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	<title>Blogstorm &#187; Best Posts</title>
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	<link>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk</link>
	<description>Internet marketing and search engine optimisation</description>
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		<title>5 Killer Ways to Promote Your Website Offline</title>
		<link>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/5-killer-ways-to-promote-your-website-offline/</link>
		<comments>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/5-killer-ways-to-promote-your-website-offline/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:03:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Patrick Altoft</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Best Posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[features]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/5-killer-ways-to-promote-your-website-offline/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In 2005 Lingscars.com had a 6 wheeled military truck imported from the People's Liberation Army in Shanghai and her husband built a giant nuclear missile to go on top. The truck was parked next to the A1 motorway in North East England.<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/5-killer-ways-to-promote-your-website-offline/">5 Killer Ways to Promote Your Website Offline</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Print your url on a fake rocket</h2>
<p>Former Dragons Den contestant and winner of North East Entrepreneur of the Year <a href="http://www.lingscars.com">Ling Valentine</a> has a unique method of promoting her car leasing website.</p>
<p>In 2005 Ling had a 6 <a href="http://www.lingscars.com/feature/truck.php">wheeled military truck</a> imported from the People&#8217;s Liberation Army in Shanghai and her husband built a giant nuclear missile to go on top. The truck was parked next to the A1 motorway in North East England for a couple of years before being moved to one of the busiest motorways in Western Europe, the M62, where it remains.<span id="more-346"></span></p>
<p>Millions of motorists see the missile truck every year and it is no doubt a much better investment than any online advertising campaign in such a competitive industry.</p>
<h2>Draw it on the street</h2>
<p><a href="http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm">Julian Beever</a> is the worlds most famous street artist and has been commissioned by large companies such as Sony to promote their products by drawing them with chalk on the ground. Virtually any picture released on the web by Julian is reposted on hundreds of blogs and is almost guaranteed to make the Digg homepage.</p>
<p>Ask Julian to paint you a stunning picture with your website in it and publicity is almost guaranteed.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/julian-beever.jpg" alt="Julian Beever" /></p>
<h2>Pitch in the Dragons Den</h2>
<p>Hundreds of companies pitch in the Dragons Den every year but only a few of them are web based businesses. Some of the most famous are <a href="http://www.lingscars.com/">Lings Cars</a> (owner of the rocket above), <a href="http://www.gamingalerts.co.uk/">Gaming Alerts</a> and most recently <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/hungry-house-dragons-den/">Hungry House</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/dragons.jpg" alt="Dragons Den" /></p>
<p>The one thing these sites have in common is a huge influx of traffic after the show. The day after Hungry House were on TV thousands of people were searching for them on Google and even competing sites saw an increase in business because of it. Their Alexa Rank went <a href="http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/hungryhouse.co.uk">through the roof</a> and continues to rise even today.</p>
<h2>Paint your url on a streaker</h2>
<p><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/vodafone-streaker.jpg" alt="Vodafone streaker" class="left" />In 2002 Vodafone paid a New Zealand rugby fan to run onto the pitch during an All Blacks vs Australia game wearing nothing but the Vodafone logo. Thanks to Tim from <a href="http://www.seoagencies.org">SEO Agencies</a> for the tip about this one.</p>
<p>The streaker was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/international/2182817.stm">fined Â£30,000</a> and Vodafone were more than happy to pay it in return for publicity in almost every newspaper across the world.</p>
<p>If you can find somebody willing to streak at a major public event the press coverage is likely to far outweigh any fines levied, especially for large companies with multi million pound marketing budgets. Recently television networks have been reluctant to give coverage to streakers so this tactic may not be as effective in 2008.</p>
<h2>Project your website address onto a building</h2>
<p><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/projection.jpg" alt="Projection" class="left" />Most people remember the infamous <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/341052.stm">FHM stunt</a> involving a giant image of Gail Porter, a very large projector and the Houses of Parliament. The publicity was huge and so was the cost, around Â£40,000.</p>
<p>Luckily the cost of hiring a big projector nowadays is more affordable and you don&#8217;t even need a giant building any more. <a href="http://www.arcstreamav.com/projection.htm">Arcstream</a> can not only project your URL onto any building you like but they can even create a <a href="http://www.arcstreamav.com/water-screens.htm">giant wall of water vapour</a> and project onto that instead.</p>
<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/5-killer-ways-to-promote-your-website-offline/">5 Killer Ways to Promote Your Website Offline</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>65</slash:comments>
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		<title>How to use the Google &#8220;Query Deserves Freshness&#8221; or QDF model to your advantage</title>
		<link>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/using-google-query-deserves-freshness-model/</link>
