Elevate Local » Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog Internet Marketing Blog Tue, 15 May 2012 10:53:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Checking keyword position with PHP http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/checking-keyword-position-with-php-05056876 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/checking-keyword-position-with-php-05056876#comments Sat, 05 May 2012 22:27:55 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=6876

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

There are many tools available to check keyword position on Google. I have always been curious about how it’s done so tried various methods and found a simple way that I will build on for later purposes. The example below will grab a “Search Engine Result Page” (SERP) from Google using the keywords entered then…

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

]]> Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

There are many tools available to check keyword position on Google. I have always been curious about how it’s done so tried various methods and found a simple way that I will build on for later purposes.

Checking keyword position with PHP

The example below will grab a “Search Engine Result Page” (SERP) from Google using the keywords entered then check the position of our domain name, as long as it’s in the top 100.
It was made more for example purposes than use in a live environment but should return fairly accurate results for low volume queries.

I will update this a fair amount as I will be using it from time to time.
At the moment it gets confused with results that have “site links” and Places results. Better defining the xpath should help avoid this.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Checking keyword position with PHP</title>
	<style type="text/css">
    body{font-family:Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; color:#666;}
    #center{width:350px;margin:5px auto 0 auto;}
    form { float:left; width:380px; }
    input, label { width:70%; clear:left; float:left; margin-top:5px; }
	input{color:#999;}
    input[type="submit"] { width:30%; clear:left; float:left; margin-top:20px; color:#666; }

    .small{ font-size:0.7em; color:#999999}
	h3{font-size:1.4em;}
    #kwdz{ width:400px; position:relative; top:5px;}
	#domainz{width:400px; margin-top:10px;}
	#result{margin-top:20px;}
    </style>
</head>

<body>
<div id="center">

<form action="index.php" method="post">
    <div id="domainz">
        <label>Domain:</label>
        <input name="domain" value="elevatelocal.co.uk" onclick="this.value=''" />
    </div>
    <div id="kwdz">
        <label>Keywords:</label>
        <input name="keywords" value="internet marketing agency" onclick="this.value=''" />
    </div>
    <input type="submit" name="check" value="Get position" />
</form>

<br style="clear:both" />
<?php

$i = 1; $hit = 0;

if($_POST) {

	// Clean the post data and make usable
	$domain = filter_var($_POST['domain'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
	$keywords = filter_var($_POST['keywords'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
		// Remove begining http and trailing /
		$domain = substr($domain, 0, 7) == 'http://' ? substr($domain, 7) : $domain;
		$domain = substr($domain, -1) == '/' ? substr_replace($domain, '', -1) : $domain;
		// Replace spaces with +
		$keywords = strstr($keywords, ' ') ? str_replace(' ', '+', $keywords) : $keywords;

	// Grab the Google page using the chosen keywords
	$html = new DOMDocument();
	@$html->loadHtmlFile('http://www.google.co.uk/search?q='.$keywords.'&amp;num=100');
	$xpath = new DOMXPath($html);
	// Store the domains to nodes
	$nodes = $xpath->query('//div[1]/cite');

	// Loop through the nodes to look for our domain
	$hit = 2;
	foreach ($nodes as $n){
		// echo '<div style="font-size:0.7em">'.$n->nodeValue.'<br /></div>'; // Show all links
		if (strstr($n->nodeValue, $domain)) {
			$message = 'Position '.$i.'<br />'; $hit = 1;
		}
		else { ++$i; }
	}
}
?>

    <div id="result">
        <?php // Echo the result
        if ($hit == 1) { echo '<h2>'.$message.'</h2>'; }
        else if ($hit >= 2) { echo '<h2>Not found!</h2>'; }
        ?>
    </div>

</div>

</body>
</html>

Please let me know if you have any issues or feedback as it will all help to improve the code!

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

]]> http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/checking-keyword-position-with-php-05056876/feed 0 Google vs non-semantic code http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/google-vs-semantic-code-15046655 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/google-vs-semantic-code-15046655#comments Sun, 15 Apr 2012 08:01:11 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=6655

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

Most SEO companies are aware that semantic code has an effect on how Google indexes and ranks a website. Many web master’s, however, are unaware of the extent it’s influence has, so let’s cover the basics. Coding semantically simply means following development standards and using best practices which have evolved over several years to build…

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

]]> Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

Most SEO companies are aware that semantic code has an effect on how Google indexes and ranks a website. Many web master’s, however, are unaware of the extent it’s influence has, so let’s cover the basics.

