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Which software submission software?

After many years of submitting my software by hand to shareware sites, well I haven’t done it for well over a year now. I just update my pad file.

Whats the best software in your opinion, whats your experiences?

Heres what I’ve found to be contenders :-

Submit It 2000 – http://www.gregorybraun.com/SubmitIt.html
SoftSubmit – http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/program/ssubmit.htm
SharewareTracker – http://www.accusolve.biz/strack.html
Software-Promoter – http://www.softilium.com/sp/index.htm
RoboSoft – http://robosoft.rudenko.com/

Or are there any I’ve missed which you rate?

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2008 08 01 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (10) Permalink

Idea for naming landing pages

Inspired of the last blog entry I was thinking about valueable landing pages for my own product. The problem is to find names that fits to what the customer searches. There’s my idea.

I have monthly statistics of my web page for the most used search phrases. What about taking these search phrases for buying new domain names?

by GS

2008 07 31 admin Search Engine Optimisation Comments (4) Permalink

How to maintain second language product pages?

I’ve got a product which is available in English and German. I met a German guy online and we discussed our software and we helped each other. Then he offered to help me create a German version of my program. He provided all the text I needed for all parts of my program.

Its been a good thing for me and my program and has created a lot of sales, as many if not more than the English version.

About a year ago, maybe two, I created about 20 additional keyword pages.
I guess you could call them landing pages.
But I like to think of them as additional product pages.

I took care to write content which was relevant to the keywords I used.
However some of it probably sounded a bit waffly, perhaps.

I also added some nice unique pictures and as I say added unique content.
Also so outgoing links, more recently I’ve added nofollow.

So it took me quite a long time to create these pages.

So once I finished them I contacted my friend and asked him to create some german versions, to translate them. Obviously it was a big ask and it took him a while to find the time to do it. And in the end he used some standard text on certain pages.

If I look at these pages in analytics they don’t do as well as my english versions.

My german pages don’t get many hits at all.

So my question is where do I go from here?

I guess my options are :-

a) to contact my friend and ask him to do some improvements.

b) hire someone on RAC to revamp and SEO the pages and submit to german search engines.

In my SEO book it mentions other language sites for your products and says you should have a that language manager, who does the SEO and handles everything related to that language.

My problems are that I don’t want to impose on my friend as he’s done a lot for me and I feel guilty. Also its nice to have someone on-board in case I get really stuck with something.

The counter problem, is the cost of hiring someone on RAC, germany has similar costs as the UK and therefore to get someone good, will cost me a lot. I can’t really afford to spend much money at all on this.

I do realise that this will probably increase sales.

Of course another question, which relates to Ideaspad as a whole, if I re-brand ideaspad, I’d probably want a german re-brand and possible a standalone site for it.

So a long of decisions I need to make and hurdles to jump.

Any thought would be greatly appreciated.

Ideaspad – An Award winning information manager for home and professional use

by JM

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2008 07 29 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (7) Permalink

When you’ve got 2 product sites for the same product?

Now that I’ve got a new website for MDBSecure, I’d like to ditch my old site.

Change my pad file and set the new location in the old file.

I can hear you saying already, “you don’t want to do that” you have an existing / established site, with inbound links and is already on a lot of software download sites. Also got several alternative keyword pages.

Or maybe I’m just giving you to much credit 😉

I do appreciate these points and I’m not 100% sold on the idea of ditching the old site.

I think the idea of promoting the new site with a pad file is a good idea and I think I’ll struggle is I don’t do this.

I guess another idea is to re-brand the product and give it a new name.
Although I think this is a bit of a shame as I like the name.

From a cost point of view I would like to get rid of the old site eventually.
Although I’m not sure how I could add my keyword pages from the old site into the new site without making the new site look unprofessional.

So lots to talk about there and lots of crucial decisions to make for me.

HELP!

by JM

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2008 07 29 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (2) Permalink

Graphic App Category and sub category problem

When I ugraded softtester to work on a webserver rather than an offline database a program I discovered a problem / a typo in the graphics app category.

I though I’d fixed this problem, however there were some remaining occurences of the phrase “graphics apps” or “graphics-apps” where in both cases it should have read graphic without the S.

As graphics was used intensively up till today and it other case graphic I have had to make a hard decsion.

So I checked the pad spec and with s is the correct way to do it.

As a result I will create more dead links and new pages will have to be indexed. But at least I won’t have and broken links on my site.

