If you read my last set of comments about amazon’s search engine, or my wild speculations about how they can win the webmater’s heart with cold hard cash, you’ll want to read this article.

My knees are sore from praying. I never dreamed this could happen. I have to be out of the Vegas area by November 14th at the outside. Why?

Because as I found out from Andy Beal‘s recent post over at SearchEngineLowdown.com they’re coming.

And Henderson isn’t far enough away…

Yes, it’s from Search Engine Journal again.

The News
Domain Names Still Important Despite Search Engine Popularity

My Own Wild Speculations and Gossip
The average webmaster will continue to feel important if those of us struggling to stay content focused and relevant were rewarded with consistent, fair listings that the average search engine hacker can’t crack.

And again, continue to buy my love, in a way where they can not only survive short term, but thrive long term from the prospect of supplying a constant stream of good content.

I’ve got one friend who got his legitimate site knocked off the top listings by spam sites who somehow manage to benefit from the very algorithm change that was rumored to have been intended to punish them and not real sites like his.

Yeah, his site is climbing back in the results with some tweaking, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. Make it easier for folks like him to focus on providing content instead of playing this game where his site is only naturally relevant if he hops on his left foot during full moon Tuesdays.

While you’re at it, give surfers a vote that factors into the equation – an Amazon-style message like “surfers who like this site also like.”

I’m lucky. I was able to learn a consistent, ethical system for getting into the search engines, based on the things about them that don’t change. When I start new sites, I’ve been able to stay out of places like the Google sandbox. (So far!)

With that, I get consistent results that don’t vary from one of the best and most targeted sources of first-click traffic, and I’m grateful for the boost. Getting consistent results from search engines should be more of a time saver, for the average webmaster though.

I just think we saw a lot more purely content-driven sites when the hobbyist webmasters and time-pressed small business owner were focused on content-only, not what it takes to rank well.

News

Internet Week counts Yahoo, MSN and Amazon among Google’s rivals. Among the rivals is an issue of loyalty, as the article states, Yahoo and MSN don’t really have any personality.

My Own Wild Speculations and Gossip

I think that if the search engine game turns out to hinge on an issue of loyalty, two interesting things become a factor…. Amazon’s new search engine, and the only other group of people besides every day searchers who really have a reason to be loyal to any search engine.

Webmasters.

I’ll come back to the webmaster thing in a minute.

But if Amazon.com would really put a face on their corporate image, they’ve already got trust the size of eBay, and lots of research. The a9.com search engine could become the search engine of the intellectual, the reader, the smart guy, the bookworm.

At least, they can win surfers that way. If they want me as a webmaster, they’ve got to make the proceess of being a great affiliate a little bit easier. I mean I do great when I have the time. But who really has the time?

But back to the webmasters. Who else cares how they get their search results, so long as they’re relevant and convenient. I say we matter. And we’ve really been a little quieter on the whole matter than we should be. Without sites, where the heck would people on the internet go?

Google is my one true love, you all know that. But while I’m being a bigamist, and having an affair with Yahoo anyway, there’s more than enough of my site to go around. If Yahoo, MSN and Amazon make it easier for me to make money off their names and features, while promoting my own site, hell, I’ll be there with bells on. Please direct your attention to Exhibit A at the top of this page – you think that banner is there because I love Google?

Well. You’re right.

But my love is Totally conditional.

I love Google because they’ve been good to me, the extra small business owner who got more traffic to her site by playing by the rules. Then, after I made money from just selling my wares, they throw more money at me.

And I would quickly build and direct traffic to new, completely free resource sites for the same purpose again.

Dear other major search engines – if the limits to my love is a problem, throw money at me. I can and will be bought, so long as no one gets cheated or hurt. So buy my love.

Please?

As small business owners trying to make our way on the web, and as webmasters trying to save and make a buck here and there, it’s good to know that there are some resources out there to give us a basic education on how to do more advanced webmaster stuff, all online, mostly for free.

It will be hard, but I’m going to try not to repeat any resource I’ve referenced in my blog before. Call me on it if I do and i’ll replace it with another goodie.

BigNoseBird.com, part of the Really Big network can give you a wide education on everything from site promotion to HTML and server side includes. And if you can’t figure out the answer from their resources, you can always post to their bulletin board.