		<comments>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/using-google-query-deserves-freshness-model/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:35:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Patrick Altoft</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Best Posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimisation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/newblog/using-google-query-deserves-freshness-model/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Query Deserves Freshness or QDF algorithm was first discussed by Amit Singhal in a New York Times article about the Google Algorithm in June. During the second half of 2006 Google was trying to figure out a way of showing new content for some &#8220;hot&#8221; search terms while keeping the more competitive keywords spam [...]<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/using-google-query-deserves-freshness-model/">How to use the Google &#8220;Query Deserves Freshness&#8221; or QDF model to your advantage</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The Query Deserves Freshness or QDF algorithm was first discussed by Amit Singhal in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmoney/03google.html?_r=3&amp;ref=yourmoney&amp;pagewanted=all">New York Times article</a> about the Google Algorithm in June. During the second half of 2006 Google was trying to figure out a way of showing new content for some &#8220;hot&#8221; search terms while keeping the more competitive keywords spam free.<span id="more-306"></span></p>
<p>The issue came to a head when Google Finance was launched and didn&#8217;t rank for its own name.</p>
<blockquote><p>Freshness, which describes how many recently created or changed pages are included in a search result, is at the center of a constant debate in search: Is it better to provide new information or to display pages that have stood the test of time and are more likely to be of higher quality? Until now, Google has preferred pages old enough to attract others to link to them.</p></blockquote>
<p>The problem is that Google has to give more weight to older content to keep the quality of the search results high. The solution is a mathematical model that tries to determine when users want new information and when they don&#8217;t.</p>
<blockquote><p>THE QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is &#8220;hot.&#8221; If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model figures that it is one for which users are more likely to want current information. The model also examines Googleâ€™s own stream of billions of search queries, which Mr. Singhal believes is an even better monitor of global enthusiasm about a particular subject.</p>
<p>As an example, he points out what happens when cities suffer power failures. <strong>&#8220;When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds,&#8221;</strong> he says.</p>
<p>Mr. Singhal says he tested QDF for a simple application: deciding whether to include a few news headlines among regular results when people do searches for topics with high QDF scores. Although Google already has a different system for including headlines on some search pages, QDF offered more sophisticated results, putting the headlines at the top of the page for some queries, and putting them in the middle or at the bottom for others.</p></blockquote>
<p>The QDF model takes a number of factors into account, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Search volume</li>
<li>News coverage</li>
<li>Blog coverage</li>
<li>Toolbar data (maybe)</li>
</ul>
<p>Google has a <a href="http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=913">patent</a> on the methods they use to gather this data including a sampling technique that allows them to gather statistically accurate data without having to trawl through all the logs for a particular query.</p>
<p>QDF is clearly a very interesting model but what really interests me is how I can use it to drive traffic to my websites. This is where the <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/hot.topics">Hot Topics</a> tool comes in.</p>
<p>As you might have guessed QDF is a great way for newer sites to publish content and leapfrog the Google trust filter for queries that Google thinks are fresh. The key is to post about breaking news stories as soon as possible, hope Google indexes your story quickly and watch the traffic come rolling in. Once your site ranks highly it becomes a self reinforcing authority and is referenced by other people researching the topic.</p>
<p>So, next time you are stuck for something to write about make sure you choose something fresh. Find something people are blogging about and searching for in much greater numbers than last week.</p>
<p>A good example today is the search for &#8220;<a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=canoeist">canoeist</a>&#8221; which is probably a very low volume term. Today thousands of people are searching for information about the canoeist who went missing 5 years ago and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7124119.stm">turned up in London</a> at the weekend. The search results are now full of references to this new story. Notice how Google has given higher rankings to stories released within the last 2 days whereas other articles about canoeists from very well trusted sites are down on page 2 and 3.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/canoeist.png" alt="Canoeist" /></p>
<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/using-google-query-deserves-freshness-model/">How to use the Google &#8220;Query Deserves Freshness&#8221; or QDF model to your advantage</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>26</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>10 Linkbuilding Tips for Ecommerce Websites</title>
		<link>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/linkbuilding-for-ecommerce-sites/</link>
