Alright it is time to say good bye to April, but what I am going to do in this post is collect the best posts that I found online that were posted in April 2008 which I think are useful/entertaining to my users. I think I am going to make this a tradition and hopefully I will keep following it from now on that my last post of the month will be the one that collects the best post of Balkhis and other blogs that I read normally.

Top 10 from my favorite other blogs

Clear Windows XP RAM without Restarting
Must Attend Affiliate Marketing Events
12 Ways to Be a More Interactive and Accessible Blogger
Dot Com Life Style
Widget Best Practice in a Google World
60 more AJAX and Javascript for Professional Coding
History of Mozilla Firefox Logo
What Happens to Doritos at 30,000 feet
A good start is half the job done
How to set Hillary Clinton on Fire just Incase you wanted to

Balkhis Top 10

5 Ways to attract commentator to your post
Tips on how to improve alexa ranking for your websites / blogs
Entrecard Results and some effective tips on Power Dropping
HostGator committing a Federal Offense
Video Blogging - Next Step
Tips on w3c Validation of your website
What Settings to use in All-in-one SEO Pack for Wordpress?
5 things that can hurt the Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs) of your website
How the determine the price of ads on your website?
Best Design Practices of RSS and free icon sets collection

I am very sure by checking these cool posts out it will only help you and some will entertain you. I am sorry for those whom I couldn’t mention in the post, but if you would like to make yourself in the next month’s top 10 … please post comments here and I tried to track each of my commentators.

Well what you know, the rumors are actually true. Last night, April 28, 2008, google has updated their measuring tool Pagerank (PR). As you know Balkhis was a PR 0 which means no green, but now Google has decided to give us a mere PR 3 for the first update. I have nothing to complain about because I am not a big fan of Pagerank. But alot of people are because I see numerous topics being created about this in Digitalpoint Google Section, so I have decided to make a list of sites that I visit daily for the most part and put down their pagerank update.

Title - Was > Now (This is the legend for the list below)

Balkhis - 0 > 3
Uzzz Productions - 0 > 3 (Some pages are PR 4)
Word Scrawl - 0 > 4
Shoemoney - 5 > 6
John Chow - 3 > 4
Problogger - 6 > 6
Aviva Directory - 0 > 4
Zorg-Directory - 4 > 5
Zac Johnson - 3 > 5
Brian Gardner - 7 > 8
Digital Point Forums - 6 > 7
TheWWWBlog - Unknown > 3

How do I know that this update is actually happening, and How can I get so many queries right now. Well I actually heard it from a friend of mine over the IM, and then started checking the Live Pagerank Websites. Most of them didn’t work, but here is the one that still works. I am not using any websites because I can see the updated datacenters on my toolbar.

Do you want to see live google pr update on your toolbar also? Follow the tutorial below: (Windows)

Open the Start Menu and click Run

Copy and Paste this into the Run box: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

Open the file Hosts in there with a notepad

Copy and paste the line below at the end of the page

209.85.139.101 toolbarqueries.google.com

Above is the IP that I am using to see the updates, Claims are that this IP is also working:209.85.139.104.

Well I have been seeing alot of increases in Pagerank, so I hope it went well for all of you. Feel free to share how the update went for you in the comments.

How many of you wondered about how to do Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns. I am sure many of you didn’t even try it in the fear of losing money. Because it is a type of thing where you can lose money, but If you know how to do it correctly, you can make alot of money from it. I know I have been doing PPC for all my websites, and they are the best way to get new users to your website and potentially sell your product as well. How did I learn? Well I learnt through trial and error, and I did waste alot of my own money learning it, but you have a better chance. Because MSN Adcenter is now giving away $75 for free to all new advertisers who sign up through the link given by Balkhis because the URL includes a coupon which will get you $75 credit in your account. I wish that I can just post the coupon codes out here for you guys, but the coupon is generated through their script, so it is different everytime.

What is PPC?

Pay Per Click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and other websites where the advertisers pay when the user clicks on the ad to visit the advertiser’s website. You as an advertiser get to pick keywords that you think brings the targetted audience to your website, and bid for those keywords. The higher you bid the higher spot you will get and vice versa with low bids. The goal of the PPC Advertisers is to get the right keywords, and pay the right amount of bid to get a decent spot.

Also publishers like MSN, Yahoo, Google displays ads on content websites through the relevancy of the content of that page, so your ad can be displayed to the websites on your niche. This way you are getting your brand out there even when a person don’t click the URL, and if they do you are getting more targetted traffic. This is the safest way right now as you already know about paid linking storm by google.

Microsoft Staff were kind enough to offer this to me when I asked them about visiting their Headquarters in one month. (Yup you guys will see photos) So are you ready to try it?

