We’ve been providing a lot of strategic and technical consulting in the social media space recently. We have been doing it well. There is nothing we love more than happy clients. We deliver relevant, successful digital concepts, strategies and products, while pushing the boundaries of technology and creativity, leveraging the low cost per acquisition opportunity the Internet provides. We are anxious to begin developing long-term (FoS0zsYcA5BP30), mutually beneficial relationships with best-of-breed clients and partners. Put our brains to work for you and we’ll start conceptualizing solutions to help it deliver against its objectives. As successful marketing campaigns continue to transition with technological innovations, online marketing continues to become more vital to organizational success. A recent statistic from “Social Media Examiner” indicated that 90% of all business owners view online marketing key to the long-term success of their business.  Stake Your Claim offers business to business online marketing consulting and contracting. Technical services include social media content management, search engine optimization and website design.

1. Every domain name is unique. That means, if your name is Mike Mann and you want your domain to be mann.com, and Jim Mann in Toledo also decides he wants his domain to be mann.com, but he registers first, you would be Out Of Luck. Now if you want your e-mail address to be mike@mann.com, you would have to get in touch with Jim in Toledo, and ask (very nicely) if he wouldn’t mind setting up his mail server so you could receive mail at mike@mann.com (not very likely). BUT – if you register before he does, not only will you be able to receive mail at mike@mann.com, Stake Your Claim! can set up e-mail addresses for YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY (i.e. mary@mann.com, dan@mann.com, etc.). THIS WOULD BE A GIFT THAT LASTS FOREVER!

This works the same way for your business. If your company name is Acme Plumbing, your domain could be acme.com, and every employee in your company could have their own e-mail address (tom@acme.com, george@acme.com, etc.). You could also set up e-mails like sales@acme.com and help@acme.com. BUT ONLY IF YOU GET THAT DOMAIN FIRST!

2. So many new domains have been registered that Internic is currently reviewing its policy of issuing domains under the high level .COM category. That means that if you don’t register now, you may lose the opportunity to have a .COM domain. When Internic does decide on its new policies, domain names will probably be longer (i.e. instead of acme.com, your domain would be acme.ohio.com or acme.ohio.midwest.com – quite a mouthful!). This will have several negative effects on businesses and individuals who register after that – the longer domains will be harder to remember and more cumbersome to advertise, and by having one of the new, longer domains, you will be telling The World, “I wasn’t paying attention when this whole Internet thing started – as a matter of fact, I missed the boat by a couple of years!” On the other hand, by having a short, personalized .COM domain, five years from now, when someone sees your domain, they will instantly know that you were on the leading edge of the Internet revolution. IT DOESN’T EVEN MATTER IF YOU DON’T USE YOUR DOMAIN FOR YEARS! AT THIS PRICE, YOU CAN AFFORD TO REGISTER IT NOW AND HOLD IT UNTIL YOU NEED IT! This is especially true because…(FoS0zsYcA5BP30).

3. No one really knows what all the possible uses for the Internet will be! The value and uses for your domain name will grow as the Internet grows! One expected use of the Internet as bandwidth becomes more available will be Internet VideoPhones. When they become a reality, most people will have a videophone number in the form of ’123.12.34.123′. Your videophone number will be YOUR DOMAIN NAME! Think of the potential – “Contact us at Acme Plumbing – VideoPhone Number Acme.Com!”

How to suggest a site to the Open Directory

The Open Directory Project is a web directory of Internet resources. A web directory is something akin to a huge reference library. The directory is hierarchically arranged by subject – from broad to specific. The ODP is maintained by community editors who evaluate sites for inclusion in the directory. They are our experts, and all submissions are subject to editor evaluation.

We care a great deal about the quality of the ODP. We aren’t a search engine and pride ourselves on being highly selective. We don’t accept all sites, so please don’t take it personally should your site not be accepted. Our goal is to make the directory as useful as possible for our users, not to have the directory include all (or even most) of the sites that could possibly be listed or serve as a promotional tool for the entities listed.

