ABC Article Directory Blog

So maybe you found this page because you want to make a really great fan page, or maybe you have a fan page already but it kinda sucks….no problem! This tutorial will turn your fan page from lame to awesome in a matter of minutes!

First you need an actual fan page. These are great to have because it lets others follow you, and gives you an authoritative presence on Facebook. This is like having social proof that you are a good guy or girl and that others find what you have to offer valuable. The easiest way to do this is to visit someone else’s fan page, scroll down to the bottom and click the “Create Page” link. You can visit my fan page here - Rachael Macgregor MLM Secrets Fan Page

Some tips for setting up your Facebook fan page -

1. You MUST upload a photo for your fan page. There is nothing less professional that a fan page without a photo, seriously!

2. Enter as much information about yourself and what you do. This is not a place to promote your primary business or try and sell anything. The aim of your Facebook Fan Page is to create fans! Offer them value and they’ll keep coming back for more. Try and sell them something and they’ll run a mile.

3. Add a link to your blog in the box below your photo with a reason for people to visit your blog. Continue reading »

Syndicated articles can be a very powerful promotion tool in the hands of the person who knows how to use them…

This is the reason why article marketing is generally a hot topic of conversation… Unfortunately, not all of the conversation is positive, because the vast majority of people who attempt to utilize article marketing for the promotion of their online business are absolutely clueless as to how to use article marketing to its fullest potential…

As online marketers begin to explore the mechanics of the article marketing, most are confronted with a diverse set of opinions about what will work and what will not…

People will read about the merits of article syndication and the merits of article spinning… People will also read the opinions of those who tend to believe that the whole industry is a sham…

Your Potential Should Not Be Defined By The Failure Of Others

More than anyone else, I think my grandmother had the most influence on my life…

“Ahhhh… That is so sweet…” Ha… You are not going to be thinking that in just a moment…

Since I have been old enough to walk, my dream has always been to own and operate my own business…

My grandmother in her infinite wisdom would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and when I would tell her, she would always respond, “People like us do not own our own businesses… We will always work for other people…”

My grandmother attempted to steal my dreams and to steal my thunder for more than two decades…

But, every time she attempted to diminish my potential, I became more determined to bring my goals to fruition and to prove her wrong…

She died in 1993, forever stealing my chance to rub her nose in my success… LOL

Yes, I have a twisted sense of humor…

But, I actually do have a purpose in sharing this story with you today…

Please do not allow the opinions of the other people keep you from reaching for the stars… Just because other people have failed with article marketing does not mean that you will also fail with article marketing…

As I said at the beginning of this article, syndicated articles can be a very powerful promotion tool in the hands of the person who knows how to use them…

If I had let my grandmother convince me that her version of reality was the only one to believe, then I would not be where I am today…

More so, if I had listened to all the people who had told me that article syndication is just too difficult to be consistently effective, then my online business may have gone the way of the dodo bird, fulfilling my grandmothers dying promise to me…

Since early 2000, people have been telling me that article marketing will never work… I ignored their opinions and pressed on knowing that I was right and they were wrong…

After five years with my wife, she finally acknowledged that I was right about article syndication… For the first time and the last time during my marriage, my wife told me I was right about something… LOL… That was when she sat down and reviewed my books for the previous two years… Only after having done that, my wife looked at me and said, “I guess we can afford for you to quit your job.”

Since March of 2005, my online business has taken good care of my family, without me having a job outside my business… All thanks to my belief in myself, my belief in article syndication, and my unwillingness to let other people define my potential for me…

Article marketing, when done well, has a very real potential of bringing a steady stream of revenue to your online business… But, if you listen to the naysayers and let them influence you away from article marketing or article syndication, then you will never realize its true potential… Continue reading »

Statistics and data are incredibly powerful tools in any environment. As anyone giving a speech is taught, the inclusion of data and facts is a sure fire way to win over an audience and get them to believe your point of view, and as any computer game fanatic will tell you (or anyone who plays golf) they are incredibly addictive and fascinating to watch and improve. Nowhere is data more important however than in business and specifically online where businesses work based on numbers and statistics gathered from market research, advertising campaigns and other sources in order to learn the habits, likes and behaviours of their audience/customers.

