If your webpages makes use of advertisements, you want to ensure that the most ads are displayed to your users. However, if users use the back button on their browser to navigate back on your site, chances are they won’t see a new ad on reloading an old page. You can overwrite these default settings by using one line of HTML code which will tell a user’s browser not to cache your page(s), thereby forcing them to reload the page again including viewing a new ad. Typically this tip should increase your advertising impressions by at least 15% if not greater, but be advised that a larger amount of bandwidth and resources will also be used to re-display the same webpages to web surfers. If your concerned about bandwidth conservation, do not apply the suggestions we make on this page.

HTML No-Cache Syntax

The cache setting can be controlled via three sets of META tags, “Expires”, “Pragma” and “Cache-Control”. Each of these META Tags will perform the same net effect and cause the web page to not be cached. The difference between each of them lies in the differences between how browsers interpret the results.

The “Expires” tag is an all browser tag which we recommend the most because it functions in all browsers and explicitly indicates to browsers that the page is to expire immediately and should therefore be reloaded now. In addition, webmasters have explicit control of defining exactly when a page will expire, whether it be now, in a few minutes or in a few months, this META Tag explicitly allows a set date for expiration. (Learn more about the Expires META Tag)

The “Pragma” tag only functions in Netscape browsers and for this reason we do not recommend its use since you essentially limit the ability to prevent caching to only Netscape users. The Pragma tag was specifically designed to interact with proxy servers that cache web sites into their local databases. It’s only option is to set the cache off if the tag is found, otherwise (if it is not found) it assumes that proxy caching is acceptable.

The “Cache-Control” tag specifies desired behaviour from a caching system and is understood by both clients and web servers. In order to prevent caching, the Cache-Control option should be set to “no-cache”. Our preference however still lies with the “Expires” tag simply because webmasters have more control and options of defining when a document will cease to be valid.

Sample Usage to Prevent Caching

Notice About These Implementations:
These cache prevention techniques override browsers’ cache settings which also means that each request will need to be re-issued which will cause an increase in bandwidth requirements. If your concerned about keeping bandwidth to a minimum, consider not using the techniques we cover on this page.

Reference: Submit Corner

META Tags are the most important tags that search engines use to categorize, prioritize and rank your website. Meta tags provide a very concise fashion for website owners to categorize their site by the most appropriate keywords and descriptions. Because of the great flexibility in giving the opportunity for webmasters to categorize their webpages, this also opens up the issue of abuse. Bear in mind that search engines have algorithms to prevent abuse of excessive meta tags, so there are some general principles that webmasters should adhere to such as:

Keep META Tags Short But Concise

Many webmasters realize that search engines use Description and Keyword META tags heavily and try taking advantage of this by writing very long descriptions and keywords. Search engines have a finite database and will only index a certain portion of your website. Try to keep your META tags simple and to the point. Search engines take into account the number of occurrences of each tag and may penalize your website’s rankings if you overuse META tags.

Avoid Using All Upper Case (Caps)

Some search engines used to prioritize websites that started with capital letters or those that had special characters such as numbers. This technique may still work with some older search engines, but beware that search engines are constantly on the lookout for abusers.

Avoid “Bridge” Pages

Bridge pages are pages which redirect a user to another page, which is often the page that the webmaster intended a user to go to directly. This practice is strongly discouraged by search engines as it clutters their databases with useless pages and opens the opportunity for users to spam search engines with irrelevant pages. Bridge pages are mostly associated with the META Refresh Tag.

Prioritize Your Keywords

Some search engines will read only the first few lines of your webpages to get an overview of your website. Search engines which do this may miss some of your META tags. As such, you should put focus on your description and keywords META tags with priority on the first few words.

Avoid Repetition

Try to avoid repeating the same keywords or descriptions in your meta tags. Often, search engines will degrade your rankings when they detect repetition of the same words in your META Tags. Should you need to use repetition, separate the repeated words from each other by a few other keywords.

An example of META tag usage:

<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”keywords, seperated, by, commas, 255, chars, maximum”>
<META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”Describe your website here, 255 characters maximum”>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”Content-Language” CONTENT=”EN”>
<META NAME=”author” CONTENT=”Author Name Here, 75 characters maximum”>
<META NAME=”copyright” CONTENT=”Copyright statement, 255 characters”>
<META NAME=”robots” CONTENT=”FOLLOW,INDEX”>

Reference: Submit Corner

If your website/blog uses images, image maps or pictures, you should always make use of the ALT tag. ALT tags are a property of the <img src> tag. It displays alternative text for users who cannot load images or have a problem loading an image. Search engines don’t see images, they read a website, so it’s a good idea to give your images a ALT description. In other words, giving your images alternative descriptions, will give search engines a verbal description of your images.

If your website/blog consits of a large number of images, it is vital to use alternative tags, as with many images, your content will probably be on a minimal side. A good image to always give an alterative tag to is the header image at the top of your website - this is often one of the first things a search engine will view.

The general layout of this tag is as follows:

<IMG SRC="image.ext" ALT="Alternative text in here">

An example would be:

<IMG SRC="header.jpg" ALT="Webtrepreneur Home Page">

The above example would give search engines a great idea of what the website is all above. I would suggest going a little further than my example above, and rather use the alternative tag to describe the website, like so:

<IMG SRC="header.jpg" ALT="Webtrepreneur making money online">

This will allow the search engine to understand your website right from the beginning. For Adsense users, this is a excellent way to get your adverts displaying relative media on a website with a large quantity of images.

It really interests me that I have not had a single Traffic Synergy sign up, since I posted an article on their services. I know that a large number, almost 70% of my readers are based in South Africa, and if you are reading my website, the chances are that you have a website/blog and are interested in monetizing your website. So why no signups? Perhaps what I need to do, is be a little more direct and give some proof.

I signed up to Traffic Synergies affilate services at the beginning of May, and have since then posted just a couple of their adverts across two of my websites. I have not had a great deal of time to put effort into it, so what I have made thus far, I think I would be safe saying, is bare minimum. The two sites I have posted their adverts on are Webtrepreneur and iMod. iMod is my personal blog, which does not get too much attension, and the traffic is nothing fantastic. Webtrepreneur gets decent traffic, around several hundred uniques a month, but is still in its very early stages. This being said, I have done bare minimum, with not a great deal of traffic to deal with, and my results are fairly fantastic if you ask me. I have probably spent around one hour setting up the adverts.

Commision Results:

Today: R11.76
Yesterday: R21.36
May: R108.80

Now, if you are into monetizing and know a bit about the scene, you will vouch that these results are pretty good considering the time and traffic I have had to play with. It is not a great deal of money, but R108.80 for an hours work (and I was programming at the same time I was doing it) is a good rate for any work. Besides, I was sitting in my room, drinking coffee, listening to music and playing around online while I was doing it - so yes, R100/hour is fantastic.

If you are more inspired now, give it a bash, spend an hour playing around, get a couple adverts up, and see what happens - that’s what this is all about - trial and error, and personally I am very happy with my R100. Take a look now!