		<comments>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/linkbuilding-for-ecommerce-sites/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:55:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Patrick Altoft</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Best Posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/newblog/linkbuilding-for-ecommerce-sites/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Most of the linkbuilding tips on BlogStorm have been focused primarily towards linkbait for blogs rather than ecommerce sites and, after an email from one of our readers, it&#8217;s time to redress the balance and offer some help to webmasters who run &#8216;real&#8217; websites. Design Having a stunning design and investing the time to make [...]<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/linkbuilding-for-ecommerce-sites/">10 Linkbuilding Tips for Ecommerce Websites</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Most of the linkbuilding tips on BlogStorm have been focused primarily towards <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/linkbait-beginners-guide/">linkbait</a> for blogs rather than ecommerce sites and, after an email from one of our readers, it&#8217;s time to redress the balance and offer some help to webmasters who run &#8216;real&#8217; websites.<span id="more-151"></span></p>
<h2>Design</h2>
<p>Having a stunning design and investing the time to make your site usable is very important. It is much easier to attract links to a website that has a nice design than to try and promote an amateurish<br />
and hard to use website. </p>
<h2>Start a directory</h2>
<p>This does NOT mean starting a directory of useless links like you see on a huge number of low quality sites.</p>
<p>By starting a directory I mean building a unique resource of partners/retailers that are related to your niche. For example a freezer manufacturer could create a directory of authorised retailers<br />
with links to their websites, location maps and a description of the store. Create a really top quality resource and companies will email asking to be included and be more than happy to link to your site in<br />
return.</p>
<p>Some of you might be thinking that this is just a glorified link exchange program that won&#8217;t help your search engine rankings. This type of link exchange between sites that actually work together<br />
offline is very valuable and, assuming the sites that link to you haven&#8217;t been engaging in mass link exchanges, will help your rankings significantly in the long term.</p>
<p>Done correctly you should find that creating a unique page for each company in the directory draws significant long tail traffic.</p>
<h2>Create a news section</h2>
<p>Blogging isn&#8217;t always a good idea for a commercial site. Company politics can get in the way and the opinions of the blogger can be censored to a point that it is no longer relevant as a blog.</p>
<p>The best linkbuilding tip is to create a news section on your site and post about the latest events from your industry every day in a non biased way. If you have a car insurance website you can post on the latest motoring and insurance news and become a trusted resource for this type of information. Spend the time to make sure you are included in Google News and network with other similar sites to make sure they read your posts. If you can break the news before other sites you will<br />
attract links and build authority.</p>
<p>Try to make your news pages less commercial than the rest of your site so users trust you as a non biased resource. Adding a news section offers you a platform to publish the timely content that works so well in social media and also gives you somewhere to publish company specific news and press releases.</p>
<h2>Publish your press releases</h2>
<p>If you don&#8217;t want to publish press releases in a news section make sure you have a dedicated press section instead. A well known mobile phone company in the UK carried out a study concluding that mobile phones were dirtier than toilet seats and missed out on hundreds of links by not publishing the press release on their site.</p>
<h2>Start networking</h2>
<p>If your company is a faceless commercial organisation then attracting links is much harder. Make sure you participate on relevant forums and add comments on blogs so that people know who you are and realise that there is a face behind your website.</p>
<p>Use some <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/reputation-monitoring-tools/">reputation monitoring</a> tools to make sure you know what is being said about your brand. If customers are posting negative comments respond to them personally and offer to help them resolve the<br />
issues. </p>
<h2>Launch an affiliate program</h2>
<p>Offering an <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/why-you-need-an-affiliate-program/">affiliate program</a> is an easy way to persuade websites to link to your site. Offer a generous commission along with lots of tools, banners and articles for your affiliates to use and give affiliates access to a dedicated affiliate manager to guide them through the process. Allowing deep links to your product pages is a good idea to improve conversion rates and search rankings . Some successful merchant sites offer to write custom content for certain affiliates as well as create dedicated co-branded landing pages.</p>
<p>Make sure you operate your affiliate program in house so that the links still pass weight. Links via services such as Commission Junction or TradeDoubler will not pass any benefits (apart from<br />
sales).</p>
<h2>Sponsor an event</h2>
<p>By sponsoring an event you will usually be mentioned in the press leading up to the event as well as in the roundup afterwards. If your budget is limited try sponsoring events in the blogosphere such as<br />
parties or blog contests. Bloggers are much more likely to link to your site than mainstream media and you don&#8217;t need a huge budget to reach them.</p>
<h2>Give away your products for review</h2>
<p>Sending a product to a popular website or blog for review pretty much guarantees you a link at the end of the review.</p>
<h2>Make your site a useful resource</h2>
<p>Each product should have a dedicated page on your site with thumbnail links to quality images of the product. There should also be detailed specifications, delivery information, product descriptions and<br />
possibly even videos of the product in action. If your page has more information than your competitors it&#8217;s much more likely to attract a link.</p>
<h2>Pay to advertise</h2>
<p>Although the adverts you buy might not pass link juice it is always worth becoming a paid advertiser at the leading sites in your industry. Websites are always eager to please their advertisers and<br />