This makes Google Analytics an incredibly powerful tool for anyone with a website, and one that will help the owners to greatly improve their internet marketing campaigns, their products and their understanding of how they are viewed by the general public. Google Analytics is a great web service offered for free by Google that can help you to discover many important statistics about your own websites in terms of the nature, source and amount of traffic you’re generating. This can then be used to greatly improve your site and to try and increase those numbers. This is achieved in many ways, by looking at which pages are popular, who your key demographic are, how long visitors stay on your pages and more. Where it really comes into it’s own though is in advising the direction for your keyword campaigns and SEO.

Keywords for those who are not in the know are the terms that people search into Google or other search engines in order to find a website. Those who understand SEO and web marketing then try to make their site more likely to list highly for that search term in order to bring future visitors to your site. The great thing about Google Analytics then is that it tells you both which pages are successful, and also how the visitors got to your website - including which keywords or search terms they put into their search engine in order to do so. Continue reading »

I’m talking about how risky a shared IP address can be. A person should be well aware of what a dedicated IP address is and if it impacts the Search engine optimization of your web page. A dedicated or static IP address is the use of the world wide web protocol that uses a 6- to 12-digit number to specially identify your website. This is how the server, routers, computers, and other electronic devices communicate with each other and know who is who. By owning a dedicated server, your website is the only one with that IP address. At the moment, there is not benefit to having a dedicated IP address over a shared IP address because all the domain names will be different. While it is true each Search engine optimization web design will be unique to each website, the purpose of each one is the same, to be configured to reach the best page ranking.

To have effective Search engine optimization, there must not be any detractors associated with your website. With a static IP address on a server, the search engine spiders can easily crawl over your website and determine its address efficiently. With shared IP address, it could take longer to affect how your page is ranked, but not always.

Knowing who is in your area in the real world and on the internet are related. For those of you that live in nice well-kept neighborhoods that are relatively safe, it is because you and your neighbors think alike when it comes to safety. Most are in the same income brackets and are a part of the legal society. Now take a home owner that is a drug dealer and he moves into your neighborhood. Crime increases along with a crackdown by the police. No matter what your Search engine optimization web design does or how effective it is, a webmaster are associated with those other websites that are on your shared server. Just like the neighbors of a drug dealer will be watched over by the police, the search engines will suspect your site of engaging in blackhat tactics if there is one on your server. If a site is targeted for banning by the search engine, and a webmaster share the same IP address, then a person may get banned just as well. a person will be guilty by association. This association is just a fact of life. If one of the sites on your shared server is of an adult theme or involved with spam, placing a request to have your site placed on a different server would be advisable. Continue reading »

Article marketing is one of those topics that always seems to generate a lot of conversation in forums and marketing discussions… Online marketers are generally split into three camps, when it comes to arguing the effectiveness of article marketing as a promotional method…

Camp One swears by article marketing, as an integral and essential part of their online marketing activities… They suggest that the benefits of article marketing are twofold: direct click-through (CTR) traffic from the article that may deliver immediate sales; and improved search rankings that will drive additional search traffic…

Camp Two insists that the only real value of article marketing is for building links and creating link popularity for a website, enabling the website to rank well in Google and other search engines…

Camp Three accuses the first two camps of telling stories and selling a sham…

I am in the first camp… I have made a lot of money online, in the last 10 years, because I use article marketing to promote ALL of my websites…

Some people insist that I have only made money online, because I sell article marketing services… But, the truth is that I have made a lot of money in a variety of niches that are “not related” to online marketing… And, I have made that money in those niches, because I have used article marketing as the primary promotion method for all of my niche websites too…

Measuring The Success Of An Article Marketing Campaign

Those folks in Camp Two measure the success of their article marketing campaigns by the number of back links and Google page one search results that they can achieve…

Those of us, who are in camp One, measure our success by the dollar value of the sales that an individual article can deliver to our businesses… We count our search engine traffic to be only a BONUS benefit of article marketing…

There are four reasons why Camp One should make more sense… Continue reading »

The best of plans sometimes go astray and so it was with the Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C) road map for web page structure. Those familiar with web design know the building blocks of web pages; (X)HTML, CSS, plus script and program languages.

• (X)HTML gives structure to web content.
• CSS controls web page presentation.
• Scripts and program languages add additional functionality.

The W3C road map for content structure went along the following path up until recently:

HTML4 > XHTML1.0 > XHTML1.1.

While each candidate recommendation contains additional features, such as additional elements and attributes, the key component progressively introduced along this road map was the requirement for “well formed” documents. What does this mean?

