Sitonomy | Find technical details easily about your competitior's site

I have just come across a great site that has the potential to help webmasters in numerous ways. In today's world, the competition between webmasters is very tight. Every webmaster is trying to get ahead of his competitor by doing Search Engine Optimization, aiming at particular keywords etc. One tactic to beat your competitor is to know what is it that they are doing and then do more than that. However, it's not easy to get access to that information about your competitor...until now!


Sitonomy is a website that provides you with enormous amount of information about your competitor's website. All you have to do is enter the website's URL and you will be presented with the information. Sitonomy tells you about the Advertising Networks, Blogging Platform, Ads Management, Widgets, Subscriptions, Stats Tools, Programming Language etc. of other websites.


Furthermore, there is an alternatives link in each category mentioned above that presents you with alternative solutions. For example, suppose that the site that you looked up is using Google Analytics as one of its Stats Tools. If you click on the alternatives link then you will get information about all other major stats tools such as quantcast, sitemeter, StatCounter etc.

Sitonomy is a great site and if you are a webmaster then I highly recommend that you use it. If you are new and want to build a website then look up what famous sites are doing and then use that information make your own website.

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Google blogging in 2008 - Google Blog
A grateful season - Google Blog
Year in review: 2008 - Inside Adsense

Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
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Should bloggers have an "About Me" Page?

First of all, I would like to apologize for not updating SEO and Blogging Tips regularly last month. I had gotten very busy with college exams and I had to choose between my education and blogging. I chose education. But now I am done with everything and ready to blog again.

Today, I am going to talk about About Me (or About Us) pages. You have seen them on famous independent blogs, group blogs and/or numerous websites. About Me pages are very common and can be found on almost every website these days but the question is whether you, as a blogger, should have an About Me page on your blog.

First lets make it clear what we mean by About Me pages. They are pages on blogs and websites that allow the readers to know more about the author of the blog/site. They are pages where blog authors reveal some information about their lives to their readers.

Should YOU, a blogger, have an About Me page?

The answer to this question depends on what kind of a blogger you have and what type of blog you run. Normally, I would suggest that having an About Me page is a good idea. Why? Simply because it lets your readers know you in more detail. The readers prefer to know that they are reading articles written but a normal human being and not just a machine. Furthermore, sometimes, knowing a little about the author helps readers understand the author's point of view.

But having an About Me page is not always a good idea. I would say that if your blog is fairly new then you should wait a little to create your page. Give your blog some time and let it develop a little before you write your About Me page. No one is interested in knowing about the author of a blog that contains only three posts.

Also, when you decide to create the page, make sure that you keep it short. Don't go talking about your family, dog, and girlfriend. No one is interested in knowing that much about you. Keep it simple! Just let the readers briefly know who you are, what you do, your hobbies etc. You may not even want to create a whole new separate page for it. You might have noticed that on SEO and Blogging Tips, I just have an About Me widget on the right. If anyone is interested, they can just check it out.

Overall, I would suggest that you do have an About Me page but just keep it short and simple.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Image Source
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New search-by-style options for Google Image Search - Google Blog
Tracking Santa: the backstory - Google Blog
New in Labs: Turn an email into a Google Doc - Gmail Blog
A holiday break to play with all the new stuff - Gmail Blog

Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
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Submit Edge - SEO service that can help your site

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not very difficult. If you practice is regularly on your blog or sites then you can easily learn the tricks in few months. However, sometimes you cannot spend months learning SEO. You have to act immediately to drive traffic to your website or blog. This is when you need outside help from sites that offer SEO services including link building.

Submit Edge is one such website that helps their customers do SEO. They offer several services such as link building services, directory submission, article submission, social bookmarking, search engine submission etc.


Some of the advantages of using Submit Edge over another SEO firm are:

• Manual directory submission
• Only one way permanent links
• Updated list of directories
• Provide full report once everything is complete
  

Submit Edge offers all of its services for very cheap prices. If you are a webmaster or blogger who does not have enough time to do all the necessary SEO then I suggest you take a look at Submit Edge and give them a try.

5 Important Steps You Should Take Before Exchanging Links

This month has been really busy for me and that is why I have not been able to update my blogs as regularly as I have always wanted to. Nonetheless, I try my best to keep sharing my experiences and knowledge about SEO, Blogging, Marketing and Moneymaking with you guys. Today, I am going to talk about exchanging links. As webmasters, we all know that link exchanges are good ways to drive traffic to your own website or blog, get backlinks and thus boost your website's PageRank. However, one needs to be very careful when exchanging links with other webmasters.

Link Exchange - What is it?
For those who do not know, link exchange is when two webmasters decided to put each other's website's link on their own websites. This is a common type of link exchange known as two way link exchange. The second type of link exchange is known as three way link exchange. In such a link exchange, a webmaster places his website A's link on the other webmaster's website B. In return, website A's webmaster places webmaster B's link on his website C. Thus, there are a total of three websites involved.

5 steps you should take before exchanging links

1. Carefully check the content of the website - You always want to exchange links with only quality websites that are regularly updated. Make sure that the content is interesting. Also, you do not want to exchange links with sites that contain adult material (and other content that Google does not like).
   
2. Check the website's PageRank - While content is important, a lot of webmasters also consider PageRank before exchanging links. Why? Just so that they can get a nice backlink for their site and thus boost its PageRank.
3. Verify the PageRank - If you consider PageRank as a major factor then I strongly suggest that you verify the website's PageRank. There are several ways to generate a false PageRank and you need to know how to detect fake PageRank.
   
4. Check if the website is a link farm - A lot of webmasters just create websites and then try to put as many links as possible on their website. Such sites with numerous irrelevant links are considered as link farms and linking to such sites can hurt your website's PageRank.
5. Check where your link will be placed - You don't want your link to be placed somewhere in the corner at the bottom of the page where no one will see it. Your link should be placed in a proper place where the visitors can easily see it.

Finally, I would like to say that sometimes you should not care about PageRank very much when exchanging links. PageRank is a good factor but it is never permanent. A website that has a PageRank of 6 today can completely lose it in the next update. Thus, try to get backlinks from websites with relevant and interesting content as well.

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Some Useful Links:
Voting tools for volunteers on the go - Google Blog
Make a date with data in Google Analytics - Inside Adsense

Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
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