WNW Design have recently launched the website for well-established manufacturer Badger Design – a company specialising in magnetic items. While they sell a wide range of refrigerator magnets, magnetic memo-boards and other related products, they also have some other useful pieces of potential advertising on offer.

Their Tax Disc holders can be customised in the same way as any of their products, and they have a range of styles including MagneTax.
Their selection of custom coasters and beer mats are also a popular way for companies to get their name and logo out into the world.

Badger Design are extremely flexible in their approach – willing to make as few as 50 of many of these items, or as many as 5000! So not only are they perfect for large corporate businesses looking for some professional and unique advertising, but they can deal with companies that require smaller quantities.
Able to fulfil most requests when it comes to customising their products, they are willing to discuss your individual requirements in respect of size, design and construct.

You can find a few of their more unique products on their site too, including magnetic dart-boards (perfect for risk-free target practice in the office!), word fridge-magnets, shelf-wobblers (dynamic and attention-grabbing advertising), stickers and membership-cards.

To see their full range of products and the different options they offer, visit their new website.

Another Look At Linking Technologies by Robert Scoble

I’ve taken another look at linking technologies (Microsoft’s failed Smart Tags in a beta of IE 6, Google’s Autolink, and now GreaseMonkey are examples).

I’ve changed my mind — somewhat. I’m now going to take a user-centric stance instead of a do’t-tread-on-my-content approach. I’m also admitting I was wrong in calling all linking technologies evil.

So, let’s throw out what I’ve written so far. Let’s, instead, attempt to get big companies like Microsoft to take as user-centric an approach as possible when building linking technologies.

Many people, including Cory Doctorow told me that I was on the wrong side of the line by being anti-user (our debate should be up this weekend, Doug Kaye told me — he apologizes for taking so long to get it up, but he’s at O’Reilly’s ETech conference right now so can’t get them up).

So, how should we judge whether these new linking technologies are really “pro user?” Here’s six guidelines:

1) Does the linking technology ship with a default set of linking behaviors?

If it does, bad. If it doesn’t, good. Why is shipping with a default set of linking behaviors evil? Because that tells me that the company that is shipping the linking technology is more concerned by its revenue generating potential rather than taking a user-centric approach. From studying past human behavior we know that most people will just live with the defaults.

If you must include a default set of linking behaviors just as a proof of concept, then link to someone other than your company at first. Personally, I’d rather people who get the linking technology be asked to download a “behavior pack” which will be clear about what it does.

For instance, if Microsoft releases a linking technology, then it should let you choose your first “behavior pack.” It should take you out to a Web site and let you choose from a variety of packs so you know what you’re getting and how it’ll behave. If a default is loaded it should set off bells for being “anti user” because then it’s clear that the linking technology was designed to take users to advertising or company-specific stuff.

2) Does the linking technology potentially confuse some users when it’s turned on?

Now, Microsoft’s Smart Tag attempt (picture here) at least tried to use a squiggly line to differentiate itself from regular old A HREF links. I’d like future attempts to go even further.

Why can’t you put something that looks like a transparent piece of glass over a word that a linking technology is adding? Why do we need it to look like a link at all?

That way no user would ever be confused. But, if you decide to stick with a link then Google’s approach is OK. That forced the user to click a button on every page to see the new links. I just would hate to see what would happen when a company would try to turn that on by default.

I see a ton of potential user confusion coming. It should be clear where the new link is coming from, and, what behavior pack added it.

3) Does the linking technology give Web designers an “opt out?”

I might not want anyone to use a linking technology on my page, for instance. I’m a user, this is my work, and it seems sane to me to tell linking technologies to stay off while visiting this page.

Taking a you-must-display-my-new-links approach seems to be anti-user. Maybe that’s just me, though.

4) Can the linking technology be programmed by the user?

This is a key point. It should be #1, actually. If you’re gonna argue that linking technologies are “for the user” then you MUST let the user have control of the linking technology.

You MUST let the user remove linking behavior and you MUST let the user ADD linking behaviors. If your linking technology does not have this it CAN NOT BE SEEN AS USER FRIENDLY.