Essentially, a well formed document is one that has a defined structure and can be parsed (checked) against a reference called a Document Type Definition (DTD). A DTD specifies a document hierarchy by prescribing what markup elements are allowed and the sequence in which they must appear. Essentially, this is XML as defined in both XHTML1.0 and 1.1, but “excused” in XHTML1.0 in favour of more tolerant error parsing.

The truth is that something as high as 99% of web pages published contain markup errors but neither HTML4 or XHTML1.0 invoke error responses that cause page content not to be displayed. This is so because all browsers have elaborate and forgiving error correction routines. However, this tolerance was to be removed with the introduction of XHTML1.1 thereby forcing the introduction of “well formed” documents. A document that does not parse correctly would cause incorrectly marked up content not to be displayed by web browsers.

Representatives from Mozilla and Opera petitioned the W3C, arguing that the evolution of HTML should continue and, among other issues, should remain backward compatible with HTML4, including the retention of error correction routines that would not cause fatal errors because of incorrect markup.

The W3C rejected this proposal on the basis that it conflicted with their previously chosen direction for the evolution of the Web, centered on developing xml-based replacements for HTML4. Those interested in evolving HTML4, including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Opera, Mozilla formed their own working group called the WHATWG. The group still has its own website at http://www.whatwg.org/. Continue reading »

 Google is making billions of dollars thanks to a magic word: “keywords”.

Keywords is the concept at the base of search engines, and of big part of the internet and the global online business.

Everyday millions of persons using the internet connect to a search engine in order to search any possible topic, and to get specific results they enter keywords and key phrases about.

The search engine sites are built to give lists of web sites related to these keywords, but nowadays they also include sponsored results of paying advertisers, also keywords related, and selling these advertising results is their main revenue.

You must consider that all those searches and the related keywords are recorded, and ordered in giant databases.

Google is the biggest search engine, and has the biggest of those databases, and it provides free access to all those data to its advertisers, and also to generic users.

All these dates can be accessed through different keyword tools, some extremely sophisticated, let’s see some of them.

The first one, and perhaps the most known is the Google AdWords External Keyword Tool, that you can reach following this link:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This tool is very useful, and powerful.
It returns a list that includes the most searched keywords starting from a single keyword, or that are associated to a specific web site.
It depends on the preferences you set on that link.

Important to consider is that you can decide also to have the results for a specific language or a specific country. Continue reading »

 So they’ve finally done it. As inevitable as the sun rising each day or English World Cup disappointment, Google have aligned their UK trademark policy with the US, allowing the use of previously-protected brand names within the confines of ad copy - From September 14th, no longer will this be the prerogative of approved users or the trademark holders themselves.

The reaction in the US following the equivalent announcement in May 2009 was relatively positive, with one survey showing an emphatic 64% in favour of the change at the time of the announcement. Certainly Google themselves are feeling far more confident pushing this out now following this warm reaction across the pond, as well as the triumph against Louis Vuitton in Europe earlier this year.
With the European Court of Justice calling them on side, they may well feel vindicated in announcing these changes now, some 5 months later. It also won’t hurt their coffers, of course, hoping to address the disappointment and uncertainty expressed by investors since April.

So is this open season for brand infringement across the Google paid search landscape? Well, on paper - no.

Officially at least, Google is now allowing the following:

“Ads which use the term in a descriptive or generic way, and not in reference to the trademark owner or the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term

Ads which use the trademark in a nominative manner to refer to the trademark or its owner, specifically any of the following:

Resale of the trademarked goods or services: The advertiser’s site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the goods or services corresponding to a trademark term. The landing page of the ad must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the goods or services corresponding to a trademark from the advertiser.

Sale of components, replacement parts, or compatible products corresponding to a trademark: The advertiser’s site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the components, replacement parts, or compatible products relating to the goods or services of the trademark. The advertiser’s landing page must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the components, parts, or compatible products corresponding to the trademark term from the advertiser.

Informational sites: The primary purpose of the advertiser’s site must be to provide non-competitive and informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term. Additionally, the advertiser may not sell or facilitate the sale of the goods or services of a competitor of the trademark owner. Continue reading »

 YouTube DMCA Ruling is Good News for Blog Sites by Chip Cooper

Copyright © 2010 Chip Cooper

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a “safe harbor” from strict liability for copyright infringement to online service providers that satisfy its requirements.

