TheAnand

Recently I was helping my friends at CSharks, the Indian Game Developers about their sites indexing issues in Bing. Initially I thought it was a flash site based indexing issues which Google had sometime back. Then we found out that BingBot has recently visited the homepage of the site, but failed to see through the redirect they had setup.

Though I knew redirects was tricky, it never occurred it could confuse the BingBot too! To me, it looks like BingBot gets stuck at the page which throws a redirect error and cannot figure out a way to index the new page.

The biggest unconference in Kerala is back! The 6th edition of BarCampKerala was announced last week and this time, the event is scheduled in Cochin, Kerala.

Date: 11th October 2009

Venue: Rajagiri College of Engineering, Cochin

The venue is sponsored by the Computer Club of the College. Thanks guys!

Register for the BarCamp | Take a Session | Venue

BarCampKerala 5 was perhaps the biggest of the barcamps we had in Kerala with about 250 people turning up from across the state and this being in the middle of the state will allow for more attendees. The hall is around 170 seats strong, so do register early! Read Shwetanks review of the meetup to get an idea about the event.

I recently put out a tweet about how your blog is in the right track if you get more spammy comments. From what I see, you are seen by the bots, which means search engines and other kinds of bots should see you too. Its a good thing though not many followers agreed with me! What do you say?!

BUT, This post is not about spamming! This is about learning from a annoying marketing technique which has been existent since email came along. Spam emails! Everyone hates those nigerian bankers who want your help or those claiming to make your body organs bigger and even those promising you replicas of popular watch brands.

Some of you might be aware that I have been spending time on Cochin Square, my portal for my home town of Cochin, India. It was a different experience moving away from single author blogs to multi-author blogs. Thanks to the wordpress plugin developer community, I have been able to get the best plugins to run a wordpress based multi-author site with ease. Here is my list of plugins which I use on Cochin Square, hope it helps those running a single installation, multiple author wordpress blogs.

Directory Submissions are what most SEO experts in the industry call – “Old School”. But personally, after all those chats of directory submissions going south with a Google ban on them, personally, I think it still works. I keep directory submission as a part of my weekly efforts on backlinks. It is pretty much the cheapest link-building methods out there.

But yes, the quality of the directories you submit to matters. I usually submit to those directories who are doing some sort of SEO for their sites and have decent authority backlinks to themselves. The list of directories will be soon attached to my RSS footer, so if you want a peice of my directory sheet, do subscribe to my RSS or get the updates by email.

A method I have been using lately is the Web 2.0 method of creating backlinks to your sites. I specifically use a the modified version of the LinkWheel method which is getting some rave results in my experiments with some keywords jumping up 3-4 positions within weeks of creating a wheel.

A method of creating backlinks from 6 different web 2.0 properties with new accounts and syndicating their RSS is what linkwheel is all about. Personally, concentrating on top sites like WordPress.com, hubpages and squidoo will give you the results you want, but mix it with a bit of article marketing and you have a powerful way of linkbuilding! If you missed the previous methods, check out the pilot post with the index to the methods of easy link building.

Personally, I think Press Releases for Backlinks have been manipulated to no end by smart webmasters and those looking to build a buzz around their product. If you can take some time off and craft a good press release, I am sure it can get listed in major news aggregators and even high end News sites like Google News and Yahoo! News.

Google News syndication is definitely the icing on the cake as it will bypass the normal listings on Google for your keyword. My personal list of press release websites I use for my submission needs can be found here and here. The time spent on this activity involves the time spent on writing the article and the time spent on submitting to the lists out there.