Here’s the presentation.

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Been wondering what the questions were?

They were about “facts” you hear almost everyday which probably you never heard them coming out from Google themselves. You are following them because a lot of people say so and assume that they’re right.

Now the statements, myths, “facts” has been cleared and debunked. Make sure to read the myths uncovered below before starting your day or tuning up your site with pointless optimizations!

Duplicate content will penalize your site – Google says:

• Don’t worry too much about duplicates on your own site.
• We’re good at ignoring duplicates.
• Make it easy for us to find the preferred version.
• Help us to crawl efficiently.
• Be reasonable when re-using content from other sites.

Mixing HTML/XHTML will break verification – Google says:

Webmaster Tools accepts both kinds of meta tags, regardless of your page’s code or doctype.

<meta name=”verify-v1″ content=”YaddaYadda=” />

==

<META NAME=”verify-v1″ content=”YaddaYadda=”>

However:

• The site must be reachable!
• The verification code depends on account + site URL. 
• Sometimes it takes a second attempt.

Getting listed in 1000s of search engines and directories is important – Google says:

Nope.

• Do you use 1000s of search engines? 
• Most search engines will find your site before you find them.
• Submitting does not significantly change things.
• Your email spam will grow exponentially.

Participating in Google AdWords, AdSense or Analytics will help or harm your site – Google says:

It won’t.

• They’re great products though!
• Google Analytics is a great aid to make the most out of your site.

If a keyword is important, it’s important to repeat it in important locations on important pages so that the page looks more important to important search engines – Google says:

Please don’t stuff keywords into your content.

• There is no optimal “keyword density.”
• Write naturally, write for your users.
• Too many mentions distract users.
• However: don’t hide what you really mean!

Using XML Sitemaps will make your site drop – Google says:

Nope.

XML Sitemaps are useful:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/ schemas/sitemap/0.9″>

<url>

       <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>

<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>

       <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>

       <priority>0.8</priority>

   </url>

</urlset>

• They help search engines learn about your content.
• They help YOU to learn about your website.
• Lots of CMS have them, lots of generators are available.
• Keep them up to date!

Also see sitemaps.org

PageRank is dead / PageRank is everything! – Google says:

PageRank is a measure of the quantity and quality of links to a page.

• Google uses PageRank.
• Google also uses over 200 other factors.
• Toolbar PageRank is updated a few times a year.

Resubmitting your site regularly is vital – Google says:

Nah.

• Resubmitting does not change crawling, indexing or ranking.
• Once we know about a URL, we’ll plan accordingly.

Once your site ranks high, don’t touch it – Google says:

Some things get better when left alone. Websites don’t.

• Happy users will return.
• Give users something to look forward to.
• Changes in ranking can and will happen.
• Other sites won’t stand still!

Valid (X)HTML will make your site rank higher – Google says:

<h1>nah</h2>

• Most of the web uses invalid code (less than 5% is valid!).
• Browser are used to it, search engines too.
• Extremely broken code is very, very rare.

However:

• Valid code may work better on more browsers.
• Valid code makes finding & fixing some issues easier.

MORE MYTHS not to believed in!

Debunking myths on your own. What to do when you encounter new Google “facts” or rumors:

Just Google it

• Lots of myths are already debunked!
• Check the reputation of the site & author.
• Apply common sense: if it’s too good to be true, it most likely is.

Google Webmaster Central Blog

• Check our blog for information.
• Comment & ask questions!
• Subscribe via e-mail or RSS to stay on top of things!

Google Webmaster Help Groups

• When in doubt, ask!
• Lots of knowledgeable users & Googlers are active in the Help Groups.
• Search before you ask.
• Be kind, helpful & constructive.
• Share your knowledge!

Some myths demystified above will perhaps relieve most of you since some things don’t need to be worried as much - like the keywords and dupes thing. But there are also some real facts that require us to do more effort in optimizing our site such as not taking care of the site once it ranks high.

Next, are you still having questions uncovered on the list above? Do you want to read what the Google insiders answer these questions?