Coding semantically simply means following development standards and using best practices which have evolved over several years to build the best website or application possible. It is often referred to as structural code by some developers.

It’s a simple idea, but the benefits this can have on SEO could be the difference between Google loving your site and hating your website!
semantic code

Google Updates

Recent Google updates, such as “Venice” and “Search, plus Your World“, seem to suggest Google are making more SERPs based on location and social relevance.

Common sense tells me that Google would need metrics with which to rank their location and social based results. I believe, as there is only so much a robot can guess, that these new metrics will be taken from data such as post date on forums and blogs or location information from on-page or in profile information.

Other changes, such as Google’s golden ratio page layout algorithm update, are targeted more at user experience while on a website. These kinds of changes could be very difficult to change on an active site developed a few years ago.

Most of the changes sound fairly small on their own, but the large number of small changes quickly adds up. It may amount to little more than making sure all post have dates and locations set, but the boost to well coded sites may mean old sites and less proficient developers may be indirectly penalised simply by not being standards compliant. The common theme I see in all of Google’s recent updates implies closer adherence to development guidelines. Google seems to be aiming for better coded websites all round, which is a great idea… If you can code perfectly.

HTML5

Several new features in HTML5 allow designers and developers to define content on a far more granular level than HTML4. The <article> and <nav> tags, for example, in theory make it easier for Google to tell where the site’s main content blocks and navigations are located with the hope of reducing the time spent crawling data it is aware of and dedicating more time to other aspects.

Google is, however, sitting on the fence towards HTML5 by saying things such as “it won’t help, but it can’t hurt” but I believe they will start to place more weight on such factors moving forward.

Technically, HTML5 is not semantic code as it’s in a specification which is still being worked on and could change before public release. This is unlikely, but a possibility, nonetheless.

Optimize Code

Server-side code should always be written to perform well which may sound painfully obvious but is often overlooked when time lines are involved. Google allocates a set amount of time and resources to each site it crawls so if it has to wait for poorly coded pages to load or process data it will detract from the time it spends performing other tasks. This is a small oversight which can lead to massive penalties if a site generates a lot of content or traffic.

Each language has different ways to improve performance, but most are simple to implement retroactively, so there is no excuse. A few examples in PHP would be to use comma concatenation when printing many text variables or definitions (instead of full stops), using a ++$i instead of $i++ incrementer inside really big loops, using echo instead of print, using full file locations on include and require statements, avoid using @ error suppression.

Faster code means more time for Google to do what you want… Index your content!

Time to update?

It may appear to be an altruistic act on Google’s part as it would provide results more based on site quality, but it could seriously damage a companies income to be overtaken by competitors with less resource intense pages or simply newer sites.

I think it’s great that Google is moving away from the links + content = rank approach, but a little more transparency would be nice.

If you have a website designed using tables, with many images, or simply an using an ineffective class or method it may be time to consider updating your code. Google seems to be saying: Keep up-to-date or be left behind!

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

]]> http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/google-vs-semantic-code-15046655/feed 0 Confessions of a spammer http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/retentive-backlinks-25036200 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/retentive-backlinks-25036200#comments Sun, 25 Mar 2012 08:00:50 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=6200

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

Building back links is a large part of any SEO engineer’s working day. As a result there are numerous articles, tips, and tricks freely available. This article covers white-hat SEO techniques many SEO companies use and the transparency that our in-house approach is proud of. I want to make it clear that I don’t claim…

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

]]> Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

Image by - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kintzlejordan

Building back links is a large part of any SEO engineer’s working day. As a result there are numerous articles, tips, and tricks freely available. This article covers white-hat SEO techniques many SEO companies use and the transparency that our in-house approach is proud of.

I want to make it clear that I don’t claim to be an expert, as I believe only Google’s engineers working on the ranking algorithms can make such claims, but I have many hours experience tinkering with websites and no social life.

Commenting and spam

I am going to say something that many consultants working for seo companies rarely admit; most of the time building back links is very similar to spamming. The line between commenting and spamming largely consists of the reader’s interpretation!

You wouldn’t think of shouting your sales pitch at people walking past you on the way to work so the e-quivalent shouldn’t be an option for online marketing.

