Here’s a nice early Christmas ou can get some first rate and totally FREE software to create some professional quality header graphics.  It’s called XHeader and you can get your copy here.

INTELLIMON

This is made by a company called Intellimon, and they are promoting their excellent software XSitePro, which is, in my opinion, the best alternative to Dreamweaver available (and it’s a FRACTION of the cost by the way).

DREAMWEAVER ALTERNATIVE

Not only that, but it’s also designed especially for people who want to sell products online.  Dreamweaver is superb for general website design, but if you want to quickly create websites for selling a product, then XSitePro is the product you should seriously consider using.

YOUR CHRISTMAS GIFT

Intellimon is giving away their XHeader software so that they can promote their flagship product XSitePro.  You can use XHeader with XSitePro or any other website creation software you want to use.

The header-graphics provided are outstanding in their quality and the the choice is more than most people would ever need.

WHY REGISTER THE SOFTWARE?

You get 50 basic templates if you don’t register your software, or 1000 if you do register! Registering simply means you are placed on thier mailing-list so that they can offer thier other software to you.  You can unsubscribe to this list at any time you choose of course.

Making money online can be a LOT easier and a LOT less expensive if you use free software, and for producing professionaly quality header (or footer) graphics, this software can’t be beaten.

GET IT HERE

Get your free copy now.

XHEADER

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND I’D LIKE TO WISH YOU A VERY PROFITABLE NEW YEAR!

Luke.

PS. I’m taking a few days off, but I’ll look forward to contact with you again in 2009.

The controversial ‘no-follow’ tag has been adopted by Google and most of the other search-engines now. What does this mean you?  Well, that depends on whether you’re a spammer or a blogger!

WHAT DO THE SEARCH-ENGINES SAY?

The good people at Google, Yahoo and MSN seem to be consolidated in their views of the use of the no-follow tag for the following reasons. Bloggers and readers of blogs alike realize that there are many people who are quite ruthless about getting their own website ranked higher in the search-rankings by getting links BACK to their own websites.

While this is perfectly legitimate and is desirable by the various blogging communities, these people simply leave ‘spam’ comments on other people’s blogs.  What is considered spam in regard to comments? As an example, you might have a blog that is dedicated to dogs, or a particular breed of dog.  A ruthless spammer might leave a comment with a link back to his or her website that says something like “Great post; check out my site at http:// etc.” and the link is to a sales page selling something totally unrelated to the blog where the comment was left, perhaps pharmaceuticals or similar.

WHO BENEFITS?

If you think about this, it’s worthless to everybody other than the owner of the site selling the pharmaceuticals.  The blog-owner doesn’t have any additional content; the blog-reader might waste some time checking a site that is of no interest and then might conclude that the blog-owner’s site isn’t worth visiting again because of these spam backlinks.

This is where the ‘no-follow’ tag comes in. Blog platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal and several others have agreed to include the ‘no-follow’ attribute in their software, though you CAN turn this off in most of them.  They agreed to include the simple piece of code rel=”nofollow”.   The effect is just as simple; whenever a comments is left on somebody’s blog that has the ‘no-follow’ attribute left on, the comment would be, in effect, invisible to the search-engine.

A CLOAK OF INVISIBILITY

This invisibility-cloak mean that the search-engines spiders (crawler-programs) wouldn’t follow that link back to the site and so would not include it in that particular search-engine’s ranking.

The logic is simple; if the spammer knows that the link won’t be followed and therefore won’t positively affect his or her rankings, why bother to spam blogs in the first place!  That’s the logic. Now for the reality.

There are at least two reasons why this may not discourage spammers.  Firstly, they don’t all KNOW about the no-follow attribute, so they go on with their spamming attempt out of ignorance.  Secondly, they often use software to automatically spam blogs with a  standard comment like “Great post” etc. so they aren’t really putting any effort and time into it anyway, which means that they aren’t losing anything by leaving their programs running on auto-pilot.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

So the question now is, will this have a positive or negative effect on blogging communities?

To answer that, I think we need to understand human nature.  The crawler programs used by Google,Yahoo, Ask.com and MSN may well ignore these links, but will people ignore them?

It’s inevitable that some people WILL ignore them, and it’s equally inevitable that others will follow the links, sometimes just out of curiosity.  However, once these people who have followed a couple of links realize that they are not at all relevant to the blog that they are reading, they are most likely to stop following these in the future unless the link is posted by somebody that they know and trust, or somebody that they have heard about.