High quality fashion jewellery at a reasonable price!

by JM

2008 07 29 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (1) Permalink

Getting Quality Inbound links

In a comment on an earlier post there was a question about getting inbound links. Well, getting links to a website is one of the most time-consuming and difficult activities when first trying to make a site rank well in SERPs. Although web directories are not as useful in this regard as they were a few years ago, they can still be a good way of getting backlinks. I’ve come across websites that have a PR of 3 and don’t appear to have backlinks from anything other than web directories.

When it comes to submitting your website to a directory, you soon find the process a bit laborious if you do things totally by hand. There’s a lot of copying and pasting and selecting of categories – it takes a long time. The alternative is to pay someone to do the job for you. The problem with this is that you can never be sure they put your sites into the best categories. You might also want to be in control of the sites you submit to. For example if you hire someone to submit to 500 directories and you only get accepted in 10% of them then you need to avoid submitting to the same directories in the future.

SliQTools now offer a free directory submission tool that combines the best of both worlds. The tool greatly speeds the process of submitting to directories. You set up your website details with a number of alternative descriptions and titles (anchor text) then start loading directories one by one. All you need to do is enter any required CAPTCHA to complete the submission process. Sometimes there isn’t even a CAPTCHA to enter.  The directory submission software will also help you select categories. You can specify up to 6 possible categories that SliQ Submitter will try and match when loading a directory page. Currently the tool support 450 directories but will support up to 2500 in a release later this month.

by ML

Tagged
2008 07 28 MikeL Link Building Comments (27) Permalink

Does traffic drop in the summer months?

In the last 2 or 3 weeks I’ve noticed a significant (20 or 30%) drop in traffic on my websites. At the same time I seem to be moving up in the SERPs for my keywords.

The only thing I can think is happening is that people are going on holiday now that summer is here and spending less time online. I can also imagine that with the kids off school, there’s less time available to spend at the computer. Do you have any experience of a drop in traffic in summer in previous years?

by ML

2008 07 28 MikeL Search Engine Optimisation Comments (1) Permalink

Top link taking an unfair proportion of PR?

On SoftTester, one of the highest PR inner pages is http://www.softtester.com/keywords-a.shtml. Strangely this page is almost the first link on every page, i.e. the link nearest the top of the page. I remember reading a while ago that the position of links on pages can influence PR pass through. I wonder if this is happening on SoftTester?

The second highest link is the KMF ad. Does this get an unfair kick of PR?

I wonder if SERPs would improve if the “Search by Keyword” phrase wasn’t a link? could it be changed to a radio button or checkbox that is actioned only when the Search button is pressed? Alternatively, could the Search group of controls, or even just the Search by Keywords link, be moved below the main category links?

Unless the blog is drawing a significant amount of traffic I’d be tempted to move that lower down the page too – perhaps to the footer.

I’d also nofollow the Advanced link in the Search group of controls. The page it links to is a bit of a dead end in terms of spreading PR back through Softtester.

by ML

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2008 07 28 MikeL Search Engine Optimisation Comments (2) Permalink

MS Access Database Security site design complete :)

I’ve only got a couple of small fixes to do then I’m ready to start doing some SEO.

I’ve also got to do my white paper.

Suggestions?

by JM

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2008 07 25 Dipsy Search Engine Optimisation Comments (8) Permalink

Tweak, Tweak… but how to keep at it?

I was thinking how I could get round to climbing my SEO mountain, with all my sites and all those pages which I have to do. Also, that I’m coming to the end of one of my tasks, setting up a new site, the content and the page design, the next job would be to SEO that site.

Over the last few months I’ve tried to organize myself and work on each of my projects in priority of most potential earnings. So I’ve got plastic folders for each of my projects, one for development and one for marketing.

This started to work well, as I did one task from one folder and then moved onto the next. However some tasks may take a couple of weeks. So it could take quite some time to get round to SEO’ing a whole site.

And I really need to do the SEO and wait for for the changes to take effect. Especially on a couple of my shop sites. So if you think about it, by the time its that projects turn and the changes have got onto the search engines, it could maybe be a year.

Scary.

So potential money earning projects which have high priorities now, will never really take off, or any times soon at least 🙁

I did think the other day about putting numbers on my folders and rotating round each, but this blows my money priortiy out of the water.

I’m now thinking I should have a period of where I do lots of small SEO jobs in between tasks. That way stuff will get done. Maybe I could priortise those jobs too.

The period could be an hour a day or a day a week, not sure.

Also what would be a high priority SEO job, maybe doing the H1 and ensuring initial content on the page was good. If I was to prioritise things further that could be a long job too.

Ideaspad – An Award winning information manager for home and professional use

by JM

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2008 07 24 Dipsy Search Engine Optimisation Comments (1) Permalink