• Two-column phpLD template with sitewide left sidebar. With stylistic and modern looks, this theme can be used for all kinds of directories.
• phpLD version: 2.1 / 3.1
• Designer: Emillie.net
• Live demo: Showcaseblogs.com
• Download: 2.1 / 3.1
• Free to use as long as the footer link remains intact.

Google introduced AdWords as a way for website owners and businesses to advertise on Google and its partner web sites throughout the Internet. Because of its flexibility, AdWords has become one of the most common and strongest advertising programs on the Internet. Google gives the advertiser much more control over how the ad appears, where the ad appears and allows you to advertising options for all kinds of budgets. It is very simple to set up a Google AdWords account. After your initial set up, you can select your relevant keywords, phrases and search terms that you would want your ad to show up for. You can select as many keywords as you’d like but they should be relevant to what your business or web site contains. Once your account and keywords are set up, your ads will appear in Google’s sponsored results when someone uses the keyword phrase or terms that you selected. The easy and quick setup makes Google AdWords a great way to advertise on the Internet instantly. But it’s not free and since every time your ad is clicked it costs you money, how do you maximize your return on this advertising investment? Here are some tips and strategies to maximize the benefits of AdWords and turn out a good conversion rate and return on investment (ROI).

• Make the most out of your advertisement’s headline. Scientific studies show that the first thing a searchers eye catches it the headline. That is what it’s there for. You need to ensure that your headlines are descriptive and contain the search terms that the user is looking for. Your advertisement’s headline has to be descriptive to whatever is on the web page. Loading your headline with keywords is going to look spammy to a user and you will notice very few click throughs. Use your keywords in this headline but make sure it reads naturally and appeals to whoever is searching for that term. One of the best ways to optimize this headline is to try out a few different possibilities. If you are torn between 3 or 4 different headlines, try each of them out for a week and see which one has the highest conversion rate and continue to use it in your Google AdWords advertising campaign.



• In the beginning, start low on your AdWords bidding. The temptation may be to top the highest bid so your ad shows number one on the first page of the search results but this may end up being very costly to you. The best approach is to start off with a small bid and get a feel for how Adwords work and how well it is going to work for your particular web site or business. After you have sufficiently tested out AdWords and have a good feel about how much it is really going to cost you, weigh the cost against the benefits and increase your bids if you feel it is the right choice.
• Make your Ad description interesting. Before a visitor clicks on your ad, they are probably going to read the full description. You want to make sure that this description gives them a good idea of what they are going to see if they continue to click on your advertisement. Avoid stuffing the description full of old fashioned sales gimmicks and words. Make sure that your description is accurate and relevant to what is on your web site. If you misrepresent your web site anywhere in your ad, whoever clicked on that ad is not going to be happy and will probably not trust you or your site. This is a quick path to a low conversion rate which will cost you a fortune. Every time your ad is clicked it is costing you money. You only want qualified searchers clicking on your ads. Give them a good idea of what they are going to get when the click through to your web site.

Advertising is the life blood of your business. Don’t throw money away by ineffectively using AdWords. By following these basics, you can make the most out of your online advertising budget and reap the rewards.

3-column WordPress theme featuring “color purple.” The unconventional curved lines in the sidebars make the theme stylistic looking. The theme is released under Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5), and free to use as long as the attribution link in the footer is kept. The theme info can also be found at themes.wordpress.net.

3-column WordPress theme with Web 2.0 looks. This widget ready theme is designed by headsetoptions.org and MandarinMusing. The design (css and images) of this theme is released under Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5), so the footer links must not be removed. The theme info can also be found at themes.wordpress.net.

2-column WordPress theme featuring feminine violet color. Header, post area and sidebar are organized nicely in an uncluttered fashion. Design credit goes to bandonimedia.com. The theme is released under Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5), so the attribution links in the footer must be retained while using this theme. The theme info can also be found at themes.wordpress.net.

Completing a successful search engine optimization campaign for your web site can be a very frustrating and difficult task. There are hundreds upon hundreds of search engine optimization tips out there. Some are reliable while a lot are not. The world of search engine optimization changes often and new tips and tricks are used to manipulate the search engine results rankings. While this may work in the short term, Google and the other top search engines frequently tweak their algorithm to render this “quick fixes” useless. Be careful when trying out any “hot new search engine optimization tip” because it may end up with your web site being removed from the search engine’s index and your web site will become practically useless. Here are some common search engine optimization mistakes and practices to avoid. While these little tricks may seem like they would help you rank better in the popular search engines, they may actually have the completely opposite affect and lower your ranking or get your web site banned all together.

