Welcome to the latest issue of the SEO Chat newsletter. You already know that Google doesn't handle Flash or Flash-like technologies well, but sometimes you need to use it for certain projects; and let's face it, some clients love it. You probably know about Silverlight, Microsoft's alternative to Flash. Is it catching on? The article we're highlighting this week from eWeek may give you some idea. Now if we only knew how well Google handled Silverlight-based content as compared to Flash-based content!

With the economy down, and many people looking for work, now might be a good time to start a job board, or add one to your site. If you're thinking along those lines, you'll definitely want to read Wednesday's article on ways to boost your job board. For a more general discussion of ways you can boost your rankings in the search engines, don't forget to read Tuesday's article; it's the fourth one in a five-part series that takes a comprehensive look at ranking factors. And if you're hunting for more ways to make money online, Monday's article covers Internet-specific jobs. You're sure to find something that suits your skill set.

If you run a content-based site, as we do, you know that duplicate content can hurt your rankings. What you may not know is how Google's spiders see web sites and decide what counts as duplicate content. This week's thread takes a surprising look at one factor that can possibly cause this issue. You'll want to check it out, and then check to make sure you're not setting yourself up with the same problem.

There's more SEO-related information awaiting your perusal on Tutorialized. We added at least four brand new tutorials on that topic this month already, and April's not even half over yet. Don't forget to check out our other topics as well, especially if you do website design and development. Or why not share your knowledge by submitting your own tutorial? It's free, and you'll have the thanks of a grateful readership!

Our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, deals with a website ranking issue that is as sudden as it is heartbreaking. There could be any number of reasons for a website to experience a dramatic drop in the SERPs, but at least one of them can be prevented. If this has happened to you, it might not even be your fault. Then whose fault is it? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out.

As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

• News of the Weird is not just for idiots. It is for stupid people as well.
• Juan Valdezburg introduces his cousin. Do you understand me? Si, claro.
• The mad Russian is back sporting an angry looking Kremlin. Patrick Swayze seen angrily shaking fists after what he does to Red Dawn.

Watch the video!

According to a 2008 study by service research group The Inavero Institute, 72 percent of salaried job vacancies are posted on the Internet. The study also reveals that online job boards are the favorite recruitment tool of around half of all recruiting managers. These statistics strongly suggest that a job board is one of the best possible services to offer online. This article will help you give your job board a competitive edge.

The range of benefits of an online job board includes low setup costs, no stock, and minimal expertise requirements, and that is aside from the fact that recruitment services are the fifth most commonly searched for commodity on the Internet. Online recruitment is clearly a winning formula.

Of course, this means that competition is high for a slice of the recruitment cake, especially under the current challenging economic conditions, with jobs scarce and candidates numerous. In these circumstances it is vital to maximize the effectiveness of a job board.

Read Boost Your Job Board

See How To Build and Deploy a Web app
In this step-by-step video demo, you will learn from the masters as they show you how to get the most out of Iron Speed Designer.
Watch It Now!>

How Modern Code Generation Works
More IT shops are facing tighter deadlines and stretched development teams. That pressure, as well as the emergence of widely accepted standards and new technologies make database applications development tools more viable today than ever before.
Read More!>

Link Authority SEO Ranking Factors
by Ivan Strouchliak
2009-04-07

This is a fourth part of a five-part series on SEO factors for ranking your web site well in the search engine results pages (SERPs). In this article we talk about the URL of the page, link authority, PR, outbound links, number of outbound links and more.

Domain Authority Factors

There are several measurements of domain authority from the perspective of links: the QUALITY of links pointing to a domain, the QUANTITY of links, toolbar pagerank, domain rankings on search results and domain keyword relevance to the topic. Let us look at how each can affect the value of a link to your website:

• How quality of links that point to a domain affect a link that is pointed to your website.
  Example: www(dot)site1(dot)com links to you. How is a link from www(dot)site1(dot)com to your site affected by other links that point to www(dot)site1(dot)com?

Read Link Authority SEO Ranking Factors

WINDOWS WEB HOSTING
Innovation, stability and support: Gate.com's World Class Windows ASP NET Platform. Windows Web Hosting solutions like no other.

Consider the bar raised

Making Money Online with Internet-Specific Jobs
by Joe Eitel
2009-04-06

One development that has come with the advent of the Internet is the great ease with which countless individuals of highly varied backgrounds and capabilities are able to earn money by working online. Due to the nature of the Internet, there is a wide variety of jobs that can only be performed on the Internet, and can therefore be done at home from a personal computer.