A June, 2010 ruling by a U.S. District Court in New York in favor of YouTube established an important precedent for blog sites for avoiding strict liability for copyright infringement by blog posters.

The DMCA

Online service providers such as blog sites are vulnerable to claims for copyright infringement if visitors post infringing material on their websites, even if  the service providers are unaware that the material is infringing.  This unfortunate result - that’s often quite surprising to blog site webmasters who are unfamiliar with copyright law  - is due to the strict liability principles of the U.S. Copyright Act.

Signed into law in 1998, the DMCA protects online service providers from strict liability for copyright infringement by their users if they:

* post a specific DMCA notice prominently on their websites,

*  register with the US Copyright Office, and

*  promptly block access to, or take down, allegedly infringing materials if they receive a notice from a copyright owner claiming infringement, or if the service provider has “actual knowledge” that it is hosting infringing material or if the service provider is aware of facts or circumstances that should make it “readily apparent” that there is infringing activity.

This protection by DMCA is known as a “safe harbor”; it completely protects the service provider from vicarious liability for copyright infringement.

The YouTube Case

YouTube’s online video sharing service permits users to post videos to the YouTube site which then can be accessed and viewed by anyone who visits the YouTube site.

Viacom International sued YouTube alleging that YouTube was liable for copyright infringement of numerous videos for which Viacom owned the copyrights.  Viacom argued that YouTube was aware that some of its users posted infringing videos on the YouTube site and that this awareness disqualified YouTube from the safe harbor protection of DMCA.

The YouTube case involved the third bullet point above - whether YouTube’s general knowledge that some of its users post infringing content on the YouTube website can amount to either:

* “actual knowledge” of infringement, or

* qualify to make it “readily apparent” to YouTube that there was infringing material on the YouTube website.

The court rejected Viacom’s argument and ruled that YouTube was not disqualified from the DMCA safe harbor.  Specifically, the court found that YouTube’s general awareness of infringing activity by some of its users did not rise to the level of “actual knowledge” or knowledge that would make it “readily apparent” which videos were infringing.  The court noted that YouTube had removed allegedly infringing videos promptly after receipt of notice sufficient to identify specific infringing videos.  Finally, the court ruled that YouTube had no general obligation to police its website for infringing videos and to determine whether specific videos were infringing.

Conclusion
Continue reading »

 Plagiarists love your original content published at EzineArticles and other honest publishers because it ranks high in Google’s search results. The trouble is that plagiarists do not include a link back to your site or author credit–because they do not publish the resource box or include a link back to the article source. Here are 5 steps you can take to protect your content, detect plagiarism, and get unauthorized copies of your content removed from the World Wide Web:

1) Include copyright and author information when creating your articles,

2) Set up an early detection system for finding plagiarists,

3) Identify and contact the offenders,

4) Identify and contact their registrars or hosts, and

5) Submit a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint.

1. INCLUDE COPYRIGHT AND AUTHOR INFORMATION WITH YOUR ARTICLES

The first step in the war on plagiarism is to provide copyright information in the article body as well as author information in the resource box. Within the article body, you can include a copyright notice and the article title with it’s date of publication. Here is an example of what I use at the end of my articles:

Copyright © 2010 [Your Name Goes Here] [Your Site Name Goes Here] [Site URL Goes Here]. [Article Title Goes Here], [Date Published Goes Here]

If you can do so, use an active link for either the site name or site URL. Depending on the publisher’s article-submission requirements, you may not be able to use an active link or domain name in the article body. Even if these are permitted, all active links and URLs in the article could be stripped by the plagiarist, although a non-hyper linked reference to your site might still remain–especially if the plagiarist is using software to automate the theft.

You can use the resource box to positively identify yourself as the author and can include an active link to your web site or blog. Here is an example:

“About the Author: [Your Name Goes Here] has written extensively about [What You Write About], and more. Visit his/her web site at [Your Site Name Goes Here], [Site URL Goes Here], for additional content on these subjects, including many images related to his/her articles published at [Publisher’s Name Goes Here].”

I would *stronglyrecommend using an active link to your site in the resource box. An honest publisher will include the resource box, will not tamper with the article body, and will provide a link to the article source. If a plagiarist strips out the resource box or neglects to include a link to the article source, the chances are still good that the copyright and author information will be left in the article body. Continue reading »