This is why I love Greasemonkey but I don’t like other linking technologies currently being tested. Greasemonkey puts me in control. It’s user centric.

5) Can the user package up new linking behaviors and distribute those to other users of the linking technology?

Again, one of the key arguments that has gotten me to switch my mind is that linking technologies are potentially user empowering.

Well, if you’re gonna make that argument then you need to go all the way to the mat for this one. If I’m a user and I want to create linking behaviors that’ll take you, to, say, a favorite charity of mine, then I should be enabled to do so.

If not, then the linking technology HAS TO BE judged as anti-user.

This is why I like Greasemonkey again. Mark Pilgrim, the other day, shipped a behavior pack for Greasemonkey that he called “Butler.” I thought that was great. I wish I could do it with other linking technologies currently on the market.

6) For linking technologies to be seen as “user centric” they must be explicitly loaded by the user.

Including them by default with other products or services is treading on dangerous water. This is why Greasemonkey is good and Smart Tags were evil.

7) If there is conflict between links, always display the original link.

That way the integrity of the linking system stays intact. Keeping the integrity of the linking system is very important to users.

8) If linking technologies are fighting over links, either display no links, or let all the linking technologies display links and let the user choose.

It’s possible, for instance, to come up with a menu. Look at the Smart Tag implementation again. A link could pull up a box that’d let you see all the linking technologies that are fighting over that link and let you choose.

Again, take as user-centric an approach as possible and make sure you don’t confuse anyone as to where the new links are coming from.

Make sense?

What do you think about this set of guidelines? Disagree or agree?

I’m still waiting for a really user-centric linking technology. Greasemonkey is close, though, and made me realize I was wrong in just calling all linking technologies evil.

About the Author:
Robert Scoble is the founder of the famous Scobleizer blog. As an employee of Microsoft, Robert Scoble is recognized as the most prominent corporate blogger in the world.

Go to Scobleizer …

5 Reasons Why Your Site
Needs to Publish a News Feed
By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2004

It seems like everyone is talking about RSS Feeds. They’ve been around for years but the buzz is up about them as the technology continues to go mainstream. Some people are reportedly abandoning their browsers and viewing the web through their readers – but they hardly represent the general public yet.
So does your site need one?

This question is somewhat like asking if your site needs a newsletter. Sure, the sky won’t fall tomorrow if you don’t get one today, but once you realize the benefits of having a news feed for your site, and try it for yourself, you may become an addict like the rest of us.

Reason #1: More frëe traffïc to your site.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that a frequently updated feed can bring you massive amounts of traffïc in a short time period. This won’t be true forever.

Here’s a snapshot in PDF format, of just the feed-originating traffïc to a new page of my site for the first 24 hours it opened.

Not exactly a stampede, but here’s the good part.

On the fourth day, the feed traffïc doubled, and all other traffïc continued to rise at the same rate.

That’s my fifth active feed of the twenty I have spread out over four sites, and I get similar results each time. In thirty days, that would be at least 5,000 new targeted visitors – again, this is not counting my present traffïc, or those who try my feed and stay subscribed, nor does it factor in what happens when the traffïc doubles again.

I can’t promise you the exact same results, no one can. But you should know that my feed is targeted towards a crowded market – if you know how to set up your feed properly and correctly apply your keyword research, you could have better results.

Those visitors, from the first hour of traffïc to today, resulted just from submitting my feed to the list of directories I compiled from many sources and studied. Some bring great frëe traffïc to new feeds, some are better once your feed has matured.

You can often get better placement in feed directories and in Yahoo’s RSS Directory than you could from your results in a regular search engine, and often, inclusion is instant.

Reason #2: It’s a hands-off way to update your audience.

What if you could run your newsletter without the hassles of maintaining your list, removing bounced addresses, finding new subscribers, formatting the content you find, altering your content to keep from being blacklisted, and after all that, wondering if all the various blockers mistakenly kept your message from getting through?

If that sounds like heaven, you can be one of the angels as soon as an hour from now.