To keep the ODP running smoothly and to assist us in exercising our editorial discretion, we have set up policies for submitting sites for our consideration. We may reject, delete, or edit submissions that violate these policies or that we otherwise believe, in our sole discretion, should not be included in the directory. We may also reject, delete, or block other sites that we believe to be associated with a user who has violated these policies.

You should take a few moments to understand these policies and the steps to submit a site before you begin.  Failure to understand and follow these instructions generally will result in the rejection of a submission.

Step One

Determine whether a site is appropriate for submission to the ODP:

• Do not submit mirror sites. Mirror sites are sites that contain identical content, but have altogether different URLs.
• Do not submit URLs that contain only the same or similar content as other sites you may have listed in the directory.  Sites with overlapping and repetitive content are not helpful to users of the directory.  Multiple submissions of the same or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those and all affiliated sites.
• Do not disguise your submission and submit the same URL more than once.
  Example: http://www.dmoz.org and http://www.dmoz.org/index.html
• Do not submit any site with an address that redirects to another address.
• The Open Directory has a policy against the inclusion of sites with illegal content. Examples of illegal material include child pornography; libel; material that infringes any intellectual property right; and material that specifically advocates, solicits or abets illegal activity (such as fraud or violence).
• Do not submit sites “under construction.” Wait until a site is complete before submitting it. Sites that are incomplete, contain “Under Construction” notices, or contain broken graphics or links aren’t good candidates for the directory.
• Submit pornographic sites to the appropriate category under Adult.
• Submit non-English sites to the appropriate category under World.
• Don’t submit sites consisting largely of affiliate links.

Step Two

Do a quick search in the directory at dmoz.org (the home of the Open Directory) to be sure your site isn’t already listed. This saves everyone time.

Step Three

Identify the single best category for your site. The Open Directory has an enormous array of subjects to choose from. You should submit a site to the single most relevant category. Sites submitted to inappropriate or unrelated categories may be rejected or removed.

Note: Some categories do not have “suggest URL” or “update URL” links. These categories don’t accept submissions, so you should find a more specific category for your site.

Step Four

Once you’ve selected the best category for your site, go directly to that category on dmoz.org and then click “suggest URL.” Follow the instructions on the submission form carefully.  Descriptions of sites should describe the content of the site concisely and accurately.  They should not be promotional in nature. Submitting a promotional description rather than an objective, well written description may significantly delay your site from being listed or prevent your site from being listed at all. Auto-submission software is (and always has been) a violation of this procedure. Sites submitted automatically are flagged and deleted after the submission is accepted, without notification to you. Persistent automatic submission may force us to ban you from the dmoz site, so we can provide resources to real human beings.

Procedure After Your Site is Submitted

An ODP editor will review your submission to determine whether to include it in the directory. Depending on factors such as the volume of submissions to the particular category, it may take several weeks or more before your submission is reviewed. Please only submit a URL to the Open Directory once. Again, multiple submissions of the same or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those and all affiliated sites.  Disguising your submission and submitting the same URL more than once is not permitted.

Updating Your Site

If a site has been accepted for inclusion in the directory but you are dissatisfied with how the site is described or titled, you may go to the category where it is listed, and fill out the “update URL” form. If you are dissatisfied with the category in which your site is listed, you may send an e-mail to an editor for the category explaining your disagreement. Be polite and civil — threatening or abusive behavior will not be tolerated.

If (but only if) you are dissatisfied with the editor’s response, you may then use the “Feedback” link at the top of the page to “appeal” the editor’s decision. Be specific concerning your disagreement (including why you believe the editor’s response is inadequate). Comments made through the feedback link are reviewed by the ODP staff, who will make the final decision. Please do NOT send correspondence to Netscape, as that will only slow down and complicate the process. We take all feedback seriously and give it our thoughtful consideration. But please remember that we must exercise our discretion and make numerous judgment calls as to how to make the ODP as useful as possible — no matter what decision we make, we may not always satisfy everyone.

