Remove “Powered by Opencart” from the footer
If you want to remove the "Powered by OpenCart" text in your footer, it's actually quite easy. You would need to FTP into your site, and browse the:
/catalog/language/english/common
directory. Once you are here, you will see a file called footer.tpl. All you need to do is to open this file, and edit the lines of code that say "Powered By OpenCart".
This is the code from OpenCart 1.5:
<div id="powered">Powered By <a href="http://www.opencart.com">OpenCart</a><br /> Your Store © 2012</div>
You can simply change this to something like:
<div id="powered">Powered By <a href="http://www.theURLtomycoolwebsite.com">MyCoolWebsite</a><br /> Your Store © 2012</div>
OpenCart asks for a donation if you do this.
Hope this helps!
MyBB Review – Worst forum spam of open source forums
MyBB has been around for a while, and offers free and open source forum software. MyBB goes up against some stiff competition such as SMF or Simple Machines Forum. MyBB is arguably the easiest to use and modify forum, but it's also the absolute worst in preventing forum spam.
There have been many reports from MyBB users that their forums are under attack by spammers specifically targeting MyBB forums because they know the forums are easy to exploit and overwhelm. MyBB out of the box has almost no forum spam prevention, not even CAPTCHA or random questions during registration.
I took the time to setup a MyBB forum, and have been running it for over 3 years. During that time I have gone through all of the MyBB updates (when you log into the admin, there is a handy little tool to let you know if you are running the latest version, and if not, what the latest version is). All of the updates were to fix some kind of exploit, but none of them were for preventing forum spam.
I have been noticing in my analytics that spammers are searching for "Powered by MyBB" when targeting my forum. They are specifically looking for a MyBB forum because they know their automated activities will be able to overwhelm most board owners and moderators.
If MyBB wants to be successful, they need to release MyBB 1.6 with at least the two basic forms of trying to catch spammers at the registration level: Captcha, and asking random questions. Right now, the only MyBB spam prevention is to send a random password to the user to check their email (which doesn't work), send a confirmation email (which also doesn't work), or just let them instantly be activated.
Also, the admin only lets you see 20 users at a time, so trying to do a mass ban is very time consuming.
If you are looking for a forum that helps you in the quest of having a great community with minimal spam, stay away from the MyBB 1.4 series.
OpenCart Update – Daniel Kerr is at it again
We have been covering some updates on OpenCart, and while we mainly forgot about it, a few of our readers pointed out that Daniel Kerr, has been at it again on his forum. We've covered some of the reasons why we don't recommend OpenCart, but here are some quick snippets of Daniel having a little breakdown when users on his support forum are posting what they believe are bugs to the system.
this is down to your server not setup properly. my server works fine and so do many others.
this means its your fault!
one of my all time favorites:
its a permissions issue! with your server! nothing to do with opencart! you have not set the web user to have permission on this folder. are u stupied! opencart does not alter your session directory!
Keep in mind, these are direct quotes from Daniel.
there is not an sql injection problem you clown!
sql injection would mean you are actually injecting sql via the some unescaped variable.
the problem is (if there is one) a bug with mysql.
this threads like the blind leading the blind.
When releasing a product, you must expect that there are going to be lots of questions, some repetitive, some off the wall, and some that make no sense. However, the difference is in the customer service. For those who want their product to be used, such as PrestaShop for example, would never talk to their users like this. Those who want to push their users away, use the exact language above.
Of course, the choice is yours of which eCommerce platform you use, but do you want to be called "stupied" when asking a support question for OpenCart?
PayPal is down: Failure of server APACHE bridge
For the past 30 minutes, paypalmanager.paypal.com has been down with the following error:
Failure of server APACHE bridge:
No backend server available for connection: timed out after 10 seconds or idempotent set to OFF.
This is extremely frustrating and not the first time PayPal has been down. PayPal is a multi billion dollar company, how can they let these things constantly happen?
Unable to process orders, check on orders, check on balances or anything during this time.
Hopefully square will be a good PayPal replacement so we have another similar option.
WL Marketing Review – Horrible RSS Feed Submission Service for your Blog
Recently, I tried the RSS Feed Submissions service offered by WL Marketing. The service seems great, and it's very cheap. What they do is take your blog's RSS feed, and submit it to 50 or 100 different RSS Feed sites. The goal here is that your RSS Feed gets syndicated by all of these sites, giving your blog more exposure and more traffic.
