What is the Best SEO Method?

My Best SEO Method

Now, I don't consider myself an SEO expert by any means. However, I do have many articles that rank highly in Google's SERP's (search engine results pages). Therefore, based on my own personal experience and the success I've had with article syndication, in my opinion, the best SEO method is to create and distribute quality, relevant content.

You see, if you create and distribute quality, relevant content, your website will get linked to by quality websites. And if your website gets linked to by quality websites, your search engine ranking will increase. And isn't that the whole point of SEO to begin with - increased search engine ranking?

The Panda Update

Just to be clear, when I talk about search engine ranking, I'm not talking about "PageRank", Google's 0-10 logarithmic toolbar which is nothing more than a "superficial beauty contest" vanity tool - very much out-of-date, and does NOT have a direct impact on a site's ranking. No, I'm referring to where your pages rank in Google's SERP's.

And if the recent Panda update has taught us anything at all, it's that Google is committed to "taking out the trash." And if you produce garbage content, eventually one of Google's algorithm changes is going to punish you.



Link SEO

In fact, this is what Google said about the recent Panda update:

"This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. It is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that's exactly what this change does." (Source: Google Blog)

Ya Gotta Have Pride

But it's not just Google that has a problem with garbage content. Many Internet users despise the low-quality content that permeates the Internet as well. That said, you shouldn't create quality content just to please Google or visitors to your website. Creating quality content should be a matter of personal and professional pride.

Because just like the products and services you sell are a direct reflection of you, so too is the content on your website. There are many marketers who consider the content on their site unimportant - little more than filler. The content is just there to take up space. It has no goal and serves no real purpose.

That's a fatal mistake. The content on your site should have a purpose. If it doesn't have a purpose, then why is it even there? And you can bet, if I'm asking that question, so is Google. Remember what I just said about your content being a reflection of you and having personal and professional pride?

Create Useful Content

Always make sure the content on your site is useful, informative, interesting and/or entertaining. If it isn't, visitors are unlikely to return or refer your site to others - depriving you of valuable word-of-mouth exposure. Also, make sure your content is well-written. It doesn't have to be a journalistic masterpiece, but it shouldn't be an embarrassment either - like it was written by a 3rd grader.

If you don't write well, reputable and professional content writing services like Nicole Beckett's PremierContentSource.com, can write content for you at a reasonable cost.

A Word About Keywords

Since this article is about SEO, I would be remiss if I didn't discuss keywords. When interspersing keywords throughout your pages, be careful not to repeat them so often they looked forced. Overdoing it with keywords (known as keyword stuffing) will make your content read unnaturally, and will lead to an unpleasant reading experience for your readers.

In addition, if search engine spiders discover too many of the same keywords on your pages, you will likely be penalized for spamming. This will adversely affect the search engine ranking of your pages. It might even get your site blacklisted, if a pattern of keyword stuffing is detected on your site.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

In closing, you have a choice. You can either create garbage content that belongs outside on the curb waiting to be picked up and disposed of by Google's waste management algorithm truck, or you can create quality, relevant content that is useful and helps people.

Because if you focus on consistently creating quality, relevant content, regardless of what other SEO methods you choose to implement, they will only be enhanced.

Read more »

Adventure PHP Framework (APF) 1.11 released

The APF team is proud to anounce the new website together with the 1.11 stable release.

Revision 1.11 serves a reworking of the form support on the basis of taglibs. Now generic definition of validators and filters on the basis of the observer pattern is supported and forms can be customised to own needs more easily.

The OR mapper GenericORMapper already added in the release 1.9 was extended with tools to automatically setup and update a database. Now the developer can completely concentrate on the development of the logic of the application since the storage of the objects is completely managed by the mapper.

Part of the performance optimisations of the releases were optimisations in the core of the frameworks and the reworking of the integrated BenchmarkTimer. It now supplies the developer with a better graphic representation of the measurements to find hot-spots within an application. Thus, an application can the optimally prepared for operation.

With appearance of the release 1.11 the support for PHP 4 was announced discontinuation and the compatibility with PHP 5.3 was improved. In the coming version 1.12 lies the focus on the extension of the new form support and the reworking of the configuration component.

Read more »

ShiftEdit – Web Based IDE

ShiftEdit is a new online IDE built around ExtJS and Mozilla Skywriter.

