When trying to find information on the internet, you typically go to a search engine. When using the most popular search engine, Google, a user enters a query, Google’s machines search their index for matching pages and return the results that are the most relevant to the user. Google determines relevancy by over 200 factors, one of critical factors is the PageRank (PR) for a given page. PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In more detail, PR can be calculated using a simple iterative algorithm, and corresponds to the principal eigenvector of the normalized link matrix of the web, i.e., that sums up all backlinks and their associated ranking weight. We assume page A has pages T1…Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations)[1]. The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Note that the PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages’ PageRanks will be one. Also, a PageRank for 26 million web pages can be computed in a few hours on a medium size workstation. There are many other details which are beyond the scope of this article.

In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other [black-hat] practices that negatively impact search results. The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content. It is not the quantity of backlinks, but the quality of backlinks that help you rank better in Search Engines. Having backlinks from unrelated or “bad” sites can actually penalize your ranking. Also a 1,000 poor quality backlinks may have less weight than 1 high quality backlink. Quality is very important in creating your backlinks.

How to determine a quality backlink?

A quality backlink will have these characteristics:

1. The theme of the backlinking website is similar to your website or web page
2. The backlink’s anchor text has the keyword or keyphrase that you are optimizing for
3. The backlinking webpage has a Google PageRank (important for Google SEO) of 1 or higher (the higher the better)
4. The backlinking webpage has few outgoing links, the fewer the better (see above equation as to why)

In order for your site to rank well in search results pages, it’s important to make sure that Google can crawl and index your site correctly. WebPaws.com uses Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and white-hat techniques using some of the best practices that can help your website avoid common pitfalls and improve your site’s ranking.

[1] The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998, Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

PageRank: How to Rank Well with Google is a post from: WebPaws.com

To achieve a top listing with a search engine’s result page for a specific keyword or phrase for a specific web page or website, you need to analyze the structure of that page. The term “content is king” applies to some extent, but how the content is built, the structure of the XHTML is really important in making the content index to the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

Consider the behavior of a person reading a newspaper. Not all pages will be looked at in any detail, scanning headlines, key areas that stand out on a page or keywords of interest is what the reader will hone into. A web page is no different. Not only do you have to have good, original, relevant to the topic (key words), but you must "type-set" that content into a logical format that is easy to understand quickly. Once the reader is "hooked", more details within the article, info should be available either in finer print, links, images, or other relevant media for a web page to pull and keep the reader active.

This is where semantic structure of the page and content is very important. With the advent of mobile technology, page structure is even more important for a wider range of users to access your information. One tool by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has this semantic extraction tool to help you analyze your page’s semantic structure. Firefox has several add-ons that allow you to view a web pages semantic structure, usually based on the XHTML header tags <h1></h1>...<h6></h6>, <p></p> and other structural elements.

SEO best practices start at the foundation of a page and the semantic structure plays an important role along with good content, properly placed keywords, meta data, links, relevant media, XHTML element placement, usage and fine-tuning with their corresponding attributes.

SEO semantics: The foundation for top SERPs is a post from: WebPaws.com

SEO Lesson 5 – Social Media is a post from: WebPaws.com

Links are still an important criteria for positive web page rankings for most search engine algorithms. They are more direct in their weighting compared to other ranking criteria such as on-page keyword use and clicks in the SERPs. Attaining good links with weight can be time consuming requiring adequate research, permissions and use. Making your content stand out, attracting users to link to you is the best proactive method for gaining relevant links to propagate the link weight in your ranking score for the Search Engine (SE) algorithms. WebPaws.com will help you identify content that attracts link-backs and propogate your messages into the social media realm to increase your company’s overall web presence.

SEO – Links are still important for rankings is a post from: WebPaws.com

Top Social Media Websites

The below list represents the top 25 Social Media Websites in the world sorted by Alexa ranking which roughly represents the popularity of website for the last quarter of 2009. Google PageRank is also listed for weighting of popularity.

Top 25 Social Media Websites is a post from: WebPaws.com

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Instant Web Presence – Limited Time Offer – FREE Website is a post from: WebPaws.com

To properly put the date and time into a MySQL date field, you need to put it into the format of:

yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss


Here is some code to do this in classic ASP for input into a MySQL table:

Dim testdate, testmonth, testday, ISODate
testdate = Request.Form("frmField5")
testmonth = Right(Month(testdate),2)
testday = Right(Day(testdate),2)
ISODate = Year(testdate) & "-" & testmonth & "-" & testday & " " & hour(testdate) & ":" & minute(testdate) & ":" & second(testdate)


The ISODate variable is in the correct format to insert in a MySQL UPDATE or INSERT SQL statement. Below is an example SQL string to UPDATE a date field in a MySQL table:

UPDATE myTable SET thisdate = 'ISODate' WHERE myID = 'thisID'


Proper Date Time format for MySQL from classic ASP code is a post from: WebPaws.com

My preschool daughter asked me how to say the number 999,999,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  She was referring to general numbers and not scientific nomenclature, so I was thinking million, billion, trillion, but what comes after that? Quadrillion?  Yes, but then what?  So I did some research on large numbers, the “illions”, and found it quite fascinating.   As a matter of fact, there is a number named Googol, which has 100 zeros, e.g., 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Back to my daughter’s question, the answer is nine hundred and ninety nine octillion, nine hundred and ninety nine septillion.

