taozero.com

Shady, Shady URLs

Here is a great article! It would make you much smarter! CLICK NOW!
Really, its a good read! and it will not damage your windows as much!

http://5z8.info/openme.exe_w3r1n_autoinstall

Or how about those great links - would you click any of those? They are highly recommended!

http://5z8.info/getPersonalData-start_p6m3w__init_download

http://5z8.info/worm.exe_z6o2f_-php-deactivate_phishing_filter-48-

http://5z8.info/startphish_t6e6d_boobs

(Maybe - the last one actually looks promising).

If those links look suspicious to you, why are you clicking links that look like this?

http://tinyurl.com/2k5kuf

Do you know where they lead you to?

As you could see if you followed the very first link above, the Wikipedia entry for URL shorteners has plenty of pros, but enough cons to counter them. My number one is that the obscurity of the URLs makes them dangerous as it removes a layer of sanity checking that you go through when you are about to click links. Also, they are widely used by spammers and phishers as they easily negate one of the basic features of spam filtering - scanning URLs against blacklisted sites and terms, so they are quickly becoming the phishers holy grail. Not to mention the fact that those links are at the mercy of an intermediate service provider, which might be temporarily down or simply out of business, and then you are stuck with a bunch of dead links that you can not even reverse-engineer on Google.

The explosion of URL shorteners brought to you by the likes of Twitter ( http://5z8.info/backyard-fireworks-disasters_y1t6m_this_persons_account_has_been_hacked ) was driven by technical constraints (like the legacy limitation of 140 characters due to SMS message size), but instead of limiting the usage to the edge case of SMS (or actually doing something to fix, or better, retire the SMS system) we embraced this as a godsend. The shortened URLs are all around.

This brilliant service, ShadyURL, illustrates those points in the best way possible (I don’t think they intended to, though).

Stop creating shortened URLs, period. Its bad for us. And when you get a shortened URL in your Twitter or email, be very careful when you follow it. Lastly, if you want to spread this awareness further, use ShadyURL to send links around.

And by the way - the above links are some of the mildest and least offensive ones I could generate - I am suspecting that most of the URLs won’t pass your basic spam filter.

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My blog moved to WordPress

I have moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress - and I am amazed of the richness, flexibility and looks.

The main reason that pushed me from Blogger was my need to have pages - static page structure that allows me to have articles and other static pages, not in a blog concept. There are some things that simply do not fit in a blog.

On the other hand, I got addicted to the ease of posting and management in a server-side platform like Blogger. Its very easy to add a post, no need to deal with HTML, cross-linking, correct URLs, etc. Once you get used to it, its very hard to go back to building a site from scratch.

WordPress is amazing. The themes are gorgeous, infinite plug-ins, rich control - the site is PHP based, and you can add your own functionality.

Here are some of the goodies I am already using.

• QPwilm theme - with some more tweaks
• Search Pages plugin - allows search inside pages, not only posts
• Sticky Menus plugin - allows customizable menus all over the place
• WP-Table plugin - allows creation and management of tables through WP admin
• Exec-PHP plugin - allows pasting PHP code as part of the post, which gets executed on render time.

So far - so good!

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Three content rules for best AdSense revenue

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

If you want to start an AdSense-based site, and you are wondering which subject it should be about, here are three rules for choosing the site’s subject.

Choose a subject that interests you

You are going to invest tons of hours in building your site. This is going to involve a lot of research, thinking and writing. If this is a subject that you don’t find interesting, you will not have the required energies to put into it.

In addition, if it is interesting to you, that also means that you might know more then other people about this, and that you might be able to contribute original ideas, commentary and opinions about this subject - this is exactly what the readers (and the search engines) are after.

Last, as this is an interesting subject for you, you might be researching and reading about it anyway - this means you just need to put that into your site.

Choose a subject that has enough advertisers

Lets suppose you invested all your energy at your favorite subject, and built a solid and interesting site. Can it be profitable? That depends on lots of things, but surely if there are very few advertisers in this area, or the ads have low value, you will not be able to monetize it.

Obviously, you need to beware of choosing a subject that has fierce competition (most are…). The highest paying keywords are the playground of the pros. If you are just starting, stay away from those.

Choose a subject that is aimed at non-technical people

Ahh, this is the most elusive secret of all: The more technical savvy your users are, and the more web experienced they are, the less likely will they be to see your ads. This is called ad-blindness.

On the other hand, if your site is aimed at low-tech users, the more likely they are to click on your ads.

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SEO and AdSense howto tips

When I decided to add AdSense ads to my blog, I made some research (as usual), and came up with a set of guidelines to the whole spooky SEO subject.Here is a set of of tips to improve your site and blog rating, and drive more performance out of your Google AdSense campaign.

Choose and Create Content

• Make sure you have high quality, rich, interesting, useful and original content
• Its good to have a niche site - but with sufficient advertisers
• If possible, concentrate on content with high paying ads
• One page per topic
• Cover all missing subtopics
• Update and add constantly

Optimize Site Flow

• Natural site flow
• Make sure all links work
• Add About page
• Add Sitemap page

Optimize AdSense Keywords

• Mine for the best keywords
• Pay attention to keyword density
• Fine-tune before turning on AdSense

Keywords Fine Tuning

• Important tags: Title, Headings, Bold, Italics, Alt
• Choose the right keywords in title
• Choose the right keywords in headings
• Links: Wrap the link around keywords (text in links is valued higher by Google). Use the title attribute like so: actual text
• Put the best keywords into the links
• Pay attention to the meta tags
• Actively block ads that are wrong
• Ask AdSense

Optimize Images

• Always use ALT with relevant keywords
• Position images near relevant text
• Images around the ad edges are helpful in getting attention

Improve Your Layout and Positioning

• For short articles, place ads above the content
• For long articles, place ads in the middle of content
• Blend ad colors
• Above the fold

Improve Relevancy

• Avoid Non-English characters
• Include specific sections with <!– google_ad_section_start–> and <!– google_ad_section_end–>
• Exclude poison-words/sections using <!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –> and <!– google_ad_section_end –>
• In case of bad relevancy, rename the page to trigger immediate re-crawl

Bring More Traffic To Your Site

• Link from outside as possible
• Promote the site: Submit to digg, reddit, sumbleupon
• Add signature to your emails

Enjoy!

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