Htaccess cheat sheet

.htaccess is a is the default name of a directory-level configuration file that allows for decentralized management of web server configuration according to Wikipedia.

Favorite .htaccess commands

The Jackal blog has cheatsheet which can be handy for online marketing professionals. My favorites commands for .htaccess are  are

• Disable directory browsing
• Custom error pages
• Change default page
• Block users from accessing the website
• Allow only LAN users
• Redirect Visitors to New Page/Directory
  del.icio.us Tags: htaccess,seo
• Stop .htaccess (or any other file) from being viewed
• password protecting directories
• Switching on the check spelling directive
• Disguise Script Extensions
• Speed up your website by caching using .htaccess
• Set server timezone
• Limit access to LAN

More about .htaccess

You can find the .htaccess cheat sheet here.  For those who want to learn more about .htaccess there is in depth analysis and guide on the perishable press blog post. The post is old (2006) but is relevant and every time I refer to it I learn new things about .htaccess.

Link Building techniques

Over the last 8 years I have developed a list of strategies and techniques for link building for a website. This is a very broad classifications of activities. The effectiveness of link building techniques is usually different for different industries.

• Directory Submissions
• Article submission 
• Press releases
• Social media profile creation
• Social Bookmarking
• Guest blogging
• Local listing like Google places
• Create link wheels using social websites and web 2.0 sites
• Identify where the competitors are getting inbound links from. Approach those resources to find out if you can get a outbound link from those sites. 
• Add your self to yellow pages and local business listings.
• Participate in forums and discussions and use signature with a link back to the website if possible. 
• Guest blogging on other blogs which are in the relevant industry with link backs to the website. 
• Use http://www.beaucoup.com/ to find vertical engines and directories and get listed in them
• Participate in question and answer websites by answering questions related to your business or website. 
• Paricipate in discussions on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn.
• RSS Submission if possible
• Blog submission if you are running a blog on your website
• Create video content and submit to various video hosting services like Youtube.com and metacafe.com
• Create documents like infographics and PDF documents and submit them to websites like Scribd.com and similar websites. 

Is there a technique that you have used that is not mentioned in the list the please share it by adding comments below. 

Ads that work on Facebook

One of the main difference between advertising on Google adwords and Facebook is that images are allowed on Facebook. When advertising on Facebook a slightly different approach is needed.

Facebook advertising rules to be followed

1. While on Google adwords the aim is to show the advertisement as often as you can a different approach works on Facebook. Research shows that users are likely to click on that advertisement that is less likely to be repeated versus advertisements which are seen often. Therefore buy impressions miserly. Of course the content of the advertisement has to enticing enough. In the end the mantra is lower your impression rate (I know it sounds weird but it is correct). You can find more about this on FBadslab.
2. Though this is true for Google advertisement network as well make your advertising enticing. The aim of the advertisement has to be to distract the user from the present task and get him to click on your advertisement. Therefore the bait has to be good which means the advertisement has to tie to a promotion or discount. 
3. On Facebook test multiple images in one campaign. Each copy in the campaign try to use a different image which is unique and provides a unique hook to the customer. 
4. The conversion ratio or percentage is low on Facebook. The average conversion rate is 0.02% which is much lower than the average adwords conversion percentage which is 0.04%. Therefore businesses that are new to Facebook sometimes panic when they get low conversion rates. 

What type of images to use in Facebook advertisements

Research done by  Jennifer Sheahan at FDAdslab.com shows that the following type of images bring about the best results when used with Facebook advertisements

1. Happy Women
2. Colorful logos
3. Headshots

If you are interested in knowing more about online marketing there is a great post at Search Engine Land about how to create effective Social Advertising. 

Free tools to evaluate competition for SEO

Whenever you start building an entity on Internet the first 'homework' that needs to be done is find out how the competition or the industry going about optimizing their websites for search engines. Here are some free SEO Tools that can be handy while trying to evaluate competition

Free SEO tools to evaluate competition

1. Blekko - One of the most underrated SEO tool. This tool by itself should be give you enough armor to fight the war! On the face of it Blekko is like a 'normal' search engine. If you look at the results little closely there are links below each search result which can give you wealth of SEO parameters of your results. I'm amazed that this tool is free and has not been lapped up by the biggies (you know who I'm talking about). I intend to a full post on the details of how to use the tool. 
2.  Compete - There is a free and a paid version. The free version does a decent job though.
3. Alexa - Though it is not rated as highly but still does give you some idea about the competition
4. HowSociable - Find out how social media is being used by the competitors and the industry.
5. Social Mention - Another social media research tool that can help you know how the competition is leveraging social media marketing
6. Website Grader - Use this tool to evaluate any website on the Internet.
7. SEOmoz Crawl Test  - The free version crawls upto 50 pages on a website. For bigger sized websites you need to buy the subscription
8. Yahoo Site Explorer - Yahoo's site explorer is still going strong.
9. AttentionMeter - A search engine which does a comparative SEO analysis 

Most of the small business owners will find these tools provide you overwhelming information. You have to wise to go after the right statistics for as they say that

        "Statistics hide as much as they reveal!" or
        "Statistics are like bikinis.  What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."
 :-)