Here is a handy list of large numbers and how they are named:

Million has 6 zeros  1,000,000

Billion has 9 zeros  1,000,000,000

Trillion has 12 zeros  1,000,000,000,000

Quadrillion has 15 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000

Quintillion has 18 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000

Sextillion has 21 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Septillion has 24 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Octillion has 27 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Nonillion has 30 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Decillion has 33 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Undecillion has 36 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Duodecillion has 39 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Tredecillion has 42 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Quattuordecillion has 45 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Quindecillion has 48 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Sexdecillion has 51 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Septendecillion has 54 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Octodecillion has 57 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Novemdecillion has 60 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Vigintillion has 63 zeros  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Googol has 100 zeros  10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Centillion has 303 zeros (except in Britain, where it has 600 zeros)  1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

And lastly, a Googolplex has googols of zeros.

Large Numbers: Millions, Billions and Googol! is a post from: WebPaws.com

Selling your products on the internet requires many factors to produce desired results:  such as great products, a good business model, supporting customer service, etc, but the key at the page level is providing very good communication about the  product.  Product descriptions should  inform, persuade and lead your customers to a sales transaction, which make them very powerful selling tools.  Listed below are several suggestions to increasing the time on page and time on site via well crafted product descriptions.

1. Educate: Educating your customers about your products provides additional value while you are teaching them how this product can improve their life, work, etc.  RadioShack does a good job of this with their Research library.
2. Use Persuasive Emotional Imagery: Let your customers see, hear, taste, touch, and smell your products through descriptions that create powerful images in their mind.  Understanding some basic psychology will help you in crafting your copy to show/describe what is important to the user (your targeted audience) to aid in persuading them to choose your product over your competitors products or even the same product but described differently.
3. Include a Call-to-Action: Don’t forget to add a call-to-action in your product description copy.  It is one thing to talk about your product, show great images, talk about its practicality, usage, benefits, etc. but if there is no way for the visitor (potential customer) to go the next step, you have failed in your endeavors to sell your product.  Put an action button such as “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” near the image or main product title.  You can also include a “Send me More Information” or “Call for More Information” link to
4. Focus on benefits, not just features: It is frustrating to listen to a salesperson rattling off useless specifications and features that you either don’t care about or don’t understand.  Focus on the unique benefits of your product. Instead of saying “This radio has over 100 presets” you can show the benefit that this radio can hold All of your favorite channels in memory. Another example, instead of saying “This handheld has blue tooth technology”, say that this handheld allows wireless updates, syncing and hands free usage.  Features are important, but should not be the focus, putting them in a table at the bottom of the page or in a separate page linked in the main product page can be a good idea.  Also allowing potential customers to compare features of similar items is a useful tool to helping the customer make a good choice.
5. Proofread Thoroughly: There’s nothing more embarrassing than being told by a customer that your product description is erroneous or contains typos. Make sure your descriptions are proof read by someone other than the original copywriter.
6. Use Customer Reviews: Allow your customers to describe or review your products. The information they provide will be very valuable to customers considering a purchase. Visitors may trust a user generated review even more than your own product descriptions.
7. Brevity is Good: Don’t overwhelm your customers at the outset with a huge, novel size product description.  Using a JavaScript enabled “Read more” link to hide or show additional product information will lighten the page, keeping focus on the crafted message of images key text and other key product describers.
8. Interactive Visual: Adding a product video or flash presentation will add a new dimension to the users experience, if done well, may enhance the customer’s understanding and interest of the product to help encourage a positive choice for purchase.  The video should show the product in use by a user highlighting it’s unique benefits, enticing the viewer to want this product because of its uniqueness in functions/benefits/features/productivity/time savings/etc.

Using most or all of these techniques will help to retain the customer on your product page a little longer.  This not only increases the Time on Page statistic but also the amount of information the customer is taking in on the product page which increases the likelihood of a sale, our ultimate goal.

Increase Time on Page & Site for Product Descriptions is a post from: WebPaws.com

Maintaining databases can be a chore, but knowing the appropriate SQL to do the job can save hours of time. Here is a tidbit regarding changing a select string of text within a specific field of a table in a MySQL database. You can edit 1000s of records with this one query:
UPDATE table SET field = REPLACE(field, 'text to be replaced', 'replacement text');

In this example, the table name is “table”, the field to find the text in is named “field”, the rest should be self explanatory.

MySQL – Replace Select Text within a Database Field is a post from: WebPaws.com