will sometimes link to them from other stories and articles.</p>
<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/linkbuilding-for-ecommerce-sites/">10 Linkbuilding Tips for Ecommerce Websites</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>22</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Ultimate Guide to htaccess and mod_rewrite</title>
		<link>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/htaccess-mod_rewrite-ultimate-guide/</link>
		<comments>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/htaccess-mod_rewrite-ultimate-guide/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 14 Jul 2007 15:50:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Patrick Altoft</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Best Posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimisation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/newblog/htaccess-mod_rewrite-ultimate-guide/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Most of the htaccess and mod_rewrite tips on this page can simply be cut and pasted into a text file and uploaded to your server.<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/htaccess-mod_rewrite-ultimate-guide/">Ultimate Guide to htaccess and mod_rewrite</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Often described as &#8220;voodoo&#8221; by frustrated webmasters the use of mod_rewrite and htaccess files is one of the more advanced tasks a web developer has to face.</p>
<p>The good news is that unless you are looking for really advanced solutions you don&#8217;t have to fully understand how they work to use them on your website. Most of the htaccess and mod_rewrite tips on this page can simply be cut and pasted into a text file and uploaded to your server.<span id="more-69"></span></p>
<p>Over the last few years I&#8217;ve given the same htaccess tips to hundreds of webmasters so I decided to create a page with all the common uses.</p>
<p><strong>htaccess</strong> is a configuration file that controls Apache web servers, <strong>mod_rewrite</strong> is a rewrite engine used by web servers to modify urls before they load.</p>
<p>The htaccess file is a text file called .htaccess &#8211; htaccess is the file extension, there is no filename. Normally it resides in the main root directory on your server but you can also create individual htaccess files for different directories on your site.</p>
<h2>Canonicalization</h2>
<p>The easiest htaccess trick is to make sure that your site doesn&#8217;t have any canonicalization issues on the homepage.</p>
<p>A lot of websites suffer from poor search engine rankings by having a number of different versions of the homepage, for example:</p>
<p><code>http://www.yoursite.com</p>
<p>http://yoursite.com</p>
<p>http://www.yoursite.com/index.html</p>
<p>http://yoursite.com/index.html</code></p>
<p>These pages are all seen as different urls, despite them having exactly the same content in most cases. Google has got better at deciding which version to use over the past 12 months but you can still run into problems.</p>
<p>To solve this issue simply add the following to your htaccess file:</p>
<p><code>Options +FollowSymLinks<br />
RewriteEngine on<br />
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com<br />
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]<br />
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/<br />
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.yoursite.com/ [R=301,L]<br />
</code></p>
<p>This will redirect all versions to http://www.yoursite.com</p>
<h2>Changing html files to php</h2>
<p>Sometimes you might have a static html website and need to use php code on the html pages. Rather than redirecting all your html pages to the equivalent php versions you simply need to tell your server to parse html files as if they were php.</p>
<p><code><br />
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .html<br />
</code></p>
<p>This works with any files so if you want to create dynamic xml or asp files that behave like php files you simply edit the code as required:</p>
<p><code><br />
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .xml<br />
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .asp<br />
</code></p>
<h2>Error pages</h2>
<p>Custom error pages can be set up in cpanel fairly easily, if you want to create a custom error page in htaccess instead use this line:</p>
<p><code><br />
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yoursite.com/404.php<br />
</code></p>
<h2>Directory Indexes</h2>
<p>To avoid Google <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;safe=off&amp;q=%22index+of%22%2B%22parent+directory%22">indexing your directory indexes</a> you might need to specify an index page for your directories. This is not required on some servers.</p>
<p><code><br />
DirectoryIndex index.php3<br />
</code></p>
<p>My preference is to redirect the directory index page to either the homepage or another suitable page. For example www.yoursite.com/images/ can normally be redirected to www.yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com/forum/ can normally be redirected to www.yoursite.com/forum/index.php</p>
<h2>Redirecting pages</h2>
<p>A nice simple use of htaccess is to redirect one page to another:</p>
<p><code><br />
redirect 301 /old-page.php http://www.yoursite.com/new-page.php<br />
</code></p>
<h2>Sending your feed to Feedburner</h2>
<p>If you want to switch your feed to the Feedburner service you will need to redirect your current feed to the new http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeed location.</p>
<p>The redirect needs to apply to all users except the Feedburner spider:</p>
<p><code><br />
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner<br />
RewriteRule ^your-feed\.xml$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/your-feed [R,L]<br />
</code></p>
<h2>Advanced hotlink protection</h2>
<p>If you want to block other websites from hotlinking your images, but allow indexing of your images in the Google, Yahoo and MSN image search engines, you should use the code below:</p>
<p><code><br />
RewriteEngine on<br />
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .<br />
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([^.]+\.)?yoursite\. [NC]<br />
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !google\. [NC]<br />
