Internet Business Scams - How to Avoid Them

Internet Scams have become big money to the people who are looking to
make a quick buck on the internet. Who out there hasn't won the Irish
lottery, been asked to be a representative for the widget corporation
collecting money to keep Ten percent or been sent an email by your
secret admirer. Three not so nice sounding characteristics will go a
long way toward protecting you from internet "work at home" scam
artists: cynicism, skepticism and gut instinct. Put those together with
a little knowledge and add a sprinkle of common sense, and you are not
likely to bit by a dirty rotten scoundrel. Here are five rules to help
you avoid internet scams.

Money won't come easy despite what
they tell you. Either it isn't money or it isn't easy. Anybody who
tells you that you will get rich sitting by your pool side sipping Pina
Coladas is lying. Think about this, if it were that easy would they be
advertising it to you? And if they want you to send them money (or your
credit card number), they are lying. Again, why would they allow you to
use their process which could potentially cut into their profits. They
wouldn't and you can take that promise to the bank.

Look for how
they are making their money! What is the vendor doing for his income?
If you are the source of his money, there is an excellent chance that
you are being cheated. Here are a couple of meaningless or nonexistent
products to be on the lookout for when looking for an internet business:

·
An ebook that tells you how to make money. If the book is so great, why
is it not on the New York Times Bestseller list? Not everybody who
sells an ebook is trying to rip you off, but let's look at the facts
here. Anybody can write down anything and sell it on a website. They
can charge as much as they want for it and they get to keep 100% of the
profit-no risk and all reward. Also, are they offering you a money back
guarantee? If not you should be running in the other direction. Now, I
am not saying that all ebooks are scams but you should investigate
before you buy.

· Anything that begins with, "I can teach you
how to make money..." That goes for those seminars that promise to
teach you how to make millions, too. You know the old saying applies
here. Those that can do and those that can't teach. Look at the gurus
background before committing any sum of money to a training program.

Look
through the hype. Sometimes it seems like those hyped up sales letters
are everywhere-they're in your mailbox, your inbox and on the websites
that want to sell you a chance of a lifetime business opportunity. When
you think about it, most of them are trying to get you to buy some kind
of product or program. Why do they need so many bells and whistles?

Half
the time, it's to confuse you and disguise the fact that they want you
to send them money but you won't get anything in return. Here's a test
for you to try: Print the sales letter out and cross out everything
that is in bold type, colored type, italicized, underscored, or large
type. Next, cross out all adverbs and adjectives, so that you only have
nouns and verbs left. Whatever is left is the real truth about the
product. And if nothing is left, then you have your answer.

Never
buy a list. Some work-at-home business opportunities give you the
opportunity to buy lists of people. This is a list that they sell to
you for a nominal fee. They are people who are looking for crafters,
envelope stuffers, typists, free-lancers, and so on. Half the time the
lists are full of dead ends, filled positions, or even fictional
companies. Even when they are legitimate email address, you can find
the same sources all on your own without paying a dime. Job lists are
never a good idea.

Be very cautious about Multi-Level Marketing.
Some multi-level-marketing businesses are legitimate, but there are
many variations on a scam in the MLM world. In Fact, MLM's are not even
legal unless the money you make is from a product, not from the
recruitment of other people. Before you spend your hard earned money on
an MLM, have a lawyer check the contract to make absolutely certain
that it's both legitimate and legal.

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6 Reasons Why An Ebay Business Is The Easiest Way To Make Money Online

By Ralf Skirr

This article is about why an ebay business may
be the best option for you to start earning money online. Many people
want to start an online business, yet most of them never get it done.
While the idea of working from home is nice, there are quite a few
obstacles, especially if you”re totally new to the business.

To build your own online business from scratch you”d have to learn
about web site creation, programming, marketing, product creation and
many other skills necessary to maintain an online business. For many
online businesses you”d have to consider significant investments in
software and online services. Before you know it, a few months have
passed, and you haven”t earned a penny!