They offer two packages. One package is for $10, and they submit your RSS feed to 50 sites. They also offer one for $20 that they submit to 100 sites. They say completion takes about 15 days for 50 sites, and a month for 100 sites. It was faster for me, they were done within 1 day.
The good thing about WL Marketing is they also provide you with a detailed report showing each site that they submitted to, plus the directory in each site, so you can check it out for yourself.
So, how did it work out you ask?
Horrible! I was completely disappointed. No wonder this was done in one day instead of 1 month. I opted to pay $20 for the 100 sites, and the next day received a detailed report on what was done. About 30% of the sites on the list were 404. Of the rest of the 70%, I couldn't my feed on a single site. Some of them didn't even have categories on the site (a site error), so I'm not sure how they were even submitted.
I complained to WL Marketing and received a quick reply that they were sorry and were going to replace the broken links with new ones. A day later I received a new report, but it was just more of the same.
I will never use them again. I thought it would be hard to mess up RSS submissions, and thought it was a good service for a cheap price since doing it manually is very tedious. But WL Marketing makes money by not giving you what you paid for.
My first time using WL Marketing, and after this negative review, I will not be using them again.
Google Panda 2.5.2 released October 13th – Verified by Matt Cutts
Did you notice a drop in Google traffic around October 13th? Matt Cutts tweeted that there was a confirmed Panda release on the night of 10/13. This release is called Panda 2.5.2
Many people noticed their site take an even bigger dive, some didn't notice a change at all, and others noticed they appear to have a new penalty.
I'm not too sure what was updated in this version of Panda, but probably a polish of the 2.5 release.
Why do I have a traffic drop after Panda 2.5.2?
I have heard from many people that 2.5.2 seems to be more major than minor. People complain they lost 40-60% of their traffic overnight. They also say their sites are 100% pure original content, original images, original everything, and they are not sure why they were singled out. If you know your site is a good site, and you received a traffic drop from Panda 2.5.2 or any version of Panda, I would look at your backlinks. When Panda rolls out, it devalues sites it deems to be of low value. When a site is devalued, it's outbound links give out less or no SEO value. Your site could have dropped in rank and traffic because many of your inbound links were devalued.
Another thing is many webmasters are getting more careful about their links, especially since Panda has been released. They are doing anything they can to ensure they are within Google's quality guidelines. Many of your links could have also been turned into a nofollow. Nofollow in addition to devalued inbound links would definitely cause you a traffic drop.
Google +1 Improves Rankings – And now you can buy them!
Google has been quick to let people know that if you have your visitors click on the +1, it can help your rankings in Google. Google is tired of seeing Facebook Likes on all these pages, and while some people have said that having Facebook likes can be a direct correlation to higher rankings, it's simply not true. With Google's feverish hate for Facebook, the last thing it wants to do is to encourage people to click on Facebook likes and use Facebook in order to help gain rankings in Google. So what does Google do? They release a competitor to the famouse Facebook like called Google +1. By clicking on the +1 in the search results, or on web pages, you are essentially voting for that page, and therefore Google will rank pages higher based on user interaction. Great idea. Except this is already falling into the hands of spammers.
Introducing Plussem. This company is actually selling +1s! Not only do they sell them extremely cheap (50 for only $9.99), but they have some interesting ways of doing this so it looks natural. The company works with people who have unique Google accounts that are phone verified. Each +1 comes from a real person and not a bot, and the person maually goes to Google search, finds your URL, and clicks on +1. Since these are real people, they all have unique and distinct IP addresses. They don't all do it at once, so it gives it a more natural feel.
Here's a red flag though. Your site has no +1s. Then over a week it gets 50, and then no more +1s again after that. If I was Google, I would flag this as potential spam. This is going to be exploited by spammers, but it's a normal thing nowadays. Google will release rules and algorithms and spammers will just find ways around them.
Would be interesting to see if plussem gets banned. All Google needs to do is to have a spam team that creates an account, and looks at which sites bought this service and ban them. Easy way to get rid of spammers.
Twitter Town Hall – Obama says “Internets”
Obama. Oh man. I can't believe it when I saw this. I made immense fun of George Bush for saying "internets" and now Obama repeats the same thing during the Twitter town hall. Luckily, it was caught on video, so you can hear it for yourself:
I guess I shouldn't be so tough on the President, but this surely must have been a mistake, because afterwards he seems to have caught it and is trying to explain a bit of what he meant. Funny nonetheless. The difference here is Obama actually slipped where as George Bush to this day calls it "the internets".
