Ways to check if your website is really down.

1. Siteuptime.Com / Hyperspin.Com
2. Ping & Traceroute
3. Check your website from another location or ask your friend

Click here for the complete information.
Link: http://support.hugepixels.net/websiteisreallydown.html

Using Blog PR to Promote Your Site
By Adam McFarland of iPrioritize

The recent trend of using the press release to promote an online business has emerged with good reason – good press costs very little and can do more for a business than thousands of dollars of marketing. Most businesses use press distribution services like PR Web or PRFree to get the word out about their news. While distribution services certainly can be effective, they tend to miss out on arguably the most influential group of the press – bloggers.

Bloggers mold and shape the opinions of their readers, who are normally the most important in their particular industry, many of whom are also bloggers. Not long after a post from an influential blogger, your news has been picked up by several other bloggers and within days you are all over the blogsphere. Before you know it your site is getting more attention than it would if a story ran in the local newspaper! So how do you get the influential bloggers in your industry to run a story about your business?

Why Would Anyone Do a Story About Your Business?

Are you a new company? Did you just launch a new product that they could review? Did your business wín an award? Are you a group of college kids who started a company on savings from your summer jobs? You get the idea. There needs to be a reason that someone would want to read about you. Bloggers take pride in the content they feed their readers. You don’t stand a chance of getting a blogger to write about you if you don’t have a story that their readers will be interested in.

Research Bloggers in Your Industry

More is less when it comes to contacting bloggers. Buy a list of 1,000 bloggers and send out a generic email to all of them and you’ll likely get no response. But send a small amount of personalized emails to the appropriate bloggers and you’ll be shocked at how many positive responses you get.

The first step is to make a list of the bloggers that would be interested in your story. You can generally get a feel for whether or not a blogger would be interested in your story by reading a couple of posts and checking out their bio. If they’ve done a few similar stories in the past or they are heavily involved in your industry, there is a good chance they’ll want to hear your story. If not, leave them off your list and move on.

The single best method that I have found to research blogs is the Technorati Blog Directory. You can peruse blogs in your industry in order of “authority” - how important Technorati thinks a blog is. This is extremely useful. For example, if you are in the travel industry, you can view a list of the most influential blogs in the world of travel.

Another great way to find the right bloggers is to search through your competitors press sections on their websites to see what blogs have mentioned them. You can also find out who has mentioned your competitors by looking at the sites that have linked to them (type in “links:www.theirsite.com” on Yahoo!). There’s a good chance that if they found your competitors story interesting, they’ll find your story interesting as well.

Compose Your Email

The best way to contact bloggers is by email. The good news is that most bloggers make themselves easy to access and provide their email addresses on their blogs. The bad news is that most people don’t know what to do with said email address once they get it. Use the following outline for your email and you’ll see amazing results:

* Have a simple subject. You probably won’t get many responses by treating your email like a press release and writing RELEASE in the subject line. Try something simple like “fan of your blog” or “comment about your blog.” You want to make sure they actually read your email and don’t mentally mark it as späm when they see the subject.

* Start by complementing them. Since you’ve read their blog and learned about them from their bio, you know quite a bit about them. Use it to your advantage. Compliment them on your favorite post, or how cool it is that they worked for XYZ company.

* Request them to post about you (be direct). In three sentences or less, tell them your story, why you think it would be of interest to them and their readers, and respectfully ask that they write a post about it. Be direct and to the point. They will respect that.

* Offer something in return. You have something that could help them. Maybe it’s a link back to their blog from your personal blog, or maybe you could provide them with a free product or service that could help them or their business. One way or another, there’s something you have to offer them in return for the time spent on a post about you.

* Close with something nice. Thank them for their time and wish them luck with their blog and/or business ventures.

Notice that of the five components of the email, only one is about your story. The rest of the email is spent complimenting them and offering them something. Your chances of getting a positive response have just gone through the roof. Every blogger, no matter how large, likes to hear that people are enjoying their posts.

Respond Promptly and Respectfully

Not everyone is going to agree to run your story. Some will say that they don’t do that type of thing or that they don’t have time. Since you have been so nice as to compliment them, they will still usually reply either way. Regardless of the response, be sure to thank them for their time and wish them luck with their ventures. You nevër know when they will encounter someone who needs your product or service in the future (remember, they are in your industry) and if they have a positive image of you and your company they will undoubtedly give you a good recommendation.

Sit Back and Watch the Traffíc Roll In

Over the course of the next few weeks you will see post after post appear about your business. Be sure to send another thank you email to the blogger after the post and also be sure to promptly provide whatever you offered them in return. At this point you have developed a mutually beneficial relationship with someone important in your industry that can become invaluable over time.

That wasn’t that hard was it? With a little research and a carefully crafted email, any business can effectively use blog PR to drive traffíc to their site.