• What weight does the age of a site and the amount of time a domain is registered for have on it’s search placement?
• Recently, you removed this suggestion: “Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!” from your guidelines. Is there any chance that you will be discounting these kinds of links for ranking value in future?
• Since Google is against using ranking software (ie:WebCeO) to monitor SERP rankings, is there any plans on Google creating an approved, in-house rank check application that webmasters can use?
• Does Google plan to let us see rankings/positions of keywords in the webmaster tool?
• Do inbound links from other sites owned by the same company help or hurt rank?
• Have links from article sites been de-valued at all?
• What is ok/not ok to sell links? We get requests on a daily base, we not offering to sell links, but sometimes we get a related request and wonder if we are “allowed” to sell one or two links without hurting our rankings?
• Are .gov and .edu back links still considered more “link juice” than the common back link?
• Can one good unknown google secret  so far - be revealed?

Well, those are only a few of the total questions and answers that took 30 mouse scrolls here.

The presentation version of the event by Google can be found here.

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Athough Moderator is in its early release, standard features are already within reach, such as:

• Viewing unmoderated comments from your desktop.
• Dock and system tray notifications of the number of unmoderated comments.
• Accept, delete, and spam comments from within the desktop client.
• Close application window, or minimize it to the system tray while running.
• Shows the Gravatar icons for the user who posted the comment.

Moderator currently requires version 2.6+ of WordPress be installed. Also, you will need Adobe AIR 1.1, which runs on Mac, Windows, and is currently in beta on Linux. And as soon as Wordpress 2.7 is released, this application will support the comment moderation methods that will be included. That should eliminate the need to even install the WordPress plugin. All that would be needed would be the desktop client itself.

Being able to moderate comments without having to log in to the admin panel is helpful enough in my opinion. Another thing I’d like to see in the next release would be the ability to moderate several blogs. Thank you, Daniel!

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…until a few days ago, I had my content on one of my social network accounts deleted due to improper linking to an adult dating site. I was surprised knowing that I haven’t changed anything in my profile for the last weeks. So I decided to send a clarification message asking what content got deleted. The reply I received then mentioned that the link pointing to the adult dating service was one of my d95.com links.

BAD BOY! It turns out that d95.com has discontinued their service and sell the domain. All links shortened with d95.com are now directed to a web page like this:

Formerly a URL service – d95.com

To be honest, I and I guess all who are using their service not for spamming purposes are very dissapointed with their decision to take down the service and provide no solution to the circumstance. One problem that will surely make the users busy is altering the shortened URL into the original URL or another link that works. But how are we going to find out where we have put the shrinked links? Is there any way to locate them and replace them quickly?

For the links you put in your blog posts, one of the solutions I use is using the PHPMyAdmin in my hosting account CPanel. This tool allows you to search directly into your blog’s database for posts containing the word “d95.com”. Here’s where you can find the PHPMyAdmin assuming your CPanel is similar to mine.

you can find the link in the “Database” section

*Disclaimer: Please do this tutorial at your own risk. I have practised the tutorial myself for many times and have had no problems. Even so, I’m unable to be held responsible for any errors or malfunctions occured in your blog or database while performing these steps.

Click the link and the next thing to do is choosing your blog’s database from the list on the left panel. That will bring up the tables contained in the database.

To locate the desired phrase – in this case d95.com – , click the “Search” tab as shown in the picture below.

The link leads to a form where you can enter your search keyword, your search rules and specify which tables you’re going to search in. To find all posts containing shrinked URLs using the deceased d95.com service, my search query looks like this:

Click on the image to enlarge. Notice that I highlight the table “wp-posts” to find the phrase d95.com inside my articles. Press “GO”.

You can then see how many results are found above the search form. I have 19..

Click on the “Browse” button to see what posts they are and you will see a table with columns such as ID, post_author, post_date… etc.

Take a look at the “post_name” column. The content might be look like this:

Among the regular slugs we usually see to direct users to our individual articles, there are slugs we barely ever see. The phrases we need to change are the ones in the regular slug forms. In my example above, they are in the “web-hosting-tips-which-web-hosting-service-fits-me” kind of slugs rather than “548-autosave”. To group the regular slugs and make the selection easier, click on the columns name (post_name).

Then, watch for the record having the regular slug and click on the pencil icon to edit the content. You may want to edit the post in a new tab. You’ll know why at the end of the article.

Inside the record, there’s a field named “post_content”. There’s the body of your article is stored. It’s in HTML format, by the way..