Amazon Affiliate Program Pulling out of California? C’mon Jerry Brown!
I am an Amazon Affiliate, and have been for about two years. However, I have recently not been participating in the program simply because I do not have the time to maintain an affiliate storefront at this time. Since I'm signed up and located in California, I received this email today from Amazon saying that they are likely going to pull out of California if Jerry Brown (our governor) gets his way. He basically wants to tax all Amazon purchases made in CA even though Amazon doesn't actually reside physically in CA.
Notice of Contract Termination Due to Potential New California Law
Hello,
For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers - including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you - even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.
We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.
As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective. We will send a follow-up notice to you confirming the termination date if the California law is enacted. In the event that the California law does not become effective before September 30, 2011, we withdraw this notice. As of the termination date, California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned on or before the termination date will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule.
You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of California. If you are not currently a resident of California, or if you are relocating to another state in the near future, you can manage the details of your Associates account here. And if you relocate to another state in the near future please contact us for reinstatement into the Amazon Associates Program.
To avoid confusion, we would like to clarify that this development will only impact our ability to offer the Associates Program to California residents and will not affect their ability to purchase from Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com.
We have enjoyed working with you and other California-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to California residents. We are also working on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available.
Regards,
The Amazon Associates Team
Please note that you must use this e-mail address to access your account in Associates Central or when contacting Associates Customer Service.
To manage your e-mail preferences, update your account settings.
Message Category: Notice of Contract Termination Due to Potential New California Law
© 2011 Amazon.com. All rights reserved. Amazon.com is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com, 410 Terry Avenue N., Seattle, WA 98109-5210, USA.
I'm not sure how to take this. Amazon is quick to pull out, but it's been doing this in various other states already. Could Amazon one day just not have an affiliate program if it becomes federal (or enough national) law that all eCommerce is taxed regardless of where your business is physically?
This is going to open up a can of worms... since every state has different tax rates, and even every county, it's going to be an eCommerce nightmare trying to keep up and charge people the right amount of tax.
Is international next?
Update- it's official... Amazon is pulling out of California. Thanks Jerry Brown.
Hello,
Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011. Those California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned before today will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule.
You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of California. If you are not currently a resident of California, or if you are relocating to another state in the near future, you can manage the details of your Associates account here. And if you relocate to another state in the near future please contact us for reinstatement into the Amazon Associates Program.
To avoid confusion, we would like to clarify that this development will only impact our ability to offer the Associates Program to California residents and will not affect your ability to purchase from Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com.
We have enjoyed working with you and other California-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to California residents. As mentioned before, we are continuing to work on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available.
Regards,
The Amazon Associates Team
How the human brain works – and quickly forgets
I was going through some old emails today, and found this email that came to me back in 2008, that was forwarded by a friend. Not sure who wrote it, or where it came from, but it's very true and in a way touching. Thought you might enjoy reading this.
There was a blind girl who hated herself because she was blind. She hated everyone, except her loving boyfriend. He was always there for her. She told her boyfriend, 'If I could only see the world, I will marry you.'
One day, someone donated a pair of eyes to her. When the bandages came off, she was able to see everything, including her boyfriend.
He asked her, 'Now that you can see the world, will you marry me?' The girl looked at her boyfriend and saw that he was blind. The sight of his closed eyelids shocked her. She hadn't expected that. The thought of looking at them the rest of her life led her to refuse to marry him.
Her boyfriend left in tears and days later wrote a note to her saying: 'Take good care of your eyes, my dear, for before they were yours, they were mine.'
This is how the human brain often works when our status changes. Only a very few remember what life was like before, and who was always by their side in the most painful situations.
Life Is a Gift
Today before you say an unkind word - Think of someone who can't speak.
Before you complain about the taste of your food - Think of someone who has nothing to eat.
Before you complain about your husband or wife - Think of someone who's crying out to GOD for a companion.
Today before you complain about life - Think of someone who went too early to heaven.
Before whining about the distance you drive Think of someone who walks the same distance with their feet.
And when you are tired and complain about your job - Think of the unemployed, the disabled, and those who wish they had your job.
