$199.99 or $399.99

Find out what the difference is between an OEM Vista and a Full Retail Version of Vista, and how you can save up to $200 on your Windows Vista purchase．

Microsoft’s four versions of Windows Vista is enough to throw any user off but that’s only counting Microsoft’s retail version of Vista. To add even more onto this confusion, there are also OEM versions of Windows Vista being sold. In this article, we will go over the differences between the two, and help you decide if saving that $200 on your purchase of Windows Vista Ultimate is a good idea. Before we begin, what is OEM anyway?

OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer.

Usually when these three letters (or words) pop up, you think of lousy packaging, reduced service, and very limited warranties. But when you are heading out to purchase Vista, you are dealing with a new definition of OEM.

First, lets go over the most obvious difference between the OEM and Retail version of Vista – the pricing. Pricing for the OEM versions are significantly cheaper. Let’s just see how much cheaper:

• Vista Home Basic OEM $99 (full version retail: $199) Savings: $100
• Vista Home Premium OEM: $119 (full version retail: $239) Savings: $120
• Vista Business OEM: $149 (full version retail: $299) Savings: $150
• Vista Ultimate OEM: $199 (full version retail: $399) Savings: $200

Much cheaper indeed than the full retail version.

Alright, we’ve got the pricing covered. Next we need to know what we are getting for the good money that Microsoft takes from your pocket. When you buy OEM Vista, you will be getting the whole package without all the nice pamphlets, manuals (if any), and any other pieces of paper that might encourage you to buy more of Microsoft’s products.
You might ask, what about the CD itself? In most cases, the OEM version of Vista will run exactly the same with a few exceptions:

1) Variation: If the Vista is bundled with any piece of hardware or computer, it is considered OEM. An example of this would be purchasing Vista with a computer manufacturer such as Dell or having it bundled with a motherboard or something similar. In most cases, Vista has been optimized to work with those particular pieces of hardware. Regardless of the changes though, you will still be getting the real deal like everyone else.

2) Ties in with motherboard: Once you install Vista on your computer, the marriage between the two is set in stone. The OEM version of Vista will lock itself to your motherboard, meaning should you decide to upgrade later on, you would need to purchase a brand new copy of Vista. However, Microsoft does have a policy to allow motherboard swaps in the event of hardware being defective or failing, but don’t count on it as a life-saving excuse to help you. Either way, just remember your Windows Vista will be non-transferable.

3) No returns: If you opened the case, that Vista CD is yours forever.

4) No support: Remember that saying, “No man is an island”? Unfortunately that doesn’t apply when you’re dealing with Windows Vista. If you bought your Vista with a PC, most companies such as Dell do provide 24/7 support. But if you bought your OEM Vista on your own, you won’t be able to count on support because there won’t be any.

Here’s the big question: Is OEM for you? It all depends on what kind of computer user you are. Consider the following when choosing what to buyCan you fix computer problems on your own?

Are you familiar with working with computers?
Are you technologically-inclined
Do you know how to protect yourself from threats?
These are some things you should ask yourself before purchasing. Not everybody requires the 90-days support Microsoft offers. If the answer to the above questions is no, you might want to reconsider before purchasing an OEM version of Windows Vista.

Does the company selling you the OEM version offer support?
For example: Dell offers 24/7 support on its systems, regardless of the OS.

Will you be upgrading your PC in the long run:
This is probably the most important thing to remember before buying OEM Vista. It would really suck if you had to purchase Windows Vista twice. If your computer is a bit out-of-date, you might want to reconsider before purchasing OEM. What you might want to do is upgrade your PC to fit Windows Vista’s requirements before purchasing an OEM. You can find out if your PC is optimized for Vista by downloading Microsoft’s Vista Upgrade Advisor Tool here.

We’ve outlined the differences between Windows Vista OEM and Windows Vista Full Retail. Now it’s your call as to what is right for you.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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Links and traffic… who wants some?

The number of excellent resources that have come out since the beginning of the year on attracting links and building traffic has really mushroomed. Plus there are some timeless classics that are still very relevant today.

I think it makes sense to compile the very best in one handy location and share it, so here’s my entire collection. If I missed your link and traffic resource let me know and I’ll take a look.

Now, it doesn’t matter if you like the term “link baiting” or not. It’s the process that one goes through to attract links that matters, not whether you prefer to think of your content as bait for links. I like to think that creating content that increases web traffic and builds links simply falls under the general social media optimization marketing buzz phrase that is gaining in popularity.