Philosophy behind the project:

Screenshot of ShiftEdit - Web Based IDE

“The web-based IDE is one of the final frontiers of apps ported to the web. I would like to be able to develop from any computer or operating system and have the same experience without having to install software or create site definitions.” – Adam Jimenez
These are some of the main features:

Code editor
The editor component is based on Mozilla’s Bespin. It has support for:

Syntax highlighing for HTML/ CSS/ JS and PHP
Block tabbing
Undo/ Redo
Line Numbers
Jump to line
+ It’s very fast
(S)FTP support
There is a built-in FTP explorer which support FTP and SFTP.
You can create/ rename/ delete files and folders. You can also set file permissions.

Find/replace
Find and replace works across current or all open files. You can do text searches or regular expression searches.

Revision History
File revisions are stored whenever you save a file. You can then look back through past revisions and view a diff comparison.
You can then restore to an earlier version. Very useful if you or a colleague breaks something!

Read more »

HP TouchPad screen can now support Android

The HP TouchPad is now capable of running Android with full use of the touch screen, thanks to the technical team at TouchDroid.

Hard at work porting Android over to HP's discontinued but much-in-demand tablet, the TouchDroid techs were able to create the necessary drivers to coax Android 2.3.5 to run on the TouchPad and let people tap into the touch screen.

Unveiling a video (also seen below) showing off the team's progress, a TouchDroid developer demonstrated how he could fluidly and smoothly tap and move his finger around a TouchPad running Android with no delays or skips. He even demoed Android's multitouch feature, moving five fingers and then ten fingers across the screen.

Though TouchDroid is currently using Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread on its demo tablet, its ultimate goal is to support the current flavor of Honeycomb or even the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich on a TouchPad. The team seems to be making quick progress as a little more than two weeks ago, its developers were still trying to drum up a TouchPad that they could use for testing.

The latest development also follows a conflict among some of TouchDroid's members over soliciting money to buy TouchPads, an issue that actually split the group into two teams now working separately.

In addition to TouchDroid, another group called CyanogenMod is striving to port Android to the HP tablet. As of late August, the CyanogenMod team had succeeded in running Android on the TouchPad but had yet to build support for the touch-screen drivers.
HP's TouchPad has been a hot commodity since the company announced a few weeks ago that it was pulling the plug on the tablet. To sell off existing inventory, HP lowered the price to $99 for the 16GB version and $149 for the 32GB model, from $499 and $599, respectively. That fire sale ignited a flurry of buyers, causing HP and other retailers to quickly run out of available stock.

Read more »

HTC sues Apple using Google patents

HTC fired another legal salvo against Apple, but this time it's armed with patents it received from Google, according to Bloomberg.

HTC employed nine patents that originally came from Palm, Motorola, and Openwave Systems, which Google bought within the past year, Bloomberg said, citing U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records. Google transferred the patents to HTC on September 1.

The latest lawsuit marks Google's strongest show of support for its Android partners. Apple has levied multiple lawsuits against Android supporters including HTC, Motorola Mobility, and Samsung Electronics in a bid to halt their momentum in the increasingly cutthroat smartphone market.

HTC filed the lawsuit in the federal district court in Delaware using the patent originally issued to Motorola. It also amended a complaint with the ITC using patents issued to Openwave and Palm.

"HTC will continue to protect its patented inventions against infringement from Apple until such infringement stops. We believe that we have an obligation to protect our business, our industry partners and our customers, who love using our products," Grace Lei, HTC's general counsel, said in an e-mailed statement to CNET.

Apple reiterated its statement from the original lawsuit.
"We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours," according to a company representative.

HTC previously filed three rounds of lawsuits and complaints in the courts and ITC, with the last one alleging Apple illegally used HTC's patents related to WiFi capabilities for multiple devices and technology used to combine a phone and personal digital assistant.

Google had initially left many of its partners hanging early on, leaving many to fend for themselves in their own individual suits. But it has more recently has taken steps to offer better protection. Last month, it agreed to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion to get access to its patents, which it said would provide protection for all Android users.

HTC has enjoyed success as an early support for Android. The company created the first Android smartphone, the G1, and has seen its profile rise over the past few years. The company was also the first target of an Apple lawsuit related to Android, and is among the most deeply entrench in the various lawsuits and complaints.

HTC is also seen as the Android partner with the weakest patent portfolio. The company has attempted to shore up its position with various acquisitions, including the purchase of S3 Graphics. S3 holds patents that it claims Apple is infringing upon.