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !search\?q=cache [NC]<br />
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !msn\. [NC]<br />
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !yahoo\. [NC]<br />
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/hotlinker\.gif$<br />
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png)$ /hotlinker.gif [NC,L]<br />
</code></p>
<p>The hotlinker.gif image is a custom image that you have created. I suggest using something like &#8220;This image was hotlinked from www.yoursite.com&#8221; and your logo.</p>
<p>My personal preference is to allow hotlinking but to implement a solution to make use of <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/use-google-images-and-hotlinkers-to-build-links/">Google Images and hotlinkers to build links to your site</a>.</p>
<h2>Create beautiful url&#8217;s with mod_rewrite</h2>
<p>The Apache rewrite engine is mainly used to turn dynamic url&#8217;s such as www.yoursite.com/product.php?id=123 into static and user friendly url&#8217;s such as www.yoursite.com/product/123</p>
<p><code><br />
RewriteEngine on<br />
RewriteRule ^product/([^/\.]+)/?$ product.php?id=$1 [L]<br />
</code></p>
<p>Another example, rewrite from:</p>
<p>www.yoursite.com/script.php?product=123 to www.yoursite.com/cat/product/123/</p>
<p><code><br />
RewriteRule cat/(.*)/(.*)/$ /script.php?$1=$2<br />
</code></p>
<h2>Removing query strings</h2>
<p>Some websites like to link to you by adding an query string, for example I could link to www.yoursite.com/index.php?source=blogstorm just so you know where your traffic came from. This creates duplicate content issue for your site so you really need to redirect back to your homepage:</p>
<p><code><br />
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^source= RewriteRule (.*) /$1? [R=301,L]<br />
</code></p>
<p>Further reading:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/mod_rewrite_cheat_sheet.pdf">mod_rewrite Cheat Sheet</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.workingwith.me.uk/articles/scripting/mod_rewrite">Beginners guide to mod_rewrite</a></li>
<li><a href="http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=49">Apache Forum</a></li>
</ul>
<p><strong><br />
If you have any questions please post in the comments.</strong></p>
<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/htaccess-mod_rewrite-ultimate-guide/">Ultimate Guide to htaccess and mod_rewrite</a></p>
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		<title>Beginners Guide to Linkbait</title>
		<link>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/linkbait-beginners-guide/</link>
		<comments>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/linkbait-beginners-guide/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Jun 2007 09:19:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Patrick Altoft</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Best Posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Linkbait]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/newblog/linkbait-beginners-guide/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Linkbait is the act of adding content to a website with the aim of attracting links from other sites. The content can take a variety of different forms from a unique tool or a breaking news story to a well written article or controversial image. Sometimes linkbait is intentional but quite often the best linkbait [...]<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/linkbait-beginners-guide/">Beginners Guide to Linkbait</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Linkbait is the act of adding content to a website with the aim of attracting links from other sites. The content can take a variety of different forms from a unique tool or a breaking news story to a well written article or controversial image.</p>
<p>Sometimes linkbait is intentional but quite often the best linkbait is conceived quite by accident.<span id="more-42"></span></p>
<p>My favourite piece of link bait is the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. The download page has over <a href="https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adobe.com%2Fproducts%2Facrobat%2Freadstep2.html&amp;bwm=i&amp;bwmo=d">15 million links</a> and is probably the most linked internal page on the web today.</p>
<h2>Creating your linkbait</h2>
<p>The first step to thinking of a really cool tool, unique news story or article is to find out what people want to read about. It sounds simple but following the breaking stories on the various social networking sites as well as Technorati and the <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/tracker.php">BlogStorm Tracker</a> will give you a unique insight into the weeks hot topics.</p>
<p>Another good tip is to search the social bookmarking sites for things related to your site that have been popular in the past. You might find a nice tool that was on Digg 2 years ago and be able to use it to inspire something more modern for your site.</p>
<p>Thanks to John from <a href="http://www.seoagencyleeds.org">SEO Agency Leeds</a> for helping me out here.</p>
<p>A quick look at some popular tools in different areas is often a good source of inspiration. For example you might see a tool on a car/auto website for valuing used cars and be able to apply it to your real estate site.</p>
<h2>Top 10 lists</h2>
<p>Although top 10 lists are very popular on sites like Digg they are actually the least successful kind of link bait. Most of the reputable sites wonâ€™t bother linking to a top 10 list unless it is really amazing or offers new information. You could try using a top 10 list to build a short burst of traffic but donâ€™t expect a link from Engadget in return.</p>
<h2>Articles</h2>
<p>Well written articles or tutorials are an art form and are one of the hardest link bait methods to pull off unless you are well known or an exceptional writer. The article would need to be very well written and perfectly targeted towards your audience to succeed. If you want to try link baiting some quality articles you should concentrate on writing content that will help people, content that will offer such great benefits that other bloggers will want to link to your post to help their readers.</p>
<h2>News</h2>