What I do next is locating where the keyword I’m looking for (d95.com) is. I use Firefox’s search function and here’s how mine looks:

click to enlarge

Replace the link and when you’re done, go to the bottom of the page and save your modification. You will be directed to a table which shows all your posts. So if you edited in a new tab, you can refresh the tab where you clicked the pencil icon and refresh button above the tables. You can see that the number of records containing the phrase you want to change is reduced. This means your modification was successfully saved.

For further checking, view your blog and head to the post you modified earlier. In my case, the link should not point to d95.com anymore and so should yours .

Any problems? Feel free to ask them in the comments.

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I once read in a blog post that in order to avoid unrelated ads showing up on your page, you need to close the comment section. This, however can be a turn off for some blog visitors, knowing that they’re unable to speak their mind.

A second solution is offered by Google themselves, which I think a lot better one. Using section targetting, we are allowed to tell Adsense which is the main content of the page. Therefore, another parts of the page which are not included won’t affect the ads showing up on our page. To implement section targetting, all you need to do is juat adding a set of special HTML comment tags to your code. These tags will mark the beginning and end of whichever section(s) you’d like to emphasize or de-emphasize for ad targeting. The format is as follows:

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->

<!-- google_ad_section_end --> 

Being implemented to the individual article template, the final code may look like the following:

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<div class="entry">
<?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</p>'); ?>
</div>
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

It may take as long as 2 weeks before the crawlers take into account the changes. And also remember that it is against Adsense’s policies to use the section targetting to display ads irrelevant to the real content of your page. Feel free to try and hopefully more relevant ads mean more revenue:)

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click to enlarge

Instead of displaying the profile picture as usual, it is now placed on the right sidebar and you can now browse some categories without directly from any page you’re at through the links on the header.

Redesigns also take place when you view other member’s profile. Look at the picture below, stats are now displayed on the right sidebar and yes, you can browse categories from this page also!

click to enlarge

Next is the review page. Only a layout change here and fewer clicks are now to rate and review a site.

click to enlarge

Want one for yourself? Go to the Stumble Upon Beta Group and these features will be activated as sonn as you join the group. The feature is in beta, so you may want to remind yourself of the feature being unstable.

And for the toolbarless stumbling, stumble using this new toolbar which will allow you to stumble sites and rate them without the SU toolbar. But I wonder where does the thumb down go?

click to enlarge

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photo by Benjamin Ellis

Chris Garrett

• What were you doing before being addicted to the internet knowing that you were 20 back then?
• When did you start blogging and what made you started blogging?
• Looking back to the beginning of your blogging journey, what were the challenges when you started your blog?
• Do you think starting a blog nowadays is more difficult than years ago when you did?
• In that condition, what are the blogging survival tips that stand through the test of time?
• Are there still slices for new bloggers to make decent income from blogging?
• For those who have just started blogging, how important the Problogger Book is and how it will also help probloggers?
• How can we grow our blogs with your Authority Blogger course?

Mani Karthik

• What made you decide to start an SEO blog?
• From your view as an SEO consultant, which one new blogs need to focus on first? Quality content or SEO concerns?
• What do you think is the most misleading SEO myth?
• What is the everlasting ultimate SEO tip of all time?
• Having been dealing with SEO matters for a long time, has its techniques changed much since the day you started talking about the topic until present?
• Are there any differences between optimizing the site for Google and others like Yahoo! and MSN?
• Have you ever been tempted to apply blackhat SEO techniques? How did it turn out?
• You give a lot of SEO tips on DailySEOBlog.com, people can read them themselves and apply the techniques. What does your SEO service has more to offer?

Many bloggers (including us, perhaps?) may have these questions in their heads and now is the time to get some real answers! Find more about the interview and Bloghology and also… more answers from

• Guy Kawasaki
• Garry Conn
• John Cow
• Wendy Piersall
• and…Yaro Starak!

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Twhirl - a desktop client Twitter tool, powered by ADOBE AIR platform. You can read the list of features on the website, but here are why I personally like Twhirl:

• it’s a desktop application
• that allows multiple account login at a time
• and minimizes to the tray
• while showing tweet updates
• but allows to pause notifications also
• and empty the list of tweets
• sends tweets quite fast
• unfollow directly from Twhirl
• and let’s not forget fast auto updates

TheMattinator.com - there are a  lot of Twitter tools that allow sending tweets to multiple accounts but like Twhirl, you need to type and submit the tweets one by one on each account. This is what makes The Mattinator being superior to Twhirl. You only need to type your tweet once and woot! All your accounts are updated. So whenever I feel like spamming updating my 2 Twitter accounts, Mattinator it is…. But what about Ping.fm?