When you supplement your current newsletter with more frequent updates via feed, you will be able to push out updates to subscribers to your news channel or feed more frequently and more efficiently.

With all the new frëe tools available, even if you’re all thumbs when it comes to making a web page, if you can fill out a ‘form’, you can create a feed.

Reason #3: Get visitors to clïck through to your site whenever you update.

If you haven’t used a feed reader before, you might be confused about the connection between the feed and your site and why it can result in an increase in traffïc. I’ll attempt to explain this to you in words, but I suggest downloading a news aggregator (also known as a feed reader), and looking at the results of your favorite site’s feed through a reader after you read this for the full effect.

You can use my main feed if you don’t have one to view.

If you don’t want to have another application up while you’re surfing, you can try Pluck , a frëe application you can use for more than just feeds that integrates with Internet Explorer – get it at http://freetrafficdirectory.com/pluck – it will take you right to the downloads page.

You can also do this from My Yahoo!, by changing your page to include their RSS Headlines console, still in Beta testing.

To summarize, visitors see the headlines they want to read, view the summary, and click-through to your site to read the rest of the news, either in a new window, or without having to leave the application they are in.

And when you update again, the reader will notify them that you have new headlines, and/or populate the list of items you have available. This can keep your audience coming back.

If you had trouble following that, come to this page for a one minute tutorial:
http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/members/postt95.html

Reason #4: Recycle old content.

If you have a list of your older articles, some older product reviews, site suggestions, or archived newsletters, you can use those to build content to populate your feed with information. As long as this news is still relevant, you can recycle this content to attract new visitors.

Reason #5: Its so easy it’s crazy not to do it.

Before the last few months, there weren’t as many frëe tools online that made the process of starting and publicizing a feed so effective and user-friendly.

The bottom line is, now that you can get all those benefits from filling out a form, saving the file, uploading to your server, promoting it once, and updating it from time to time, it’s insane not to do so.

You already have to update your site from time to time. You might as well get all the benefits of having a news feed too.

About The Author
Tinu? Currently wanted by Sëcret Hoarders of America for spilling frëe traffïc tips: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/blog

By David Bell (c) 2005

Once you have established the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines, it is time to figure out how you can get a high ranking in the search engines for those keywords. Should you create those everybody-hates-it-but-everybody-does-it doorway pages?
Well, yes and no. Doorway pages are great in theory but can be an administrative nightmare. Since each search engine uses a different algorithm to rank pages, you will need to create doorway pages for each keyword and for each search engine. Since the search engines frequently change their rankings, you’ll need to constantly change those doorway pages in order to ensure that they continue to obtain top rankings. Furthermore, if you are targeting a reasonably high number of keywords, you can easily bank on creating hundreds of such doorway pages. Can you imagine the sheer administrative difficulty in keeping track of all these pages? You’ll soon be spending more time on search engine optimization than on carrying on your normal business activities!

The method that I recommend is two-fold. Initially, don’t worry about the differences in the algorithms between the search engines. Just assume that all the search engines use the same algorithm while determining the ranking of pages. At this stage, you should create what I prefer to call “Keyword Rich Pages” (KRPs). Each of these KRPs are optimized for one keyword and are intended to rank highly in all the search engines. Once you have created these KRPs, and once the search engines have spidered these pages, find out which (if any) of the search engines have not given a high rank to these KRPs.

If you have created the KRPs properly, there shouldn’t be too many such search engines. Once you have determined the search engines which have not ranked the KRPs properly, create doorway pages which are optimized for these individual search engines. This method allows you to get top rankings in all the search engines by minimizing the number of pages that you have to create.

1) The first thing to remember is that some search engines don’t recognize the Meta Description tag. These search engines will often simply take the first few lines of text in the body of your page and display that as the description. Hence, you must ensure that the first few lines of text in your page are attractive to human beings.

