When it comes to ranking well in the search engines many of us take a "best practices" approach. We focus on the best techniques. We are concerned with what you are suppose to do and how you are suppose to do it. There is, no doubt, great value to knowing what works (after all it works). However, there is a down side to this approach. If we only focus on techniques and never bother to take the time to worry about why those techniques are successful, then we may very well find ourselves "surprised" one-day when all of the sudden what worked yesterday no longer seems to work today. This, indeed, is what many people (unhappily) discovered with Google's Big Daddy update.

The search engines, it turns out, are rather dynamic and they are constantly changing the way in which they determine which sites rank well for any given search term. What this means is that long-term success with the search engines requires us to understand the goals of the major search engines and how that effects their algorithm. It is not sufficient to know what the search engines do today, we also need to get a sense of where the search engines are likely to do tomorrow and to build our optimization campaigns accordingly. If we can learn to think like the search engines, then we can start to build and market the type of sites that they want to rank well. And with billions of dollars of cash and some of the brightest minds that roam this planet, the search engines are getting rather good at ranking highly those sites which they want to rank well. Therefore, the prudent, long-term strategy to ranking well in the search engines is to learn how to both build and market our sites exactly as the search engines want us to.

This leads us to an obvious question, or rather two obvious questions. The first question is what types of websites to the search engines like? The second questions is how do the search engines want us to market our sites? The answer to the first question is that the search engines like relevant websites. That is to say, websites which their customers (i.e., people who search online) find relevant for the search terms that they enter. The answer to the second question is that the search engines like popular websites and as such want us to make our sites popular. Note, though, that by popular we mean real world, natural popularity; not contrived popularity. These are sites people link to because they like the site and find it of value.

What this means is that if you can create a site which both the search engine's customers and other webmasters and web-users find valuable then you have a winning formula for long-term ranking success. And while that may not sound so easy, it's not so hard either. It basically requires you to stay abreast of the type of content that people are looking for as well as the types of websites that people find popular (guess what, they are often times, although not always, the same thing).

Relevant Content In terms of creating relevant content the key is to figure out what sort of information, products or services your customers need (remember, often times your customers started out as the search engine customers). Look around at the types of sites that do well, what kind of content do they provide. Talk to your customers and listen to what they want. The more information you can get about unmet needs the greater the chances you have of providing high-quality, relevant content (the type that search engines like showing and people like linking to). The key is to constantly be on the lookout for ways to create the best site possible for your particular field or industry.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Stay up-to-date In any field, there are always new developments, insights, techniques, etc. By staying abreast of these you provide yourself with numerous possibilities for creating meaningful content. You can write about it, apply it, review it, explain it, etc. The new is always interesting. It is also confusing and (perhaps) not yet known. Take advantage of these facts to create interesting, exciting, relevant content.

Play to your strengths Know your area of expertise and take advantage of that to help provide useful, interesting content. If your strength is money, then hire someone to build your content. If you excel at making connections, then perhaps you can encourage other people to build your content. Not everything has to come from you, just something. Figure out what you are best at and act accordingly.

Improve upon existing content Look at what is already successful and see if you can do it better. Look around at all of the different types of content online and see what needs improving upon and then improve upon it.

Real popularity In terms of creating real popularity for your site (and all the links that come with that) the key today is finding those people with the power to influence popularity and then giving them what they want. Blogs, forums, del.icio.us, digg.com, news sites, etc, all of these venues are run by real live people who (if they like your site) have the power to send large numbers of visitors and links to your site. However, they will only do so if you give them what they want. What that means is that in order to create real popularity online you first need to find out what the "powers that be" want and how you can give it to them.

Here are a few examples of what type of content creates popularity online:

Bloggers Bloggers need something to blog about. After all, each and every day they need to supply their readers with new content. So if you can create something that they find of interest then they will gladly write about you and your "creation" (which, of course, will include a link).

News sites News sites need stories and/or articles of interest. Is there something about your site which is newsworthy? If so, then package it as a story and write a press release about it (or contact the press directly if you have any connections). Alternatively, offer to write a column or a special article. At the same time, ask them what subjects they are interested in and see if you can either write or hire someone to write an article about it.

Social Media Sites There are no clear cut rules about what types of content do well at sites like Digg.com and del.icio.us. What does well in one industry may be of little interest to another. It is best to look at the types of content which are popular for your industry on these sites and then to create similar content on your site. With that said, certain types of styles seem to do well (such as lists or how to articles). Figure out which styles work best for your target audience and write your content accordingly.