So, here’s your ultimate “how to” guide to creating content that attracts links and drives traffic in the social media environment:

101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006 | SEO Book

101 Web Marketing Ideas and Tips | SEOpedia

25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog | Online Marketing Blog

10 Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic | SEOMoz

8 Reasons Why Lists Are Good for Getting Traffic to Your Blog | Problogger

7 Ways to Get to the Top of the del.ico.us Popular Page | Problogger

3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic | Performancing

How to Get Traffic For Your Blog | Seth Godin

The Art of Linkbaiting | Performancing

The Art of Blog | SEO Black Hat

What is Linkbaiting? | Modern Life is Rubbish

SEO Advice: Linkbait and Linkbaiting | Matt Cutts of Google

Problogger Link Baiting Series | Problogger

Secrets to Beating the Sandbox 2.0 Revealed | Link Building Blog

What Makes a Site Link-Worthy? | Eric Ward

Using Digg to Attract Hits | Slate

Using Digg and Netscape to Get Traffic | Pronet Advertising

Social Bookmarking for Traffic | SiteProNews

The Sandbox and Delicious | Graywolf’s SEO Blog

Unleashing the IdeaVirus | Seth Godin

Viral Copy | Copyblogger

Building Traffic to Build Your Fan Club | Copyblogger

Trust Rank and Your Domain | Link Building Blog

Generating Buzz With Link Baiting and Viral Campaigns | Search Engine Watch

Linkbaiting for Fun & Profit | Search Engine Journal

Link Building Guide | Jim Westergren

Link Baiting & Effective Link Building | Search Engine Journal

Link Baiting and Viral Search Success | Search Engine Roundtable

How Much is Link Bait Worth? | Cartoon Barry

Link Baiting (How Nick Wilson Created SEO Even Seth Godin Could Love) | Stuntdubl

Link Baiting Case Study from Search Engine Journal | Search Engine Journal

Link Bait | SEO Book

The 8 Free Things Every Site Should Do | Seth Godin at Squidoo

Building Traffic With Article Marketing | Copyblogger

Link Building Blog | Text Link Ads

Link Building Wiki | Text Link Brokers

Advanced Link Building Tactics | SEOMoz

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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If you’ve ever searched on google for free and quality WordPress Themes, you know that there are just about 1 million designs out there. Most designers love to create WordPress themes, so they can demonstrate the quality of their work and add some fresh works to their portfolios.

However, most WordPress themes are either used too often or just have nothing to offer – particularly, if you are looking for a free, impressive and professional design. However, sometimes search is worth it. And now your search is over.

Join us as we countdown 100 WordPress Themes you probably haven’t seen yet. All themes offer quality, elegance and a user-friendly interface. Each day we will showcase 10 random themes free for you to download and use with your own WordPress blog.

100. Redoable 1.0 [Preview ]

99. Iceburgg [Preview ]

98. Soxnest link [Preview ]

97. Gridlock [Preview ]

96. Fresh Theme [ Preview ]

95. Deep RedTheme [ Preview ]

94. Time Manager [ Preview ]

93. Fluid Solution [ Preview ]

92. Intra Blog [ Preview ]

91. XV [ Preview ]

Check back tomorrow to see what we themes we list in our countdown.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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If you’ve ever googled for free and quality WordPress Themes, you know that there are just about 1 million designs out there. Most designers love to create WordPress themes, so they can demonstrate the quality of their work and add some fresh works to their portfolios.

However, most WordPress themes are either used too often or just have nothing to offer – particularly, if you are looking for a free, impressive and professional design. However, sometimes search is worth it. And now your search is over.

Join us as we countdown 100 WordPress Themes you probably haven’t seen yet. All themes offer quality, elegance and a user-friendly interface. Each day we will showcase 10 random themes free for you to download and use with your own WordPress blog.

100. Redoable 1.0 [Preview ]

99. Iceburgg [Preview ]

98. Soxnest link [Preview ]

97. Gridlock [Preview ]

96. Fresh Theme [ Preview ]

95. Deep RedTheme [ Preview ]

94. Time Manager [ Preview ]

93. Fluid Solution [ Preview ]

92. Intra Blog [ Preview ]

91. XV [ Preview ]

Check back tomorrow to see what we themes we list in our countdown.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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1. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!
2. Obtain and install customizable blog software – WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.
3. Customize blog look and feel templates – aka design.
4. Research keywords and develop a glossary – Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.
5. Optimize the blog:

• Template optimization – RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
• Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
• Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)

6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
7. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
8. Setup Google acount for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
9. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
10. Format archived posts, related posts.
11. Enable statistics for tracking – Performancing, Google Analytics, ClickTracks.
12. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
13. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
14. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
15. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs – Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
16. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
17. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
18. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
19. Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.
20. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
21. Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.
22. Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
23. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name.
24. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.
25. Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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Link valuation is a difficult subject to quantify. Most SEO’s will tell you that coming up with a value of a text link is a “gut feel”, which really doesn’t help much when you are deciding to drop hundreds or thousands per month on a text link ad that doesn’t often show a completely direct correlation with your web site rankings.