While I may have no exceptional interest in the websites being posted to I expect to gain a link from the comment therefore must abide by a few common sense rules:

  • Every website deserves quality content relevant to the page or website.
  • Consider how you would react to receiving an identical comment on your website.
  • Provide content that will add value to the website rather than use it as a means to acquire a link.
  • And lastly, weigh the benifit of writing a noteworthy comment with the time required to do so.

We should assume our clients enjoy working in their chosen profession and have a passion for the communities involved. Taking into account how their reputation could be effected by our work is an essential consideration while building links. If I am visitng a pink shopping website with a largely female user-base adding a few extra “fab”, “wub”, and kisses is an example of how a fashion site owner may comment but, obviously, a mechanic would not… Usually.

For this reason we must make our comments insightful, authoritative, kind, witty, informative or otherwise noteworthy. Being lazy and posting something similar to “Great article, thanks!” will, most likely, just get ignored and in the worst case get your I.P. address added to a blacklist!

By now it should be fairly clear that building back links is a a murky grey area in which our moral compass is the only guide and culpability the only restriction. While it may be tempting to take shortcuts to save time and/or money the effects will be short lived and could end up doing more harm than good in the long run.

So far, so Captain Obvious.
Let’s get into some of the more esoteric differences between commenting methods.

Blog commenting

I won’t go over old ground covered by Dom’s Blog commenting post but consider this a contributory addendum.

Blogs have been hit hard by spam over the years so it’s often a struggle to gain any traction unless the comment is personal, informative, or inquisitive.

With WordPress taking a huge chunk of the CMS pie the biggest risk is being blocked by Akismet, the built-in anti-spam plugin, which can happen for several reasons and is very hard to get reversed.

Currently, on this blog, Akismet has blocked 15,843 spam comments with 278 still to be checked, so I can understand the habit of emptying the spam folder without checking for legitimate comments. We must, therefore, make our comment worth reading or it could end up getting us a red mark… black mark… certainly not a gold star! Not only should our comment be pertinent, but the page to which it’s posted relevant to our website for maximum effect.

Forum commenting

Forum commenting is much the same as blog commenting with a few, small differences; forum posts tend to be a lot shorter than blog posts which can make commenting quicker and less formal. The added bonus of being involved with forums is the profile and signature links and while signature links are often not allowed or removed, profile links are rarely prohibited or restricted to minimum post count or account age.

Forums rarely have posts verified before being published but often have penalties for replying to old threads and other arbitrary rules so it’s worth reading through their terms or rules first. You may just find that you need 100 posts to add a signature link, making it an inefficient way to gain a link except for rare cases such as a long term project.

An easy way to increase the benefit from forum links is to make sure the content and URL are of a similar nature. Linking to a web design company from a construction forum probably won’t be as effective a website in the same industry or with matching URLs.

Profile links

Deja vu? Yes, forums usually allow profile links. But forums only make up a small section of available CMSs so we should widen our net, so to speak. Profile links are an easy way of gaining many links from unique I.P. addresses in a short period of time, which is effective if combined with a lesser amount of higher quality links. There are many highly ranking websites which don’t allow any linking but provide a publicly visible “website” or “URL” field in your profile.

The downside being you cannot usually set any specifcs such as the anchor text so have to hope the URLs are “friendly” enough to be seen as relevant.

Buying links

Google doesn’t condone buying links unless clearly marked as such so it’s considered a grey area in which to develop link relationships. Possibly due to their main business being the sale of links and the traffic therefrom. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence though… Maybe.

Many companies subcontract directory submissions to save money. The obvious flaw here being the lack of accountability and, often, low quality or short term results.

I hasten to add that I think directory submission, en masse, is a terrible strategy as it can cause several of Google’s flags to be raised. If directory submissions are to be a part of the campaign, they should be of high quality and with minimal risk of becoming a “bad neighbourhood”

Link exchanges

Link exchanges are a low quality method of link building whereby links are placed in reciprocity. The two way nature of the exchanges isn’t a very professional approach and can clutter up prominent places on the website. While these links are usually easy to obtain they are often frowned upon by professionals and search engines alike.

Link exchanges can quickly become link farms if not monitored and becomming associated with a link farm could cause major damage to your rankings, even resulting in your pages being blacklisted.

Social Media

It can be difficult to gain links from social media websites as they are mostly obfuscated by URL shortens, not publicly visible, or only visible for a short time due to the high content generation. This doesn’t mean we should give up on social media as there are many websites and social profiles from which we can link. Google+, for example, seems to encourage such self-promotion.