I have come up with the 5 easiest and best ways to fight comment spam. These are ways to stop spam from ever getting to your blog…. btw if you dont know what akismet is then stop right now and set that up first. This is just to help you stop the spam from even getting the that level. The first 2 require editing of the .htaccess. The rest are wordpress plugins.

5) Deny Access to No Referrer Requests

When humans comment on your blog they have read the post and leave a comment. This of course leaves the referal from your blog. One easy way to block spammers is to check for the referal. Simply paste the lines below into your .htaccess file in the root of your webserver.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*shoemoney.com.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://whereyouwanttosendthem.com/$ [R=301,L]

What you need to edit:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php* - If you are not running a wordpress blog then you will want to change that to the file that gets the post for comments.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*shoemoney.com.* [OR] - obviously you want this to be your domain.

RewriteRule (.*) ^http://whereyouwanttosendthem.com/$ [R=301,L] - this is where you are redirecting them too. This probably does not matter since the automated spambots will not follow redirects.

Done!

4) Kill tor anonymous proxies

Thats cool people want to surf anonymously and all that but being that about 75% of my comments come from tor proxies its much easier just to block them.

simply go here and copy this to your .htaccess to block all the tor servers

3) Stop Comments On Older Posts

Spammers target older posts for 2 reasons.

A) they show up in search engines and thus they know:

• search engines value the page pr wise
• it could be relavent to the keyword they are trying to spam

B) You wont see it. - since the post is old its unlikely that you would ever notice thus greater chance of sneaking it by you.

You have a few options to fix this-

You can manually disallow comments for posts after x amount of days (ick)

If you have wordpress you can download this plugin
which will automatically close off comments and trackbacks after 21 days.

If you have some h4×0r skills you can setup a cron job (thats a automated task to us ninjas) that will edit your database directly checking for past posts and setting the comments and

2) Blacklist Repeat Offenders:

When some spammers do get in you can blacklist there ips so they wont ever be able to again… this process does suck a bit but its a option.

Again edit your .htaccess file:

order allow,deny
deny from 192.168.1.1
deny from 192.168.1.*
allow from all

Remember * represent wildcards

1) Rename your comment file

The default for wordpress is wp-comments-post.php by simply renaming this file to say… wpc.php then changing your theme to reflect the different location for the comment file you will ward off a TON of spammers. This will kill 100% of the automated spam bots.

Your probably saying to yourself… well so what? How could this effect my revenue! Well the answer is all the hardwork and time you have spent building the reputation of your site can be QUICKLY destroyed by giving these spammers NAKID (no link condom) links. You know what they say… Imagine everyone you link to and who they have linked to and who they have linked to …. eek!

1. GMail based blog
   
   This is an awesome idea to allow you to blog via GMail.
   Who needs an SQL database when you can save your posts to GMail?


2. Encrypt
   all GMail traffic
   
   This is just a simple tip allowing you to encrypt your whole
   session. When you go to GMail.com only the login is encrypted. When you
   go to GMail.com.
   At https://gmail.google.com the whole session is encrypted.


3. Make a GMail
   partition
   
   This is a simple yet brilliant idea to make use of that 2.7 gigs
   and counting of space GMail allows. This will create a new “partition” in
   explorer. You can then save files/folders to your GMail account via the explorer
   interface.
   Create one simple filter so none of the files clutter up your inbox and you’re
   set. I believe this is against the GMail terms of service, but I’ve
   been using it for a while with no problems.


4. Linux on GMail
   
   This awesome hack allows you to have a Linux file system
   installed on your GMail account. It will give you basic *nix commands such
   as cp mv rm and ls.
   This is by far the neatest of all these.


5. Use GMail as notepad
   
   It’s such a simple yet effective idea. Using GMail’s
   ability to save drafts you can edit and save text just like notepad. There
   are actually
   more advantages to using GMail as a simple notepad such as spell check and
   the fact that you can access the documents from anywhere.


6. GMail skins
   
   Tired of the same old default GMail theme? Not anymore. Use
   this simple firefox plugin to change the color and basic layout of your
   GMail account.


7. GMail manager
   
   This firefox plugin allows you to manage multiple GMail accounts
   from firefox. It will give you basic stats about all your GMail accounts,
   and can check for
   new mail at a user defined interval.


8. GNotify

This one is actually by
Google. It’s a simple yet totally needed plugin.
It tells you when you have mail with a very unobtrusive notify box in the lower
right hand corner of your screen. It also opens a new tab in your browser with
the email and subject already filled out when you click a mailto: link. This
is a must have for people who depend on their email.