The 7 TechXiety Laws That Help Scale & Improve Your Web Rank And Popularity - Globalization Edition

If you don't understand any of the blogging or technical terms and jargons, then please Google them. If the term is too general a word, then put the term in between double quotation marks and Google it. It should give you the desired result or explanation.

This guide also revolves around marketing, public relations, advertising and branding techniques using the new media in a proliferating technological globalized world environment. It is meant mainly for bloggers (professionals and webmaster-type moneymakers). Service providers, forum owners and entrepreneurs who use the web for reach and frequency may also read this guide. Those who have not started their own online making money opportunities may also use this article as a tutorial or case study or even for research purposes.

This guide promotes ethical tactics and strategies unlike others out there that teach you Alexa redirects, click-farmings, link spams and other methods to cheat and confuse search engines and ranking sites. Believe me, these unethical tricks may work, but they're only temporary until ranking sites and search engines de-list you from top pages or worst, ban you.

Since being on the net since 94, i've seen sites that have come and go in a whisker, hit and run money making legit and illegal tactics on the web, sites that have only had 40 unique visitors constantly per day that rank higher than sites that have had constant 120 unique visitors a day, people that have hired marketing, IT consultants and SEO firms to ramp up their customers website but failed and today, in the era of globalisation (YOU had better take it seriously), more and more people are turning to the web to make money. Yes, YOU, the professional blogger, YOU, the forum owner and YOU, the one providing a no-frills online shopping experience. What does that mean you ask? Yes, the pie is shrinking right before your very eyes. And do you know who will be the only ones standing? It's very easy to predict. You'll be able to tell later.

Now on to the 7 TechXiety Laws That Help Scale & Improve Your Web Rank And Popularity - Globalization Edition

Law #1 - The 'Positioning'
Finding a category for your site is crucial because the chances of you pleasing everyone breaking the age, topic, religion and race barrier is almost near to nil. Therefore it's always better to focus or to differentiate and with that in mind, to be niche. To be first in your category is great, to be second in your category is fine as well. And most people cannot remember a third in the same category did you know that? So if you're third or anywhere down the line, then forget it (if you're a super high achiever like myself who hates being third or forth). Believe me. So create, test, measure, then go back to the drawing board to recreate, retest and remeasure again. Do this until you get it right. And once you get good results, go all the way again. And always try to write about something that you're good at. It doesn't have to be in perfect English. Try to be original as well because if you're doing a cut and paste of an existing article or 'breaking news', you will hardly ever beat the blogger who ranks better than you at the top to it. And remember there is always someone better than you at the top and if you think i am wrong, you would not be reading this article now would you? So remember people, it's about the 'positioning'. Plus, did you know that a site that gets direct hits towards the root of a site (http://www.yoursite.com) would grab higher rank points than those who get hits towards (http://www.his-site.com/article/mylife.php)? So 'positioning' *is* crucial i repeat. Make your users or clients remember that whenever they want to read all about (fill in here), they would go to (http://www.yoursite.com). Fill it up and see what you come up with. Get my point now?

Law #2 - Naming Convention
Try to avoid the letter 'i' or number '1' for your site URL because they confuse old generation search engines as well as bots that crawl your site. The name of your site should also be 3 syllables or less. Anything more than 3 will not be easily remembered, easily spelled and easily spoken to recommend to others. Try to have your blog start with an alphabet that's closer towards 'A' rather than 'Z'; ever seen books in a library or CD's at Tower Records sorted from 'Z' to 'A'? No! And once you have finalized it, think of a 'tagline' and a 'mantra' for your site and don't confuse them both because they're totally different. Example, a 'tagline' for Nike would be 'Just Do It' while a 'mantra' for Nike would be 'Authentic Athletic Performance'. You need both for your site, and once you have it, make sure it's visible on the first page, preferably on the top next to your photo. Erm, don't bother with a photo if you're not a celebrity or an evangelist YET.

Law #3 - Aesthetics
Design is second to aesthetics. And it's not even about clutter. Why do you think MySpace got to be the king of social networking for 2 years in a row? One of the reasons is because the people there love clutter. Do you think you can do the same for your blog or do you think your blog needs to be neat? Did you even know that Google hired a Director Of User Experience? There must be a reason for that isn't that so? So again, find the right theme (if you're not customizing) for your site, get feedback, create, test and measure your results. If you're not happy, go back to the drawing board. Oh and did you notice why top Alexa Web 2.0 applications normally use white, gray or even blue colored headers, footers and borders? Simple, it's because they're trying to avoid a certain color-blindness that affects a small percentage of the population. You wouldn't want to lose their readerships too am i not right? Also always bear in mind that the right eye is leading two thirds of the population and the left one, among one third of the people. So common sense will tell you to place important ads more towards the right hand side of the page instead of the left, which can be used for lesser priority advertisements. Worry about 'aesthetics' too because this would reduce your bounce rate tremendously. And again i wish to reiterate, you can't please everyone, so know what's right in the eyes of your audience based on the category you've selected.