Not so with an ebay business. An ebay business is easy to start and offers a few advantages:

1. You can start selling on ebay even if you don”t have your own web site.

2. You don”t have to buy expensive tools or equip an office. Your only
cost is your ebay fee, which is tiny and can be paid as you go.

3. You don”t need to buy products to sell or keep an inventory. You can
sell something you already have and don”t need any more. Ebay can earn
you a nice additional income from stuff you no longer use.

4. You don”t need complicated skills like programming and web site
creation. Ebay provides everything you need to get your first offer
online within minutes.

5. Your new ebay business instantly starts with a huge customer base.
Millions of people search the ebay marketplace each day - and they
intend to buy!

6. You start receiving money within a few days. Once your first ebay
auction is over the buyer will send funds to your paypal or 2Checkout
account.

I”m self employed since 1987 and from all the business opportunities
I”ve seen, ebay is the one that is the easiest to start. At first it
will not make you a fortune, but it will bring in a few smaller sales.
But you can earn money from your very first week onward, and as you go
along you will learn how improve it.

Then you can choose to either join the league of professional ebay
businesses or to branch out into other online business ideas.

So if you thought about making money online but have not yet managed to do so, just head over to ebay and observe how it works.

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How Does a Search Engine Know the Language of A Query? Google Explores Character Mapping

Google Patent Applications on Languages and Queries

Google published four patent applications recently that delve into
these areas, covering the “handling of language uncertainty in
processing search queries and searches over the web, where the queries
and documents can be expressed in any one of a number of different
languages.”

A search engine is called upon to index and search documents written
in a wide variety of languages, and a number of documents that are
expressed in multiple languages.

Keyboards without Non-Latin Characters

Another challenge is that some devices that are used to create
content and display web pages can have difficulties in producing some
of the characters used in different languages.

People searching on a handheld, or on a keyboard, may use characters
that are close substitutes for the ones that they would actually want
to use, such as an unaccented character.

A search engine could process content that it has indexed, to remove
accents and convert special characters into a standard set of
characters, but this would result in losing information from the search
index, and making it impossible to retrieve content when a searcher
does use their natural language in a query, when their search does use
non-latin characters.

The Query Language Patent Filings

The patent applications were published on December 13, 2007, and were originally filed on April 19, 2006.

• Query language determination using query terms and interface language (20070288450)
  
  Invented by Ruchira S. Datta and Fabio Lopiano
• Augmenting queries with synonyms from synonyms map (20070288448)
  
  Invented by Ruchira S. Datta
• Augmenting queries with synonyms selected using language statistics (20070288449)
  
  Invented by Ruchira S. Datta and Fabio Lopiano
• Simplifying query terms with transliteration (20070288230)
  
  Invented by Ruchira S. Datta

Search Engine Learning the Language of a Document

Under the approach in these patents, a training model is created to
use to identify the language used in documents to be searched. The
training model focuses upon a specific body of documents when training,
and those can be a mix of different types of documents, such as:

• HTML
• PDF
• Text documents,
• Word processing documents,
• Usenet articles, or;
• Any other kinds of documents having text content, including metadata content.

These documents should ideally represent what might be found on the
Web, and might be the Web itself, or a snapshot or extract from the
Web.

That body of documents should include all languages represented on
the Web, with enough documents from each language, so that they might
contain a significant enough portion of the words found within all
documents of the language on the Web.

The Role of Character Encoding

A system like this might work best if each of the training documents
and each document to be searched would be encoded in a known and
consistent character encoding, such as 8-bit Uniform Transformation
Format (UTF-8).
Of course, that isn’t what you’ll find on the Web, where you will see
many pages not even including a character set defined, or another
character set completely. Here’s what the code what look like in the
HTML for a page using UTF-8:

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″>

If a page doesn’t use UTF-8, and this language determination process
does, then documents using some other encoding might be converted into
UTF-8. That conversion might result in some funny looking characters
ending up in results.

Language Detection on Pages, Using Probabilities

The document language detection process uses statistical learning theories, and classification models.