2) Ensure that each sentence or every other sentence that you use contains your target keyword once. The keyword shouldn’t just be placed on an ad hoc basis – the way the keyword is placed in every sentence should actually make grammatical sense. This is not only important from the point of view of ensuring that your readers don’t get a bad impression of your site, but also from the point of view of search engine optimization – the search engines may penalize your page for spamming if they find that you have randomly repeated the keyword throughout the page.

3) Make sure that your paragraphs are not too long – each paragraph should be no more than 3 or 4 sentences long. This is because people on the web simply don’t have the time or the inclination to read long paragraphs.

4) Try to ensure that the page contains links to other pages with the keyword being present in the text under the link. This can often lead to a higher ranking for your page.

5) If possible, link to other pages which have the keyword in the file names. This can again lead to a higher ranking for your page.

6) There is no hard and fast rule regarding the total number of words that should be present in the KRPs. As a rule of thumb, try to ensure that there are between 500-600 words. However, if the number of words falls short of or exceeds this limit, don’t worry too much – it’s not that important.

Once you have created the page, ensure that the name of the file in which it is saved contains the keyword and that the individual words of the keyword are separated by hyphens. For example, your file name could be travel-to-australia.html. This will get you a higher ranking in the few search engines that give a lot of emphasis to the keyword being present in the URL.

Once you have created the KRPs, how do you ensure that they are spidered by the search engines? Do you simply upload the KRPs to your server and then submit each of the individual KRPs to the search engines? You can do that, but you may get a higher ranking if you allow the search engines to spider your pages by following links to them, rather than by submitting them manually. Furthermore, the search engines also take a rather dim view of pages which only contain outgoing links to other pages but do not contain any incoming links from other pages. The search engines will often recognize these pages as doorway pages and may penalize such pages.

What you should do is to provide a link to these KRPs from the home page of your site. You don’t want people who are seeing the home page to actually follow these links to the KRPs – you only want the search engines to follow these links. However, you can’t create links with hidden text (i.e. text with the same color as the background color) in your page since the search engines will almost certainly penalize or even ban you for doing this.

What you should do is to create a small image which has the same background color as the home page. Then, name this image with the same file name as the name of the KRP you have created. Hence, in this case, you should name the image travel-to- australia.gif. Then, add this image to the end of the home page and have it link to the KRP. Also, in the Alt tag of this image, add the keyword that you are targeting once. Furthermore, you should explicitly set the border of the image to 0 (add border =”0″ to the img tag of the image). Otherwise, when you get the image to link to the KRP, a border may be visible.

That’s it! When you want to target another keyword, create another KRP for it, make a copy of the image that you created for the first keyword, rename it to the file name of the new KRP, add the image to the home page and then link it to the new KRP. Repeat this process for every keyword that you are targeting. Once you have created all the KRPs and once you have got the home page to link to each of them, submit your site to the search engines. Don’t submit any of the individual pages in your site – submit only the URL for the home page of your site. While the search engines may take a long time to spider all the internal pages if you don’t submit them individually, I would still recommend not submitting them individually as this may get your KRPs a higher ranking in the search engines.

Follow all the rules that I have outlined in this article and you can soon see your search engine blues disappear for ever! I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

About The Author
David Bell is Manager, Online Marketing, at www.WSPromotion.com, a leading Search Engine Optimization services firm and Advertising Agency.

WNW Design has recently launched a new ecommerce site that sells a brand new product called the Holdsta™.

Holdsta™ is a safe, secure and yet discrete carry pouch designed to be worn under your normal garments, where you can store all your personal items and valuables.

Holdsta™ is ideal for bikers, snow sports enthusiasts, cyclists and horse riders (or any other sporting types for that matter!).

This is a brand new product and as such the launch of the site is also being complimented with a new advertising campaign aimed at creating and increasing consumer awareness of the product. This will include offline advertising in various magazines targeted at their main markets, including motorcycle magazines, etc. Press releases will also be sent out to increase awareness.

The Holdsta™ makes an ideal, original gift for any loved one that likes the security of having thier personal items stored safely yet within easy access, as and when they need it.

The Holdsta™ secure carry pouch is available in a number of different designs suitable for all tastes and in a couple of different chest sizes.