Getting Your Site Into Portals and Search Engines Using ODP Data

If your site has been accepted into the Open Directory, it may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data, such as AOL Search, Google, Netscape Search, Yahoo Search, and hundreds of other sites. We make updates of the data available weekly, but each partner has their own update schedule.

Editorial Discretion

Please recognize that making the ODP a useful resource requires us to exercise broad editorial discretion in determining the content and structure of the directory. That discretion extends (but is not limited) to what sites to include, where in the directory sites are placed, whether and when to include more than one link to a site, when deep linking is appropriate, and the content of the title and description of the site. In addition, a site’s placement in the directory is subject to change or deletion at any time at our sole discretion. You should not rely on any aspect of a site’s inclusion in the directory.  Please understand that an editor’s exercise of discretion may not always treat all submissions equally. You may not always agree with our choices, but we hope you recognize that we do our best to make fair and reasonable decisions.

The Open Directory team welcomes comments and feedback about the directory generally. Please let us know what you think, and how we can improve the service. Thanks!

Proceed to the Open Directory home at dmoz.org – Start here to find a category to submit to.

The following is a brief tutorial on search engine optimization basics. We use many of these techniques every day to optimize websites and stay ahead of the competition.

Better Rankings in 4 Steps

Step 1. Select The Right Keywords
The first important step is to select the right keywords for basing your website optimization around. The best approach is usually not to choose generic or general keywords. It is usually better to focus on more specific, niche keywords that directly relate to your service or product.

In order to do this you need to target a suitable market, compete with fewer websites that are targeting the same or similar keywords as you, and optimize for the keywords that searchers actually use when they perform their searches.

How you target a suitable market depends on what specific services and products you offer and on your website. You need to be as specific as possible when it comes to your keywords. Also keep in mind that people don’t usually search using single keywords, example FoS0zsYcA5BP30 . Most search phrases are 3-5 words long.

For example, if you were trying to optimize a web development website based in Dublin, Ireland you would want to use keywords like “web development Dublin” or “web development services Ireland.”

In order to figure out the number of websites competing with you on your keywords, just do a Google search and take note of the number of results that are returned. The more sites there are competing with you on your keywords, the more difficult it will be for you to get your website on Google’s first page of the search results.

To get a rough idea of the number of people searching for your keywords that you would like to optimize your website for, the Google External Keyword tool can be used. It isn’t exact but will give you a fairly good estimate. You will also be provided with other keywords in a list that are similar to the one that you enter into the keyword tool. It can a great way of finding more keywords to use when optimizing your website.

A general guideline you can go by is to use a different search phrase for each page of your website. Your search phrases should consist of 2 or 3 keywords that are highly targeted.

Step 2. Title Tag and URL
Two of the major factors determining your website’s ranking in Google are your title tag and domain name. Having your main keywords in your domain name can help to get your website ranked higher for that keyword. Some people might think that having keywords in our website’s domain name looks unprofessional or our domain name is already registered. An alternative and useful tactic is to add keywords into your page names.

Title tags are also very important. Using your keywords in the title tags can significantly improve your Google rankings. However, it can sometimes be a bit more difficult to balance keyword density with professionalism when using the title tags. Try to get your keywords as close to beginning of the title tag as you can.

Step. 3 Keyword Density and H1 Tags
These days the <h1> tag isn’t used as much in stylesheets as it once was. The ranking algorithm of Google dictates that when you use a </h1>
<h1> that the text enclosed in the tag has more importance than the rest of the content on the page.

Sprinkling your main keywords throughout the content of your pages also can help to improve the keyword density on your site. What keyword density means is the ratio of the keywords you are optimizing for in relation to all of the other content that is on your page. Usually keyword density is expressed in the form of a percentage. Some experts recommend that your keyword density should be around 7% for each page, while others recommend less. The key is to not overdo keyword density but also to not overlook it.

Step 4. Links, Links, Links
Now for the hardest part of the Google optimization process: back links. A back link occurs when a website links directly back to your website. In general the more websites linking back to your site, the higher ranked your pages will be. The assumption is that you must have a good website if lots of other sites are linking to it.