And if you’re stumped about the priciples behind internet marketing and site promotion, you really want to check out sitesell.com – they have free trials… I know you have probably heard of Ken Evoy’s site before, but you should give serious consideration to, at bare minimum, taking them up on one of their trial offers. Even if you can’t afford some of their other products yet, it’s really helpful to take a look at the trials – they give you information you may not have considered before. There’s a longer review here.

Ever want to become certified at some IT specialty, for your own uses? Freeacademy.com is your answer. You can sample a course for free, then there is a low registration fee to continue. I’ve used them before and you can pass real accredidation course with their program. Don’t even think about paying $2000 to learn stuff that’s free, or nearly free, online.

Before I tell you the last one, I have to talk about LearnThat.com first. You can teach yourself all kinds of things here, and I have.

With that out of the way, let me ask you something.

Have you ever been sitting in front of Outlook, Flash or Photoshop and thought – if only I could get an intermediate or advanced guide to this?

CCT Global gives out a free CD with all kinds of courses on it, you only pay for the shipping. If you only want one or two courses, you can download them free right off their site. Just click on samples – but remember – you’re not allowed to use these to make course of your own for sale.

Here’s a quick list of what they’ve got -

Microsoft Access
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Word
Internet Explorer
Macromedia Director
Macromedia Flash
PageMaker
PaintShop
QuarkXPress
Adobe Fireworks
Adobe Go Live
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Image Ready
Adobe Photoshop
PC Foundations
HTML
Lotus Ami Pro
Lotus Freelance

All downloadable in html or PDF and/or other formats.

Having this kind of knowledge can really help your free traffic efforts – you won’t have to hire a programmer to do basic things for you unless you’re too busy, and understanding how to apply minor fixes will take big headaches out of your day.

Get some free continuing education. It’s worth it.

In the good old days, there were lots of places you could go for a mechanical pair of eyes to look over your site and tell you how fast it loads, if there are broken links, that kind of thing. Netmechanic’s services used to be free, or have free trials. Ah, the good old days…

Most, if not all, of the utilities linked below are free.

The Craig Cecil site also has some valuable helpers, including a CSS validator, an HTML validator, and links to other tools as well, such as the Bobby checker, that will tell you if your site is suitable with people who have physical or sensory challenges and can’t view the web the same way most of us do. That’s a fantastic page, you could be there for hours.

Designerwiz will also trace the network route to your server – good in the odd case that you can’t access your site or your host’s and everything else seems to be fine – sometimes it’s between your PC and the host, not that your host or the site is actually down.

Dr. Watson is a free service to analyze your web page on the Internet. Watson can also check out many other aspects of your site, including link validity, download speed, search engine compatibility, and link popularity.

Have fun – the more people who can see your site, the more use you’ll get out of the traffic you DO have.

Before I tell you what to do if you get hacked – and how to prevent it – here’s a short, funny story.

So there I was, thinking, “I can finish my long-overdue update to my book and then, I can try that thing they call sleep. Then I’ll finish my toolbox tips”.

I went to do a final check on my sites before I continued on my merry way and guess what.

I got hosed, Timmy. Someone with way too much time on their hands hacked my PHP-Nuke section. Oh, the shame of it!

Shame on me for forgetting to do the security updates to my PHP-Nuke installation after the last upgrade.

But, I’m a techie, I knew what to do… I mean come on, I used to work for the IMF. Only my busy schedule kept me from remembering to do something this basic, though I was prepared for the worse case scenario as a back up.

I’m a fanatical back-upper, so even if I hadn’t caught them in the act, I would have been fine, because the only thing that keeps me from using my knowledge for evil is that pesky “conscience” thingee I have. I just couldn’t do that to someone, especially someone who is trying to help people… Hell, I won’t even download from Kazaa anymore.

So, that’s why I was delinquent in my free traffic posting. And here’s your continued tip from yesterday… a whole day late, I’m sorry.

Tool Tip #2 – Backup and Security

The first place you should go for basic study is The Web Host Industry Review’s Security section for webmasters. There are tons of articles there telling you what horrors exist that you probably don’t even know about, and how to recover from them.