Law #4 - Don't Give Them What You Want, Give Them What They Want
A picture paints a thousand words, agreed? So include as many images as possible to make that article pleasing to the eye. Your article does not have to be long because if there are enough images to tell your user or customer a story, then the job's done. I did a survey once back in the Web 1.0 years and 85% of the 1,000 survey participants aged anywhere between 18 to 55 occasionally speed reads through articles or content. So give them something interesting to SEE instead of READ. If it's interesting enough, then they will forward it to their friends, and their friends would do the same too. That way you create automatic buzz for your site. You can try to surprise them, give them a gift, start a contest, give out awards, give out prizes, ask silly questions, respond, break a scoop or try be bold, daring, shocking, cool, loud, obnoxious, humorous, nasty, controversial, expose someone or something or even leave your footmarks in your viewers hearts, minds and souls but at the end of the day, please remember to promise and deliver in your best possible manner. And guess what, you don't even have to spend a single cent to promote your blog once your site is buzz-worthy. Once you get there, word-of-mouth marketing will take its course automatically. And before i forget, did you know that attracting and pleasing top evangelists or top influencers in your selected category will help you gain more readership? You buy Nike Hyperdunks because Kobe Bryant tells you to do so, you registered on FriendFeed because Robert Scoble spoke so highly of that site and when Michael Arrington spoke about how great the IPhone was, why did you buy it? They are evangelists or influencers in their selected category. So who's your evangelist or influencer who would spread about your site to the masses? Target them and get noticed. And finally, if you get your big break through a fluke, you ought to capitalise on it. You only get one shot remember. So work thrice as hard and redefine your site to take advantage of this situation.

Law #5 - Timing & Consistency
Interesting articles should be submitted on the 1st day of the week.To most, it would be Monday. For some it would be Sunday. So it depends who you are targeting (by continent, country, race or religion). Most article based sites are read on the 1st day of the week at about 9:00AM (office workers), about 2PM (the younger generation who don't work) and about 8PM (all of the above). Submit your most intelligent or most interesting article at the wrong time on the wrong day and you'll lose out a fraction of your article's readership. And when you want to break a story, IF you can't be first, then be second or third. Why? Simple, the first site will be crawling and would have its bandwidth exceeded for the day / month and the majority of users won't be able to access it and end up frustrated. Soon these users will be hopping on to the next site that is being listed on the first page of the search results. Consistency is king too for web ranking. The more consistent you are in churning out articles, the better search engines and rank sites will love you. So don't deteriorate. If it's 1 article a week, then slowly push it to 2, then slowly 3, 4, 5 .. but don't get back to 4 a week. Just keep the momentum going. So take it slow and plan ahead.

Law #6 - Pushing It A Step Further
Backlink to other bloggers that are in your SAME blog category. Backlinking to other blogs which are totally irrelevant to what your blog offers will cause it to drop SERP points. Submit your site to reputable online 'directories' out there too like Dmoz or Yahoo if your site can be categorized. Submit to Technorati, Sphere, Mixx, Digg, Netvibes, etc if you are a blogging site. Submit your site URL to Google, Yahoo and Live. There is a way you can do that. You can either do the above on your own or you can send it to SEO websites that would submit it to 3rd party online directories and search engines for a fee. Install widgets (Alexa or Quantcast), toolbars (Google, Alexa & Compete) and other measurement tools to showcase your readership, to check your Google PageRank, or to study demographics and ethnographics. Including Alexa widgets on your blogging site SHOULD help your rank. Corporate sites need not apply them at the frontend as they can use site metric tools or software at their backend to do the same. Tweak your *relevant* META settings correctly and DO NOT overdo it, make full use of ALT-TXT for image 'balloons' as search engines crawl them as well and sitemap your site (XML and Non XML). ALT-TXT can be a description of your site or the title of your interesting article. Enable all 'Ping' services in your blog settings. 'Ping' your site manually if you have too. Interact with your audience once they comment or ask you a question. Doing that will indirectly make them come back to visit your blog comments again for any responses. And by all means, encourage participation. Open ended questions may help. Now refer to Law #4 again. Oh, you know you are supposed to *embrace* RSS (do it now!) and not disable it because you were afraid people would not come to your site and thus reduce your pageviews right?

Law #7 - Serving Your Desert So They Stay On
Now you've hit your milestone and reached an Alexa ranking of 5,000. Your readership is pretty secured. Money's flowing in. What next? Retest, remeasure and go back to the drawing board. Think now. What's lacking from your site? Is it foreign users? Have you thought about URL-Linking your article for self-translation? Do it even though it's highly inaccurate. Mr. Foreigner will thank you for that. Housekeep your site. Do that by getting rid of all profanity, elements of pornography and taboo subjects. Households with children who frequently go on the web have privacy and surf-safe controls installed on their machines. You don't want your site to be filtered by them now do you? If your site is big enough, then have decentralised machines that are clustered. Cluster them in different regions using different ISP's. This enables faster access times for foreigners and guess what? It helps add HEFTY points for rankings as well. You're probably quite tired at this point of time after months or years of working hard typing articles. I used 'working hard'; now change that notion to 'working smart'. One way is to write 'non-stale / non-expiry type' articles. These are articles that can be used and reused over time (e.g. Recipes & Dating Tips sites). Next, lessen your 'site categories'; that's the category WITHIN your site and NOT the category of your site. The lesser, the better. This will make you focus even more. And now that you've focused, proceed to a walled-garden mentality. Make your users stay, not bounce away. A 'Walled-Garden' approach; in layman explanation, have a shopping cart on your site if it applies or have a forum on your site if it applies as well. Having a chatbox too would be a neat idea. You don't want your users to discuss about your product or service outside of your blog now do you? Finally, make your site mobile browser friendly. More and more people will commute on public transport in the future and spend more time on their hi-tech devices as prices of these gadgets cheapen and access rates dip. Now say again, "Make my site mobile browser friendly".

That's it folks. Hope it works out for you. And remember once again, you CANNOT PLEASE EVERYONE. And always launch, test, measure and go back to the drawing board again and again till you get it right. Good luck people.

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