SEO For The Common Webmaster

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.

One of the first steps in creating a website or blog is registering a domain name. When doing so, you need to make sure you are dealing with a Domain Names registrar that is reliable and easy to deal with. There are certain factors you want to look at.

First, you want to make sure that you are able to transfer your domain to another registrar if you are not happy with them. All registrars are required to allow you to transfer a domain but some make it very difficult. The other thing you want to check is how easy it is to transfer to a new owner if you wish to sell the domain name. I used a company by the name of Ipower and they required you to have forms signed by both the buyer and seller and have the form notarized before you could switch owners. This made it impossible for me to sell a name I no longer needed so I lost the name. There are many that allow you to just transfer to a new owner if the owner has an account with them. These are normally free accounts. Make sure your registrar does this before signing up with them. I know for sure GoDaddy and Namecheap both offer this service.

Next, you want to do your research to see what others are saying in regards to problems and support. A domain registrar should be able to provide great customer service and quick help. I have dealt with several companies and I can honestly say, the one I am with now has been the best so far. I have been with NameCheap for over two years and I have not had any problems and the service is excellent. The manage domains interface is easy to use and when I did sell a domain name, it took seconds to transfer it to a new owner.

The final thing to look at is price. This to me means very little if the rest of the factors do not add up. Be wary of great first year offers. Make sure you know what the cost will be for renewal. Several companies offer free WhoIs Privacy for the first year free then they charge from $2.88 to $9.95 a year after that for the WhoIs protection. Make sure you know this upfront. I was with GoDaddy and their’s went from free to $8.88 and it was a pain to try and figure out how to get it off my account without paying for it with the renewal. With NameCheap, it was free the first year and $2.88 for the renewal. However, you could just choice it or not choice it and it was not automatically applied to your bill.

One last piece of advice. Never ever register your domain the same place you have your hosting account. If you do this and your site is ever shut down for any reason, you lose both the access to your site and to your domain name. At least if you have the domain at a separate place, you can use file back ups and a new host to get your site up and running.

This article will get you started, make sure you do your research before buying any service.

Have any advice or question to add to this advice? Please leave a comment and I will do my best to answer or add your advice for others to read.

There are so many plugins when it comes to a WordPress blog. I use a few but one of the most important ones that I use for all my blogs is the All in One SEO Pack. As I mentioned in previous post, there are many things that are important when it comes to making your site ready for the search engines. However, to do some of them in WordPress requires you to do some template modification.

With the Seo Plugin, this is not necessary. This plugin will automatically install meta tags and descriptions for every post based off you tags and your posts. You can of course tweak this to your own descriptions but if you do not want to take the time, it will be done automatically.

The other cool feature of this plugin is that it will prevent your articles from being duplicated in the search engines. You can have categories, archives, tag clouds marked as not indexed which means the search engines will not follow the links and they will not be indexed more than once. This prevents problems with possible duplicate content penalties from the search engines.

All in all, if you have the ability and time to do all the work yourself, I recommend you change the template and do it the exact way you want. However, if like me, you have no interest in changing codes or messing with the template, this is the plugin for you. It can be used as is or can be tweaked to your needs. It is well worth adding it to your plugins and best of all it is free.

Just remember Search Engine Optimization is never done. You will always need to work harder to be number one. This plugin is just a small step in to building a number one blog.