Here are some back-up tools from SnapFiles.com – some are free. Doing it on your PC is not enough, you then want to back up your PC to CD.

Snapfiles also has all kinds of Security Tools.

Here’s an article called Seven Ways to Protect Your Site From Hackers – wouldn’t have helped me but I would add to that – change your passwords often. I know we already have a lot to do as webmasters and small business owners, but it’s worth the trouble. I like to use random password generators for this,

Here’s hack help for your PC, from Microsoft.

Got Linux? Try here.

Don’t have one for Mac yet – though no Mac I ever had or was near ever got hacked… coincidence? I think not.

I miss Macintoshes…

If you’re running a network, you might find tips at TechRepublic helpful.

Here’s hack help if you are using PHP – important things to remember.

And if you have PHP-Nuke, 3 things that will save your butt are the instructions for what to do if you’ve been hacked, the security patch files for each release, and a security program called The Protector. They have another article called Lock down your web site and other stuff in their security section.

If you get hacked in any way that relates to the web and you live in the US you can get the government to help you prosecute.

Get IP addresses if you can – I keep mine on record for this purpose solely… I know I’m not supposed to be vengeful.

But I really, really am. Sometimes I wait years for payback. I really need to lighten up.

Think it can’t happen to you? It can. There’s an article up today about the dark side of Google’s powers – unintentional on their part I’m sure – that can tell a good hacker your site’s vulnerabilities.

And you don’t have to get hacked for your web host’s servers to crash and lose your site. Just happened to one of my members. Luckily he found a resolution – if you don’t you can try The Way Back Machine for recovering html pages they way they used to be before you crashed.

At bare minimum, back up your site. I’ll have more tools for you later on…. ta for now…

So I was asking myself, when I had my cell issues (not padded-cell, cell phone), I immediately thought about how I could turn my problem into an opportunity for growth.

That’s when I came up with this idea – I know from that experience what things, as a small business owner that I can’t do without, what resources should every traffic-seeking webmaster have?

Well, the first thing you need, on a basic level, is a good html editor. We just don’t have the time to code every html page into Notepad, as is my preferred method. So what makes life simpler?

If your html code is jacked up, you can forget about traffic. But not everyone has the money to drop on the commercial tools. And sometimes, the best ones are free anyway. While I’m a huge Dreamweaver fan, to me, nothing beats Arachnophilia. Hands down, it’s one of the best html editors around.

If you’re making a really big site, one of those resource sites – you might also think about getting your hands on a content management system. In my newsletter I cover a wide range of them with reviews. But my favorite is also free – PHP-Nuke. It’s highly customizable, and has a great support community. You can even make it compatible with all search engines, which I discuss further in the Forums. (You don’t have to register for the rest of the forum, but this tip is in the Member’s Only section Free to join).

The only places I feel PHP-Nuke doesn’t quite meet my needs is in the Journal module, and the duplicated META tags on every page. I prefer to use Blogger, also free, and a good Meta tag editor- though I prefer to use only two or three tags on most of my site. With a combination of these three tools, you can have a decent looking site that the search engines can find, and you can funnel the time you lose with coding into time you spend promoting your product or service.

I was a little busy today. I tend to use the term, “working from home” loosely, and today I’m back at my home – Home. And I’m trying not to grow too attached to it, because I’m soon to move to another part of the area for a short time, and then move back to the East coast permanently. I love it out here in the West though, and I’d love to buy a house out here.

Anyhoo, today, I want to talk about toolboxes. I learned the hard way this past week, when my phone went on the fritz that there are some tools I can’t live without, free or not. I was out in a small country town that didn’t have a branch of my cell company, and when I called the free customer service number from a land line… let’s just say I was underwhelmed with their service.

So I’ll get this phone fixed later on this week and change companies.

Again.

And hope for the best.

So today, we’re going to talk web master tools. I’ll stay in the free range, but I can’t promise I won’t drop in a couple of premium options that you can only get by paying.

I may not be able to cover everything a webmaster who wants traffic needs, but I’ll try to cram several tools in each tip – and I’ll cram in several free options where and when I can. This may span two days, if so, I’ll just continue the numbering from the day before.

Be back in a few.