept to educate new members. These “stickies” were often case histories of those who were guided to make profitable marketing campaigns. People starting from scratch were shown how to create campaigns that made money, sometimes a lot of money.

Besides the “stickies,” there was also a sub-forum where people reported their sales and what they did to achieve them. In addition, there were forums on different aspects of marketing, from how to write articles to how to set up a Google AdWords campaign.

Should you choose to follow my lead, you’ll notice something rather startling and amazing when you join. It’s called the Wealth Counter. This is where those who have made affiliate sales add the amount they’ve earned. Right now, as of today, it stands at a staggering $2,325,612.06!

If that doesn’t make your blood rush, I’m not sure what will get you enthused about your potential to make money online.

I know, in a review like this one, I should mention something negative about Wealthy AffiliatesWealthy Affiliates, but, to be honest, I can’t think of anything bad to say.

The only way to really find out if this is the right thing for you, too, is to check it out.

Recently, Matt Callen has decided to reveal an incredibly powerful strategy of his for doing just that with little to no extra work. It’s one of those ’set-it-and-forget-it’ types of strategies that anyone can implement no matter what type of website or niche market they’ve got.

Matt has spent a good majority of his online business time researching and developing new ways to increase traffic to his site. And it’s proven to be one of the most influential reasons for his success online.

The more visitors he gets, the more customers he gets. It’s that simple.

Essentially, having or not having traffic to your site will make or break you. Recently Matt launched a software program that will literally create dozens of HIGH quality articles from just one single article.

How does that increase traffic? Simple.

When you submit these articles to article directories, you can place a backlink in them to your site, the search engines quickly pick them up and increase the credibility rank of your site… thus bringing in more visitors to your site. This is just one of the strategies for using article marketing to bring in traffic.

Matt decided that it was about time for someone to pick up the ball on the duplicate content penalty myth.

He says he won’t be offering this software to the public for long, so if it’s unavailable at the time this article is published we all know what has happened.

For more article marketing strategies visit: Article Apps

Does Google Like This?
Matt Cutts was quick to say that this link buying program violates Google’s TOS (and might be against an FTC guideline), but Shoemoney highlighted how Google is known to look the other was on such decisions when it is profitable to do so.

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Realistically, that’s not likely to be the case. Instead of buying a new computer, optimize your present one. The following are 11 things that Chip Manufacturers and PC Retailers don’t want you to know or how to perform. Following these advices will drastically increase your PC performance and help you regain your sanity while saving loads of money. And, if your PC is years old and can’t afford to upgrade yet, you will be able to squeeze out some more juice out of the old thing!

1. Disable file indexing. This is a tiny service that uses a great deal of RAM and induces much disk thrashing. Your system instantly becomes more responsive. Here’s how: First, doubleclick the My Computer icon. Then, right-click on the C: Drive, then hit Properties. Uncheck “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching.” Next, apply changes to “C: subfolders and files,” and click OK.

2. Zap the Windows Prefetch folder every week. Windows XP can “prefetch” portions of data and applications that are frequently loaded. This allows processes appear to start faster when requested the user. Over time, the prefetch folder overwhelms with references to files and applications no longer in use. Guess what happens? Windows XP wastes time and grinds to a halt by pre-loading obsolete data. It helps you gain some performance on your XP Professional to periodically empty the prefetch folder.

The prefetch folder resides on your local hard disk, under the Windows folder.
%systemroot%\prefetch
-or-
X:\windows\prefetch

Where X is the drive letter where you have Windows installed. Either path will get you to your local system. The second path is for those who have the default installation on the most commonly used drive letter, C:\

3. Optimise Display Settings. Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. Kill unnecessary animations, and nix active desktop. Here’s how to do it:
1) Go to Start
2) Click Settings
3) Click Control Panel
4) Click System
5) Click Advanced tab
6) In the Performance tab click Settings
7) Leave only the following ticked:
(1) Show shadows under menus
(2) Show shadows under mouse pointer
(3) Show translucent selection rectangle
(4) Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
(5) Use visual styles on windows and buttons
Feel free to play around with the options offered here, as nothing you can change will alter the stability of the computer - only its responsiveness.