The most likely class or classes for a page of text may be based on
the text from the page, and possibly by looking at the URL of the page.

This could be done by breaking the text down into words, and
computing the probabilities of those words appearing upon the page
together in different languages, to prodict the most likely language
for that text.

So, on a page where the word “Hello” occurs frequently, and in the
training model, it appears most frequently on English and then German
pages, there’s a probability that the page may be in English, and then
in German.

Looking at certain characters can be helpful, too. If certain
characters don’t appear very frequently, if at all, in some languages,
then pages which have words in them with those characters might be less
likely to be in those languages.

The Use of Character Mapping

One of the keys to this process is the creation of character maps
that may be more unique to one language than to others. A common form
of a word in a specific language may contain accented characters, for
instance.

The patent applications go into a great deal of detail on how these character mappings can be used in a few different ways.

One is to help identify languages for some queries.

Another is to identify when certain queries might be simplified
versions of a word, when a searcher can’t use certain characters
because the device that they are using, such as a smart phone, is
incapable of using those characters. There are a number of examples of
how this might work given in the patent applications.

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How Does a Search Engine Know the Language of A Query? Google Explores Character Mapping

Google Patent Applications on Languages and Queries

Google published four patent applications recently that delve into
these areas, covering the “handling of language uncertainty in
processing search queries and searches over the web, where the queries
and documents can be expressed in any one of a number of different
languages.”

A search engine is called upon to index and search documents written
in a wide variety of languages, and a number of documents that are
expressed in multiple languages.

Keyboards without Non-Latin Characters

Another challenge is that some devices that are used to create
content and display web pages can have difficulties in producing some
of the characters used in different languages.

People searching on a handheld, or on a keyboard, may use characters
that are close substitutes for the ones that they would actually want
to use, such as an unaccented character.

A search engine could process content that it has indexed, to remove
accents and convert special characters into a standard set of
characters, but this would result in losing information from the search
index, and making it impossible to retrieve content when a searcher
does use their natural language in a query, when their search does use
non-latin characters.

The Query Language Patent Filings

The patent applications were published on December 13, 2007, and were originally filed on April 19, 2006.

• Query language determination using query terms and interface language (20070288450)
  
  Invented by Ruchira S. Datta and Fabio Lopiano
• Augmenting queries with synonyms from synonyms map (20070288448)
  
  Invented by Ruchira S. Datta
• Augmenting queries with synonyms selected using language statistics (20070288449)
  
  Invented by Ruchira S. Datta and Fabio Lopiano
• Simplifying query terms with transliteration (20070288230)
  
  Invented by Ruchira S. Datta

Search Engine Learning the Language of a Document

Under the approach in these patents, a training model is created to
use to identify the language used in documents to be searched. The
training model focuses upon a specific body of documents when training,
and those can be a mix of different types of documents, such as:

• HTML
• PDF
• Text documents,
• Word processing documents,
• Usenet articles, or;
• Any other kinds of documents having text content, including metadata content.

These documents should ideally represent what might be found on the
Web, and might be the Web itself, or a snapshot or extract from the
Web.

That body of documents should include all languages represented on
the Web, with enough documents from each language, so that they might
contain a significant enough portion of the words found within all
documents of the language on the Web.

The Role of Character Encoding

A system like this might work best if each of the training documents
and each document to be searched would be encoded in a known and
consistent character encoding, such as 8-bit Uniform Transformation
Format (UTF-8).
Of course, that isn’t what you’ll find on the Web, where you will see
many pages not even including a character set defined, or another
character set completely. Here’s what the code what look like in the
HTML for a page using UTF-8:

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″>

If a page doesn’t use UTF-8, and this language determination process
does, then documents using some other encoding might be converted into
UTF-8. That conversion might result in some funny looking characters
ending up in results.

Language Detection on Pages, Using Probabilities

The document language detection process uses statistical learning theories, and classification models.

The most likely class or classes for a page of text may be based on
the text from the page, and possibly by looking at the URL of the page.

