After posting about on age SEO it seems only right to continue with off page SEO. This, as you will no doubt have guessed, is things that you can do off your website to help improve its search engine rank. As I have posted before when talking about increasing PageRank, off page SEO is about creating more links to your website.

You can go out and get lots of irrelevant back links to your site, however this will not help you very much. You need to get back links to your website, from websites that have similar content and preferably from a page that has a high Page Rank.

You need to get links to your website from websites that are trusted and do not spam or have duplicate content. You need to check if the website has content that is of good quality and is relevant to your site. You should check what type of out-going links the page your link will be on has and ensure that these are of a good quality.

Different types of websites have different types of traffic. You don’t want visitors that are just visiting your site for a second and then leaving. You need quality visitors to your website who are looking for the type of content that your website offers.

You should look for sites that have the do follow attribute because these are the ones that will benefit you the most. Make the most of alt tags if you are placing an image advert or if its a text advert include keywords that are relevant to your website in the anchor text.

I will try and write some posts about link building and provide some places that you can use to create good back links.

Every blogger wants comments, even me so here are a few tips to try and get some. I’ll try out the first on the list now. If you liked the methods listed here, please comment and let me know what you think.

1. Asking for Comments

The first thing to try and get comments is to ask for them. Kash Dash doesn’t receive a huge number of hits yet so for those few readers who are loyal, you are welcome to comment

2. Write Something Stupid that is Wrong

I came across this idea of the past few days while arguing a point by commenting. I seldom comment on other blogs however the fact that the guy posting had the facts wrong was enough to provoke a reaction from me to correct him. The continued battle for who was right in the comments sent the number he received very high. So I began thinking, why not just write rubbish…no jokes about by normal content… or get something wrong in a post to try and get that one person who wants the truth to be known

3. Question Your Readers

By asking your readers questions directly you are likely to provoke thought in that readers mind. You comment box is a great place for them to express their opinion.

4. Reply to Comments

After asking your readers a question, its always nice to get a response from the person who wrote the original post. Interact with your readers and reply by commenting. This will increase your comment count and make visitors intrigued to what all the fuss is about.

5. Top Commentors

Kash Dash has a plug-in that shows who comments the most. I have this in the footer of the blog. You might want to implement a similar plug-in. Competitiveness between readers to see who can get the most can only benefit you. …I think.

6. Do Follow Comments

Blogs that provide Do Follow links are increasing popular. The reason for this is due to getting more comments. Do Follow was created to reduce spam in comments, however reverse its purpose and website owners will comment for a free back link. They know that the comment has to look real to ensure its not marked as SPAM so again by having Do-Follow links you can benefit. I used a plug-in for Kash Dash so that these are enabled.

7. Comment on Other Blogs

Ok, now its time to be that webmaster in the tip above. Go and comment on blogs with similar content to yours to increase back links to your website. This will increase your blogs popularity and therefore encourage more comments. Steps 6 and 7 go hand in hand in a sort of loop.

8. Freebies

Everyone wants stuff for free, so take advantage of it. Create a free digital product, ebook, theme, script or whatever and offer it free to the most interesting comment you see in the next month.

Just a few idea’s to help you get comments on your blog, let me know below what you think of the above and how it helps your site.

Great news! Alienware have just introduced a voucher code to be used with their Area-51 m15x notebook. The code is worth 5% off the m15x notebook and is valid from now until Sept 22nd 2008.

Enter the code: AWTDM15X

at the checkout to receive the 5% discount. The Area-51 m15x notebook has been a real hit since its launch and a great product to push as we are heading towards our ‘Back to School/University’ time of the year.

Check here for details

After waiting a long time for other adverts I selected Kash Dash to be Matched, and within a few days this has been done. You can see the matched advert on the right sidebar. All I need to do now is leave it there for a month and I get £3, simple as that.

If you want to get your site matched, click here.

Everyone has different needs when looking for shared web hosting. You will need a certain amount of space and bandwidth for your website. You may also need databases, add-on domains, sub-domains and e-mail accounts. You should check with the host that the package will meet your needs.

Over Selling Resources

A small website will not need many resources, however people are caught in the headlights by large numbers. A large majority of web hosts on the Internet oversell their services. You may have come across plans that include 500GB Space and 2TB of bandwidth, this is overselling. If you were to actually use all these resources I’m sure the host would soon close your account on the grounds of “high CPU usage”. There is no need to get lots of space and bandwidth, simply get what you need at a moderate price.

Resource Limits

Most shared hosting will have resource limitations such as CPU etc. This means that you can only use X% resources for your site for X amount of time. If you are running scripts, check that they can run in the time limits set by the host. You should also check database size limits, and outgoing e-mail limits that may be in place.

You may only be able to have a database up to so many MB. If you have a forum then this is likely to grow and you may need to upgrade so you might want to plan ahead and see how easy upgrades are going to be. E-mail limits may be set hourly which means you can only send for example 200 e-mails an hour.

Reseller Hosts

Reseller hosting makes it easy for anyone to setup a web host. This means you need to check to see how reliable the host is. The last thing you want is a weeks hosting before the person running it ditches their hosting site leaving you with no money and no hosting. To avoid this look for a host that has good reviews from others and is well established. If you are insistent on going for a certain host check how long they have been operating for, if they are a registered business and you may also check there Paypal transaction rating if this is available.

More on Reviews

There are many review sites that you can take a look at, however it is likely that the host themselves have added their website to allow reviews. This also implies that they have the ability to edit and remove reviews that have been left. The best place to get reviews is from existing customers - how obvious was that. Do this by running reverse IP on the hosts IP address. This will allow you to get some of the web addresses on that hosts server.

Hopefully you will not get other sites run by the host so check the WHOIS info to different details and send an e-mail to the site owner asking about the service. You may also want to Google terms such as “hosts name reviews” or “hosts name scam” to see what comes up. Forums are another good place to ask, however if someone simply keeps saying the host is great, check the website URL that they have hosted with the host to ensure they are not just self promoting.

Up time

Up time is very important in hosting and now many hosts have a service level agreement that ensure you receive X% of up time. You may want to use external monitors to see what the up time for a web host is like. The only real way to find the truth is to ask previous customers due to some monitoring sites allowing hosts to remove outages from statistics.

Support

This is one of the most important things in hosting. Check what types of support are available. Do they have Phone, E-mail, Instant Messenger, REAL Live Chat or Ticket Support. If there is a problem with your website you want it sorted asap so ensure that the facilities are there for you to receive help when you need it. Ensure their after sales support is as good as their before sales.

Summary

Always go with a host that has a good reputation for up time, pricing and customer service. New hosts with great deals might to be around for too long due to lack of experience. It only takes one thing to go wrong with a small host that removes their budget for servers so ensure that your host is there to stay.

Those are a few basic things to look out for, more advanced users may wish to check that the server IP is not black listed and that they have a good server infrastructure etc.

I have been registered with Pipeline Card for some time now and didn’t really think about posting about it here until I received an e-mail today.

Pipeline Card has been set up by a long time fuel protester Ben Scammell (I know, worrying isn’t it) to try and get us all cheaper fuel. It’s totally free to join and they are trying to get a discount on petrol & diesel. Besides the doubt that the name may bring, put it to one side you have nothing to lose by signing up infact you can benefit from it in more ways than one.

It seems like a good idea, and has some impressive support… Join Here

Oh and if you register, then recommend someone you get £25 discount off a case of wine from Virgin Wines.

You can find information that may save you money in other area’s such as Gas and Electricity.