Here is the deal, Microsoft will credit your account if you sign up through the link given by Balkhis and enter the coupon that the link generates for you. All what you have to do is have a valid Credit Card because they charge $5 account set up fee.

But in reality, I think that is worth paying because you are getting $75 for $5. So If and only if in the end you didn’t learn anything you have only wasted $5 rather than your own $75 from your pocket like you would have if you

When I first started, I invested about $100 in PPC and didn’t get enough return, but I learned through that much money. The money I invested was my own money from my own pocket, where as you will be only putting in your $5 to get $75 credit. If you ever desired to learn about PPC, this is your ultimate chance to try it. Reading Books by professionals won’t get you anything because those professionals have tried and tried and experienced it all thats how they are willing to sell that book to you. You need to be experienced in the webmaster field and this is just one more way of advertising that you should always know because this is what gives your project a boost start. Click here to claim your coupon to try out Microsoft adCenter free* with a $75 credit for paid search clicks.

Webmasters look for affordable and reliable hostings every day. Specially those who are new in the industry because they have no idea where to find the right web host. Sometimes searching on Google, sometimes at different forums, after years of experience and hassle one finally finds the right webhost. Well, I was asked to review a company that makes your Web Hosting Search easy.

What is Web Hosting Search?

Web Hosting Search is a company created by professional webmasters who have had experience with webhosts in past years. This site consist of a list of different webhosts sorted from good to bad. Cheapest to more advanced webhosts. This is basically a one stop shop. Pick the host you like, go to that host and get your hosting. All to all, this is not just reviewed by few people, every user is allowed to put their reviews about the webhost, so you get to hear what others think about the company before you sign up and have a bad experience.

Enough with the description of the site lets get on to see some of the features that they have.

Starting with the first glance of the page, you will see a navigation that shows the categories by which the hosts are categorized. These categories are as listed, Cheap Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Reseller Web Hosting etc etc.All hosts are sorted by the prices. A feature that would be nice to have which this site lack is the sorting option for users where they can see a list by highest ranking score, or worst ranking score.

Though their advanced search menu makes up for the lack of the feature that I think they should still have.

As you can see in the screenshot, this search method, will let you specify your settings and then run the search in their database to find the right host for you. Making your search webhosting search easy. I think that should be the new slogan for this website.

If you decide to go into [Read the full review in the post]

I got a question over the email from one of the reader after they saw the post I answered yesterday. How to get Top 10 rankings in google for your keyword? I am going to answer this question in my post. Eventhough I mentioned Google because that is the most popular Search Engine, but this technique will work with other popular seach engines as well such as Yahoo, and MSN.

As a webmaster, each and every single one of us wants our websites to rank high in seach engines to get organic traffic. A traffic that you don’t necessarily pay for which is targetted. But sometimes it becomes a hard task to rank in the top 10 in google and other search engines. While it is a hard task, It is not impossible. With the right techniques used, you can rank in the top 10 before you will know it.

The ranking process will begin at the selection of keywords. Quiet frankly I believe as the generation is getting more internet savvy, it is pointless to target one word keywords. Such as website, or blogs. People know by searching this sort of terms in google they will get tons of results and it is too hard to find what they are looking for.

Take the keyword ‘Blogs’ for example shows 697 million results in google.

Whereas say the user was looking how to set up a blog. They won’t look at the term blogs. They will look up the term “How to set up a blog”. So if you rank high for this term it will be more beneficial for you rather than the term blogs itself. It is good to rank for one word keywords, but in my eyes those are just bragging rights nothing more. So pick your keywords wisely. (Preferably long tail keywords)

Next you would need to have a Search Engine Optimized pages in your website. Meaning you need to have a decent coded design which is seo friendly. Next thing you want to do is make sure that you are using the keywords in the right places. Such as titles of categories (Hint: these are usually h2 tags), For bloggers titles of post (because these are h2 tags). Also you need to use these titles on image alt tags, title tags, in your meta description, meta keywords. Try to use them differently, don’t just copy and paste 3 word keywords in all your image alts. Make it relative.

Which takes me to my next point is that you need to build links to that page of your site. Wait a minute did I just say build links. No I meant build relevant links. Don’t just go out and buy links on any site that is cheap or have high rankings. But buy it from the sites that are on your niche. I have seen from past projects that google tend to weigh the relevant links more than the non-relevant links. Also buying links on just any site can also get you penaltised as google is getting strict on text links.

What could be a better way to get tons of backlinks than having quality unique content on that page. By providing content that attract your audience, you are likely to get backlinks from other sites in your niche. Original content can also get you higher ranking in Seach Engines, so use that. Don’t even think about using duplicate content because it will cause you to be penaltised in google.

Above is a small guide that you can use to rank in the top 10. I am sure you will have no problems if you do the general tips that I listed above. If anyone have any more questions that they want answered feel free to email me using the contact form.