This could be done by breaking the text down into words, and
computing the probabilities of those words appearing upon the page
together in different languages, to prodict the most likely language
for that text.

So, on a page where the word “Hello” occurs frequently, and in the
training model, it appears most frequently on English and then German
pages, there’s a probability that the page may be in English, and then
in German.

Looking at certain characters can be helpful, too. If certain
characters don’t appear very frequently, if at all, in some languages,
then pages which have words in them with those characters might be less
likely to be in those languages.

The Use of Character Mapping

One of the keys to this process is the creation of character maps
that may be more unique to one language than to others. A common form
of a word in a specific language may contain accented characters, for
instance.

The patent applications go into a great deal of detail on how these character mappings can be used in a few different ways.

One is to help identify languages for some queries.

Another is to identify when certain queries might be simplified
versions of a word, when a searcher can’t use certain characters
because the device that they are using, such as a smart phone, is
incapable of using those characters. There are a number of examples of
how this might work given in the patent applications.

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5 Link Development Guidelines You can Build On

Considerations for building links are:

1. Varying your anchor text - This is important because building 1000 links to one page with the same anchor text “is not natural”,
meaning highly unlikely. Whereas building 100 links with overlapping
use of one or two prominent keywords on the other hand, over the course
of a month (while integrating other website promotion tactics to
promote natural linking patterns) is within the boundaries.

2. Avoid linking from websites that are connected or hosted on the same server
- This whole link scheme unraveled as a result of webmasters purchasing
throw away domains, building them up and then pointing the collective
sum of links at their rock star domain to give it a boost. This
technique was a shady one (naturally inflating the target domain) and
search engines wised up to this tactic.

Hence, any links harboring the same IP address, or owned by the same
person (which you can see using domain tools) could invoke a penalty
which results in a ban of the sites in question (removal from the
index) or being sand-boxed in the hundreds vs. the top 10.

IP Diversity is the key to any solid link building strategy. Next in line on a scale of importance would be link frequency and link velocity (the rate in which you build links, or lose them) as covered in the next point.

3. Maintaining a solid momentum for gaining / losing links.
- Many battles have been one or lost on the whole top 10 comfort zone
(basking in the glory attitude) that many powerhouses are lulled into
vs. the I’m hungry for this keyword and I am not stopping until I reach
the top (underdog competitor mentality).

Despite page rank, website authority and other factors coming into
play, the rate in which one builds links most definitely has an impact
on the search algorithm (as it is not always able to distinguish the
rate from popularity/demand).

A more popular page (one with traffic and more links) for example,
could overthrow a page from a more established website over time. So,
don’t get too comfortable resting on your laurels, unless you want to
lose your spot to a nameless or openly bold competitor who has figured
out your link building strategy and focused on a flaw in your armor.

It is just the nature of the game, some links get dropped or
devalued as indexing, algorithms or other factors affect their ability
to pass rank. In which case having knowledge of this you should…

4. Use a variety of sources (don’t rely to heavily
on one tactic). Predictability or becoming complacent in your methods
is a sure sign of decay, not only will predictable patterns make your
tactics even less likely to produce consistent results (as algorithms
most certainly change).

But, it is always best to have link insurance by using a variety of
methods to balance the equation. By simply not putting all of your eggs
in one basket, you can take up the slack in one area, if another link
building strategy goes to pot without having to start from scratch.

Not to sound cliche, but diversity truly is the key to high
rankings. Relying too heavily on one link building tactic insures that
if one area loses velocity or is devalued, that at least your pages
have the ability to defend themselves in the SERPs or maintain their
present course.

This should not preclude you from developing them consistently, it
is more about observing the effect that the link building is having
when combined with other methods such as social media and traffic
barrages from visitors to create the perfect combination of popularity,
traffic, links and relevance through consistent new content creation.