<p>Most new linkbaiters should really start off with trying to break the latest news in their niche before anybody else. Done right this is an easy way to build links from authority sites and social bookmarking sites. You should also benefit from lots of new RSS subscribers who want to get more breaking news from you in the future. Gain a reputation for being the first to break the news and you will dominate your niche. If you break a big enough story you will find all the bloggers in your niche desperate to post about it and  links will flow into the hundreds or thousands.</p>
<p>Apart from being the first to write about it the key aspect of writing a breaking news article is to make sure the article is of exceptional quality and includes the sort of images that other bloggers will want to use on their sites. You need to make sure that your article is the authority that others will want to link to. If somebody else explains the story better or has more details then they will attract the links.</p>
<p>Finding news to write about can be very hard. Building relationships with larger companies is impossible for most bloggers so you will be reliant on subscribing to press releases and news feeds in most cases.</p>
<p>If you can be the second site to write about something and promote it in the right way you can often overtake the first site and become the â€œsourceâ€ yourself. The best way to find breaking stories that have not yet become mainstream is to subscribe to a load of RSS aggregator feeds. Below are some of my favourites:</p>
<h2>Tools</h2>
<p>For anybody with a bit of imagination and a talented programmer, creating a tool for your site is the easiest way to link bait. Make the tool useful and well presented and its very easy to link to. Unique and useful tools can often turn a commercial site that struggles to attract any natural links into a useful resource that even competitors will link to and use on a regular basis.</p>
<p>Common ideas include methods to help people find information about products, test their websites, improve their skills, generate images or content for blogs and social networking profiles. Some of the best tools build <a href="https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitalpoint.com%2Ftools%2Fgeovisitors%2F&amp;bwm=i&amp;bwmo=d">millions of links</a> without the users even knowing they are part of some clever link bait scheme.</p>
<p>As with any type of link bait the presentation of the tool is very important. Although it sounds like a clichÃ© making good use of AJAX is a great way to improve the linkability of your tool.</p>
<h2>Get sued or sue somebody</h2>
<p>This technique is only recommended for those with deep pockets or a postal address in an obscure country where you are unlikely to ever face court.</p>
<p>If you decide to take on an industry giant like Google then the links will flow nice and fast. Make sure you have a good case to maximise your links.</p>
<h2>Presenting your link bait</h2>
<p>Although successful link bait will attract thousands of visitors you should not expect the visitors to click on any Adsense adverts or buy any products from your site. The best way to make your site stand out and attract links is to remove all the adverts. Yes, you read that part right. Remove your adverts. You can put them back on in a months time if you like but make sure the page is clean, well laid out, easy to read and ad free.</p>
<p>The next part is very important, you need to have a selection of bookmark buttons at the bottom of your page. Use the icons from each site to form the buttons so they are familiar to your visitors. The goal is for readers arriving from sites like Digg and Stumble Upon to like your site and bookmark it at Del.icio.us and Reddit while they are visiting.</p>
<p>Design is another essential skill in a link baiters arsenal. The page needs to look great and not look like just another WordPress blog. Invest the time and money required to make your site look great. People who go the extra mile and design custom graphic for a particular article or blog post will get more links because of it. If you are really creative then adding an image thatâ€™s cool enough for other bloggers to use it on their blogs while they link to you will make you more memorable and maximise the potential of your link bait.</p>
<p><strong>Next week: Promoting your link bait</strong></p>
<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/linkbait-beginners-guide/">Beginners Guide to Linkbait</a></p>
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		<title>Advanced use of Google Analytics and the new interface</title>
		<link>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/advanced-google-analytics/</link>
		<comments>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/advanced-google-analytics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Patrick Altoft</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Best Posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blogstorm]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/newblog/advanced-google-analytics/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Update: following lots of peoples questions I have posted Google Analytics Tutorial Part 2 many thanks to SEO agencies and digital agencies for the help on this. Since Google Analytics was launched in 2005 it has become one of the top analytics packages for small to medium sized websites. Growth was initially slow due to [...]<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/advanced-google-analytics/">Advanced use of Google Analytics and the new interface</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Update:</strong> following lots of peoples questions I have posted <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/google-analytics-tutorial/">Google Analytics Tutorial Part 2</a> many thanks to <a href="http://www.seoagencies.org">SEO agencies</a> and <a href="http://www.digitalagencies.co.uk">digital agencies</a> for the help on this.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/ga.gif" alt="Google Analytics" class="right" /><br />
Since Google Analytics was launched in 2005 it has become one of the top analytics packages for small to medium sized websites. Growth was initially slow due to the frustrating waiting list system initiated by Google to avoid over stretching their servers. Now that the waiting list has been removed anybody can sign up to use this great service.<span id="more-4"></span></p>