“How to Valuate a Link”
Questions to ask when purchasing about the quality and value of a link

1. What is the value of the theme?
(Is it a high competition/ highly monetized industry such as pharmaceuticals, gambling, or finance?)

2. What is the power of the link?
(Is it helping any other sites to rank high?)

3. What is the linking neighborhood theme of the site linking to you?
(The Topic of the links that link to that site. – and a comparison of how close of a “linking neighborhood” is to your site’s theme.)

4. How many outbound links are on the page giving the link, and who else do they link to?
(Lower the better and quality counts – skip the site with poker plastered all over it.)

5. What is the format of the link, how many characters for anchor text and description do you get, and do you have control to change it?
(Footer Link? Sidebar link? Run of site? Body text link? Pre-sell page?)

6. Where is the link deriving it’s power?
(Does it have any .edus or .govs linking to it? How many unique domains and C class IP addresses?)

7. What is the age of the site? (older the better)

8. Will the link pass any direct click through traffic?
(Alexa is a litmus test here)

9. How many pages will the link be placed on?
(Don’t go overboard with run of site links now)

10. Will the link go to a subsection of your site or your homepage?
(Help your deep link ratio)

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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StumbleUpon, the web surfing social network, is hands down a long term traffic builder for blogs, online businesses, and Web 2.0 services.

For a quick overview of SU:

• Sites or users submit their URLs to StumbleUpon.
• StumbleUpon members can find these sites via random yet targeted web surfing called

“Stumbling”, clicking on the suggestions of their SU friends, or via StumbleUpon Search which matches user generated tags and search queries.

• StumbleUpon users then vote on the sites or posts they find, with a thumbs up or thumbs down.
• The more thumbs up, the more people who see the site via StumbleUpon.

I make it a point to submit what I feel are some of the more original posts here at Search Engine Journal to StumbleUpon and let their members decide on the value of the posts. Usually, such submittals to StumbleUpon result in 400-1,000 referrals.

On occasion, the referrals hit the 2,000 or 4,000 mark, over the course of a couple of days, depending upon the voting by SU members.

The slower drawn out traffic is a nice alternative to Digg, as a top story on the front page of Digg can result in server overload as sometimes up to 10,000 Digg users could click over in the course of 15 minutes.

As a StumbleUpon member myself, I don’t only submit my own properties for reader review. I also submit blog posts and new sites which I feel are of interest to me and my StumbleUpon friends.

But why stop there?

One form of social media marketing which I’ve found to be quite useful is submitting the sites which link to blog.designcreatology.com posts and other properties to StumbleUpon.

Example:
1. TechDirt links to blog.designcreatology.com
2. I see traffic coming from TechDirt
3. I go to TechDirt post and submit it to StumbleUpon with lots of good tags and info
4. SU users find that TechDirt post
5. SU users click on the link from that TechDirt post to blog.designcreatology.com
6. More traffic to blog.designcreatology.com

It’s a form of rewarding or surprising those sites with some extra traffic, perhaps some links which will help with SEO, and the end result is more referrals to my site from the site which originally linked to me.

In such practice, by submitting sites or posts which link to your site to StumbleUpon, you are supercharging those links by adding more value to your incoming links and the sites which link to you.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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Recently I received an email from someone who was having a severe problem learning CSS. I can definitely understand much of the frustration, but I don’t think it really has a lot to do with CSS. Learning anything can be difficult, confusing and frustrating. Whether you’re trying to learn how to ride a bike, swim, drive a car, code HTML or use CSS, most people will get frustrated, feel like giving up, and then give it another try.

One of the problems I see is that many people who complain about CSS being too difficult haven’t really learned how to code HTML properly. Jumping into CSS-based layouts without a solid understanding of HTML will not be easy. Going from table-based WYSIsortofWYG tag soup to structured, semantic HTML+CSS will take some time and effort. But it’s worth it. I know. Having worked with web design and development since -95 or -96 I’ve had to unlearn the table tag soup ways of coding and really learn HTML.

