KEYWORD research SEO Tip

KEYWORD research

This is the most important step to success.

Before building your site do the research. I like to use the keyword tools provided for free by google. Create an Adwords account and have a look. What ever way you do your research, you need to find the best keywords to get your site ranking well on google.
What are good keywords? Use keywords that are searched for often but have few competitor sites. That is the key. For example, this site. I noticed that the phrase "Web Hosting Site Design" is searched 27,000 times a month, but has low site returns, in other words lots of people using that search string but few sites are showing up in Google.
So I made my sites name www.webhostingsitedesign.co.za. Now if you look at the statistics you will see that a phrase like "web site design" has 450,000 searches a month. This is great except for the fact that is has a huge amount of competitor sites. Its all about finding a good balance.

So to summarise find a few keywords that have a high search rate and low competition site count. Then see which ones are available as domain names, buy the domain name that matches the keyword phrase, that has the best search rate to competition site ratio. You can check and order domain names using this link. This will be your new site's name :)

A few rules when using keywords in your website.

1. Google likes to see search phrases in your website's title. So create a different title for every page in your site. Mix them up, but don't over do it. Google is clever, it will know when you are up to something, when you have 500 words in your title that are all "Web Site Hosting". Keep your title to the point and aim at being helpful to your visitors.
2. Meta description tags. Put a good description explaining your site in your meta description tag. Try and incorporate the search phrases into this tag. Remember like the title, don't over do it. Remember the description tag is the text displayed in Google.
3. First words on your site. Yes ill say it again: FIRST IMPRESSIONS LAST. The very first words posted on your site are more important than the other content that follows. So put your favourite search phrases in the first few words of your site.
4. Headers. These are your "h1", "h2" etc. tags. Google likes these. So try and use them for important words. Again, it wont help if your entire site is in a H1 tag. The trick is to get your search phrases to stand out amongst the other content.
5. Images. Your images allow you to give an alternative text value, called the 'alt' property. So every image on your site should have one of your key search phrases in it's alt properties.
6. Links. Google looks at the text used for a link. So don't use words like "CLICK HERE" in your link. Rather use "If you would like more info on KEY WORD PHRASE click here".
7. URLs. Try use keywords in your file names, example design.html would work better as webdesignandhostingmadeeasy.html.
8. Other highlights. Bolding, Underlining and italicized keywords also make a difference.

Thats it for now, If you would like to get more tips sent to you every month, just give us your email address here.
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Microsoft Windows 7 is being officially released this month

The next version of Microsoft Windows is being officially released this month.

Is this a good thing, and are people going to be rushing to upgrade?

Lets examine the facts.

The last Windows desktop release was Vista, a total disaster in many people's opinion.

It had huge hardware demands and if you managed to keep it running for more than 3 months it would become progressively slower and slower, until unbearable to use and you would switch back to XP or do what I did a few years back and start learning to use a new OS (Operating System).

Lets look at a bit of history.

Before Vista, people used the charming windows XP, a huge improvement from Windows 98/95, and in my opinion the best Microsoft desktop OS since DOS.

Don't forget XP was more hardware hungry than Windows 98 and like all the others had its own teething problems, however in those days it seemed that upgrading was more common for other software needs and people accepted hardware upgrades and crashes with less resistance. Today, standard pc hardware is good enough to run 90% of your software needs, and if you need to play that new game, a new screen card is all you need, or your gaming console will work fine.

Lets try remember that gremlin that came around for a very short while, Windows ME. I think people were asking for their money back before the installation progress bar reached 100%.

So what do we have.

I can generously say in my opinion, Microsoft Desktops have had a 55% hit rate over the years. Not good considering there have been better alternatives. Would you keep buying hamburgers from the same company if every second one tasted bad and cost you R1000? Well no. We bought that smelly hamburger cause it came with the free toy and bottomless coke.

It seems that bad desktop software from Microsoft happens every second generation. Hmmm, almost a marketing strategy to make their next version seem better. Lowering the benchmark before releasing an average product. So this means, as bets go, Windows 7 should be at least a half a cup full, but is that good enough for today's market?

I have looked at the beta and release candidate of Windows 7. This was my conclusion.

If you have used Mac OS or a good Linux Desktop before, Windows 7 will be as exciting as another sequel to “Rocky” the movie. You wont see anything too wonderful and it might not be worth the popcorn.