Prices range from £17.50 to £19.99 (plus shipping), depending on style and size.

Click here to visit the Holdsta™ secure carry pouch website and check it out!

By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2005

You have to laugh when you hear about the elaborate schemes people cook up in order to get three or four clicks through to their site, when there are plenty of legitïmate ways to get attention for your web site – from dozens to hundreds of interested prospects. It’s one thing to think creatively – it’s another to try and buck the system for a few hits from people who won’t subscribe, return or buy.

Speaking of creative thinking, one of the ways you can get above-board, quick and free traffïc is from using link services. Without even a hint of abuse, you can use these services to bring visitors to you – in minutes sometimes.

The first two services that you and I can use without stepping on any toes are the two link services at http://Furl.net and http://del.icio.us.

Also called “social bookmarks managers”, these sites allow you to start up a frëe account where you can start a link collection which can be sorted by theme. Using a system that makes use of categories – at del.icio.us they’re called a “tag” – there are times when it is quite acceptable to include your own site. Both make use of RSS to allow you to keep track of either your list or someone else’s – you can even subscribe to any public collection.

So where does the traffïc come in? Sign up with either of these services, and start collecting links on the same topic as your site, sprinkling in your own links.

Notice I said “sprinkling in”.

Treat this as you would a blog – you don’t want post your salës page. You’ll just get put on public link lists that collect sp@m entries – bad publicity may be great in Hollywood, but online it’s an income killer. So again, do not gratuitously begin to link to your entire site and think you’re helping yourself.

What typically happens is one of three things.

1- Your link will be displayed on sites that share these tag lists with the world,
2- Your site will be visited by someone who is interested in the tag you’ve chosen, or,
3- Your link library will be so diverse, varied and helpful that other users will subscribe to your tag to find new links to add.

I find it a good practice to use your real name or your site name as your login because it shows up as part of your link collection’s name. You can also use your own name or very targeted keywords to create custom tags.

As you’re adding the links to your collection, be sure to add a topic or tag to target your desired type of visitor. As an added bonus, if you use FeedBurner.com to study your feed statistics or to reduce your bandwidth load, you can integrate these link collections into your own feed as well.

So should you use Furl or del.icio.us for this? If you are going to be making personal use of this link collection, want the 5GB archive space and a place to save an archive snap shot of a web page, Furl is for you. Want to keep it simple? Stick with del.icio.us.

You can also use the Bloglines clip service, with or without Feedburner, to achieve similar ends – if you’re more focused towards blogs than RSS, you’ll probably have more success here. The Bloglines clip service is more geared towards the verbose user, as it is set up much like a blog.

The third tool you can use to draw traffïc is at a site that blatantly asks you to use it, and they’ve created it solely for that purpose – to connect certain kinds of web readers and publishers.

The catch? Unlike the other three services, this really can only be used by bloggers – you’ll have to verify that you own the blog in question just to participate.

Good news if you blog though, or plan to – the web resource in question is run by one of the most important sites a successful blogger needs to be visible in.

In mid-January 2005, Technorati.com took the idea of tags to a global level.

If you’re writing about travel, you can appear on their travel tag page automatically. You can bet that your post will cross the paths of blog enthusiasts who are specifically interested in travel. This works on any claimed blog in the blogosphere, on every platform. And it’s so easy to do.

If you have the category capability built-into your blog software, you need only claim your web log and ping Technorati with updates using your blog software, if it’s set up to auto-ping, or their form: http://www.technorati.com/ping.html. How easy is that?

If you use Blogger or some other system that doesn’t include categories, never fear. You can come to the party.

>From now on, when you post links to your blog, you’ll want to include the special tag code. It works with any link, or you can link to Technorati – see an example of it on their site: http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html.

With a little time and patience, Bloggers especially can use any of these methods to bring frëe targeted traffïc to their doorsteps. Bottom line : don’t be tempted to cheat at traffïc generation – there are so many ways to get better results honorably.

About The Author
Learn how Tinu saw a 75% increase in both traffïc and sales from feeds at http://freetraffictip.com/rssbook. For free reprint rights to her articles (and a potential $500 bribe) send a blank email to moneyarticles@freetraffictip.com.