Submitting your website to directories like dmoz.org and Yahoo is another step that can help increase how many websites link back to your site. Keep in mind that it does take time to set up back links. I would recommend that you email 5-10 websites each day requesting a partnership link or back link. You should contact sites that are relevant but not necessarily direct competitors. Within a weeks, you could have around 100 or so sites linking back to your website.

Google can be a hard search engine to rank for. Hopefully these basic tips will help you get off to a good start in optimizing your website or client websites.

Some people who acknowledge that unlimited is an unacceptable word for describing bandwidth because it can be deceiving believe that the right term to use would be “unmetered.” But is it really?

What unmetered means for this context is “unmeasured.” The problem is many of the hosting companies that offer it mention explicitly that once an initial limited has been reached, that upon request at no charge you will be upgraded. So in fact they do measure your data traffic consumption. The thing that they don’t do, or at least claim not to, is placing a limit on your consumption. It is true that they don’t, at least not in a direct way.

Reasons Why Hosts Offer Unmetered Bandwidth
Businesses exist in order to make a profit. That is their purpose and employees are responsible for doing whatever is necessary to maximize profits.

How does offering something like unmetered bandwidth increase a company’s profits? It is through sheer volume. A significant increase in sales that have a small profit on each account potentially could translate into a higher amount of total profit.

For serious businesses offering unmetered bandwidth is a decision to gamble based on statistics, which is the cornerstone for all overselling decisions.

However a way has been devised so that the hosts don’t have to take the risk. There are certain requirements that websites must meet in order to receive unmetered bandwidth.

So why would unmetered bandwidth sell more than a quota would? It all comes down to perceived value. It isn’t what you sell, it’s what a customer thinks they are buying. Targeted customers feel they are getting more for less. Unmetered bandwidth is supposed to provide more than fixed quota.

Another reason that customers sometimes give is they don’t have to worry about getting charged when they exceed their allotment of bandwidth. It is a kind of guarantee that getting a higher amount of traffic to their website won’t result in higher charges. Once again it’s risk reversal. At least that is how certain customers see it.

The ultimate sales proposition: worry free hosting. Just sign up and you won’t ever have to worry over hosting again. You will get everything that you need for one fixed fee.

This type of service/product offer has a target market. It isn’t hard to realize that the market that is targeted is individuals who have websites that won’t take full advantage of the offer.

In order to ensure that things stay manageable, certain kinds of websites usually aren’t eligible to receive unmetered bandwidth:

* Websites offering file downloads (mp3s, video, software)
* Websites hosting image galleries (notorious for high server resources and high bandwidth usage)
* Websites with popular forums
* Portals and other kinds of social communities
* Adults websites
* Chat sites

Another common restraint to see is that 90% of files have to be linked from HTML, ASP or PHP kinds of pages, meaning that the website needs to be content driven.

Some hosting companies have more restrictions than others, meaning that in order to protect themselves they go to much greater lengths. Others take on more chances.

A lot of these restrictions also are used by hosts who offer unlimited bandwidth. That isn’t surprising since unmetered bandwidth for shared hosting comes from the unlimited bandwidth concept.

If these restrictions are examined, it’s have to imagine any website using up large amounts of bandwidth, and therefore taking advantage of the offer of unmetered bandwidth, that doesn’t fall into one of the above categories. So what is the point? (FoS0zsYcA5BP30).

The point is actually a simple one. Unmetered bandwidth would take overselling to an entirely new level. Because hosting companies need to ensure profitability as well as long term sustainability they take some serious safety precautions.  However, the more restrictions there are the more it feels like empty talk. They make it almost impossible for any customer to actually be able to take the host up on their offer of unmettered bandwidth.

It’s not just due to the above limitations. If a website was able to get through all the rules and somehow be eligible to receive umnetered bandwidth, the hosting company would still stop them from taking advantage of this offer.

One clause gives hosting companies all the power. That clause is the one called server resources abuse. If your website happens to use up too much memory and CPU power to the point that it affects the performance of the server’s other websites, the hosting company will suspend it.