The traffic gained by being social involved has it’s own advantages such as higher chance for conversions and a more prominent public image. But as this article is about link building I wont digress.

Nofollow

I have followed the development of HTML over the years and was originally concerned by the introduction of the rel=”nofollow” tag. When Google first announced it wouldn’t pass any “Google Juice” onto links with the aforementioned attribute it set SEO circles into a fit of panic. The fear has remained where logic seems to fail. I will explain why I think Google places far more emphasis on rel=”nofollow” links than it may have you believe.

There are many quotes of Google stating something to the effect of: “and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest”. My favourite Google quote is a fairly mundane but sums up my opinion: “In general, we don’t follow them [nofollow links].”. If my Sherlock Holmes like powers of deduction are correct, the loss of ranking power from such a large part of the content management system market is a big loss of usable data to a company which places high value on exactly that.

My experience has lead me to believe it makes more of a difference than most SEO engineers would have you believe, even if substantially less than a “dofollow” link (that is a link without the nofollow attribute).

Are you a spammer?

It’s a question I think about a lot. I have spent years working on my own websites using the techniques above for their promotion and ranking improvements. Google’s algorithm has developed to not only encourage this but has built an entire business around it! If the only way to gain more exposure and more relevant search engine placement is to use methods such as this, I guess I am.

 

I’ll get back to posting code next month, I promise :)

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

]]> http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/retentive-backlinks-25036200/feed 0 G-volution http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/g-volution-17015875 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/g-volution-17015875#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:13:07 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=5875

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both studying at Stanford, had the great idea of making a website on which you could find other websites. Brilliant! Initially naming their invention BackRub, the unlikely duo took on what seemed a simple task but turned into a monumental undertaking resulting in a little company called Google. Little did…

Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

]]> Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both studying at Stanford, had the great idea of making a website on which you could find other websites. Brilliant!

Initially naming their invention BackRub, the unlikely duo took on what seemed a simple task but turned into a monumental undertaking resulting in a little company called Google.

Little did the pre-bubble world know that a tiny search engine, started in an American university before being turfed out for bandwidth hogging, would become one of the most influential companies on the planet!

Early versions of both BackRub and Google can still be found online at the links below:

  • BackRub
  • Google Alpha

      • It didn’t take long for Google to gain several key deals with the likes of Yahoo and DoubleClick, among many others, which lead to an explosion in Google’s search quality and reach.

      Along the way Google innovated in several areas of internet search and user experience with services like Gmail, Image Search and Google Book Search (then called Google Print).

      And the winner is…

      Many companies have tried to compete with the services provided by Google, some with far larger budgets, but all have failed to some degree.

      According to some reports, Google currently has about 65.5% of the global search market and a very large portfolio of other projects making many millions a year each.

      Some reports put Google’s current market share at 85.75% with it’s closest rival being Yahoo with a measly 5.42%!

      So how have Google done so well where others have often failed miserably?

      What makes Google special?

      What did Google do?

      Apple and Google have one thing in common which I believe has lead both to success – Focus.

      Google search let’s you search the internet. Google Mail provides hosted email. I could go on but let’s surmise with Google develops each product to be good at it’s core business.

      Some companies, Yahoo is a good example, seem to try to hard to integrate all their services into one package resulting in a confused, and sometimes, overwhelming product.

      I also believe the idea of providing high quality free services while charging advertisers for relevant promotional positions was more effective than planned and some companies still struggle with the idea that you can make money by giving stuff away!

      So why am I rambling on incessantly about Google?

      An evolving environment

      They way we use the internet is changing partly due to the recent boom in social media and mobile devices.

      More and more applications have built in search features for popular sites such as Wikipedia and Youtube and the content we want can often be accessed from these directly.

      Google recently announced Search Plus your world which promises to offer results tailored to suit ones social habits and detected interests.

      All seem right with the world. Search gets better resulting in more relevant results, as any sane business would.

      …Right?

      When I rule the world

      Well, that depends on on several important factors, one of which being the compliance of social media sites such as FaceBook and Twitter or the retention of it’s impressive user base.

      Google has run into problems with many sites in the past over how it indexes their content.

      It may seem obvious but Google can alter it’s search results to rank any website higher or lower as they see fit. It’s safe to assume that Google+ will be ranked higher than Twitter or FaceBook.