This article is from the SitePro News newsletter, click here to visit them.

By Mark Daoust

What is the Sandbox?

Before we get too far into an explanation as to what Google’s sandbox is, it must be noted that not everyone even agrees that the sandbox exists. The sandbox is actually nothing more than a theory developed to explain what many different SEO experts have witnessed with their listings. Whether or not the sandbox really exists is actually irrelevant when we know that the effects of the sandbox exist.

Google’s sandbox is a relatively new filter that appeared to be put in place back in March of 2004. This happened after the widely publicized updates of Austin and Florida, and the implementation of what is known as the Austin update. If you are not sure what those are, there is no need to worry as those updates are for the most part in the past. The sandbox filter seems to affect nearly all new websites placing them on an initial “probation” status. The effect of this is that new websites may get into Google’s SERP’s (search engine results pages) relatively quickly and may even perform well for a couple of weeks. When the filter is applied to the new website it is referred to as being put in the “sandbox”. The new website still appears in the result pages, but it does not rank well regardless of how much original, well optimized content it has and regardless of how many quality inbound links it may have. The filter keeps new websites from having immediate success in the search engine result pages.

The sandbox filter seems to affect almost all new websites, with very few exceptions. It is important to note that the filter is not a punishment for anything a webmaster does with a new website. The filter is merely an initiation period for new websites.

The sandbox filter also affects competitive keyword driven sites more than sites that key in on less competitive keywords. If your website focuses on very competitive keywords, you are likely to remain in the sandbox for a longer period of time than if you focus on keywords that are relatively non-competitive.

Why Does the Sandbox Exist?

There is a lot of debate as to whether the sandbox filter is a good thing for Google to implement or not. Obviously webmasters who are trying to get their sites well positioned in Google do not like the sandbox filter as it prevents them from receiving the huge levels of traffïc that a top listing in Google can bring. The filter was not implemented at random, however, and there are some good reasons for the filter’s existence.

As the SEO community figured out the basic elements of Google’s ranking algorithm, inbound links, original content rich with keywords, and the proper use of anchor text, search engine spammers began to take advantage of these elements, setting up websites that were in clear violation of Google’s policies with the knowledge that eventually those websites would be banned. This, however, did not matter. If a search engine spammer got a website to rank well in Google for even one month, the profïts justified the cost of building the site in the first place. All that needed to be done in the future was to rebuild the sp@m websites with different domains and slightly different content. The idea for spammers was a simple one – capitalize on Google’s traffïc for as long as possible (before being banned), then do it all over again with a new website. The method was extremely effective and easy to implement.

What made this all the more easy to accomplish was Google’s extremely fast indexing. While other search engines would take several months to index a new website, Google could index a website in as little as one month (sites are currently being indexed within a few days). Search engine spammers were living large off of Google’s generosity.

To solve this problem, Google determined that it would compromise by continuing to index websites quickly, attempting to get as much new, fresh content out to the general public as possible, but new websites would not be trusted as implicitly as they had been in the past. Instead, all new websites would be put on probation. As time passed, and a website continued to pass any sp@m filters, it would begin to perform well in the rankings. Eventually, the site would be allowed to “leave” the sandbox and join the rest of the established websites.

How Does This Affect My Website?

If you have a new website, there is a good chance that you will be placed in the sandbox. This should be expected, but it should not change the way you build your website or market it. You should use the sandbox filter to your advantage.

Google still ranks websites in much the same way that it did in the past. Websites are judged on the quality of their inbound links and the quality of their content. Google will continue to change how they evaluate inbound links and content, but the basic elements of ranking will remain the same.

While your website is in the sandbox, you should use the time to build your traffïc using regular traffïc building methods such as writing articles, building a strong community of visitors, and partnering with websites that offer some synergy to your visitors. During this probationary time, you have an excellent opportunïty to build all the elements that cause websites to perform well in the search engines. When your site finally does leave the sandbox, it should be very well positioned within Google.

