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MSI Files

In our series of discussion about software installation we shall be discussing the different installation methods provided by shareware and software developers.

MSI stands for Microsoft Installer file, which is a file format which is recognised by Microsoft Windows by Microsoft Windows Installer technology.

When you run an MSI file it gets copied into a sub folder of your windows folder and is then available when you go into add and remove programs. You can then use the options provided e.g. repair or remove.

MSI files tend to be quite small as they don’t need any of the functionality to setup your program. Instead it just has a small list of things for Windows Installer to do.

Great Shareware and Freeware Software Downloads

2008 10 12 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (0) Permalink

Finding backlinks to a website

There are a number of ways of finding the backlinks to a website but each has pros and cons. The two simplest ways are to use Google Webmasters or the link: command.

You can only use Google Webmasters if you control a website and can verify ownership. In terms of Google PageRank, Google’s Webmaster interface is the most accurate way of determining which backlinks to your website Google actually takes any notice of. The problem is that Google Webmasters often lags behind the real world situation. If you’ve added lots of links to a site they will often not show up in webmasters for some weeks or months. Usually there’s a jump in the number of backlinks reported at the same time Google exports PageRank values to the Google toolbar.

An alternative method is to use the link: command. To use this, type the following into any search engine:

link:www.domainname.com

for example: link:www.resourcefill.com to find backlinks to the domain www.resourcefill.com.

The problem with the link: command is that some search engines don’t return all the backlinks. Google in particular only returns a sample – usually far less than it returns via Google webmasters. The best search engines to use for the link: command are Yahoo and all the web (www.alltheweb.com).

by ML

Tagged
2008 10 06 MikeL Link Building Comments (1) Permalink

Any further SEO improvements I can make to this page?

I’ve now got internal keyword links on every page to my keyword pages.

I’ve also had help, producing a cross linker to automatically add keyword links to content.

http://www.mcls4u.com/shop/costume-jewellery-sets-red-black-spiral-necklace-earrings-set/prod_28.php

Anything further I can do?

by
JM

2008 10 03 Dipsy Search Engine Optimisation Comments (0) Permalink

I’ve just shelved my To Do list…

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been lacking motivation, I’ve had so many things going on in my life and I’ve been getting quite stressed.

Theres things which have needed doing for ages.

Well they will all have to wait a bit longer.

I’ve decided that since I spent an afternoon a couple of weeks ago doing keyword research with the adwords tool, that I need to do this for all my websites / products.

I’ve had my To Do (21 page) document open several times over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had some notes on this blog pinned open in Fire Fox, but none of them mean anything unless people can find me / my products.

I really feel this time that this method of finding good keywords will work.
The only difficulty is deciding whether people will buy if they use a certain keyword.

At this point since that first afternoon I’ve got 5 sale pitch content pages finished and I’ve commissioned 11 more today. I know this will take a week maybe 2, so I can do some other research for other products now.

by
JM

2008 10 01 Dipsy Search Engine Optimisation Comments (0) Permalink

A marketing tip

This doesn’t have as much SEO value as for marketing, but it does have a little SEO value.

I was told to pretend you are your customers and post of forums saying how good your products were, providing links etc.

I guess from an SEO point of view you’d have to be picking about the PR value of the sites you choose.

Also from a marketing point of view you would have to post on a popular forum.

It does seem a lot of work when you consider the benefits.

by
JM

2008 10 01 Dipsy Search Engine Optimisation Comments (2) Permalink

PR Update Again

Google has exported the latest PR values to the toolbar today. Both Access Database Security and SliQTools are winners with PR increases from 0 to 2 and from 3 to 4 respectively but again this blog didn’t get assigned a PR.

Have you noticed changes on any other sites?

by ML

2008 09 27 MikeL Search Engine Optimisation Comments (6) Permalink

Whats an unreasonable amount of programs on a download site for an author?

I did a keep clean up job a few months back and deleted authors who had lots of programs on softtester. I can’t remember the figure I deleted from.

However I’ve noticed a lot of credit site listings etc again.

So I plan to limit the amount of programs an author can have on one email address.
I know that the author could then have more that one email address, but I figure since some sites require listings to be activated, its probably too much hassle for a spammer to have lots of email addresses. But I may be wrong.

At the moment I have 50 authors with over 100 programs some with a lot more than that.

I’m thinking 50 or 25 sounds about reasonable?

I guess I could limit things further and say they can only have x number of programs in a category.

2008 09 20 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (7) Permalink

My first C# program

Well I’ve now read 3 hours of my teach yourself C# book.
I’ve found it really hard to keep awake, not learnt that much so far.
Taken me ages to motivate myself to keep going.

Anyways, I thought I’d try and write a small program to see how far I could go.
I’m stuck already, having difficulty creating a function, or what I’d think of as a function in vb.

I googled and found someone saying that you can’t do functions in C#.

That seems weird.
So, I guess I’m a bit more motivated to read further in my book.
Otherwise I’ll not be able to finish my program 🙁

by
JM

Tagged
2008 09 19 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (2) Permalink

Free article sites

At least a year ago, I read about free article sites and added some article pages to my kids mask factory site. Aaron just emailed me, he’d done a personal search and found one of my articles.

I guess there is some value is having these pages, but I’m not sure whether such pages lead to sales. But are these pages valuable for an SEO / Google point of view?

Maybe I should add some free articles to my other sites?

I guess I know the answer to this question, these articles haven’t led to a massive raise in sales, although I can’t really tell.

by
JM

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2008 09 14 Dipsy Search Engine Optimisation Comments (1) Permalink

Adwords Tool, competition indication, whats good ?

We’ve been using the adwords keyword tool to try and find good keywords. My initial thoughts where that I should avoid ANYTHING with any competition but have at least a thousand search volume.

However, Aaron found a video on how to use the tool and this changed our / my understanding of it.

Heres the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDB6T_L-mqs.

In the video it says you should have around 100,000 search volume and the guy ignored the competition indicator.

Mike, whats your understanding / thoughts?

I’m not thinking I should have waited with my directory submission until I’d found good keywords to use in the links, however I can now change them I guess, so it doesn’t look like I’ve got lots of the same.

by
JM
EDIT: I’ve also learned from the video, that you REALLY need to know your keywords and near keywords, I mean, I did realise this to a certain extent, but this guy knows numbers too. I think I’m going to have to keep records, I just don’t know what. Although, I guess keyword / phrase and search volume, would be start.

Tagged
2008 09 12 Dipsy Search Engine Optimisation Comments (11) Permalink