5. Think links for search engine traction and go with social media for viral marketing and exposure
- Links are still a crucial component to how search engines see your
site. Call it contextual reference, tagging by association, the fusion
of anchor text, or what have you. Despite our attempts to label or
describe the phenomenon, building links is still the cornerstone of
securing a high ranking position in search engines, for the keywords
above any other method that we know embrace.

As we have all surmised, different types of traffic have different
needs. So before you try to create a one size fits all mentality, make
sure that your website has all of the fundamental bases covered to
serve each of the types of potential visitors, before embarking on
bring the crux of the web to bear on your website. Otherwise it’s a sad
scene to go through all of that hard work only to see thousands of
potential customers bounce back into the SERPs (search engine result
pages) looking for a better offer.

Now I guess I better get around to writing the other 550 link
development strategies and tips, *as the title was an unfortunate typo,
but if I start now maybe I can finish by the end of 2008.

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What are the Most Important SEO Factors for Achieving High Rankings?

SEO Factors

First things first, if you really want to rank highly in search
engines (aside from a short term boost) then here are the fundamentals
known for producing hang time once you hit the mark.

1) Create relevant content, frequently; Search
engines like fresh content. Our site for example as a result of the
relationship that is developed over time gets spidered within 24-48
hours from Google for the main folders that have a history of frequent
updates. Other pages take up to a week to see results. If you
understand the implication of increased spidering activity, you realize
that when you make adjustments to your pages if ultimately affects the
relevancy of your pages.

So, having the ability to go back and make tweaks to static pages,
their links / anchor text or reformat areas that have been neglected
and align them with the new direction of your marketing efforts can be
extremely useful for fine tuning your position. This is a by product or
(a) frequent (relevant) updates and (b) website authority.

Website authority in your niche is the goal, so if you think that
SEO is only about links, think again. Site relevance, the word you use,
the age of the links (both internal and external) all make a
difference.

2) Make sure your sitemaps are current - some link
to the site map on each page, so the spiders hit the map from whichever
page they land on, others link every page back to the homepage which
has the link to the site map.

My suggestion, give spiders credit, they are crafty enough to know
which pages get the most attention from internal as well as external
links and spidering the content is only one aspect of the equation (a
very important one) but the main factor once again is relevance to the
core theme of your site.



3) Use authority sites to develop links to bolster your position
in the global scheme of search engines. Spammy pages will not provide
that, generic directories will not produce the result. One way you can
start building authority is looking at less competitive terms for your
niche, targeting them, writing content specifically with those terms in
mind (a page title, an h1 tag using the exact match key phrase, etc)
then build 10 links to the page and see if you hit the top 10 for that
term.

After you bing enough lower level terms, the search engines become
familiar with your site ranking in the top 10 (even if they are less
competitive) and over time (if the keywords overlap) your site builds
credentials for those terms.

Just like the law of momentum where a like attracts a like or birds
of a feather flock together, search engines can glean the gist of your
sites collective relevance, categorize your motive (if you build the
content systematically with relevance) and rank your pages accordingly.

Combining topical relevance with building links from diverse IP’s
and using content that is frequently created/updated to fit like a
piece of the puzzle in your websites overall relevance/theme can
accomplish more in 6 months than most websites accomplish in years.
This will become evident when the site starts ranking like a juggernaut
for virtually hundreds or thousands of niche related terms.

So, if you want the secret to high rankings, it is never a simple
one and done linear method for organic search (if you want that then
use pay per click). High rankings are a result of finding the right
combination of elements such as forecasting trends, targeting the right
marketing channel and audience and optimizing the terms THEY would use
to find you, NOT the terms you assume, so use keyword
research. Another key point is to put the needs of the user first, give
them purpose, yet engage them with a call to action so they can
reciprocate, make a purchase, sign up for an RSS feed, visit more
frequently and increase your click popularity. All of which are a major
contributing factor in maintaining high rankings through popularity and consistent, relevant traffic.

So, before you think I will just build some links, or I will just
write a few articles or tweak a few pages, it is more about engaging the process as a whole with proper planning and vision (working from the projected future back to the present) that can put your site over the top.