      As Google’s portfolio expands past search, video, social media and other current projects, it will undoubtedly favour it’s own services in search results.

      The new changes could, however, effect the way many websites are developed and marketed with new websites finding it hard to get a competitive amount of exposure.

      Many complaints have been raised about anti-competitive behaviour by Google including some recent acusations of fraudulent activity, so they could soon be forced to change.

      I think it is likely SEO would have to shift to take advantage of the higher weight Google’s services get in comparison to similar organic results.

      Summary

      Will Bing reinvent the wheel before the Mayans rise from their graves to eat our brains in December 2012 apocalypse?

      Conspiratorial jokes aside; both are very unlikely but Google will need to be as innovative as ever if it wants to retain it’s currently dominant position in one of the most fickle markets.

      Big changes to the way people search using Google are due, whatever happens this year!

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]> http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/g-volution-17015875/feed 0 Setting up a localhost http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/setting-up-a-localhost-22115632 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/setting-up-a-localhost-22115632#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:23:38 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=5632

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      Windows computers don’t nativly process PHP files so a few tricks are required to allow working on them as if using a web server. Once setup you can use your PC as an ad-hoc host to test and work on scripts or even run a website or two. There are many programs to do a…

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      Windows computers don’t nativly process PHP files so a few tricks are required to allow working on them as if using a web server. Once setup you can use your PC as an ad-hoc host to test and work on scripts or even run a website or two.

      There are many programs to do a majority of the hard work such as installing and configuring PHP, MySQL, and PHPMyAdmin so we should start there.
      I suggest using WAMP as it has interchangeable components and is fairly easy to setup.

      Installing WAMP

        » Download and install WAMP – http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php

      I find it easiest to install WAMP to the suggested directory of C:\wamp as your final “web” folder will be C:\wamp\www.
      We will need to make a few changes after it has finished installing to emulate a web server a little more.

      We can start by creating a folder called “example.com” in the C:\wamp\www folder to store the files we are testing.
      Inside the example.com folder create a file called index.php and insert some random data such as “hello world” so we can see if it’s working or not.

      Allowing Virtual Hosts

      Allowing virtual hosts will enable multiple websites, or hosts, to run from one machine so we need to enable it in the httpd.conf file.

      • Click the WAMP icon in your taskbar
      • Click Apache
      • Click http.conf to open the file
      • Find: 
        #Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
      • Change to: 
        Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

      WAMP virtual hosts

      Now we have allowed virtual hosts we can create a fake website to test on so we need to tell Windows we want to see our fake domain.

      Editing the hosts file

      The file we need to edit is protected; it is easiest to copy the file to the dekstop then edit and copy it back, replacing the original.
      Find and edit:
      C:\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
      Adding the following to the very last line of the file:

      127.0.0.1     example.com

      This will make sure example.com is loaded from our computer instead of the remote website.

      Note: We can also copy the above line with www.example.com but it’s good practice to test offline with non-www and online with www urls.

      Setting up virtual hosts

      Next we need to tell PHP and associated software where the files are located on our computer and where to store the error and access files, so we need to edit another file.
      Find and open:
      C:\wamp\bin\Apache2.2.17\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts
      Adding the following to the bottom of the file:

      <VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@example.com
    DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/www/example.com"
    ServerName example.com
    ErrorLog "C:/wamp/logs/example.com-error.log"
    CustomLog "C:/wamp/logs/example.com-access.log" common
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@example.com
    DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/www/example.com"
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    ErrorLog "C:/wamp/logs/example.com-error.log"
    CustomLog "C:/wamp/logs/example.com-access.log" common
	<directory "C:/wamp/www/example.com">
	 Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
	 AllowOverride all
	 Order Deny,Allow
	 Deny from all
	 Allow from 127.0.0.1
	</directory>
</VirtualHost>

      The above code will tell PHP, MySQL and PHPMyAdmin where the files are located on our computer. It handles both www and non-www urls but we won’t need both yet.

      Wrapping up

      The final step is click the WAMP taskbar icon and then “restart all services”.

      Typing http://example.com in your browser should open our example “hello world” page
      Typing http://www.example.com in your browser should show the official test page, which is useful for testing purposes if you plan to get a little more involved with coding.