About The Author
Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize - simple to-do lists that can be edited at any time from any place in the world. Email, print, chëck from your mobile telephone, subscribe via RSS, and share with others.

Webmaster Tips

By Sharon Housley

According to Matt Cutts, there are over 100 factors that affect search engine ranking. For those of you who don’t know, Matt is a Google guy guru, he is employed by Google but writes an independent blog and shares information related to Google and search engine optimization. Unfortunately, of those 100 items that account for search engine ranking, there are only a few that webmasters can actually control.

Unless you are a interested in an exercise of futility, it is important to only focus on those ranking factors that you, as a webmaster, can control and influence.

What Search Engine Factors Do Webmasters Control?

Outside of the obvious (webpage title and description) those items over which the webmaster has the most control are: PageRank, TrustRank, Anchor Text, Keyword Density, Domain Age, URL, and Relevant Links.

How Can a Webmaster Use These Items to Help Ranking? First off–the obvious, each and every web page should have a descriptive page specific title and description. The title, description, and header tags are channels to communicate the most important details of a specific webpage. They should be used effectively, but not be abused. The web page should make use of h1 and h2 tags (header tags) to emphasize pertinent keywords and phrases.

Particular attention should be paid when formatting urls. Keywords related to the webpage can and should be used in the webpage urls. Use hyphens rather than underscores between the keywords. Search engines are designed by developers and programming languages will recognize a hyphen and distinguish separate words, while an underscore blends the words. Keywords in the URL should not be abused, as search engines do not appreciate excessively long urls. Avoid using characters like ID= in the URL since many search engines will see it as a unique session ID and not spider the contents of the webpage.

The website’s navigation depth should not exceed 3-4 levels. The shallow website depth will make search engines deep crawl easier, ensuring that they will be able to spider the entire content of your website. If you add a new page and wish for it to be spidered quickly, add a link to it from an existing spidered web page.

Domain hostíng and location do matter! A .uk domaín and a webhost located in the UK will increase the domains search engine position in any .uk search engine. If you are targeting a specific region or market consider purchasing a local domain.

Obviously you control the websites content; bad content or no content means no incoming links. Good content has the potential to attract good quality unsolícited links.

What Kind of Content Generally Attracts Quality Links?

The idea is to develop quality content that will result in incoming links. Think of JibJab. They portrayed a controversial subject in a humorous way without alienating their audience. While JibJab was able to garner a lot of attention, it’s a tricky tight-rope to walk. Consider adding tutorials that explain a specific technology, create a niche directory or a topic specific glossary, post industry news, maintain a blog with fresh content, or write how to articles.

Take advantage of your content. If you write a press release don’t just send it to the editors, add it to your website in a press center. Submit the press release to public relations websites. There are a number of press related websites like PRWeb that are really good and all will result in good quality incoming links back to your website. Also add your press release(s) to an RSS feed. Not only will this communicate to your customers that new products or updates are available, but you will also benefit from RSS search engine and directory links.

When you post a release or content that has genuine value, use social bookmarking tools (like digg, del.icio.us, furl) to bookmark the content. These social bookmarking sites are becoming increasingly important in weighing the value of a site. The large search engines do not yet use social bookmarking in their algorithms, but it is quite possible, and highly likely, that they will in the future. If the webpage/content has genuine value, others will social bookmark it as well. The bookmarks are viral and with increasing popularity there is more emphasis placed on content. Additionally, bloggers notoriously skim social bookmarking sites for content to write about which will result in additional links. Keep in mind that in order to bookmark a webpage, it really must have genuine value.

Before we talk more about links, there are a few warnings worth mentioning.

What are the Link Warnings?

The first is to attain links gradually. Search engines prefer links obtained over time rather than links achieved all at once. Avoid link schemes, link farms, or overt reciprocal links. They can be time consuming and have very little benefit. Avoid links on the C block. If you own multiple domains, be sure not to triangulate links. Search engines have become wise to this and they prefer a linking scheme that is more like a star (or web).

What Keywords Should You Optimize For?

When determining what keywords to optimize a website for, there are a number of tools that will assess the number of times that a keyword or phrase is searched on, the number of websites/ webpages competing for that keyword or phrase, and rate the phrase. Obviously, the terms that have more searches and less competition are the best to optimize for–if, and only if, they relate to your product or service. If you optimize for terms that are too broad, you will likely increase traffíc but decrease your conversions.

It is really a balancing act. Two of the more popular tools available are Keyword Discovery and Word Tracker. Also, talk to friends or family members and ask what phrases they would use to describe your product or service. You might be surprised at the terms they use. Consider optimizing for regional variations. Look at the variety of terms used to describe soda - tonic, pop, soda, soda pop, or cola are all relevant and popular, but only within a specific region. Examine web logs to determine what your users are using, look at the language used in emails and forum posts and consider optimizing specific pages for popular descriptive terms. And finally, use competitive intelligence to locate links and keywords. What are your competitors using? Analyze the adwords they bid on, look at their meta tags, look at their anchor links.

