Link Tool for Websites- Affiliates, Bloggers, Designers, Publishers…

Attention Website Affiliates, Bloggers, Site Designers, Publishers, etc.

I’ve found another one of those ‘sleeper’ tools – a website design/development tool that I initially wasn’t terribly interested in, but now find virtually indispensable – I use it every day. Who Knew?

GoShortUrl, by Will Bontrager, is my new favorite link tool for web sites, blogs, forums, e-mails, etc.

As the name suggests – GoShortUrl creates short URLs.

I could always use something like tinyurl.com – which is a good service, but, if I did – my Short URL would be under their domain name. That’s fine for them – get’s their url a lot of exposure – but it does nothing for my own domain name recognition. To me, it just makes more sense to use my own domain instead of theirs, don’t you think?

With GoShortURL I create short URLs for ANY URL, using MY Domain Name – not someone else’s.

Take this url for example-
http://www.willmaster.com/library/tools/What_Search_Engine_Spiders_See.php?dlperry.

It’s a syndicated link to another great article and tool by my ‘programmer of choice’, Will Bontrager. Now I like Will a lot – he makes great website software – but that is a rather unwieldy url.

GoShortUrl is all I need to turn this –
http://www.willmaster.com/library/tools/What_Search_Engine_Spiders_See.php?dlperry

into this –
http://www.intuitivebydesign.com/08/ZNrhQ

And it’s so easy – 1-2-3 and it’s done.

See my GoShortURL screenshots and instructions here.

Want your OWN copy of GoShortURL ? That’s so easy too…

For your convenience, GoShortURL is available here
from this Direct Purchase – Instant Download link
only $19

Purchase made through Paypal. All major credit cards are accepted. PayPal account not required.
At the checkout, Bontrager Connection LLC. will be listed as the seller.

Notice: Placing an order indicates your acceptance of the License Agreement.
All WillMaster software programs are guaranteed to work as intended.

As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me – I’m here to help.

–D L Perry
IntuitivebyDesign.com
©2008

Save Time/Money with Pre-Installation script|server Testing

or “How to Get a Migraine in 10 easy steps”

You’ve found this great website software that will be perfect for your web site, so…

1. you download it to your computer
2. you read all the set-up and installation instructions
3. you open a few files in your ascii text editor and realize you need to read the instructions again…
4. you re-read the instructions
5. you carefully edit the programs files as indicated to make the script work on your url
6. you carefully fix the mistakes you carefully made in step 5
7. you build new files/pages as necessary
8. you re-build the files/pages from step 7
9. you upload all the files to your web site server, and
10. THEN – you discover that your server does not meet the programs requirements, you cannot run the script, and if you’re really unlucky – the script|server failure has damaged your site – maybe even made your site completely unavailable… and presto – you have a migraine!

Who Knew?

YOU could have – if you used your free Master Pre-Installation Tester first.

With the free Master Pre-Installation Tester, you can test a web server to see if it meets a script’s requirements before you buy/download/read/read/edit/upload/etc. ,

and the 10 Step Migraine described above will look more like this:

You’ve found this great website software that will be perfect for your web site, so…

1. you test the server first with Master Pre-Installation Tester
2. you discover that your server does not meet the programs requirements, you cannot run the script, and because you tested the script|server requirements first …presto – no migraine!

And did I mention…..it’s a FREE Download.

MasterQuiz Step by Step Software review

Over on the IbD site (www.intuitivebydesign.com) I’ve been piddling around with MasterQuiz – Website Quiz Generating software. The “What you know about Who you know” quiz has some fun info that you may not have known about some of todays popular Search Industry pro’s, and an ABC’s of SEO quiz is here.

Installation was a snap – as expected. Instructions were clear and concise, and no surprises were encountered – unless you count the one bonehead instance where I forgot to actually UPLOAD a required file before attempting to run it – which was so obviously a ‘swiss-cheese-brained operator’ error that it doesn’t count anyway. 🙂

But I digress. I’ve only just scratched the surface with this one, but here’s a quick rundown on creating a simple 3 question quiz. This is only an outline – detailed information is in the MasterQuiz Control Panel and manual.

Create a Quiz – this is a simple, 4 step sequence in the MasterQuiz Control Panel –

1.Answer questions to name the quiz (ours is Step by Step), set cookie duration, specify required entry fields if any, and customize the submit button text (ours just says ‘sendit’)

2.Type in the first quiz question, then the corresponding answer choices – specifying either a Numeric or Right/Wrong Score Value for each, and selecting how answers will be displayed (radio, checkbox, dropdown or select box) Repeat for each question. In our quiz we are using a numeric score and only two possible answers per question.

3. This is a long page, but it’s because of all the options available in MasterQuiz. There’s only 1 (one) required item – ” The URL of a default results page…”. If you want to use them – other options include settings for:

• Emails – up to three emails may be sent whenever a quiz is submitted.
• Results Display – In this section, you can specify what information should be included in the quiz results and, set the formatting for the results page(s).
• Databases – Optionally, up to three databases may be updated whenever a quiz is submitted.