Once you’ve achieved a notable mecca of success, an entirely new
series of challenges arise (like staving off the competition who will
be gunning for your keywords with unparalleled tenacity) but that goes
with the territory of being at the helm of the food chain online.

The real benefit of SEO is being able to see measurable increases in
website traffic that can start as a trickle and erupt into a stampede.
Aside from all of the point mentioned above, timing is the most
important, just like a hot IPO, those who get in on the ground floor
before a companies stock skyrockets as a result of the value they offer
to the market, keywords have the same capacity.

The more you optimize the better the odds you have to gain market
share, so, instead of sitting here reading about it, make sure you take
steps daily to increase the equity of your website. Whether it’s adding
a few links from blog comments, eliminating the clutter from your pages
through editing your content, or adding a few new pages that correspond
to a hot new category or buzzword in your industry. The early bird gets
the worm, just like the top 3 receive the spoils of traffic, and the
more pages you have indexed with your main keywords intact, the higher
the authority your website can develop.

content relevance how to achieve high rankings SEO top ranking SEO factors

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Make Your Blog Personal

One major appeal of the blogosphere is the personal, community
feeling associated with blogging. The most successful and most
profitable bloggers write for their readers, providing useful, relevant
content that is easily accessible. Make use of all the tools available
to share your blog with your dedicated readers.

- RSS feeds allow readers to get regular updates whenever you post
new material to your blog directly through their personal feed reader.
You can find more information on feeds, news aggregators, and RSS here:
http://www.rss-specifications.com/

- Allow visitors to easily subscribe to your feeds through their readers, as well as email. Feedburner (http://feedburner.com) is a popular way to offer your feeds.

- Visit other blogs that relate to your niche, make comments, and
refer to interesting entries in your own blog using trackback links.
Trackbacks leave a brief excerpt of your post in the comments of the
post you are linking to, as well a link back to your blog. You can
enhance your blog further by creating trackback links to your own posts.

It is possible to make money with your blog. It just takes a little
time and effort, as well as dedication and commitment. Blog regularly,
at least three times a week, but strive to post on a daily basis. Make
a habit of frequenting other blogs and be a useful commenter. Most
importantly, spread the word about your blog by giving out your URL and
submitting to search engines and directories. Keep track of your
traffic and visitor statistics with a program like sitemeter
(http://www.sitemeter.com) or statcounter (http://www.stat counter.com).

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Online Marketing Tips

Marketing online is a
dog-eat-dog world these days. Most Internet searchers are aware of
Google’s AdWords program, they are the ads that appear on the right of
the search results, under “Sponsored Links”. But what about all the
other search engines? Are pay per click programs available there, too?

MSN.com, a search engine produced by Microsoft, offers pay per click
under the name of adCenter. For a low start-up cost of $5 and a credit
card, you can start bidding on ad placement based on the words users
search for. The starting bid, as little as a nickel per click, is the
maximum you are willing to pay for a prime-location placed ad. You can
increase your maximum bid amount for certain audiences or keywords to
help boost your chances of appearing at the top of the page when users
fitting your target audience search for your keywords. Typically, the
higher you bid, the higher your ad placement.

Microsoft adCenter offers a few tracking tools to advertisers. There
is a free conversion tracker (so you can see how many clicks resulted
in purchases, registrations or specific actions on your site),
adTracker (reports the effectiveness of your clicks) and a reporting
tool that allows you to see how much you are paying per click, among
other data.



Microsoft also offers a demographic finding tool. To access this tool,
click on MSN Directory from the MSN.com home page. Then click on
Advertise on MSN under the ‘From MSN’ heading.

Yahoo!, the second most popular search engine behind Google, offers
a versatile pay per click program. You bid on placement, much like MSN.
Yahoo has additional tools, though, like their Keyword Selection Tool,
that will show you how many times a keyword has been searched in the
past month as well as searches related to a specific keyword.