For a variety of reasons, many people have always preferred or been forced to (by circumstances) stay home for the vast majority of the day. These are not career professionals or anything like that; they are stay at home parents, caretakers, students, and the like. These people still have a strong desire to make some cash with their spare time, but they do not want to subject themselves to the drudgery of a part-time job at a convenience store or fast food restaurant.

There are also plenty of career professionals that have some extra time to themselves after 5 PM every day. Rather than waste it, they figure that it would not hurt to earn some extra cash. Just as with those that stay at home, these professionals do not want to earn minimum wage doing a job that they would hate.

Read Making Money Online with Internet-Specific Jobs

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other
tech related tutorials.

Search Engine Optimization for Your Online Store
Getting a good ranking in search engines is essential.
Read the tutorial.

How to Choose Keywords
Part of SEO work is putting golden keywords in your website.
Read the tutorial.

Social Media Optimization Basics - Part 1
The basics of using social media sites in website promotion.
Read the tutorial.

How Search Engines Operate
How do search engines and their spiders actually work?
Read the tutorial.

Social Media Optimization Basics - Part 2
Harvesting the power of social media for website promotion.
Read the tutorial.

Duplicate Content
Avoid duplicate content in print ready pages.
Read the tutorial.

How can this SEO Newsletter be better?

What do you like or dislike about this issue?
Is there a topic you want to learn more about?
What issues in search engine news are important to you? We'll consider your suggestions and ideas for improvement,
so please email us. Email us.

Duplicate content issues can cause penalties in Google; the problem is, it isn't always clear what will cause duplicate content issues. This week's thread looks at one possibility. Be sure to stop by the thread and join the discussion.

Are redirects perceived as duplicate content?

Trying to help a friend with his Google rankings and I have noticed that he has 4 domains redirecting to his site. When I'm on his site the original redirecting URL remains in the address box, so it appears as if this is the domain where the site is. Question 1. Will Google penalize for duplicate content? 2. Are there any negative effects in terms of SEO for using this type of redirect with multiple domains? Thanks in advance; any advice will be appreciated.

Depends on the type of redirection: 302 redirection bad, 301 redirection good.

1. A 301 redirection is intended to stop content being seen as duplicated; it's there to clarify which domain you are actually using.

For instance, our company has mysite(dot)co(dot)uk, mysite(dot)com and www(dot)mysite(dot)co(dot)uk all pointing towards www(dot)mysite(dot)com.

2. A 301 redirection is there to prevent penalization, but a 302 can cause it.

If the URL stays in the address bar, it is not a 301 redirection. It is a parked/aliased domain, and yes, this can cause duplicate content issues.

If you are getting 200 OK from two domains which have the same content, then you need to decide which one you want to be your URL and 301 redirect the other to it.

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

SEO Writers Wanted for SEO Chat

Are you looking to write feature articles about SEO industry trends? In addition to being paid for your articles on SEO Chat you get your name in front of over 500,000 individual readers that access our site every day.
Find Out More...

Laid Low By Viruses

Many web sites today are database-driven; that is, their content is stored in a database, and when a user looks for a particular item, the page may be dynamically generated, with the content from the database going into the web site's template. Database-driven web sites serve a variety of purposes, and can be wonderful for both visitors and owners. But they can also present security risks, and breached security can cause some ugly SEO issues.

One of the newer members to our SEO Chat forums wrote in with a ranking problem that illustrates this point. He was ranking around page two to three for his chosen keyword, when he suddenly dropped to page 90. He checked Google's quality guidelines and felt pretty certain that he hadn't done anything wrong. But he did get a message from Google in his Webmaster Tools, stating that the search engine detected his other site as having a Trojan virus.

He honestly had no information about that virus. If his original site was pointing to his other, virus-infected site, it's no wonder that Google penalized the original site. But how could he have a virus and not know it?

The infection could be the result of an SQL injection attack. Forum member purdue512 explained that malicious hackers usually go through the URL string or perhaps form submits to try to run DECLARE and EXECUTE statements from a database's tables. First they determine your data schema, then they hunt for any varchar / text fields, he explained. Next they UPDATE these fields to add JavaScript or other external calls to scripts hosted somewhere else.

So your site might not be hosting the virus, but it is spreading it. Whenever anyone loads one of your web pages that happens to hit a field in the database that the hacker tampered with, the virus/Trojan script gets called, potentially infecting your visitors. And you may not even know it.

Google does, however; the search engine will remove such sites from its index, or throw up a warning that says This site may be dangerous. Often FireFox will also put a warning on the site. If you see this, you need to track down the changes made and fix them. You should also take appropriate security measures to prevent this from happening again. The good news is that, once you've cleaned up your site and kept it clean for three to seven days, you should get relisted with the same status you had before the problem started.