<p>The user interface had a major redesign in May 2007 and a lot of the features we love have become hard to find. This guide should help you find your way around the new system.</p>
<p>I see a lot of comments on the forums asking whether Analytics can do X, Y and Z. In most cases it can do it but people just don&#8217;t realise it. As webmaster of several large sites I have been using GA for around a year now to track a huge number of variables. In this post I will go through a few of the more obscure interactions that GA can tack on your site.</p>
<h2>Tracking exit clicks, banner clicks and RSS feed subscribers</h2>
<p>Have you ever wanted to know how many people clicked on a particular link or banner on your site? You may wish to find out how many people click on an affiliate link, how many people from a certain country click on your banner advert or even the number of visitors from Digg that clicked to sign up to your RSS feed.</p>
<p>GA can track this for you quite easily by simply adding an onClick event to your hyperlink code.</p>
<p><code>&lt;a href="http://www.example.co.uk" onClick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/outgoing/rssfeed'); "&gt; </code></p>
<p>Every time somebody clicks on the link above GA will register a page view on the page www.yoursite.com/outgoing/rssfeed. To view the stats for the link you will need to follow the directions below:</p>
<p><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/ga1.gif" alt="Select Content and then Top Content" title="Select Content and then Top Content" class="right" /></p>
<p>In your GA account visit Content &gt; Top Content and you will see the most popular pages on your site. Enter the term &#8220;outgoing&#8221; into the filter box as shown below and you will see a list of all the pages on your site with &#8220;outgoing&#8221; in the url. Normally this will just show exit clicks unless you happen to have real pages with &#8220;outgoing&#8221; as part of the url.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/ga2.gif" alt="Drill down to the content you require" title="Drill down to the content you require" class="center" /></p>
<p>To drill down into the data simply click on the url you are interested in and you will see a snapshot of data like the image below.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/ga3.gif" alt="Page snapshot" title="Page snapshot" class="center" /></p>
<p>(screenshot courtesy of <a href="http://www.firesgalore.co.uk/">Gas Fires Galore</a>) If you want to drill down further by clicking on the &#8220;Segment:&#8221; drop down menu you can see details such as the source of the visitors, the keywords they were searching for and the landing page they arrived on.</p>
<p>This data is extremely valuable to webmasters who are not selling products. Sites selling products can measure ROI accurately by looking at the profits made on a particular sale compared to the cost of obtaining the visitor whether by SEO or Pay Per Click marketing. If you don&#8217;t sell products you need to place a value on other aspects of your site. How much are you willing to pay to acquire another blog subscriber? Was the $5000 you spent on link bait worthwhile?</p>
<p>All these actions can be tracked using the onClick event in Google Analytics.</p>
<p><a href="https://adwords.google.co.uk/support/bin/answer.py?answer=27246&amp;topic=8202">More information at the Google Help Section.</a></p>
<h2>How do I track downloads?</h2>
<p>Downloads can be tracked again using the onClick event as above:</p>
<p><code>&lt;a href="http://www.example.co.uk/files/map.pdf" onClick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/downloads/map'); "&gt; </code></p>
<p><a href="https://adwords.google.co.uk/support/bin/answer.py?answer=27242&amp;ctx=sibling">More details</a></p>
<h2>Tracking ecommerce revenue</h2>
<p>Tracking where your visitors come from is very important. Tracking where your actual customers came from is even more important. If you knew that people searching for your keywords on MSN Live were twice as likely to buy your product as people searching on Google you can happily bid far more for your Adcenter clicks as your Adwords clicks. Thanks to SEO specialist Dave for giving me the screenshots for this section.</p>
<p>Sales reports by traffic sources can be found under the &#8220;Traffic Sources &gt; All Traffic Sources&#8221; section of the menu.</p>
<p>Before explaining how to track your transactions lets look at the data that GA can provide on this subject. These figures are for April 2007. Some details are blocked out for privacy reasons.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/ga5.gif" alt="Revenue from different sources" title="Revenue from different sources" class="center" /></p>
<p>Lets drill down into the stats for Google (keywords removed):</p>
<p><img src="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images/ga4.gif" alt="Revenue from different keywords" title="Revenue from different keywords" class="center" /></p>
<p>From the chart above we can see that some keywords earn Â£31.52 per visit whereas some only earn Â£5.72 per visit. This data is hugely valuable as you can adjust your PPC bids on high and low paying keywords to maximise your profits.</p>
<p>GA also lets you drill down to see stats such as the number of people who bought product A after searching Google for Product B.</p>
<p>Now we know why we need to see these stats it makes the task of enabling the tracking slightly more appealing.</p>
<h2>How to track Sales</h2>
<p>To track your sales you will need to use some server side script on your confirmation page (the page people see after they complete a transaction on your site) to populate a form in the following format:</p>
<p><code>&lt;body onLoad="javascript:__utmSetTrans()"&gt;<br />
&lt;form style="display:none;" name="utmform"&gt;<br />
&lt;textarea id="utmtrans"&gt;UTM:T|[order-id]|[affiliation]|<br />
[total]|[tax]| [shipping]|[city]|[state]|[country] UTM:I|[order-id]|[sku/code]|[productname]|[category]|[price]|<br />
[quantity] &lt;/textarea&gt;<br />
&lt;/form&gt;</code></p>
<p>Example</p>
<p>UTM:T|34535|Main Store|111108.06|8467.06|10.00|San Diego|CA|USA</p>
