Webmastering: Semantic Web

Wikipedia.org Definition: The Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.
SemanticWeb.org wiki definition: The Semantic Web is the extension of the World Wide Web that enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and websites. It has been described in rather different ways: as a utopic vision, as a web of data, or merely as a natural paradigm shift in our daily use of the Web. Most of all, the Semantic Web has inspired and engaged many people to create innovative semantic technologies and applications. semanticweb.org is the common platform for this community.

Semantic web is one of the Web3.0 technologies.

Semantic Vs. Syntax?

Syntax in linguistics: is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages.

Semantic: is the study of meaning.

How Semantic Web (SW) works?

Although the computers present the data (texts, imges & videos) from any given website well, yet computers doesn't understand the content of the website sent data.

Semnatic web aims to give a computer valid meaning for the data sent through any given website, through applying metadata to any given site, to make these data readable by computers.

Such process will help much the quality of search results dramatically.

The process is simple, suppose that you have a blog where you post essays about technology and gadgets, with different images, videos.

Now you want to improve your rank through search results for semantic web search engines, you are going to mark up your videos with metadata, it is easier for semantic search engines to relate, find and exchange information about the content posted.

Webmastering: Beyond Web 3.0

Experts of the Web, seem to have no limit for their expectations about the Web.

Next is a part of "Howstuffworks.com: Beyond Web 3.0"

Some Experts opinions About the Web:

• According to technology expert and entrepreneur Nova Spivack, the development of the Web moves in 10-year cycles. In the Web's first decade, most of the development focused on the back end, or infrastructure, of the Web. Programmers created the protocols and code languages we use to make Web pages. In the second decade, focus shifted to the front end and the era of Web 2.0 began. Now people use Web pages as platforms for other applications. They also create mashups and experiment with ways to make Web experiences more interactive. We're at the end of the Web 2.0 cycle now. The next cycle will be Web 3.0, and the focus will shift back to the back end. Programmers will refine the Internet's infrastructure to support the advanced capabilities of Web 3.0 browsers. Once that phase ends, we'll enter the era of Web 4.0. Focus will return to the front end, and we'll see thousands of new programs that use Web 3.0 as a foundation [source: Nova Spivack].

• The Web will evolve into a three-dimensional environment. Rather than a Web 3.0, we'll see a Web 3D. Combining virtual reality elements with the persistent online worlds of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), the Web could become a digital landscape that incorporates the illusion of depth. You'd navigate the Web either from a first-person perspective or through a digital representation of yourself called an avatar.
  

• The Web will build on developments in distributed computing and lead to true artificial intelligence. In distributed computing, several computers tackle a large processing job. Each computer handles a small part of the overall task. Some people believe the Web will be able to think by distributing the workload across thousands of computers and referencing deep ontologies. The Web will become a giant brain capable of analyzing data and extrapolating new ideas based off of that information.

• The Web will extend far beyond computers and cell phones. Everything from watches to television sets to clothing will connect to the Internet. Users will have a constant connection to the Web, and vice versa. Each user's software agent will learn more about its respective user by electronically observing his or her activities. This might lead to debates about the balance between individual privacy and the benefit of having a personalized Web browsing experience.

• The Web will merge with other forms of entertainment until all distinctions between the forms of media are lost. Radio programs, television shows and feature films will rely on the Web as a delivery system.

it's too early to tell which (if any) of these future versions of the Web will come true. It may be that the real future of the Web is even more extravagant than the most extreme predictions. We can only hope that by the time the future of the Web gets here, we can all agree on what to call it.

As per my comment the Web is still under discovering it's real potential.

SEO: White hat Vs. Black hat SEO Techniques.

SEO Practices are divided into two types:

• White Hat Techniques
• Black Hat Techniques

White Hat Techniques:
are the techniques that are recommended by search engines, to enhance the quality of the website traffic by using good practice techniques in design and developmentand to make the website more appealing to visitors.

Usually, in white hat techniques the SEO aspects are involved in every step through the way from analysis to the development passing by designing, hosting, domain name selection and promotion.

SEO Activities:

• Review of your site content or structure.
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages.
• Content development.
• content enhancing.
• Management of online business development campaigns.
• Keyword research.
• SEO training.
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies.
• organic natural web design and development.
• fixing content.

BTW: Abiding to the W3C Design Guidelines is not an answer to your SEO issues, But of course abiding to the W3c standards will not hold back your SEO activities on the contrary it will enhance your site from within.

the most important W3C standard that concern content is the accessibility guidelines.

