The Brads - Camping. Courtesy Brad Colbow @ BradColbow.com

So what do you think? Is Twitter addictive for you?

InfoRapid Search and Replace

If you have ever needed to replace text in documents or files, you know the added benefits of a search and replace function. However, if you are making major changes to a large file, or folder full of files, the basic search and replace can be very time consuming. While working on one or two files isn’t that big a deal, if you are making changes to a series of several hundred files all intertwined (such as a big content management system), you will need something with major power!

That’s where InfoRapid’s Search and Replace comes in. It can open up all the files within a designated folder, search for the text you request, and even quickly replace with new text. Its fast, easy and WORKS!

The program hasn’t been updated since 2003, but in 2009 it is working just fine for me! I highly recommend the program if you are working with large files.

Seek alternative idea sources

A lot of the content here at Found By Design is dedicated to SEO. Why? Simply put, SEO strategy is an ongoing fluid thing. Search engines evolve and change the way they do things and it seems like there is something new almost every day! So to keep up with the changes can almost be a full time job! Since you have more important things to focus on, we want to be more than just a website designer. We want to be your total website provider, one that actively provides SEO advice for our clients.

This morning while exploring new ideas, discussions and news related to the practice of optimizing websites for greater search engine access, I spent quite a bit of time on YouTube. Sure, YouTube has a ton of “Hey! Look at me make a fool of myself” type of videos, but it can also be a great resource for finding information related to the interests you may have. In this case, watching videos from Matt Cutts, one of the most well known Google engineers, became the fodder for my information gathering. Topics of Matt’s videos ranged from the Mac vs. PC debate to a question about why Big Brands seem to rank so well (hint… they complain to Google that they should rank higher in many cases!)

The main point of this article is to suggest that when you are seeking information about a topic, be open to other resources for article fodder. Sure, you can recycle the news, rehash what another blogger wrote about, or even answer a question that has been asked numerous times. But sometimes you will find that an alternative source of information, such as YouTube, might inspire you to create something new. This morning, I got a few ideas of future topics and articles. Even a couple ideas on new content features for my website!

Automatically Post New Content to Twitter

When you post new articles to your blog or website, you want to get the word out to as many people as possible. For certain blogging platforms, there are a few plugins that can automatically do this for you, but right now there are only a few and their reliability is spotty at best. And what if there isn’t a plugin that will post your articles to Twitter for you?

Introducing TwitterFeed

Auto post with TwitterFeed

Great news! As long as your website has an RSS feed, you can have your newest articles and posts automatically submitted to your Twitter account for you using the TwitterFeed online service! This FREE service will check your RSS feed on a regular basis and automatically post the newest articles to your Twitter account for you. We just set this up for Found By Design and so far are pretty happy!

Signup

Signing up is rather easy. You create a new account by entering your email address and choosing a password. Then you connect your Twitter account to the system, name the feed and add your RSS feed url. For example, Found By Design’s feed is located at http://foundbydesign.com/feed/

That’s it! Your account is set up.

Settings

There are additional settings you can choose on your feed.

Frequency

You can change the frequency that TwitterFeed checks your RSS feed, anywhere from every 30 minutes to every 24 hours. By default it is set to hourly. Unless you post new articles all the time, you can choose something like every 6 or 12 hours.

Number of updates to post

You can choose how many updates to post at one time. Choices are from 1 to 5. The default is 1.

Post Content

You can choose what you want to post. The options are Title, Description or Both. Default is Both.

Post Link

You can choose to include a link back to the content and even use a URL shortener like Bit.ly or TinyUrl. The default shortener service is Bit.ly (which seems to be among the best!) These URLs use a 301 redirect back to your site, so you end up with the link credit! And we always recommend a link back to your website!

Post Sorting

You can choose how to post your content, based on timestamp (pubDate) or a post ID (GUID). If your RSS feed does not place a timestamp on the article, choose GUID. The default is pubDate.

Post Prefix and Suffix

You can append your Tweet with a prefix or suffix. A typical prefix might be “New article” while a suffix could be “Check it out!”. By default these are blank.

Keyword Filter

You also have the choice to filter your submissions based on keywords where only the keywords submitted would automatically be posted. For all articles, leave this alone. Default setting is unchecked with no keywords.

Summary

Overall, this seems to be a very simple and yet flexible way to automatically have new content on your website automatically submitted to Twitter. This could greatly improve your website content visibility and provide additional links back to your site! We give this service 2 thumbs up!

Avoid These Links to Avoid SERP Penalties

Avoid Paying for Link Building

Long since Google began total search domination, the practice of SEO (search engine optimization) has evolved. One of the cornerstones of SEO for any website is link building, a method of developing incoming links to your website for a stronger perception of popularity. The search engines have long believed that the more websites on the internet linking to a website, the more important that website must be.