Is My Website in the Sandbox?

When webmasters learn about the sandbox filter, their first question is always whether or not their websites have been placed in it. Determining whether or not you are in the sandbox is relatively easy.

First, being placed in the sandbox is different than having your website banned. If you do a search for your domain in Google and it returns zero results for your website (and you had been previously listed in Google), there is a chance that you have been banned. One of the best ways to determine if you have been banned is to look at your log files to see if Google is visiting your website. Banned websites typically do not receive Google visits, regardless of who is linking to them.

If you have not been banned, but do not rank well with Google, you should look at the quality of your content and the quality of your inbound links. You should also see if you rank well for non-competitive keywords. Remember how the filter affects competitive keywords more than less competitive keywords? Well, you can use this to determine if you have been sandboxed. Finally, if you rank well in all the other major search engines, but do not show up at all in Google’s rankings, you have probably been sandboxed.

Is There A Way to Get Out of the Sandbox?

The quick answer to this is yes, there is a way out of the sandbox, but you will not like the answer. The answer is to simply wait. The sandbox filter is not a permanent filter and is only intended to reduce search engine sp@m. It is not intended to hold people back from succeeding. So eventually, if you continue to build your site as it should be built, you will leave the sandbox and join the other established websites.

Again, if your website has been placed in the sandbox you should use this time to your advantage. It is a great opportunïty to build your traffïc sources outside of the search engines. If you have a website that does well in the search engines, you may be tempted to ignore other proven methods of traffïc building such as building a community, or building strong inbound links through partnerships. However, if you establish traffïc sources outside of search engines, when you finally leave the sandbox, you will see a welcome increase in your traffïc levels.

Conclusion

Google has been going to great lengths to reduce search engine sp@m. Some have faulted Google for this, claiming that legitïmate sites are being affected as well as the sp@m websites. While this is probably the case, as an owner of a website, you need to place yourself in Google’s position and ask yourself what it is really looking for in a website. Google is looking for websites that offer quality content and still relies on the natural voting system that was first used to establish pagerank. Google may change the way it qualifies content or inbound links, but the basic elements of a quality website will always remain the same.

No website owner in his right mind “likes” Google’s sandbox. However, a smart website owner will use the sandbox as an opportunïty to build a website that Google simply cannot reject.

About The Author
Mark Daoust is the owner of Site-Reference.com. This article originally appeared at http://www.site-reference.com/Search-Engines/5147/index.html.

This article is from the SEO News newsletter, click here to visit them.

WNW Design, the Devon web designers, are proud to anounce that we have now signed over 100 web design clients.

Launched in January 2000, Devon web design company WNW Design, has continued to grow and expand over the last 5 years, with clients in such varied industries as holiday accommodation and health products to commercial lighting and alloy wheels.

The sites in our portfolio range from little 3 page sites giving small businesses their first step on to the world wide web, to large shopping sites that have hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of products available to buy online.

Infact, over the last 5 years, WNW Design has been responsible for the launching of 12 e-commerce sites that sell online and currently have a further 8 in developement at the moment.

The reason for our success?

We believe that it is our professional approach, quality of work and the results that we produce time and time again for our clients that has contributed to our continual growth. However, even more than that, the fact that we involve our clients in every step of the developement process, our constant contact with our clients to make sure all is well and the ability for our clients to ring us and actually get to talk to someone encourages confidence and loyalty.

As it is, the growth of the company is set to continue at an even greater pace than ever before with the recent launch of sites such as Masons of Chudleigh – John Deere Merchandise And Used Garden & Agricultural Equipement and Jean Bartlett Holiday Cottages.

If you would like to find out what WNW Design Devon web design company can do for your business, do not hesitate to contact us.

WNW Design Has recently been employed to help improve the search ening positioning for the Western Tyden website.

Western Tydens specialise in spark arresters which are designed specifically for preventing the risk of fire due to the ignition of flammable materials, caused by spark emissions from the exhausts of internal combustion engines.

They are also the sole UK distributors of Engine Control Systems range of industrial and off road Catalytic Cleaners and Particulate Filters (otherwise known as exhaust cleaners).