Yahoo! also has a tool, called the View Bids Tool, that allows you
to see what other advertisers are bidding for certain terms and their
titles and descriptions. Additionally, the Price Determination chart
will help you find a happy medium between top advertising spots and
your budget.

To open a Sponsored Search account on Yahoo!, you’ll need an opening
balance of $5. Bids start at $.05. Before you create your account, you
can view all the tools and run a few searches to see the keyword
saturation in your field. To get there, just go to Yahoo.com and click
the Ad Programs link next to the Yahoo! Search button.

goClick.com, a smaller search engine, offers a lower minimum bid per
click, just one cent. There is no set up fee or monthly fee to be a
part of goClick’s network of paid advertisers and the opening balance
minimum is $10.

If your target audience is very specific, web sites they are likely
to visit may offer affiliate advertising. Using this marketing method
you pay a fee for each month you advertise on the site, either via
banner ad or link, or you may pay per click. The cost per click is
typically higher than search engine programs but your advertising
dollar is reaching a more specialized market.

The crucial points to remember when utilizing pay per click advertising are:

* Be very specific about your keywords - avoid broad terms

* Stay away from sites that pay visitors to click on their advertisers

* Keep an eye on your cost per click vs. sales or traffic and change your keyword ads as needed

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4 Steps I Did To Make Money Through Blogging

1) Make sure that your blog provides a lot of useful information.
Furthermore, there must be a steady amount of traffic to your blog.
Then, you can generate income from your blog.
Post relevant content which covers your niche. In this way, visitors
will find your blog useful and informative. Some may even come back to
your blog again.

If you have problems creating content, then, I suggest that you visit
forums that covers your niche. See what are the problems people face.
Convert the problems to topics and offer solutions in your blog. The
most important thing for blogging is that you must share your
information with others.


2) Optimize your blog.
Search engine traffic is the best source of traffic to one's
blog/website. In order to optimize your blog, you need to find the
keywords that are relevant to your blog. Furthermore, you need to know
how to place these relevant keywords in your blog. Then, the search
engine spider can easily crawl on them.


3)Promote your blog.
There are various ways to promote your blog. You can promote online or
offline. Online marketing techniques are link building, article
writing, commenting on other people's blog and forums. Offline
marketing techniques are creating a business card with your blog url in
it and telling to your relatives, friends, work place colleagues about
your blog. For me, I only concentrate on online marketing.


Do all the techniques mentioned above and you will be able to pull up your search engine ranking quickly


4) Take advantage of text-link-ads.


When you receive large amount of traffic, sign up for text-link-ads. Text-link-ads is a free service. So, don't worry about any paying money to use their service.

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5 Critical Steps to Protecting Your Computer on the Internet

Spyware, viruses and worms... oh my!

If you are
connected to the internet, you need to make sure you get your computer
set up properly if you want to avoid problems down the road.

With
all the viruses, spyware and other threats on the internet today, no
computer should be set up without the proper protection.

And that protection needs to be in place as soon after you hook up your new machine as possible.

The
following five steps will make your computer a much harder target for
threats. You still won't be completely immune to problems, but 99% of
the time the threat will pass you by, looking for the easy mark.

1. Running a Personal Firewall

A
personal firewall is software that basically makes your computer
invisible to hackers, worms and other threats that can infect your
computer over the internet.

Setting up a firewall is the
absolute first thing you should do if you're going to connect to the
internet. Without a firewall, your computer could get infected in as
little as one minute after connecting.

If you have a brand new
computer running Windows XP Service Pack 2, there is a firewall built
into Windows. It will already have been turned on when you first set up
your computer.

If you're running an older version of Windows,
even an earlier version of Windows XP, there is no firewall
automatically set up for you. In this case there are two possibilities:

- Your computer came pre-loaded with a firewall such as Norton Internet Security or McAfee Internet Security
- You have no firewall installed and should download one ASAP.

If
you don't have any personal firewall software installed, you should do
so right away. Zone Alarm is a very good firewall program that has a
version that you can download and install for free.