After a while, Google and the other search engines caught on that website owners were creating links just for the purpose of increasing their rankings, and the rules began to change. Since then, incoming links have been looked at more carefully and now some links are worth more than others. Some can even hurt you, which is why we have told our clients to avoid certain types. A couple examples of links to avoid would be linking farms, links from websites with black hat seo efforts, and paid links.

But Not All Paid Links Are Bad, Are They?

In general, paying someone to include your website’s link on their site has been frowned upon. This was seen as an artificial way to build links and gave big companies with large budgets an unfair advantage. Therefore, incoming links to your website that were paid links would be treated as cheating, and could penalize your rankings. Of course, there is nothing wrong with advertising your website, so as long as a “nofollow” tag was included on the link, there would be no penalty, mostly because the “nofollow” tag tells the search engines to ignore the link.

However, search engines can’t read javascript, so there was a way to be stealthy with such links! The idea was that by using inling javascript codes, you could actually link to a website, get credit for the link, but because of the javascript, Google could not tell it was a paid link! Cool huh?

Well, not anymore! Google has gotten smarter, and now, according to Matt Cutts (Google’s main SEO guru), Google can not determine the nature of such links, and even the javascript links need the “nofollow” tag or there could be a penalty for paid linking! Ouch!

So Why Pay For Links?

Paid links still have their place. Its part of advertising, and if you are advertising in the right places, it may be worthwhile to do so. Rember, Google offers an advertising service on their website called Google Adwords. But if your reason for buying the ad link is simply for getting another link back to your website, then this may not be a smart thing to do.

If you do choose to do paid ad links, make sure the website that is hosting your link uses the “nofollow” tag to avoid potential problems. Nothing would be worse that that small ad costing you more than you bargain for! After all, the natural organic search engine results will bring you more traffic over the long term and give you a better ROI than any other advertising method!

Why can’t I see the changes to my website?

Clear your browser cache to see current page

Sometimes when updating your website’s content, you may not see the content on the page when you visit it. That doesn’t mean the changes did not take… instead, the most likely problem is your browser’s cache. Most internet browsers use a cache (a snapshot of a webpage) to speed up the browsing experience. If you have already visited a web page during your current browsing session, the browser may assume that nothing on the page has changed and instead shows you the saved (cached) version.

How to clear your browser’s cache

To correct the problem, simply clear out the cache so the web browser has to reload the actual page instead of pulling it from memory. To do so is rather easy, and will vary slightly from browser to browser. Use the steps below to clear your browser’s cache:

Internet Explorer - Clear Cache

1. Click the “Tools” menu bar.
2. Choose “Internet Options”.
3. On the “General” tab, click “Clear History”.
4. When it asks “Delete all items in your History folder?”, click “OK”.
5. click “OK”
6. Refresh your page by clicking on the Refresh button (or hitting the F5 key)

Firefox - Clear Cache

1. Click the “Tools” menu bar.
2. Choose “Clear Recent History”.
3. Click the “Details” arrow to open more options.
4. Uncheck all checkboxes except for the Cache checkbox.
5. Click on “Clear Now”.
6. Once the “Clear Recent History” dialog box closes, refresh your web page by clicking on the Reload button (or hitting the F5 key)

This should clear your browser’s cache and allow you to see the most recent version of a page.

Choosing the Right Forum is Important

There are a number of online forums available online to get involved in. One of the benefits to getting involved is the fact that you can generally have a signature on your postings in which you can tout your own services and websites. This then is attached to each posting you submit, including new subject postings and replies to others. If you are posting to a popular and high ranking forum, this can be great for quality links back to your own website.

Not All Forums Help SEO

Due to the fact that you can add signatures and get a link back to your website, spam on forums and discussion boards can get out of hand. To help prevent the spam, most forums have added safe guards that limit the ability to include links within posts or signatures. This requires you to actually get involved and add something of value to the website before you can get the links back to your website.

Other forums do not impose any restrictions and just deal with the spam. The trouble with getting involved with this type of forum is that you may get associated with “bad sites” such as porn, spam and gambling websites. This is not good because Google warns against the “bad neighborhood” effect of being associated with spammy websites. Check the forum posts before getting involved.

Forum Spam Reduction Techniques

Minimum number of posts for signatures

This technique either does not permit signature links from being shown until you have reached a specific number of posts (usually 10) or may not even permit signatures at all until the post minimum is reached. Once the minimum is reached, signature links become available and you start off with 10 backlinks to your website!

Limiting who can view signatures

Another technique is to only allow registered users to view signatures. This technique virtually eliminates the link back benefits as Google will not register with the forum. This type of forum is for those that are targeting users within the forum only. Before registering, check out a couple posts and see if you are able to view links in the signatures. If you can do so while not logged in, so can Google.

No signatures at all

This is the most extreme method as there are no signatures. Although these forums are usually high quality with help and suggestions because only those dedicated to the forum typically post there, there is no link back to your website as a benefit.

As you can see, while forum posting can have great benefits, make sure you are posting to the right ones. Otherwise your link building efforts may be in vain, or worse… hurt your own website!