Google Search submission URL. Submit here if your site is new and/or still not listed in google. How to know if your site is listed in Google?

Just go to Google and type this in Google Search -> site:your-url.com

1) Google Search submission URL:

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

2) Google Blog Search:

Make sure you submit here, because if your site is listed in Google, it doesn’t mean it is listed in the blog search. High quality and when you make a new high quality post, you can also get listed in the top 10 in Google, at the bottom, where it says: “Blog posts about…”

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

3) Bing Search:

Bing was originally known as MSN Search. Microsoft’s official search engine that is here to stay.

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

4) Yahoo Site Explorer:

You can submit a webpage or a Site Feed. They can ask you to verify your submission by adding a META tag to your home page, or uploading a verification file to your site. It’s worth it to submit there and take a few minutes to verify it.

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

5) Yahoo RSS submission:

Another great tool from Yahoo to submit your RSS, very useful.

http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/submit

Happy WordPressing everyone!

Creating the image

The first thing you need to do is to create the image that you want to use as favicon. Don’t make your image too complex because small detail tend to get lost when resized to a tiny 16 by 16 pixels.

If you want to easily draw your own favicon, there is a great online tool called Favicon.cc. It lets you draw your own icon while the Favicon in the browser updates in real time to reflect your changes. If you use this tool you can skip the next step as the tool will handle the conversion to .ico as well.

Converting your favicon to .ico format

If you draw your image with Photoshop or any other editor, you will need to convert your file to .ico format. Modern web browsers will generally let you get away with using a png, gif or even a jpeg for your favicon, but to be compatible with older version of internet explorer and Firefox, you’ll have to convert the image to .ico format.

To convert your image, you can also use the Favicon.cc website, only this time, click the “Import Image” button on the left side of the page and upload your image. The tool will convert your image to .ico format and let you download the final product.

Add the favicon to your site

Then make sure you store/save your favicon icon inside your WordPress Theme images folder. For example /patagonia/images/favicon.ico.

Then, assuming you save your favicon.ico file in your theme directory, add the following anywhere between the tags.

1

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/favicon.ico">

Just copy that line and paste it in the header.php. In patagonia theme, you can paste this line right after the <link rel=”pingback”…> line.

If you have many sites and you want to track the whole server, the best option is to use a single web server script. These are easy to install and run. You can contact your hosting support and they will install it in a few minutes. Some hosting companies have a 1 click install of these tools. Others come with stats installed by default.

Many different free and paid web stats tools are available. I will show two of the best known free web stats tools. I tried both on my own sites and I will show you how they work, along with their pros and cons below.

Webalizer:

Webalizer is a free open source script written in C. It has a very simple interface with a straight to the point approach. Some people like using Webalizer because it’s a nice tool for viewing web stats quickly. You can choose to have the stats either protected by username and password or open to the public. Remember the best part of using your own server based script like webalizer or awstats, is that you don’t have to insert any code on your pages. If you have a lot of pages, webalizer will track the activity in all of them automatically. No codes needed like with google analytics. This is a huge advantage and you also have full control over your stats.

Visitor tracking and stats information are GOLD nowadays. With Webalizer, you’ll be able to see your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly traffic stats. Also referrers, spiders and KB’s used. Sometimes you see a lot of traffic coming in and you don’t know who’s sending you that traffic. Webalizer will tell you. It will recognize most traffic sources. You can sort the traffic by Hourly Statistics, URLs, Entry URLs, Exit URLs, Agents, Systems and Countries. Here is just a sample screenshot, as you can see the graphic environment is pretty basic, but in terms of information it is a great script. It’s a “lite” script, which means that it can be used in very small servers and still process big amounts of traffic. You can get Webalizer here.

AWStats:

AWStats is a free open source script written in Perl. Some webmasters prefer AWStats due to its fancy report format. Although the type of information AWStats displays is similar to the type of information Webalizer displays, for some statistics the reporting values might vary between Webalizer and AWStats due to the different way they process logs. To choose the one that’s right for you, review both types of reports. One report may be clearer or easier to understand for a specific web metric. You may also have an aesthetic preference. The key is to find something that works for you and meets your needs and comfort level. Here is a sample screenshot of AWStats:

You can download AWStats here. There is a more detailed graphic analysis of both scripts on their sites. You can take a look at the demo account to get a better idea.