FREELOADERS

Like most other human endeavors, there will ALWAYS be some people who try to get something for nothing, and these people just make it more difficult for the honest people who have integrity.

What’s the answer?  Well, the no-follow tag is a start, but what it comes down to is this; as a blogger, you will have to create increasingly better quality content to keep your readers coming back.  As the owner of another site, you will have to ensure that the quality of your comments are such that, even though the search-engines don’t see your link as relevant, the people READING your comment will see enough value to come to your website willingly.

After all, you CAN have a lot of visitors to your website WITHOUT having a high search-engine ranking!

Luke.

PS. Your Christmas gift will be in my post tomorrow!

“There are a lot of things money can’t buy. Not one of them is on my son’s list” — Milton Berle

Even though most people don’t understand how search-engines like Yahoo actually work (mainly because they keep their mathematical algorithm a closely-guarded secret), people DO know that if they type something into the search-engine’s search-box, they will get a list of somewhat relevant websites to their search.

SOMEWHAT?

However, the key word there is “somewhat”!  Why?  Well, if you’ve ever used a search-engine like Yahoo or Ask.com, then you already know that most of the results that are returned from a search are less than perfect.  It’s also the reason that there are still several search-engine companies and not just one.  If any ONE search-engine becomes so perfect that all of the results is ever returns are EXACTLY what EVERYBODY ever searches for, then there will be no need for any other search-engine companies.

ORGANIC

You see, most of the information found on websites is found as what’s termed organic results.  Yes, there are plenty of website links that are sponsored (other companies are paying to be shown on certain results pages; in Google, these are on the top and down the right-hand side and they are clearly marked as ‘Sponsored Links’), but by far the most results returned for any search are organic.

“Organic results” simply means that the results returned aren’t being paid for.  The search engines find these websites, which could be weblogs, company promotion sites, article sites or pretty much anything else, using their own peculiar guidelines.  Each has their own way of categorizing and ranking each site and they put these guidelines into their software algorithm (a string of instructions) that they then use to crawl the World Wide Web.  Google is the only search-engine that I know that is willing to share its information gathering secrets.  Just go to Google’s PigeonRank page for full disclosure.

LESS THAN PERFECT

So with search-engines you get results that are not only less than perfect, but you often get results that are totally unrelated to what you’re looking for.  This might be because of the way you typed in your search-term (otherwise known as your keyword) or it may be because you simply misspelled something. It might also be because the search-engine you’re using isn’t very good.

PROOF

To prove this, use your favorite search-engine.  Type in a search-term and then go to about page 5 of the search-results.  You’ll see plenty of websites here that have little or no bearing on your search-term.  The words you typed will be there, but most of the sites from about page 5 onwards have no relevance to what you searched for.

DIRECTORIES

Directories differ from search-engines in that they are edited by humans, rather than a computer program called a crawler.  Directories are much more like a traditional directory like Yellow Pages or any other phone book.

There are literally hundreds of directories now and more are being created every year.  One of the most popular ones is the Open Directory, otherwise known as DMOZ.

So why are there so many?  Well, like the phone-book, people are creating directories for different niche areas.  After all, you wouldn’t try using a Detroit phone book for San Diego would you and directories are very much like this, but instead of being directories for geographical areas, they are directories containing websites that are similar or related in some way.

SEARCH-ENGINES VS. DIRECTORIES

The benefit of using directories instead of search-engines is clear; if you find a directory that is related to your search, then every website in that directory might be relevant to your search.  The disadvantage is less clear.  With TOO MANY relevant websites to look at, you may easily become overwhelmed with choices.

With the disciplined use of directories AND search-engines, there’s almost nothing that you can’t find on the web.

On the other side of the coin, getting YOUR website into these directories is critical.  The more directories that your website appears in, the more links there will be to your site and the higher rankings you will enjoy in each of the search-engines.  You’ll also enjoy an increasing number of visitors to your website who have found you in the directories.

A good place to start is dmoz.org.

But submitting your sites to all of these hundreds of Directories can be VERY time consuming.  Fortunately, I’ve found some great FREE software that will let you do this much MUCH quicker.  It’s called Directory Submitter.  There’s an upgrade offer which you can decline, but you will be added to their mailing list, which you can unsubscribe to at any time.

You can check it out for yourself here.

Directory Submitter.

Remember, it’s FREE!

Luke.

“Money was never a big motivation for me, except to keep score.  The real excitement is playing the game.” - Donald Trump

Robert Kyosaki lives about ten miles from me in Paradise Valley, AZ.

I’m a huge fan of his work, especially Rich Dad, Poor Dad.