Another problem is that there are CSS evangelists who swear up and down that not only can CSS do everything that tables can, it does it cleaner, easier and better (quote from the post to css-discuss). Yes, there are. And no, as long as browsers like Internet Explorer don’t improve their CSS support there are a few layout tricks that are very hard to achieve with a pure CSS layout but are easy to do with tables. Don’t blame that on CSS though. Blame it on lazy browser vendors.

So, what is it that you can’t easily do with CSS that is easy with tables? Some things I can think of:

• footer that sits at the bottom of the browser window only when there’s not enough content
• side-by-side boxes that expand to the same height even when they contain different amounts of content
• vertically centered content of unknown height inside a box

Anything else? I can’t think of anything else, but there’s probably one or two other cases where pure CSS layout won’t work well, especially in Internet Explorer.

Note that there are cases where tables should be used. A common misunderstanding is that tables can’t be used for anything, but if you’re marking up a table of data, a table is what you should use.

If you feel that you absolutely must have something in your design that calls for a table, then go ahead and use a table for that specific effect! Just avoid nesting tables, make sure your markup is semantic and valid, and then style the page with CSS. You’ll still be way better off than if you do the old-school thing with five levels of nested tables, font tags, presentational, invalid HTML and no semantic markup whatsoever.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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There’s something fundamentally satisfying about the power of real-time interaction. I tend to forget that from time to time and try to get my head around why I find certain products and services so appealing when, on the surface, there doesn’t appear to be other any unique value proposition. Maybe it’s a little too obvious to notice.

At first I didn’t understand why the blogosphere was clamoring for MyBlogLog. Then I realized it satisfies bloggers’ voyeuristic need to see who’s visiting your site right now. Compare this to traditional analytics services and all that in-depth referral data collected from 2 days ago seems so distant and uninteresting.

In the beginning I failed to see why everyone was talking about twitter. Then I started using the service and now I see why broadcasting what you are doing and listening in on what your contacts are doing right now can be highly addictive. The so call “lifestream” experience is far different from publishing a blog post or following one via rss reader. It feels like watching a stream of incoherent snapshots of people’s lives ticking across your eyes, but somehow you feel compelled to observe and participate because it’s happening right now.

If I look around, there are plenty of other examples — Digg Spy, EarthCam, Etsy’s cool-as-shit time machine UI, etc. They’re all interesting because they’re all happening right now. And when you take “now” out of the equation, they all stop being interesting. Immediately. Interesting…

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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In the world of search engine optimization building backlinks is perhaps the most important, and most difficult, part. In order to get your website to the top you need to work your way passed websites that have had years to gather soldiers in the battle for link popularity. So how do you keep up, and more importantly, how to you work towards surpassing your predecessors.

Building Backlinks With Time, and with Content

Perhaps the best, and yet the most looked over, method for gathering links to your website to make good content. If your website has information that people care about then that information is going to be passed on to others. In forum posts, blogs, article indexes and more. Furthermore, when you create a good piece of content your not only getting a chance to inspire others to link to you, your creating a page that will increase the girth of your website and continue to attract visitors through search engines. It has been said before, and I’ll say it again, in the world of web design content is king.

Getting Your Content Seen

One way to get your content seen by others, and at the same time increase your link popularity, is to submit your articles to article indexes like Goarticles.com. Every time you submit an article you get a backlink to your page from a large and reputable website. Search out places that you can submit your content. If you write tutorials, get your tutorials submitted to tutorial indexes such as Good-tutorials.com, Pixel2life.com, Tutorialized.com etc.

Submitting You Website To Directories

Perhaps the most tedious way to gather links, submitting your website to directories is available to anyone. Some directories, such as Dmoz.org have a good reputation, and their pages are highly valued by search engines. With a little money, you can even get your website listed in the Yahoo! web directory.
Trading Links With Other Websites

Even though direct link exchanges may have a lesser value than one-way links, link exchanges still increase your popularity, and you will always be able to get hits from the links themselves. If you have multiple websites you can try the three-way linking strategy. Site A links to Site B, site C links to Site A. Sites B and C belonging to one party, and A to the other.

Add Your Link to Your Forum Signature

If you participate in any online forum, get your links into your signature. It cant hurt, and believe it or not people are interested to see the creations of the people they are conversing with!

Link Building Strategies to Ignore

Search engines have a goal, to get the most relevant links to the top of their searches. If your use black hat seo methods, then the search engine doesn’t want your website in their results. If you try to manipulate their system and get caught, you can get removed. Try to stay away from programs that claim that they can get you thousands of backlinks instantly. Avoid link exchange programs unless you are willing to take a risk. Try to build your links at a slow and steady pace, eventually your website will start doing the work for you.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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