Black Hat Techniques (spamdexing):

black hat techniques are more concerned with spamming or fooling the search engine indexing algorithms by studying the algorithms' methodology and use these knowledge to cram the black hat site in search engines in a process called spamdexing.

The earliest known reference to the term spamdexing is by Eric Convey in his article "Porn sneaks way back on Web," The Boston Herald, May 22, 1996, where he said:

The problem arises when site operators load their Web pages with hundreds of extraneous terms so search engines will list them among legitimate addresses. The process is called "spamdexing," a combination of spamming — the Internet term for sending users unsolicited information — and "indexing."

Common spamdexing techniques can be classified into two broad classes: content spam (or term spam) and link spam.

Content Spam:

• Keyword stuffing: it is the stuffing of keywords deliberately in the pages whether hidden or visible to make the page appear to search engine crawler as legitimate page for the chosen keywords, this technique manipulates the older indexing algorithms which were built for counting the wordings in the page to determine the density of a given web page and upon the counting the rank is determined.
  
• Hidden or invisible for unrelated texts: usually, by tiny texts, background colored texts, off-margin DIV tags, zero-height zero-width DIV tags Or using No script Section, No Frame Section.
  
• Meta tag stuffing: using the meta tags to stuff keywords that are unrelated to the site content.
• Gateway Or Doorway pages: Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. They are designed to rank highly within the search results, but serve no purpose to visitors looking for information.
• Scraper sites: are websites built using programs that scrape data Or wordings from various websites or search engines and pack these search words together in a website, this type of websites is also called "built for Adsense" as the name suggests the website usually contains Adsense Ads that are integrated within the site content.
  

Link spam: takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, such as Google's PageRank algorithm, which gives a higher ranking to a website the more other highly ranked websites link to it.

• Link farms: Creating a close network of links within separated pages.
  
• Hidden links: Putting links where they won't be seen in order to increase link popularity. Highlighted link text can help rank a webpage higher for matching that phrase.
• Sybil attack: This is the forging of multiple identities for malicious intent. A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs known as spam blogs.
• Spam blogs: Spam blogs, also known as splogs, are fake blogs created solely for spamming, by redirecting users by links to the main spamdexed site, They are similar in nature to link farms.
• page hijacking: This is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites, this considered more like phishing than page hijacking as SEO Technique, yet phishing is going further in scamming the visitors in a cyber crime. page hijacking is considered a type of cloaking.
  
• buying expired domains: Some link spammers monitor DNS records for domains that will expire soon, then buy them when they expire and replace the pages with links to their pages. Now Google resets the link data on expired domains, which is somewhat important aspect to take care if you are a fellow webmaster, Rule1: don't let your Domain Name Expire.
• Cookie stuffing: This involves placing an affiliate tracking cookie on a website visitor's computer without their knowledge, which will then generate revenue for the person doing the cookie stuffing. This not only generates fraudulent affiliate sales, but also has the potential to overwrite other affiliates' cookies, essentially stealing their legitimately earned commissions, this earnings are realized when a user is registered to the business website.

Using world-writable pages

• Spam in blogs: This is the placing or solicitation of links randomly on other sites, usually blog comments, guestbooks and forums.
  
• Comment spam: is a form of link spam that has arisen in web pages that allow dynamic user editing such as wikis, blogs, and guestbooks. and it is similar to the spam in blogs
  
• Wiki spam: Using the open edit-ability of wiki systems to place links from the wiki site to the spam site. The subject of the spam site is often unrelated to the wiki page where the link is added, and this technique is also called Vandalis.
• Referrer log spamming: referrer-log spam may be used to increase the search engine rankings of the spammer's sites, by getting the referrer logs of many sites to link to them.By having a robot randomly access many sites enough times, with a message or specific address given as the referrer, that message or Internet address then appears in the referrer log of those sites that have referrer logs.

Other types of spamdexing

• Mirror websites: Hosting of multiple websites all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs. Some search engines give a higher rank to results where the keyword searched for appears in the URL.
• URL redirecting: Taking the user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g., using META refresh tags, Flash, JavaScript, Java or Server side redirects
• Cloaking: Cloaking refers to any of several means to serve a page to the search-engine spider that is different from that seen by human users. It can be an attempt to mislead search engines regarding the content on a particular web site. Cloaking, however, can also be used to ethically increase accessibility of a site to users with disabilities or provide human users with content that search engines aren't able to process or parse. It is also used to deliver content based on a user's location; Google itself uses IP delivery, a form of cloaking, to deliver results. Another form of cloaking is code swapping, i.e., optimizing a page for top ranking and then swapping another page in its place once a top ranking is achieved.