Ping.fm is able to update even more services than Mattinator does. Ping.fm takes care of your blogger and wordpress.com account, Facebook, Friendster and various microblogging platforms. Which for that reason, I prefer Mattinator if I only want to update my Twitter accounts. Of course I also use Ping.fm, but in a limited way.

Twitter Karma - you’ll definitely love this tool. Once logged in using your Twitter login, you’ll be presented your friends and followers like below

• what it says was, “Here are your friends. Friend A is following you, but you aren’t. B is following and you are following him and you’re a fan of C since he’s not following you”.  You can also view their latest updates time stamp to figure out whether they’re active users or not.
• What about the checkboxes? They’re for this one:

• Get the idea? You can check friends or followers and have them followed/unfollowed/blocked at once. A real time and bandwidth saver than having to browse through pages and click on each profile to follow/remove.

TweetLater is when you need to schedule future tweets. I’m aware that you can do the same thing with EasyTweets, but TweetLater has something EasyTweets doesn’t.

• TweetLater lets you to automatically send a warm welcoming (or cold and snarky) messages to new followers and auto follow them.

• To auto send welcome messages, you need to filter your email and send notifications from Twitter to TweetLater. It’s not that scary and everybody can do it by following their step by step manual.

The other tools I’m going to mention here are the ones I’ve just met with. I either new to them or haven’t spent a lot of time using them and I’d just like to spread the words out. Feel free to give them a try!

Dwigger - an interesting tool that enables voting and threaded conversations on Twitter tweets.

WhoShouldIFollow - looks at who’s following you that you’re not following back and has sliders for filtering by popularity and physical location - TopRankBlog.com

Twerpscan - if there are opportunistic marketers following everyone under the sun in the hopes those good souls will just automatically follow them back, this tool might help identify those whom you may want to block - TopRankBlog.com

Twittad - an advertising agent that targets Twitter users as publishers. You can charge a certain amount to have advertisers use your background to advertise their products. Price is likely based on how many followers you have got.

These tools are probably not the best, but they sure come in handy. Please aware that some of these tools are also widely opened to be used as a spamming devices. It is entirely up to the users (our) integrity to limit themselves from abusing services. I hope you (and your followers) enjoy their benefits!

PS: Here’s what every twitter related articles have..follow me!

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Why do I put this in the “Quick Tips” category? Because I’ll be posting the solution here also .

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Realizing that it WAS from Entrecard themselves, I tried to remember what I’ve done that considered spamming. I found that a few days before, I sent emails to blogs under the “Music” category introducing my blog. However I was still in doubt that introductory messages are spam wih Entrecard.

So I went on reading the “Illegal Activities” on the rules and found that it was. It’s my bad for not checking with the rules before sending the messages but I was sure also that I had no intention to spam.

The next thing I did was sending a “reconsideration plea” to Entrecard support containing all the things above. I’m not copy-pasting my email here, but in the letter I admitted my blunder and gave an assurance that such thing will never happen again, …and also some “good deeds” I’ve collected during my EC membership (that is, never received a single warning from Entrecard since I signed up with them. Better than nothing ). And remember to keep the tone polite.

The response was out of expectation!

In addition Ben responded in 15 minutes, he also reinstated my account. Woo-hoo! Why I was so happy? Because I have 15,000 Entrecard credits available to sponsor some contests! Haha..!

Now if you’re planning to host a contest and looking for a sponsor, feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to have a mutual sponsorship .

PS: If you’re going to send messages promoting your blog, you can do it on the Entrecard forum instead. Look for “Post Critiques” and “Marketing” topic. It’s legal there!

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“I’m going to ✈ to ☭ in the morning after I make a ☎ to make sure my ♂ is ✔ with it. ✌ for now and don’t forget to ✍ and lets have ♨ soon!”

Haha..!

Here is the complete list of TwitterKeys. Go to their post page to find out how to use them easily.

♥✈☺♬☑♠☎☻♫☒♤☤☹♪♀✩✉☠✔♂★✇♺✖♨❦☁✌♛
❁☪☂✏♝❀☭☃☛♞✿☮☼☚♘✾☯☾☝♖✽✝☄☟♟✺☥✂✍♕✵

Happy tweetkeying and remember to drop me a tweetkey!