SEO For The Common Webmaster

I am not a big fan of most social bookmarking sites. I do like like a couple of community sites. I joined MyBlogLog.com a while back but have not done much with it. As you can see in my sidebar, I decided to give it a better try. I have added the widget and I have updated my profile. It is a great way to interact with other in the same niche and also to drive some traffic to your site. The main reason I use it is that it is fun. I am beginning to find some people that I interact with that share many of the same interest as I do.

It is easy to join and if you are a member of Yahoo, you can use the same log-in information and add all your blogs to the site. You can also link to all your other social sites with ease. I have had problems verifying my blogs because they do not seem to pick up my blog post to verify it. I am going to try again today to see if it works.

If you enjoying reading my blogs, please bookmark the site and subscribe to the feeds. I have provided easy links to all book marking sites and a subscribe button on top for easy RSS subscribing. Please also leave comments if you have something to add to any of my posts. It is a great way to influence what I write and also to add a link back to your site for others to visit. Please do not spam because that will be removed.

Thanks to all my readers for being part of SEO08.com.

Often times as a webmaster, we do not want to do all the work of starting a site from scratch. To avoid this, we may purchase a website or blog that is already up and running. However, when doing so, one needs to do lots of research to make sure that they know all the details before buying a site.

If the site claims to have loads of traffic, find out where that traffic is coming from. Traffic by the thousands can be generated by using services like Stumble Upon. Though the number of visits increase, the traffic is useless. Ask the seller to provide proof by showing the stats from the website. Most websites have some kind of tracking that shows where the traffic is coming from. If it is mostly from social bookmarking sites, the traffic is useless and lowers the value of the site. Also beware of false traffic from weird sites. Check those out to see what they are.

Another consideration is what is the site earning and from where. If they claim to be making $400 a month from Google Adsense, make sure you see proof. Also find out what they are doing to get that amount of earnings. If they are spending $300 a month on things like Adwords, than the earnings is really $100 a month. This is still decent earnings but it changes the value of the site.

Looking at the domain name is important. Is it something that is easy to market, when does it expire, and how easy it to transfer? You need to know if it has any fees to transfer. Also make sure how the files of the site will be delivered. Ask if the seller will transfer to your host or are you required to do so. Make sure you know how to transfer the whole site prior to buying.

If you are looking for original content that is not just copied from elsewhere, make sure to both ask and check for yourself. It is easy to copy the first paragraph into Google or use Copyscape.com  to check to see if the  content is located elsewhere. Be sure to check several articles to make sure that the original was not just copied from the site you are wanting to buy. To me, a website or blog with original unique articles is worth a lot more than a site loaded with content that belongs to someone else. Be sure to give the owner the chance to explain and not jump to conclusions. However, if they lie about it than it is better not to deal with them.

If Page Rank or Google PR is important to you, make sure the PR stated is not faked. There are many PR checkers that can check for fake PR. You can also check Google by searching for the site URL. If it shows up with a different URL, it most likely is faked.

One last piece of advice is to check the WhoIs information for the domain. this can be check at http://whois.sc. They will tell all information related to age, domain registrar, and owners information along with details about the site.

I would like to think that the majority of webmasters are just honest people who are trying to make an honest living. However, there is always scammers trying to steal your money.  Make sure if you are thinking of buying a website or blog, you follow the above advice and do all the research you can so you avoid being scammed.

Sometimes we see how vulnerable the Internet and its structure can be. On Saturday a fire in Houston, Texas’s The Planet’s H1 Data Center reported a fire that caused them to shut down their generators and in turn shutting down thousands of websites. Personal it has not affected my blogs or websites but many of the big websites including sites like Entrecard are affected and the outage could be several hours.

The Planet reports no damage to any of its servers but the servers are still not up and working and they are reporting still working on the problem several hours later.

To keep up to date, The Planet is providing hourly updates on their forum.

Please share your thoughts on this by leaving a comment.

If you missed the original posting of our directories listings, we have recently added several new directories to our list. You can find check out the Free Directories or the Paid Directories Lists to submit your own sites. We are trying to add as many directories as possible so that our readers will have new placed to add their links.

If you own a directory, we would love to add your free or paid directory to our list. Feel free to leave a comment at either thread or you can contact us by using the contact form under the advertise tab on the top of the page.

If you find a certain directory very useful, please feel free to share that by telling the rest of the readers. Thanks once again for making our humble SEO blog a success!