Keyword Optimization

The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to choose your keywords or keyphrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The right keywords are those that:

1. clearly describe the purpose and content of your site, and,
2. allow your site to show up as close to the first results page as possible.
A good position doesn't depend only on your choice of keywords. It also depends on how well do you position those keywords in your web page, and how many quality external pages link to you. However, choosing the wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy, so you need to invest a few hours and make sure you do it right.

Let's start with your homepage. Look at it carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word keyphrases is fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. That is why, from now on, we will talk about keyphrases, not keywords. Once you have developed your list of potential keyphrases you are ready for the next step: to analyze the demand and supply for those keyphrases, and choose the best ones (those with good demand and not enough supply).

We will first check the demand for your selected keyphrases. For this, we will go to Google Awords Search Term Suggestion Tool:

Google Awords

Google Awords is a popular pay-per-click search engine. You will then type each of the keyphrases you selected, and see how many people search for those terms. This tool will show you only those searches conducted in Overture (and only in one month time). However, the relative popularity of each search term will be very similar in other search engines as well. In addition to telling you if your selected keyphrases are popular, this tool will show you other keyphrases that you may not have thought about, which may even be more relevant to your site.
For example, if your first keyphrase was "Italian Restaurant", the Search Term Suggestion Tool will also display other popular search terms, like: "Gourmet Italian Restaurant", "Northern Italian Restaurant", "Italian Restaurant Pizzeria", "Italian Restaurant Miami", etc. You may also try other keyphrases, for example: "Italian Cuisine", and come up with more specific keyphrases, like: "Fine Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Miami", "Northern Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Fine Dining", "Gourmet Italian Cuisine", etc.

What you have done is to validate and enlarge your pool of popular, in-demand, potential keyphrases for your web page. The next step is to check the supply, or, in other words, to see how much competition there is for your selected keywords. Naturally, you want to focus on keyphrases where competition is less fierce. For example, choosing "Italian Restaurant" alone will certainly hurt you. There are so many of them that your chances of showing up in an advantageous position within the search results are pretty slim.
Having said that, get your list of keyphrases, go to Google ( http://www.google.com ) and type-in each of them in the search box. Enter your keyphrases within quotation marks (to filter-out less relevant results), and see how many results each individual query produces, making a note of those with a relatively small number of results (less competition). You will stick with the keyphrase that:

1. Best describes the topic and content of your page
2. Is a popular search term according to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool.
3. Generates a relatively small number of results after performing the Google search.
If "Gourmet Italian Restaurant" is the keyphrase that best meets these three criteria, it will become your primary keyphrase. To get even better results, you can choose a second keyphrase to make your page more relevant to an even more specific niche. For example, if your restaurant is in Miami, you can consider "Miami" a second keyphrase. Once you have chosen the keyphrases for you homepage, do the same for the other pages on your site.

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Whether you’re looking for a new design or just some summer inspiration, these great Joomla themes will brighten up your website or your ideas. We’ve chosen a range of styles, incorporating everything from professional business looks to soft swirls, so there’s something for everyone.

If you don’t have a Joomla content management system installed, log into your hosting control panel and try out our one-click install. Or take a look at the range of web hosting plans we have available.

Download Free Joomla Templates Here -

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Adding more and more plugins can bloat out your WordPress installation, so try to use straight coding where possible. You can customise your WordPress blog and add new features without worrying about plugins, widgets and themes using these simple code snippets.

Display Random Links

If you have a lot of links to other websites and not very much space, you can show random links in your WordPress sidebar rather than displaying all of them at once. To do this, open up your sidebar.php file (either in the WordPress theme editor or via FTP). Then define your existing list to show random links by using ‘rand’ in the tag, e.g.

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Whether you want to set up a full-blown gallery or simply display a few holiday photos, there are numerous free ways to showcase your images on your website. Here are our top picks:

1.Lightbox 2

If you’re looking for an adaptable and attractive solution, Lightbox is a good choice. It doesn’t matter what (if any) content management system or blogging software you use as it’s compatible with any type of website. Once you’ve installed the software, simply add an image to your page and then click it to see a larger version with your page background darkened out and the ability to click through your photos. You can choose to group photos with a slideshow-type effect or show them individually.

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We’re changing our current default version of PHP from 4 to 5 from the 6th September. As many of you will know, to use PHP 5 at the moment you need to enable this in a .htaccess file on the server. From the 6th September, we will swap this around so that PHP 5 is the default and PHP 4 may be called via a .htaccess file in the directory you wish to use PHP 4 from.

This is unlikely to affect many people as nearly all scripts written in PHP now operate on PHP 5 (for example all the PHP scripts available in your eXtend control panel).