4. Remove the Desktop Picture Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.
1) Right click on Desktop and select Properties
2) Select the Desktop tab
3) In the Background window select None
4) Click Ok

5. Remove Fonts for Speed Zap extra fonts fonts installed on their computer. Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. The more fonts they have, the more lethargic the system will become. Anything over 300 fonts tax the system and slow down load times- especially graphic apps. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.
1) Open Control Panel
2) Open Fonts folder
3) Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.

6. Speedup Folder Browsing You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:
1) Open My Computer
2) Click on Tools menu
3) Click on Folder Options
4) Click on the View tab.
5) Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
6) Click Apply
7) Click Ok
Reboot your computer
To prevent a single Windows Explorer window tanking up takes the rest of your OS down, you can launch separate folder windows in multi processes. Open My Computer, hit on Tools, then Folder Options. Click on the View tab. Scroll down to “Launch folder windows in a separate process,” and enable this option.

7. Disable Performance Counters Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea. To disable:
1) download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List
2) Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom button below

8. Optimise Your Pagefile Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.
1) Right click on My Computer and select Properties
2) Select the Advanced tab
3) Under Performance choose the Settings button
4) Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
5) Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.

9. Improve Memory Usage PC Washer improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings.

Once Installed:
1) Click the ‘Tools’ from the left menu
2) Select ‘Memory Booster’ in the tools list. A new window named ‘PC Turbo Memory’ will popup.
3) Click Defragment button in the new window.
4) Exit the program. That’s all.

10. Disable unnecessary services Windows XP loads services you will never need. To determine which services you can disable for your client, visit the Black Viper site for ideal Windows XP configurations. Here are a few services I booted off to streamline my PC:
* Alerter
* Background Intelligent Transfer Service
* ClipBook
* Computer Browser
* Error Reporting Service
* Help and Support
* Indexing Service
* IPSEC Services
* Messenger
* NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
* Network DDE
* Network DDE DSDM
* Performance Logs and Alerts
* Portable Media Serial Number
* QOS RSVP
* Help Session Manager
* Remote Registry
* Secondary Logon
* Server
* Smart Card
* Smart Card Helper
* SSDP Discovery Service
* System restore Service
* TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
* Uninterruptible Power Supply
* Universal Plug and Play Device Host
* WebClient
* Windows time
* Wireless Zero Configuration
* WMI Performance Adapter

11. Disconnect USB devices you aren’t using. When Windows starts, it must load all the drivers for the devices connected to your computer. If you have many devices connected to the USB ports, such as printers, scanners, cameras and hard drives that you don’t use on a regular basis, disconnect them. You can reconnect them when you use them. Disconnecting them when they are not in use will allow Windows to load the drivers only when needed.

The above steps should help increase the performance of Windows XP as well as keep it running with more stability.

Duncan Kredion is a software engineer focusing on system optimization area since 1999. To read more system optimization tips, please visit Windows XP & Vista Optimization Tips Archive .

He writes:

Every time paid links is brought up Matt Cutts brings up the FTC’s “suggestions” on bloggers disclosing things they have been compensated for. In no where in these “suggestions” does it talk about paid links. But even if it did they are just suggestions.

They are not law and if Google was following the FTC’s suggestions I doubt Google Adsense/adlinks would be engaging in some of the most deceptive advertising methods I have ever seen on the internet.

He also mentions Google’s paying of $66 million to the allegedly non-profit Mozilla to be the default search engine for Firefox.
From there a slew of comments went pouring in on Schoemaker’s post, bashing Google’s practices, calling the company names like “evil” and “hypocrite.” Mentions are made of Google’s own sponsored results being made less disclaimer-like by the lightening of the hue surrounding them. Eventually, Cutts weighs in here too amidst a sea of criticism.