Many other web stats tools are available, and although we covered only two of the most popular ones, don’t be afraid to experiment with others until you find the one that meets your requirements. You could also look for a paid tool if you or your client can afford it. These two tools we covered are the standard scripts in shared hosting environments.

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Good luck everyone!

This tool has seen several upgrades and face-lifts over the past few years. Google didn’t start with Google Analytics from scratch. In fact, it bought the idea from another company. They describe the Analytics platform as “enterprise-class features delivered on Google’s world-class platform.” One of the advantages of Google Analytics is integration with AdWords and AdSense. Additional benefits include multimedia tracking, customized reporting and data visualization. Perhaps its most enticing feature is that it is completely free.

Installating Google Analytics:

You need to place a small piece of JavaScript code in every page that requires tracking. Before you can use Google Analytics, you must register for a Google account. You can sign up for an account by visiting http://www.google.com/analytics/.

The code looks similar to the following fragment:

<script type=”text/javascript”>// <![CDATA[
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ?
"https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost +
"google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
// ]]></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>// <![CDATA[
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9899851-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
// ]]></script>

They give you the option of using the legacy code, which lacks some of the features in the latest version. Google supports the old code, as many sites are still using it. Do not use both pieces of code, as this may produce inaccurate reported data. The next thing to do is to place the code within your site. Instead of placing this code into every single HTML or PHP file, you can create a new widget in wordpress. Choose a text widget and paste the code there.

By late 2001, Google was well on their way to claiming a dominant position in the search market, and everyone was looking for links. Because of the “link building arms race” that Google started back then, link building has changed a lot since 2001. Link building has become a discipline unto itself, and one short chapter isn’t enough. Bing has also been using a similar concept since 2009.

The first step in understanding link building is getting a sense of how the search engines see things. As explained in a previous article, all of the search engines use link analysis to help them determine page rankings and choose relevant pages.

There are only a few areas where the search engines are actively working to fight what they call “webspam” and link analysis is by far the most active subject in that area. As a result, it’s very important for you to understand their position, and what they’re looking for, if you want to create an intelligent link building strategy for your site and stay alive.

There are a number of ways to look at any given link that you find on the web. From your perspective as the webmaster trying to get ranked, it might seem that the only important questions are: What page does this link point to? What words are used in the text? How much “link juice” am I going to get from this link? Is there any risk of being penalized?

In order to understand the answers, you need to understand the questions, and that means starting with the search engines’ perspective. So, make sure to check and analyze the sites you exchange links with.

The main difference between directories and search engines is that search engines use software (spider/crawler) with an algorithm to automatically index the web pages. However in a directory, web sites are organized into categories by people. If you have ever submitted to at least one directory and have checked the traffic to your site, you would have noticed that it is negligible comparing to the traffic coming through search engines. The advantage is that directories bring targeted traffic.

Though the traffic generated through directories is very limited, this traffic is from people who, by their own choice, come to our blog by browsing through categories in the directories. These people are more likely to remain in our site for long and more likely to be our prospects. Another important benefit is that these directories are considered “expert” sites by search engines. So, submitting a site in directories increases its chance of getting good rank in search results. Isn’t it worth submitting your site in directories?

Directories can broadly be classified into “Free Directories” and “Paid Directories”. There are many free directories available on the web, such as DMOZ, World Wide Index, AbiLogic, etc. Usually the free directories take a long time to list a submitted web site. So be patient and constantly check these directories for your site. In most directories the procedure is the same. Just go to their homepage and drill down to the most specific category for your site. Then click in the “Suggest a Site” or “Add your site” links found at the bottom of the category page. I will talk about social networks soon, that’s another great place to add your blogs.

Even if you don’t invest a lot of time, knowing who is speaking to your target audience, and linking to sites in your industry, is worthwhile. Most forums usually have FAQs and lists of recommended resources.

These are partly “friend lists,” and partly based on who has already established themselves. If they link to someone else in your industry, there’s no reason why they can’t link to you, if they have a good reason to do so. I’ve personally spent a bit of time on SEO related and webmaster forums, talking with a lot of bloggers, designers and webmasters in general, because it just makes sense for me to participate in the community. Make sure you add them to your ICQ, MSN, Skype or any other messenger you use to stay in touch with them and exchange advice and ideas.

When I started participating in forums and building a circle of friends, I didn’t do it to get links to my site, but if I asked all of the friends I have made to do me a favor, I could probably generate many links in a week to any kind of related site. Building relationships isn’t easy and quick, but it can be fun and very rewarding on a lot of levels. You must give in order to receive.