A question you may be asking yourself is why a hosting company would go through so much trouble to specify which kinds of websites aren’t eligible if they have that clause.

In order to answer the question we need to look at what effects those limitations have. The only websites qualifying for the offer have a very little chance of going over more than few GBs each month. There is also very little chance of these websites going over the threshold for resources abuse. That means the clause hardly ever needs to get used. This is great from the hosting company’s point of view.

Customers usually have no idea what is contained in the TOS. The clause is shocking to them, particularly since with most of today’s control panels there isn’t any way of verifying the claim made by the host. Out of shock, these customers might voice publicly their dissatisfaction that their website was suspended and that they are being blackmailed into upgrading their hosting account. Most hosts could do without this type of publicity.

How do hosting companies explain this? One of the ideas is that limits on bandwidth aren’t meaningful anymore. What is more meaningful are things like memory and CPU usage. In terms of unmetered bandwidth what ultimately limits consumption of bandwidth is how much of the server’s resources are used.

I wouldn’t have a problem with this change as long as:

1. Hosting companies didn’t monitor individual consumption of data transfer

2. Resource usage was visible and measured inside the control panel, allowing users to know at any given time if they had used too many resources for the given time period. In addition, users should have a guarantee of a certain level or share of resources.

The whole idea of unmetered can be called into dispute if the above first condition isn’t met. If you offer unmetered and then meter all your users consumption then why are you calling it unmetered? Some may say that’s just semantics. Maybe.

However in terms of semantics, unmetered bandwidth in the way it is advertised currently is basically unlimited bandwidth that has been repackaged into a somewhat nicer and less deceiving wrapper.

Bandwidth allowances have become so huge that the quota war on bandwidth has started to not make much sense, particularly since this war has been fueled through overselling and not real cost decreases.

Instead of monthly bandwidth increases, in an attempt that is never ending to be cheaper than competitors or to just try to keep up, some people might come to the conclusion to just call it unlimited or unmetered and just be done.

In part this is what has happened in the trend towards unmetered bandwidth. The overselling limits have been pushed many times, along with the bandwidth quotas. “No boundary” will become the next limit that is used.

An idea that I do like is limiting shared hosting based on resources used rather than bandwidth. Unfortunately it is tough breaking the bandwidth measurement standard.

Plans being limited based on resources instead of bandwidth would move the industry forward. It would make a huge difference between what has been advertised as unlimited bandwidth and a new idea that could be referred to as shared hosting that had unmetered bandwidth as well as specified server resources.

Let’s see if we can weigh unmetered bandwidth and benefit from it as customers.

The cost of unmetered bandwidth is usually about $10 from hosts that specialize in low cost shared hosting. The major benefit that unmetered hosting provides is not having to worry that small websites will exceed their quota and have to pay a huge amount for excessive bandwidth.

However since most sites qualifying for unmetered bandwidth are not likely to exceed 5 GB data transfer in a month, you could achieve the same effect by purchasing a hosting plan that offers 10GB worth of monthly data transfer for around $10.

Experience tells us that hosts that charge more for every GB of data transfer provide better overall service. The $1/GB ratio of data transfer often is considered the point at which a host is able to still make profit and not oversell.

The only other possible way to get more from a plan that has unmetered bandwidth is by having a website fitting the restrictions and managing to consume a high bandwidth amount while at the same time using low server resource amounts.

Personally, I am not in favor of the current form of unmetered bandwidth plans. If I had to choose between a plan suiting the needs of my website and one that came with unmetered bandwidth, definitely I would choose a plan that fit my bandwidth needs.

Everyone can choose their own point of view and priorities. To me unmetered bandwidth for sharing hosting isn’t currently the revolutionary breakthrough that I was expecting. I am not waiting around for the ultimate offer in budget hosting. I am waiting for changes to be made in how server resources are sold.

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Use Backlink Check to:

• analyse your domain- and IP popularity (analyse your own homepage URLs)
• find new link partners (analyse competitors homepage backlinks URLs) shown at Google and Yahoo
• find link exchange networks (analyse suspicious homepage URLs)