There is a wealth of information out there. No real mystery to it, so use it to your advantage.

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage a wireless text messaging software company.

Understanding HTML Color Codes
By Fred Black (c) 2006

When I help people with web pages, I encourage them to edit the HTML directly and not rely on programs like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe GoLive to layout their pages. One of the things that most people have a hard time grasping is what HTML Color Codes mean and how they work.

HTML Color Codes are 6 characters wide and look like “#80FF12″. This is really made up of 3 2-digit hex numbers that represent Red, Green, and Blue. I probably just lost a good portion of the readers, didn’t I? Let me back up and explain some things about hex values and color.

How to describe a color using numbers? There are a lot of ways to specify a particular color, but one of the ways that’s used with computers is to specify the values of Red, Green, and Blue to mix together to achieve the desired color. As we vary the amounts of Red, Green, and Blue we can create most any color you desire.

Why does this relate to computers? Computer displays, TVs, LCDs, and other “projected light” display devices use pixels to display what you see on the screen. The color value for those pixels is specified in a RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) value. For example, if your PC monitor is set to 1024 x 768 resolution, then there are 768 lines (going across your screen from top to bottom) on your screen, each line has 1024 pixels or little dots in it. Each of those pixels or little dots is actually made up of three smaller dots or light sources: a red one, a green one, and a blue one.

Ink is different. Printers that you use with your computer generally specify color as a four (or more) color “reflective” ink value made up of Yellow, Magenta, Cyan, and Black which is abbreviated as YMCK. Your computer uses formulas to convert the RGB values to CMYK values so that you can print what you see on your screen accurately.

How does the computer represent a RGB color value? As 3 separate values (one for Red, one for Green, and one for Blue) and each one ranges between 0 and 255. If you count the 0 as a value, that’s a total of 256 possible values. When you put the Red, Green, and Blue values together to represent a color, you get a possibility of 16.7 million colors (256 x 256 x 256). That’s a lot of colors and most people consider this to be “true” color because it can represent most photographs and images.

OK then, what is a Hex value? I’m glad you asked! Your computer stores information as single ones and zeros. Each of these tiny single values is called a “bit”. We then combine 8 of these “bits” to make a “byte”. So a byte is 8 bits. If you recall from high school math, you can count in various “bases”. We normally use base 10 or “decimal”, which uses 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 to represent a number. Likewise, if we use the ones and zeros I just mentioned, we’re talking about just two possible values for each digit, 0 or 1, and this is called base 2 or “binary”. However, in computers, we also use base 16, or hexadecimal (hex for short) because it packs more values into a single space. Hex uses the following digits to represent a number: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F. To represent the number 128 in decimal or base 10 takes 3 digits (128), in binary it takes 8 digits (10000000), and in hex or base 16 it takes just 2 digits (80). So by using hex values we save storage space and gain efficiency.

OK, my head hurts now, how does this relate to HTML color codes? HTML colors codes are made up of 3 sets of hex numbers, one for Red, one for Green, and one for Blue.

For example:
000000 is black (0’s for all three colors)
FFFFFF is white (255’s for all three colors)
FF0000 is all RED (255 for Red, 0 green, 0 blue)
00FF00 is all GREEN (0 Red, 255 green, 0 blue)
0000FF is all Blue (0 red, 0 green, 255 blue)
FFFF00 is Yellow (255 red, 255 green, and 0 blue)
808080 is a gray (128 red, 128 green, and 125 blue)

Generally in HTML, you also put a “#” in front of the color code, but this is not necessary when you specify all 6 digits. If you make profiles for mySpace.com, leave off the “#” too because they filter them and it won’t display the color correctly if you use the “#”.

You can use the calculator that comes with Microsoft Windows to convert between Decimal and Hex values. Open the calculator and select View and then Scientific. Once you do this, you’ll see more buttons and controls on the calculator. Clíck “Dec” and the key in a number. Now clíck “Hex” and it’ll convert the number to hex. To convert from Hex to Dec, clíck on “Hex”, key in the number, and then clíck “Dec”. Sometimes you’ll get a color specification in Decimal, for example (128, 30, 80) and you can use this method to convert it to hex (80, 1E, 50) which would look like this for your HTML color #801E50.

I hope you understand more about HTML Color Codes and how colors are stored and specified in computers.

About The Author
Visit Fred Black’s web site www.InternetMakeMoneyOnline.com. Discover how to Make Money Online with internet marketing techniques and skills that are easy to master - 100% Guarantëed.