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/setting-up-a-localhost-22115632/feed 0       HTML file inclusion using SSI http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/html-file-inclusion-using-ssi-14115579 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/html-file-inclusion-using-ssi-14115579#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:04:46 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=5579

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      Server Side Includes are a little used feature of most webservers and have limited use but can be handy for certain needs. Obviously this is something best handled by PHP file inclusion or something similar but that isn’t always an option. You may, for example, have a host which doesn’t allow PHP files yet has…

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      Server Side Includes are a little used feature of most webservers and have limited use but can be handy for certain needs.

      Obviously this is something best handled by PHP file inclusion or something similar but that isn’t always an option.

      You may, for example, have a host which doesn’t allow PHP files yet has SSI enabled.

      This short article gives an example of how to include one html file inside another using simple HTML.

      The two examples below show how to embed one HTML file inside the other.

      <!--#include file="included.html" -->
OR
<!--#include virtual="/directory/included.html" -->

      Notes:
      Use “file=” when the included file is within the same directory as the page that wants it. Use “virtual=” when it isn’t.
      You may need to name the file “included.shtml” as the shtml acts as a parsing command and tells the server the file has posisbly dynamic content.

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/html-file-inclusion-using-ssi-14115579/feed 0       Overlaying content with HTML and CSS http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/overlaying-content-with-html-and-css-30105436 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/overlaying-content-with-html-and-css-30105436#comments Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:32:37 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=5436

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      There are several reasons to have content overlaid on a website such as ratings or text on images, statistical information on charts, text on icons, to name just a few. The technique to do so is simple and scalable. Below is a very simple example of overlaying divs but can be used for almost any…

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      There are several reasons to have content overlaid on a website such as ratings or text on images, statistical information on charts, text on icons, to name just a few. The technique to do so is simple and scalable.

      Below is a very simple example of overlaying divs but can be used for almost any content!

      The HTML

      <div id="container">
    <div id="layer1"><p>Layer 1</p></div>
    <div id="layer2"><p>Layer 2</p></div>
    <div id="layer3"><p>Layer 3</p></div>
</div>

      The CSS

      div{font-family:Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-weight:bold;text-align:center; color:#fff; border:thin solid #999}
div>p{margin-top:65px;}

#container{width:300px; height:275px; margin:auto auto; position:relative; background:#CCC;}
#layer1, #layer2, #layer3{width:150px; height:150px; position:absolute;}
#layer1{top:15px; left:15px; background:#00f;}
#layer2{top:110px; left:75px; background:#0f0; z-index:1;}
#layer3{top:15px; left:125px; background:#f00; z-index:2;}

      Notes

      The layer in which the sublayers are contained requires relative positioning while the lower layers have to be absolute positioned.

      Each layer needs to have an incremental z-index value set with zero (0) being the default for the lowest, containing, layer. For this reason it is generally easier to have each layer styled by ID as a reminder that they are seperate entities.

      It’s a super simple idea with many uses that every webmaster should know!

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/overlaying-content-with-html-and-css-30105436/feed 0       Fixing SEOQuake PageRank check http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/fixing-seoquake-pagerank-check-06105097 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/fixing-seoquake-pagerank-check-06105097#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:39:45 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=5097

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      There was a lot of outcry by SEO consultants on Twitter about PageRank Today. I have been trying to check various website’s PageRank using the SEOQuake toolbar today but every page was showing as unranked, even google.com. It was fairly obvious something was wrong so I looked into it and found that Google’s URL had…

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      There was a lot of outcry by SEO consultants on Twitter about PageRank Today. I have been trying to check various website’s PageRank using the SEOQuake toolbar today but every page was showing as unranked, even google.com.
      It was fairly obvious something was wrong so I looked into it and found that Google’s URL had changed slightly rendering most tools useless, for now at least.

      To restore the Page Rank checking functionality to the SEOQuake toolbar follow the instructions below:

      • Open SEOQuake’s prefferences
      • Select “Google pagerank” under the Parameters tab
      • Click edit
      • Change the following code:
      [NAME]=Google pagerank
[TITLE]=PR
[URL_R]=http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&amp;hl=en&amp;ch={gchecksum}&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;features=Rank&amp;q=info:{url|encode}
[REGEXP]=Rank_.*?:.*?:(\d+)
      • to:
      [NAME]=Google pagerank
[TITLE]=PR
[URL_R]=http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&amp;hl=en&amp;ch={gchecksum}&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;amp;features=Rank&amp;q=info:{url|encode}
[REGEXP]=Rank_.*?:.*?:(\d+)

      The change is small but should restore the ability to check PageRank en-masse!
      Below are a few pictures incase you have any problems.