Google's willingness to supply HTC with patents for protection could hint that it may eventually take its own direct action against Apple. So far, the two companies have been fighting through proxies and partners.
"This intervention on Google's part increases the likelihood of direct litigation by Apple against Google," said Florian Muller, a consultant in intellectual property cases and publisher of the Foss Patents blog site. "Apple may hold patents that could affect Google beyond Android."
Openwave, meanwhile, has increasingly become a player in the wireless legal battles. Last week, the company took aim at Apple and Research in Motion, claiming the two companies infringed on its intellectual property in a lawsuit filed in Delaware and a complain filed with the ITC. Openwave specifically claimed that virtually all of its iOS products infringed on its patents, which related to Web browsing, cloud computing, wireless networking and offline e-mail.

Technology companies have increasingly used the courtroom as a second front in the smartphone and tablet wars. In particular, many have filed complaints with the U.S. International Trade Commission, which typically goes through the review process faster and can potentially bar products from being shipped into the U.S. The ban, however, has never been leveled on a company, since the threat is high enough to spur a resolution.

The potential reward of a licensing agreement, and the slowdown of a competitor, is enough to go through the trouble.

Read more »

SF police launch probe into iPhone search

SAN FRANCISCO--Police here have begun looking into what role officers played in a search by Apple for a missing unreleased iPhone.

Lt. Troy Dangerfield, of the San Francisco Police Department, told CNET today that an internal investigation has begun into determining how officers assisted two Apple security employees in their July search of a home in the Bernal Heights neighborhood for the handset.

A week ago, CNET reported that members of the SFPD and the two Apple employees showed up to the home of Sergio Calderon and started questioning him. Apple had gone to police for help after an employee lost possession of the handset at a San Francisco tequila bar. Apple told police that it had electronically tracked the phone to the Bernal Heights address where Calderon resides.
Calderon told SF Weekly following CNET's story that when police arrived, he told them he had no knowledge of the phone or its whereabouts. He did, however, acknowledge being at Cava 22 the night the phone went missing. A source close to the investigation said police asked to search the house and told Calderon that if he declined they would return with a search warrant. Calderon then consented.

Dangerfield confirmed that police participated in the search, but according to Dangerfield, the officers never entered Calderon's home. After Calderon agreed to the search, the policemen stepped aside and allowed Apple to go through his house, car, and computer.
SFPD Chief Greg Suhr told the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday that it isn't uncommon for police to assist private investigators. "The reason we do civil standby is to make sure there isn't a problem," Suhr said, according to the Chronicle. "Whatever conversations the (Apple) employees had with the resident, I can't say."
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Reached outside his home on Tuesday, Calderon declined to discuss the specifics of the incident. He told CNET that he's "talking to an attorney," but didn't specify the reasons for the discussions.

Criminal defense attorneys in San Francisco say that some of the allegations are worrisome if true. According to Calderon's statements to SF Weekly, he suggested that "officers" tried to intimidate him and his family into cooperating with the search. They asked whether everyone living in the house was in the United States legally.

Police aren't supposed to try to obtain permission to search a home by putting someone under duress, said Ginny Walia, of Ginny Walia Law Offices.

Calderon also claims that the Apple security personnel entered his home without identifying themselves as Apple employees. He told SF Weekly that he was under the impression that the group on his doorstep were all police officers. He said he would not have allowed the two Apple employees to conduct the search had he known they were not police officers.

John Runfola, a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco, said that police must be transparent about the facts of a search and not identifying who was performing the search wouldn't be lawful if proven true. However, both Runfola and Walia said that because the phone was not found and nothing was taken, there might be little recourse for Calderon outside of filing a complaint with the police.

To pursue some kind of civil suit against the police Calderon would have to show some kind of loss as a result of the search, the lawyers said.
As for SFPD's internal investigation, it is typical in these sorts of inquiries to talk to all the parties involved, Dangerfield said. He said that the department could seek to interview Calderon.

Read more »

The Net must fight back to regain our trust

Trust is tremendously valuable, but unfortunately supplies are running a bit short on the Internet right now.

We've all heard about Trojan horse malware that poses as software you might want to run, phishing scams that send fake e-mail purporting to be from your bank, and identity thieves who can siphon away your money. But an unpleasant new variety of faith-undermining behavior has shown up twice now in recent months: bogus versions of the digital certificates that enable encrypted communications on the Net.

How does a bogus certificate hit you where it hurts? Think of the Web sites you trust, the ones with the traditional closed-lock icon that signifies a secure connection. Fake certificates, in combination with changes to the way in which data is routed around the Internet, can be used to steal passwords and intercept e-mail from use of those sites.