• Cloaking – This is one of the quickest ways to get your site banned and removed from Google and other popular search engines. Simply defined, Cloaking is displaying different content to the search engine spiders that crawl your web site and your web site visitors. Most people use redirects or different kinds of programming to perform this cloaking technique. An example of cloaking would be to display information that would lead search engines to think your web site is about real estate in Los Angeles but when a searcher clicks on your web site, it shows them ads for Viagra and Cialis.
• Duplicating your content – Google doesn’t want the top 10 search results for “Los Angeles Real Estate” to be the exact same content just reproduced on 10 different web sites. That is why you need to avoid duplicating your content on your various web sites. Worse than that would be copying content from other people’s web sites. Not only is this risky because of Google finding duplicate content but you may also be in violation of copyright laws and could face legal issues. It is very important to have unique content on your web sites.
• Keywords Meta tag abuse – The keyword Meta tag isn’t very helpful to your rank in the search results anymore but you still want to avoid overstuffing this tag with hundreds of keywords. Only list the most important and relevant keywords to your site. Abusing this Meta tag by listing hundreds of keywords, repeating keywords or listing keywords that have nothing to do with your site’s content will actually hurt your ranking in Google.
• Hidden Text – One of the oldest keyword stuffing techniques available, hiding text on your web site is easily detected by Google and the other major search engines and will result in a lower search ranking or removal from their index. Hiding text can be done by filling your background with keywords and then matching the color of the text with the color of the background so that it cannot be seen by humans. A variation of matching the color to hide text is to make the text incredibly small so that it won’t be seen by your web site visitors. Either technique of hiding text on your web site is a big mistake and will not help your cause.
• Bad Links – Links to your web site are one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. Clever search engine optimization experts noticed this and would obtain links from any source possible. As with every other abused search engine optimization technique, the search engines have recognized this and will penalize you for links that come from known link farms (sites whose sole purpose is giving links). When looking for links, you want to direct your efforts towards sites that have related content to your own. If you are a real estate agent, gaining links from your brother’s rock music blog isn’t going to help you.
• Extra Title Tags – Adding extra HTML code to include multiple title tags is known as “Title Slacking” and can easily be discovered by search engine robots. People try to stuff more keywords into the very important title tag by duplicating the tag. The effects of this are not seen by the web site visitor but originally, this may have helped you rank better for those particular keywords.

By avoiding some of these very common search engine optimization techniques, you can be assured that your web site will not be penalized and drop in the rankings. More importantly, you can also avoid have your web site removed from the index of the major search engines which is not easy.

A widget-ready and xhtml-compliant WordPress theme designed by Muhammad Haris. Uncluttered layout and elegant touch to the details are the hallmark of this theme. The design is pretty generic, and so can be used for many different kinds of blogs. This theme requires three addition plugins: Add to del.icio.us, WP-EMail and WP-Print. Please check the instruction contained in the release. The theme is released under Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5), so please keep the attribution links in the footer when using this theme. It has already been released at themes.wordpress.net.

A widget-ready and xhtml-compliant WordPress theme. The theme is released under Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5), so footer links need to be maintained while in used. It has already been released at themes.wordpress.net.

If you’ve been involved in search engine optimization (SEO) for more than a day, you know that the best SEO techniques and rules can change at any time. If you go to your local library to learn about search engine optimization you’ll be lucky to find anything, let alone anything up to date. The most current information about search engine optimization has to be found on the web. And for those who are new to this industry, it can be quite a challenge. Valuable information can be found and learned by visiting different SEO blogs and forums but any information taken from these is only as trusted as the person who wrote it. Here is a list of well known (and very respected) search engine optimization experts that you can trust and learn a lot from.

Danny Sullivan – One of the original SEO experts, Danny Sullivan’s expertise dates back to April 1996 when he published research about search engines called “A Webmaster’s Guide to Search Engines.” About a year later, Danny started Search Engine Watch which is still available today. Search Engine Watch is a resource to those in the SEO industry. You can find tips, news and other information about everything to do with search engine optimization. Another popular SEO resource, Matt Cutts of Google, has said that Search Engine Watch is a “must read.” In addition to Search Engine Strategies, Sullivan began the Search Engine Strategies conference that is one of the most popular search engine optimization events. Danny Sullivan continues to own his own consulting business and maintains a personal blog called “Daggle.”

Matt Cutts – Google’s search engine optimization expert, Matt Cutts, has been known to give advice and a little insight to how Google search works on his blog. Cutts studied information retrieval at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill while working towards his Ph. D. Although Matt only finished with his masters degree from the university, he obtained a job in Google’s quality group and has worked hard to uphold Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and ensure that tricky SEO experts don’t damage the quality of Google’s search engine results.

Aaron Wall – Widely known for his e-book titled SEOBook, Aaron Wall is known as one of the top search engine optimization experts in the industry. SEOBook is one of the most popular search engine optimization resources available because it is frequently updated by Aaron. And since this book is distributed through the Internet, the updated version of this book can easily be obtained. Aaron Wall shares his insights on SEO and sells his e-book through his blog (www.seobook.com). Wall also introduced Threadwatch.org which is a very popular forum where many people can share information and ideas about SEO and Internet marketing. Wall was also a part of one of the most closely watched lawsuits by Internet bloggers. Aaron Wall was sued for comments posted on his blog which raised the question about who is responsible for blog postings. Aaron’s case was dismissed.

Rand Fishkin – Owner of the extremely popular SEO website resource and Internet marketing firm SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin contributes to blog posted on SEOmoz.org along with other trusted experts in his marketing firm. Fishkin is a well known SEO expert and participates in many of the conferences including Search Engine Strategies and PubCon. Rand Fishkin began a big buzz with an anonymous website that was created to help him buy a Super Bowl advertisement to propose to his girlfriend. Unfortunately the plan fell through but Rand was able to propose to his girlfriend during her favorite television show, Veronica Mars.

Barry Schwartz – The youngest SEO expert in the group, Barry Schwartz is known for his blog and reporting of search engine marketing news. Beginning in 2007, Barry became the editor of Search Engine Roundtable, a resource for search engine optimization news. Schwartz is also the CEO of RustyBrick, Inc. which is a web development company based in New York. Barry Schwartz is very active in the SEO community with his own sites as well as contributing to Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land, where his is a news editor and a moderator on Search Engine Watch and WebmasterWorld’s PubCon.

3-column WordPress theme that features a ultra wide layout with two sidebars, boasting of modern looks. Design credit goes to AskGraphics.com. The theme is released under Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5). So feel free to use the theme for your blog, but be sure to acknowledge those who contributed the theme to the community by keeping the attribution links on it. It has already been released at themes.wordpress.net.