      Fixing SEOQuake Page Rank in FireFox

      fix seoquake toolbar
      fix seoquake firefox
      seoquake firefox fix

      Fixing SEOQuake Page Rank in Chrome

      SEOQuake chrome fix
      seoquake toolbar chrome fix
      chrome seoquake

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/fixing-seoquake-pagerank-check-06105097/feed 21       Gmail filter basics http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/gmail-filter-basics-05105084 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/gmail-filter-basics-05105084#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:44:56 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=5084

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      Filtering email in Gmail has many benefits and can save time on maintaining your email accounts. I use email filtering for many reasons including, but not limited to: Filter out spam Pre-label emails Used as multiple email accounts Setting up a filter in Google mail is fairly straight forward and is useful when combined with…

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      Filtering email in Gmail has many benefits and can save time on maintaining your email accounts. I use email filtering for many reasons including, but not limited to:

      • Filter out spam
      • Pre-label emails
      • Used as multiple email accounts

      Setting up a filter in Google mail is fairly straight forward and is useful when combined with Gmail’s acceptance of pre-labeled addresses.

      Log into your Gmail account and click the cog at the top right of the screen.
      Then click “Mail settings”. Click “filters” then “create a new filter”.

      In the “To:” field you can enter your email address with a +keyword to pre-define how incomming emails are handled.

      Let’s use an example email address of elevate@gmail.com. Entering elevate+test@gmail.com can be used to essentially create multiple email aliases sending to the same Gmail account.

      The next screen will allow labels to be applied as the emails are received among other options such as marking the email as important, starring, deleting, forwarding et al.

      We could also create a custom label to mark the email with and tick the “Skip the Inbox (Archive it)” option to prevent it showing in the main Gmail inbox.

      This is a very useful feature as it can help when registering multiple accounts on a website which requires a unique email account.
      It can also be used if you think a site may send you junk email as you can change the way the emails are handled at any time.

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/gmail-filter-basics-05105084/feed 0       Password security http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/password-security-26094958 http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/password-security-26094958#comments Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:51:03 +0000 Adam Davies http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/?p=4958

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      Having a weak password or using the same password for every website are both common mistakes while creating online profiles. Simplicity and memorability often supercedes strength. Obviously it’s easier to remember a short and simple password, but having all your accounts comprimised at once can have serious side effects. Below are two ways to make…

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      Having a weak password or using the same password for every website are both common mistakes while creating online profiles.
      Simplicity and memorability often supercedes strength.

      Obviously it’s easier to remember a short and simple password, but having all your accounts comprimised at once can have serious side effects.
      Below are two ways to make your passwords a lot more secure with minimal effort.

      Entropy

      Adding entropy to a password is the only real way to increase it’s strength.
      The most memorable way to add entropy to a password is to simply add more characters.
      If my chosen password was “sheepdog9″, adding entropy could be as simple as adding extra characters on the end. “sheepdog9!!!!!!!!!!!!”.

      This may not seem any more difficult to a human, but because password brute-forcers don’t have any notable intelligence, this is just as secure as adding special characters and punctuation.

      There is, currently, no way for password crackers to guess the next character in a string as the result from an incorrect password attempt is simply true or false.

      Remembering how many fullstops or exlamation marks to add onto the end of a rememberable word is far easier than tracking passwords by including mixed case, alpha-numeric, and special characters.

      Software

      There are many programs and browser plug-ins which can generate, store, and retrieve passwords making it easier to have different and secure passwords for each website you visit.

      I have tried many different password programs over the past few years but one stood out as doing everything right.
      Lastpass is a program with browser extension which will generate secure passwords, input them into the site and even auto-login, not to mention a host of other features. And it’s free!

      Lastpass encrypts passwords before saving them on your computer and uploading the block of data to the Lastpass servers using your master password as a salt.
      This is important as it means your data can’t be used even if was intercepted or your computer was stolen.

      To sum up

      Using either of these techniques will make it a lot harder for a hacker to get access to a website you have registered on.
      GRC has created a script, if you want to check how long it may take a brute-forcer to crack your password, called Password Haystacks. The page also has links to a podcast and more information about this topic.

      Digital Marketing Agency Elevate Local

      ]]>       http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/password-security-26094958/feed 0