Finally, According to W3 Consortium that site design guides for accessibility will eventually clash with the SEO Good practices, That means that complying with any of the guidelines or practice will conflict with the other's guidelines and good practices.

Webmastering: Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

Web 2.0: is a terminology coined by Dale Dougherty of O'Reilly Media,to simply notify the tremendous changes in the web as a media.

Web 2.0 Refers to the use of the same technologies yet in different techniques for the site development and execution to allow better user experience through easy sharing, bloging , RSS service, social networking.

web 2.0 refers to websites that:

• Give the ability to users to add and change the content of the website (that belongs to Web 2.0 website) such as Amazon.com, Forums.
• Give the ability to people tio link to each others in a huge social networks, such as Facebook.com, MySpace.
• Give the ability to visitors to easily share content, such as YouTube.com.
• Extend the use of the internet to other devices than Personal computer and laptops, many people now extend the use of internet to cellular phones, gaming concoles and in the near future television sets will join the horde or face teh extinction, just like the late VCR.
• Also, allowing the users to grab a quick news alerts using RSS (Really Simple Syndicate), wihtout going through a dozen of web sites to get this mission accomplished.

Web 2.0 is intended to be:

1. The internet is an applications platform (cloud Computing).
2. Democratizing the web (allowing more people to share and add and change data in the Web 2.0 websites).
3. Employ more mehtods of information discloser (open information range).

Q: What is Web 1.0?

A: that is a simple question to ask, yet controversal to answer.

Web 1.0: is -as a casual not professional answer- whatever website that doesn't provide any of the Web2.0 services.

Let's think of Web 1.0 as a library, you can useit a source of information but you can't share the onformation nor you can contribute to this library.

in the library example Web 2.0 is a group of friends, while you can recieve information you can share and contribute information within this group of friends.

Web 1.0 Refers to websites that:

1. aren't Interactive: might contain useful data, but not continiuosly changing and growing data.
2. are Static, Visitors of these websites aren't able to Add or Change any part of the data.
3. aren't open source, Web 1.0 depends on proprietary software that is owned by companies and not allowable by public to alter or add any code snippets to it, on contrary is the open source software where poeple, publicly, own the software and its code is opened to be altered or added to.

Q: What is Web 3.0?

Web 3.0 is -in short- personalizing the web to the visitors, it is the upcoming revolution in the web techniques.

Many experts believe that the Web 3.0 browser will act like a personal assistant. As you search the Web, the browser learns what you are interested in. The more you use the Web, the more your browser learns about you and the less specific you'll need to be with your questions.

As I write this blog entry, I know that Google uses Google Account to personalize search results for registered visitors.

Many experts compare Web 3.0 to a giant database, which will use the Internet to make connections with information.

A Web 3.0 search engine could find not only the keywords in your search, but also interpret the context of your request. It would return relevant results and suggest other content related to your search terms.

Experts believe that:

• Web 3.0 will provide users with richer and more relevant experiences.
• with Web 3.0, every user will have a unique Internet profile based on that user's browsing history.
• the foundation for Web 3.0 will be application programming interfaces (APIs). An API is an interface designed to allow developers to create applications that take advantage of a certain set of resources.
• Web 3.0 will start fresh. Instead of using HTML as the basic coding language, it will rely on some new -- and unnamed -- language. These experts suggest it might be easier to start from scratch rather than try to change the current Web.

Experts beliefs are more applicable and going into actual steps.

I hope to see more virtual reality to the Web 4.0

SEO: Introduction

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process to improve the volume (number of visitors) and the Quality (type of visits, duration of each visit, type of information requested or fulfilling a marketing target) of a website from the traffic referred by search engines via natural (organic, Algorithmic) search results for targeted, relevant keywords.

To say an optimized website is to be the first in search engine results for the targeted keywords, by simply having the highest rank for that search subject.

The first site in search engines is the website that has the highest rank in the required keyword.

SEO is also applicable to many other types of data, like images, videos, local searches and industry specific vertical search.

As a matter of fact, search engine algorithms get changing all the time, so instead of trying to fool the algorithms, it is considered a better practice to concentrate on building an Effective SEO strategy targeting the website potential users.

An Effective SEO strategy will typically include:

1. How search engine algorithms work?
2. what are your prospect clients looking for regarding your Industry?
3. What is the subject for your website?
4. Building a website with a professional content.
5. Find the prospect visitors to your website.
6. Spread the word.

In short SEO is increasing a site relevancy to prospect and existing visitors.

SEO is better to be integrated with the early steps of your website developing, since SEO involve:

• site coding

• presentation of the core product

• structure of WebPages in an intuitive way

• Fixing programmatically errors that prevent search engines from getting the website from being crawled and indexed.