<p>UTM:I|34535|XF-1024|Urchin T-Shirt|Shirts|11399.00|9</p>
<p>UTM:I|34535|CU-3424|Urchin Drink Holder|Accessories|20.00|2</p>
<p>Once you have populated the form GA will start tracking your sales right away.</p>
<p>The Google Help Section has a good <a href="https://adwords.google.co.uk/support/bin/answer.py?answer=27203&amp;topic=8198">reference guide for this topic</a>.</p>
<h2>Tracking 404 errors</h2>
<p>Google Analytics makes the process of tracking your 404 errors fairly straightforward. Simply add the code below to your error page and GA will tell you the source of the traffic that is generating the error.</p>
<p>Make sure you replace the xxxxx-x with your GA account number!<br />
<code><br />
&lt;script type="text/javascript"<br />
src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js"&gt;<br />
&lt;/script&gt;<br />
&lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;<br />
_uacct = "xxxxx-x";<br />
urchinTracker("/404.html?page=" + _udl.pathname + _udl.search);<br />
&lt;/script&gt;<br />
</code></p>
<p><strong>If there are any other advanced features of Google Analytics you would like us to talk about or if you have any questions on how to implement these ideas please post in the comments below <img src='http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> .</strong></p>
<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/advanced-google-analytics/">Advanced use of Google Analytics and the new interface</a></p>
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		<title>How to use hotlinkers and Google Images to build natural links to your site</title>
		<link>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/use-google-images-and-hotlinkers-to-build-links/</link>
		<comments>http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/use-google-images-and-hotlinkers-to-build-links/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Patrick Altoft</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Best Posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/newblog/use-google-images-and-hotlinkers-to-build-links/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Are you tired of people using images from your website without linking back to you? This simple script has the answer. View the demo here (right click on the image). Note that I prefer to only run this script for users who arrive from an image search engine rather than for everybody. Most website owners [...]<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/use-google-images-and-hotlinkers-to-build-links/">How to use hotlinkers and Google Images to build natural links to your site</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Are you tired of people using images from your website without linking back to you? This simple script has the answer.</p>
<p>View the demo <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/images-demo.html">here</a> (right click on the image). Note that I prefer to only run this script for users who arrive from an image search engine rather than for everybody.<span id="more-3"></span></p>
<p>Most website owners hate hotlinkers and blame them for stealing valuable bandwidth and costing the website owner money without giving anything in return.  In fact, images can be a very valuable way to build links to your site.</p>
<p>First of all, a few points to note. If you want to stop people hotlinking your images this script isn&#8217;t for you, turning off hotlinking is an easy option in cPanel and fairly straightforward in htaccess as well. Also this strategy isn&#8217;t really recommended unless you have unlimited bandwidth hosting. Some sites using this script use over 100GB a week just from hotlinked images.</p>
<h2>The good stuff</h2>
<p>Remember that the majority of internet users who are looking for images to use on an eBay auction, blog post, myspace profile etc aren&#8217;t aware of the implications hotlinking can have and are even less aware of the benefits that the backlink will provide to your website.</p>
<p>Most of you are probably thinking that your regular users will be upset if they can&#8217;t use the right click function and you are quite correct.<br />
The best way to make use of the script is to only show it to visitors who arrive from Google Images, Yahoo Images or MSN Live Search Images. Most of these visitors are likely to be after your images rather potential new customers so its safe to use this script. The key is to set a cookie when they arrive that expires after an hour, if the visitor likes your site and stays around you don&#8217;t want to upset them.</p>
<p>Of course if your site doesn&#8217;t have any regular users but enjoys traffic from Google Images then it might be acceptable to use this script all the time, in that case simply remove the cookie dependence.</p>
<h2>What if I have thousands of pages?</h2>
<p>This script works perfectly on database driven sites with lots of pages as long as your images are referenced in the database somehow. For example a product site will have an image of a product on each page and you will be able to use the image location to populate the textbox that hotlinkers will see.</p>
<p>If you are running a blog with lots of images embedded in the posts the script is a little harder to install. My favourite method is to parse the entire post and use a preg_match to find and output the images.</p>
<p><code>&lt;?php</code></p>
<p>$match = Array();</p>
<p>if (preg_match(&#8220;/<img[^>]*&gt;/&#8221;, $blogpost, $match) !== FALSE) {</img[^></p>
<p>// Make sure it truely was a match</p>
<p>if ((count($match) != 0) &amp;&amp; ($match[0] != &#8220;&#8221;)) {</p>
<p>// Save the image</p>
<p>$theImage = $match[0]; //image now saved as $theImage</p>
<p>}</p>
<p>}</p>
<p>?&gt;</p>
<p>Note: make sure you add a safeguard to handle posts with no images.</p>
<h2>The script</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/imagescript.txt">Click here for the code</a></p>
<p><b>Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for <a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk">Search engine optimisation</a></b><br/><br/><a href="http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/use-google-images-and-hotlinkers-to-build-links/">How to use hotlinkers and Google Images to build natural links to your site</a></p>
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