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WebProNews

I don’t think anybody is surprised to see Cutts trying to defuse the situation before everybody gets too excited, but of course a topic like this isn’t going to be left at that. Debate is sparking up around a variety of popular search blogs. You know Michael Gray for one is going to get involved in a discussion about this, but he made an interesting choice in how he decided to handle it:

IMHO the key to buying links is using them over the short term.

6-9 months, to jump start your rankings while you swing your PR machine into full gear, shaking hands and kissing babies. Google has a top down preference for brands and the more you work normal PR and advertising tactics to reach that goal the better you are.

Use viral marketing and linkbait to start securing links over time. As you start to acquire natural links, revisit your links buys and slowly start phasing them out (ultra competitive and non mainstream topics have different rules).

My position on paid link advertisingwell known and at this point I don’t have anythingto add that hasn’t already been said . The most important thing I learned from Pubcon this year was stop wasting time on drama, so comments on this post will be closed.

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WebProNews

The debate has basically turned into Matt Cutts vs. the “Yeah, let’s stick it to Google” crowd. .As far as I can tell, this started with TechCrunch reporting on InLinks, which prompted Matt Cutts to send them an email from which the following is a sample:

Google has been very clear that selling such links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines. Other search engines have said similar things.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also given unambiguous guidance on this subject in the recent PDF at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/03/P064101tech.pdf where they said “Consumers who endorse and recommend products on their blogs or other sites for consideration should do so within the boundaries set forth in the FTC Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and the FTC’s guidance on word of mouth marketing,” as well as “To date, in response to this concern, the FTC has advised that search engines need to disclose clearly and conspicuously if the ranking or other presentation of search results is a function of paid placement, and, similarly, that consumers who are paid to engage in word-of- mouth marketing must disclose that fact to recipients of their messages.”

Source: WebProNews

Is Ranking Dead?

Cutts said, “I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be. The fact is the smart SEOs are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.”

“The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase.’”
Universal Search In 2009

“Universal is really useful and I think it will continue to expand and what that means in 2009 you can’t just think of yourself as an SEO,” said Cutts.

“SEOs are starting to embrace the fact that they are marketers. It’s a broader spectrum. You have to think about how you build buzz, how do you get loyal customers, how do you optimize your ROI. All those different things and that can include how do I make good videos, do I have a book, things like that.”

Cutts says that people will continue to pay attention to video and images in 2009 but noted a down side. “Of course anywhere there is money there will be spam.” Google has been focusing on its different properties to manage the spam issue.

Metadata

Google has gotten better on Flash and submitting a video to video sitemaps is really helpful in getting onto Google Video Search. “We want to be able to present video from all kinds of places,” said Cutts.

Video File Format

“Whatever file format you want to use is totally fine.”

Mobile

Cutts says that just because search engines are getting better at Flash does not mean mobile is. On mobile devices you can’t just think about search engines. You have to think about the user experience.

Competing with Black Hat SEO

“Black Hat SEO is getting a little more malicious. In a world where Black Hat is moving towards really illegal things as an SEO you have to decide your risk tolerance and do I really want to try to compete with people who are doing illegal stuff or do I want to make a long term site that’s gonna stand the test of time.”

Subdomains

There is no real advantage to using Subdomains. If you have a lot of Subdomains that can be a lot of work. You don’t want to overdo it.  Really it’s what ever is easiest for you.

Full story on WebProNews.

The key items to note in this final video is that when positioning your AdSense ads for performance:

- Ad units placed at the bottom of the page don’t perform as well.

- Place Your Ads Where Users Will See Them

- Ad Units Perform better when they are placed above the fold

“So remember, position your ads above the fold and where users are more likely to see them,” says Google.

Going a bit further, Google has put together a “heat map” to further emphasize good AdSense placement:

Full story.