You can download the free version of Zone Alarm from http://www.computer-help-squad.com/zonealarm

2. Turn on Windows Updates

Again,
if you're running Windows XP Service Pack 2 this is already set up, but
otherwise you should turn on Windows Updates. Microsoft releases
updates for security problems and other bugs in Windows on a regular
basis.

These updates will keep your computer running better, and
they often fix security issues that could compromise your information
or privacy.

If you are running Windows XP Service Pack 2, you
can double-check that automatic updates are turned on by clicking
Start, then click Control Panel, then double-click Security Center. The
window that opens will tell you if automatic updates are turned on, and
lets you turn them on if they're not.

To turn on automatic
updates in earlier versions of Windows XP, click on the Start menu,
click Control Panel and then double-click on System. On the "Automatic
Updates" tab, click the option to "Automatically download the updates
and install them on the schedule I specify."

To turn them on in
Windows 2000, click on Start, click Control Panel and then double-click
on Automatic Updates. Again, click the option to "automatically
download the updates and install them on the schedule I specify."

Now
when Microsoft releases updates, they will be downloaded for you
automatically and Windows will tell you when they are ready to be
installed.

3. Install & Update Antivirus Software

Most
new computers come with antivirus software these days. You might have
Norton, McAfee, PC-Cillin or another brand. No matter what program you
have, you will need to update it when you get connected to the internet.

It
doesn't matter how new your computer is - there will be new viruses,
and new updates for the antivirus software, since it was loaded.

The
exact process is different for each brand of antivirus program, but
most of them will have an icon in the bottom right corner of your
desktop, beside the time. The icon might be a picture of a shield
(McAfee), a stethoscope (Norton) or something else.

In most
cases, if you point to the icon for your antivirus and click the right
mouse button, a menu will pop up with an update option. It could be
simply called update or could be something like Live Update or Download
Latest Updates. If you click on the update option (with the left button
this time) it will install the newest updates for you.

If you're
not sure which icon is for your antivirus software, just point to each
one for a few seconds and a little title should pop up telling you what
it is.

4. Install Anti-Spyware Software

Spyware - and
other things known as adware and malware - is becoming as big a problem
as viruses. Spyware programs can cause a lot of problems with your
computer, not to mention they can track your personal information and
you never know where it's being sent.

Some new computers might
includes antispyware software, but most of them don't yet. There are
quite a few anti-spyware programs available, some free and some not.
The one I recommend is from Microsoft and is one of the free ones.

One
of the reasons I like it is because it always runs in the background
and will automatically catch a lot of spyware before it gets on your
computer.

Many of the other programs don't catch it until you
run a scan. Not only does this allow things to get on your computer, it
also means you have to actually remember to run a scan.

You can download the free Microsoft Antispyware from http://www.computer-help-squad.com/antispyware

5. Set up a Free Email Account

This
last item is not as critical as the first four, but I would highly
recommend you set up an email account with one of the free services
like Hotmail or Gmail.

Once you're on the internet, you'll find
a lot of useful information that you want that requires you to provide
an email address. In some cases, these people will end up sending you a
bunch of spam.

If you use a free email account to sign up for
anything that you don't know for sure you can trust, it's not going to
fill your main email with a bunch of junk.

This goes for
anything really, not just online information. If you're entering a
contest or signing up for anything offline and you don't know where
your information could end up being used, I would suggest using your
free email address.

If worse comes to worse, and your free email
address gets inundated with spam, you can always just set up a new one
and let the old one expire.

Some of the better free email services are www.hotmail.com, www.gmail.com and www.yahoomail.com.

If
you've had your computer for a while and never done any of these
things, you should still take these steps to get it set up properly. It
will definitely save you a lot of time - and possibly money - as you
use your system.

About the Author

John Lenaghan offers easy-to-understand advice at the Computer
Help Squad website. Find out more about these 5 steps - sign up for our
newsletter and receive your free 5-part guide at http://www.computer-help-squad.com/5steps



Written by: John Lenaghan

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