If you are a VISTA or XP user you will be excited by fancy new menu bar sorry, "Superbar”, as Microsoft now calls it. “Superbar”, Sounds like another marketing ploy or perhaps a place where everyone knows your name.

There is also new desktop effects, some are worth using and help productivity for a change, I especially liked the snapping windows. The larger preview of minimized applications seems a little silly as you could just maximise the application to see the real thing. These are worth using if you have a large high resolution monitor.

It also seems to run faster than VISTA, for that I would have to congratulate Microsoft with a one handed clap, as this seriously couldn't have been that difficult to accomplish.

This however is Microsoft's biggest hurdle, and why I think sales are going to be slower than before.

If you are currently happy with your XP installation. Your XP runs all your applications and hardware the way you like it, then why should you upgrade? The free toy just isn't worth risking another bad taste in the mouth.

How can Microsoft expect XP users to spend that extra cash on a new OS just for a "Superbar" and a few new effects? Especially after they said no to VISTA.

VISTA users and new pc contracts with hardware manufacturers seem to be the only real market for windows 7.

If you are willing to backup all your files and spend a long afternoon changing your pc to a new OS then I suggest trying Linux, at least their is no money spent and its risk free. If you are willing to spend that extra cash, then spend a little more on a Mac with new hardware and better OS. Makes more sense to me.

If you are buying a brand new PC and it comes pre-installed with Windows 7, I say then give it a go. For gamers, well, I would say until you have to, stick with XP and your consoles.

Perhaps Microsoft will have to work for their sales for a change.

I would like to hear your experiences with Windows 7 so send us your feed back and I will post it on my blog .

Apache and Re Writing Domain Names

We have just implemented a new feature to our Content Management System, Teacup Web Tools V2.00.

Apache URL Rewriting

What this does, is allow a dynamic database based website's url or link to be changes to a more 'Google' friendly domain name.

Example

The old link

http://www.teacup.co.za/?website_pagesid=134

can be changed to

http://www.teacup.co.za/request_a_quote.html


This will still access the dynamic web content as usual and the old dynamic link will still work.

It should allow search engines to index sites faster.

Some more testing must still be done, but we will be updating our current clients with this new feature as soon as possible.

Cheers for now.....

Linux Server PDC

We have just tested an install of Ubuntu Linux Server 9.04 as a PDC (Primary Domain Controller). This was a very easy install following instructions found here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1184288. This was a very easy install that took +- 1 hour even with using aptitude through our Telkom ADSL internet connection.

After joining a few Windows XP machines to the Linux PDC with ease, I decided to play with proxy servers.

Following this howto http://www.howtoforge.com/squid-proxy-server-on-ubuntu-9.04-server-with-dansguardian-clamav-and-wpad-proxy-auto-detection the only thing that I could not get working is the proxy auto detection. Ill try post the solution a little later. My interim solution was to create a domain login script that would set Internet Explorer proxy settings using a registry reg file, and for firefox, I copy a firefox profile over the users profile with proxy settings every time they login.

This server would now handle domain logons and windows profiles, as well as handle and control internet access with anti virus to boot.

Now whats left? Email.

I now wanted an internal email server. This server had to distribute local email to users loaded on the ldap system, as well as direct email to external email addresses and fetch or download external users email from our email service provider.

After a few Google searches I couldn't find a "howto" that would run me through this step by step. So I used a combination of a few howtos and http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-ubuntu-9.04-ispconfig-3 .

This worked well because I needed a "lamp" install for our Teacup Business Applications any way.

This was the End Result

• Samba, Slapd : File sharing and domain control
• Postfix, Fetchmail, Courier, SpamAssasin: Email directing, fetching and pop or imap
  
• Squid, DansGuardian, ClamAV : Proxy and anti virus
• MyDNS : DNS
  
• ISPconfig 3 : Website and dns administration

All works flawlessly except, we cant get local domains to resolve from our linux desktops. Its strange, our windows XP machines resolve local domain names with no issues and all external domain names work fine.

I will try solve this issue and post the solution when I have more time.

Feel free to leave comments.
Cheers for now.

New Teacup Web SIte

Great news, Teacup has launched their new website.... http://www.teacup.co.za go check it out now!!