We’re now at a point where having PHP 5 as the default version makes more sense for users; PHP 5 was released in 2004, whilst PHP 4 hasn’t been updated since 2008. If you’re operating legacy software that will not work on PHP 5, please set up a .htaccess file with the following line in it:

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We’ve already put together a list of tips and resources for Twitter beginners, and Part 2 is focused on those who are familiar with Twitter and don’t want to waste time trawling through hundreds of applications which all do the same thing. All resources mentioned were free at time of posting.

Time-saving Twitter tools

• Twitter Tools for Wordpress – This handy plugin automatically creates tweets from your blog posts, so your Twitter followers can grab a link to your new entry straight away. Optional bit.ly URL shortening is included, and you can also post your Tweets as blog entries. If you don’t have a blog yet, you can take advantage of our one click WordPress install and web hosting to get set up in less than a minute.
• Twitoria – This website allows you to unfollow people who haven’t tweeted in the past week, fortnight, month, two months, six months or year. A great easy-use tool which will keep your follower base fresh.
• Hashtags – Just enter a search term to get a list of tweets, trends and people tweeting about that topic recently using a hashtag. Hashtags also displays a popularity graph. This is a useful tool to find out how popular a word or term is so you can get in on a conversation or monitor a trend.
• Friendorfollow – displays your relationships with your followers, i.e. people who follow you but you don’t follow and vice versa, and reciprocal following.  You can also look up the stats for other tweeters simply by entering their username and export data.
• OneForty is a directory of Twitter applications along with ratings and comments. Currently approaching 3,000 tools, it’s a good solution for checking up on apps you’ve heard about and finding the right software for you e.g. the right mobile phone application.

Twhirl is a good choice for those requiring a simple, unobtrusive client whilst HootSuite offers a lot of features ideal for business users. It’s also important to keep an eye on the development plans for each application so you’re aware of what features are intended for the near future. Just because you’ve found a suitable client doesn’t mean you have to stick with it – it’s an area which is increasingly growing and increasingly competitive – but consider the impact on any stats or analytics you may be tracking to avoid confusion or loss of information.

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We’re pleased to announce that we’re now offering one-click installs of WordPress’s forum software, bbPress. Message boards are a great way to promote visitor interaction and can be a useful tool to discover what your visitors are interested in, who they are, and what else they want to see from your site.

bbPress is open source and focused on speed and security, meaning you don’t have to worry about slow loading pages or the risk of being hacked. The streamlined software is also lightweight and efficient for better use of space and bandwidth. bbPress is easy to install thanks to our one-click install solution, and the user-friendly control panel also means less work for admins and moderators once you’re up and running.

bbPress enjoys many similar customisation elements to WordPress so you can develop and install themes and plugins (e.g. for ratings, video and private forums) to customise your forums. Furthermore, bbPress can be integrated with WordPress so it has access to your blog’s functionality and users signing up to your message boards can also be users on your blog. This is especially useful for multi-author blogs, blogs with regular commenters and those looking to build up integrated site communities from an existing WordPress blog.

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With only five days to go until general release of the .co domain name, here are five top reasons to pre-register your .co domain name before it’s too late!

1.    70% of the world’s top 500 brands have signed up for their .co name already, and WorldTrademarkReview.com has discovered that some big brands intend to provide new services and products just from their .co website, cementing its popularity.

2.    It’s a good way to get a generic domain name that describes your brand or field rather than just having to stick to your company name, e.g. webdesign.co or slimming.co.

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Twitter in itself can be very overwhelming, and that’s without worrying what tools and resources you need to manage your account properly. So we’ve done the hard work for you and compiled a list of our favourites.

Twitter for Beginners

We’ve divided our list into two parts; this one for fledgling tweeters and one for fully-fledged users (keep an eagle eye out for more advanced tools in Part 2, coming soon), but it’s worth checking them both to make sure there’s nothing you miss.

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With more and more social media sites popping up everywhere, the craze to have the next Facebook or Twitter continues to be relentless. Wikipedia lists ‘some notable, well-known’ active social media sites  – ‘some’ being 190 – and even has a separate page for defunct websites, showing that this competitive trend shows no mercy.

So with almost two hundred ‘notable’ options out there, how do you know which to use for your site and how? Facebook and Twitter are the most obvious choices, but it’s essential to take time to create a strategy and see what works best for your particular needs.

Take time to find the sites relevant to you
Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Investigate what’s out there, and make two lists of potentials – one for pages that require very little maintenance (e.g. a StumbleUpon link), and one for sites that require frequent updates and monitoring (e.g. Facebook).

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