4. Completing this page is optional. Here you can set the quiz form’s look and feel – ie what fonts- colors-sizes, etc. If you want to do all style/design/formatting after your quiz is generated, you can just leave all the fields on this page blank.

All that’s left is to click the ‘Generate Form’ button – and the MasterQuiz Generating software does it’s stuff. You’ll see a preview of how your quiz form will look, and all the code, text, etc. needed to add the quiz to your website – cut-n-paste easy.

Of course there’s other options, that I didn’t cover here, but you can see how easy it is to use MasterQuiz.

Ready to take our little quiz? It’s just 3 easy questions about what we covered above – no tricks, I promise.

http://www.intuitivebydesign.com/masterquiz-step-by-step-review.html

Inbound links and Site Rank – does Google agree with ME? :-0

Am I reading this wrong, or did Google just say what I’ve been thinking all along?

from Google's Webmaster Help Center

"Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on
analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and
relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to
you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can
indicate its quality and popularity."

- and -

"It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that
matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links "

So – if a flock of porn and viagra sites link to your perfectly nice, normal, non-pornographic, non-viagra site – those links CAN (and do as far as I can tell) have an affect on your sites search ranking. Right?

Right! So now what do we do to stop those uninvited and negatively impacting inbound links from happening in the first place? Obviously the standard response of ‘create original content’ does not apply here.

And what about if those links are from your own AdWords ad – which Google is displaying on spammy sites. Is Google taking this into consideration at all?

It would not be un-reasonable to ASSUME they do – but we all know what that can do. And I DO still see inbound AdWords ads links from some really just horrible spammy sites, link farms, directories, etc., on a daily basis. I do use the ‘block’ function to try and avoid this, but someone’s gonna have to prove to me that this works – so far I cannot tell that it has any effect. I still see the same ‘players’ appearing in the stats.

Google? Anyone?

Website Search Ranking isn’t ‘ALL THAT’.

Controversial title ain’t it 😉

I keep seeing this same general question asked – ‘Can ‘bad neighborhood’ inbound links hurt a websites search ranking?’, and I keep seeing the same general answer – ‘inbound links to a website cannot hurt said websites search ranking’. While I agree in theory, I’m not 100% convinced of it in practice. BUT – I am convinced that there’s a more important long-term issue involved when considering the potential for harm from bad inbound links – ‘Perceived Reputation’.

What’s ‘Perceived Reputation’? Well, it’s kind of like the old ‘Judging a Book by it’s Cover’ thing that we’re admonished NOT to do but sometimes do anyway.

For example – a searcher does a search on Google or Yahoo, or MSN or wherever for a specific name or url – and the first 2 or 3 listings feature old or invalid information – or worse still – bad press. Does this have an effect on the searchers ‘impressions’ of the name or url they were looking for? I could be wrong, but to me it’s a no-brainer – Of Course it does – it’s human nature to make snap judgements – how can it NOT.

Granted, because of my profession – when I personally encounter old or invalid data in my searches – I tend to blame the search engine first, then the site manager. And if I encounter bad press – I will at least look into first to see if it’s at all relevant. I wonder if that holds true for the average searcher.

Do most searchers consider or understand the whens, hows,whats and/or whys of their search results, or do they simply accept the returned results as accurate? I don’t want to ‘dumb-down’ the general search population, but I tend to lean towards the latter – which to me indicates that bad inbound links CAN hurt the searched for name/url – IF the returned results are detrimental, invalid, irrelevant, or out-dated.

But what to do? Often when something like this is encountered – there are other problems with the searched for site that prevent it from positioning well. The first step is to go over the site with a fine toothed comb – review all the guidelines offered by the search engines, and make sure your site is up to snuff. When that is done – listing positions will improve.

But mistakes DO happen, search engine algorithms are imperfect and subject to change without notice, and spammy linking and advertising tactics are apparently a fact of life these days – have you SEEN some of the stuff out of Adsense/Adwords these days!

If the bad results are due to an error in the Search Engines reporting – a site manager can only ask, beg, cajole and plead with said engine (sometimes followed by ranting, raving, threatening and a lawsuit) to please, please, please fix it – good luck with that.

And of course a website really has no control over who links to it, nor HOW they link to it. The site manager can make suggestions on how the site should be linked to, and maybe even send a nicely worded ‘please don’t link to us’ message to identifiable bad link sources – but good luck with that too.

There is also that spam report tool in Google Webmaster tools – does that work? Maybe. I’ve heard a lot of bad press, but my personal experience with it has been ok, I think. I DO use it when needed, and sometimes I DO see a change in the serps afterwards, but was it because of spam reports – only ‘the Google’ knows for sure…

But anyway…that’s my .02 – I think Reputation trumps Ranking any day.