Western Tydens have had a site for a little while now, but the site has never undergone any sort of search engine optimisation work.

Hopefully, over the following weeks and months we will start to see their site featuring more highly for such terms as spark arresters, ctatlytic cleaners, particulate filters and exhaust cleaners.

If you would like to check out he Western Tydens website, click here.

By Scottie Claiborne (c) 2005

You’ve Got To Pay Your Dues

Many site owners and SEOs are worried because their new sites that rank well in Yahoo and MSN, aren’t doing well in Google, and they’re blaming it on the “sandbox.” The current theory is that new sites are somehow being penalized for obtaining too many links, too quickly.

Is There a Sandbox?

Is there some sort of link analysis going on; some sort of threshold that will get links to new sites discounted? It sounds like a logical possibility. However, many of us who don’t buy volume links or participate in linking networks are seeing the same ranking delays. New resource sites with a few good relevant links are taking just as long to climb Google’s ranks as the instant link pop sites. I think a lot of people are confusing the sandbox, with an “aging filter” that appeared earlier this year.

Editorial Note: For more information the Google Sandbox read Mark Daoust’s article Google’s Giant Sandbox.

6 Months For Results in Google

I haven’t seen any brand new sites with new domains appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERP) since early in 2004. There seems to be a delay of about 6-8 months. I’ve checked with many site owners and SEOs and I haven’t found anyone who’s gotten a brand new domain ranked well in Google. If there’s a magic bullet, no one’s spilling the beans.

What happens is new sites get indexed, they appear for some obscure queries and they may appear at the top for a week or so, but then they drop to the bottom of the SERP for several months. The page shows a PageRank in the Google toolbar, as well as backlinks. Everything else works fine but it just doesn’t rank well for any terms in Google. Many times, not even the company name.

If you have a brand new site, stop driving yourself nuts wondering what you are doing wrong! Stop tweaking and changing things, trying to influence your rankings; until the site has been in the index a while, it doesn’t seem to matter what you do to it.

Why an Aging Delay?

My own theory is that the age factor for new sites is Google’s answer to mini-networks and other multi-site strategies intended to artificially inflate link popularity. Many people divide what should be a single site into multiple sites in order to capitalize on the links that are exchanged between them. Others build a series of small sites that are only designed to add link popularity to the main site.

By delaying the ranking of brand new sites, the mini-network strategy becomes more of a long-term strategy than a quick jump to the top. Site owners who might have started new sites are going to be more inclined to build new pages on existing sites in order to avoid that delay.

Plan Ahead for New Sites

If you are launching new sites for clients, make sure you set the expectation that it is likely to be 7-8 months before the site achieves any real results in Google.

We used to keep a site under wraps and launch it once it was “perfect.” Today it makes sense to get a few pages up for your new site as soon as you complete them. The sooner Google is aware of the domain, the better.

As soon as you have a domain name, get the hostïng set up, put up a temporary page and link to it from another site in Google’s index to start that clock ticking.

Subdomains May Avoid the Aging Delay

Pages on subdomains are generally treated as part of the main domain, making them a possible workaround. If your client has the option of building their site on a subdomain instead of a new top-level domain name, let them know that this may avoid the time delay.

MSN, Yahoo, and AdWords

When launching a new site, if traffïc from Google is critical to your plan for success you need to plan ahead. Get the site out there and linked to as early as possible and plan to run an AdWords and/or Overture campaign for a few months until the site can be established in the editorial results. Yahoo and MSN do not have this delay built-in, so focus your early efforts on these engines.

Don’t worry, Google will eventually give your new site the respect it deserves — just give it time.

About The Author
Scottie Claiborne is the Web Marketing Strategist for The Karcher Group and the facilitator of the Successful Sites Newsletter.She is a speaker at the Search Engine Strategies conferences and the High Rankings Seminars as well as the administrator of the High Rankings Forum. This article originally published in the High Rankings Advisor.

This article is from the SitePro News newsletter, click here to visit them.