The problem is that there are hundreds of organizations called certificate authorities (CAs) that issue certificates, and those organizations may be vulnerable to attack. The certificate authority worry is very real: In March, Comodo issued fake certificates after a successful attack, and in August DigiNotar issued 531 fake certificates for Google, Facebook, Twitter, the CIA, and more. Some security experts expect more use of fake certificates, too.

In other words, we're running into a breach of trust not just for Web sites, but for the organizations set up to to tell us whether we can trust Web sites.

That's a particularly corrosive type of doubt to have in the back of your mind: it's systemic, with the potential to undermine faith broadly, not just hurt the reputation of one particular site.

The utility of trust
Trust is tremendously useful. It increases the efficiency of transactions, saving time by not requiring every little detail to be verified in advance.

It can be hard to establish trust, though. Here's a case in point from my recent move to France: my bank required a phone bill with my new address to prove that I really had moved, and my phone company required a bank statement with my new address before it would give me a subscription. (The situation was more complicated, to be fair, but that procedural deadlock was one very real aspect.)

Once the trust is established, though, future transactions get easier. For example, my bank now will send me a replacement debit card or an older bank statement with little fuss.
The bank's process is very formal, but I think systems of human interactions naturally incorporate trust more organically. Perhaps it's human nature, in which we evolved to give others the benefit of the doubt to some degree. Perhaps it's that a system with a certain amount of trust is more efficient and spreads more quickly to other people.

The problem is that it's easy to get ahead in the short run if you're willing to abuse trust. The September 11 attacks took advantage of some built-in goodwill in pilot training, aircraft security, and air traffic control. Other examples of abuses: fabricated news stories, fraudulent scientific results, investment funds that are actually Ponzi schemes, and the patron who stiffs the restaurant. If everybody skipped out on paying bills, you can bet that all restaurants would demand payment in advance, but for now, we generally get the flexibility of being able to add dessert and a coffee onto the bill at the end of the meal.
Happily, human systems repair themselves because overall the advantages of trust are pretty high, too. The stock market, airline industry, news media, scientific research community, and restaurant business all have surmounted plenty of trust-based challenges.

Hidden tax on the Net
What worries me about the Internet is that it operates at a massive scale and with greater automation. Even though the overall Net will keep on humming, a large number of individuals could suffer. Consequently, we're seeing a gradual rise in technical countermeasures. That means a tax on the Net's use, one way or another.

Here's one example: I use Google two-factor authentication, and it's a pain. For one thing, I have to have my phone around to provide a verification code when I log into my account from a new browser. Given that I have two phones, two tablets, three computers, and at least a dozen browsers in regular use, that's a lot of work.

Just as inconveniently, two-factor authentication means I have to generate passwords for apps that use Google services--Gmail and Google+ on my Android phones and tablet, Mail on my Mac and iPad, Chrome settings and iTunes-Google sync, and more.
I've thought about ditching two-factor authentication on many occasions, but each time I ponder the risks and leave it on.

Likewise, my bank makes me jump through hoops to sign on--but in today's world I grit my teeth and put up with it. When I sign up for new services, I worry that I'm adding one more potential way that some identity thief or fraudster will find a way into my life.
Browsers, the gateway to the Web, are on the front lines of this battle. There are encouraging signs here that browser makers are getting more serious.

Google has modified Chrome so that for particular domains such as Gmail, it will only use certificates from a short list of certificate authorities it deems solid. That won't stop all abuse, but it was useful enough to flag the DigiNotar problem.

Browser makers are also making it harder for add-ons to add themselves without user permission, asking difficult questions about balancing new features' utility and risk. More broadly, Google is pushing the use of secure Web connections, not just for Gmail but also for search.

No longer naive
This isn't the first time trust took a hit on the Net, of course, and computing systems continuously evolve away from their early, naive designs. Gone are the days when it was possible to break into servers with the username "guest" and an empty password, as described in Cliff Stohl's 1989 book "The Cuckoo's Egg."

The trouble is that the Internet is increasingly essential to school, business, politics, and our personal lives. The damages of breaches of trust are worse than ever.

It's great that the Net's technologists are responding. But there's no miracle cure here, and malicious hackers are advancing the state of the art at the same time. Governments and armed forces, not just thieves, are getting involved as cyberwar becomes just a facet of ordinary war.
It's a great time to be on the Net, and I'm confident that ultimately it will withstand this current hit to its trustworthiness. But the time being, I'm keeping the annoying, heavy-duty Google authentication.

Read more »