And when depressing thoughts seem to get you down - Put a smile on your face and think: you're alive and still around.
DMOZ is dead – Why DMOZ is corrupt
It used to be that DMOZ was the end all directory that everyone wanted to have their site listed in. Being in DMOZ meant your site passed a human review, noted as not being spam and contained some quality content or material. Google even encouraged people to list their site in DMOZ, because if you were listed in DMOZ it gave Google a clear signal that your site passed the human test.
As DMOZ became more popular, they started to take on more and more editors to help them sort through all of the submissions they get on a daily basis. The editors would pick quality sites, and drop the low quality sites from the directory. Seemed like a great idea.
I have many sites, and about two weeks ago I submitted one of my sites to DMOZ. It's been years since any of my sites were actually approved by DMOZ. It's not because any of my sites are low quality, but because DMOZ never even checked my sites! I know this because I specifically track when dmoz.org comes in as a referrer. For those who don't know, DMOZ has a control panel that their editors log in to. This control panel is located in www.dmoz.org/editors. When they see URLs they need to approve, the referrer comes in as:
www.dmoz.org/editors/editunrev/listurl?cat=
After the cat=, is the category that you submitted your site to.
So let's say you submitted your site to this directory: /Arts/Movies/Genres/Sports/Baseball/
The referrer to your site would be:
www.dmoz.org/editors/editunrev/listurl?cat=Arts/Movies/Genres/Sports/Baseball
They click on the URL to look at your site, and determine if they want it added into the index or not. The editor then selects yes or not, and then they go on to the next site.
Well, here is where it gets interesting... after submitting one of my sites two weeks ago, I checked my logs today, and noticed that I got a referrer from DMOZ! I was excited to see someone actually looked at my site. Now here is where my blood started to boil. The IP for the editor was a competitor of mine!! Yes, DMOZ allows people within the SAME category to determine if you are going to appear or not. What competitor would say yes??
No wonder people are complaining left and right that no one is being added into the index. Competitors got signed up as editors, and now they are making sure no one else gets added into the index. This might not be the case for every category, but from what I saw today with my own site, and my logs, I bet it's the case for MOST of DMOZ!
People have questioned if DMOZ is dead for years. This proves that it IS. The site might be up and generating a ton of traffic from SEO's who are trying to get every possible link, but with this kind of corruption and scam, DMOZ is dead in my book.
Do you have a similar story? Post it here, so we can boycott DMOZ submissions. Maybe then the owners will listen, and drop all existing editors and start from scratch with a better background check!
HostGator is the best host for WordPress Blogs
I've used dozens of hosting companies over the years, and none stand out more than HostGator. Honestly, I was skeptical before I used them because I figured for the prices of their plans (starting at only $3.96 a month), it had to be garbage. Before I used to use GoDaddy simply because it was easy to register a domain name and then sign up for a hosting plan. The ease of having it all in one place was good, but then I ran into a lot of problems with GoDaddy hosting. Many times my site would get shut down for too much bandwidth usage, and not being able to connect to a remote database was also a struggle.
However, my friend had been using HostGator for some time, mainly for his clients, so I decided to try it out. For $3.96 a month, you get a single domain, with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space, and a SSL certificate. Pretty damn cheap. I also liked that anytime I had a question, I just asked on Live Chat. Live Chat is not something that GoDaddy offers, which is a big downfall for them.
HostGator uses cPanel, and I found it familiar and easy to use. If you have multiple domains, you might want to try the $6.36 per month package where you can host unlimited domains. It's cheap, easy, and the site is pretty fast.
They seem to be optimized for bloggers because WordPress runs fast and flawless, even WordPress updates.
Highly recommended, cheap, and I will keep using them. They even claim to host 5 million domains.... Check out HostGator for their latest specials.
Priceline.com Review – Not what it’s cracked up to be
My wife and I are looking to go away for the weekend, and after looking at some hotel prices directly on the hotel site, we decide to try Priceline, since they brag about their Priceline Negotiator. We selected a 4 star hotel to see what kind of prices it would show, and to our surprise, Priceline showed the name of the hotel. It also said Price Guarantee. So I decided to compare prices with the price on Priceline vs the price on this particular hotel's website. The price turned out to be exactly the same, with no price difference.
I decided to contact their live support:
Isaac R. : Hello! How may I assist you?
customer : the price on your site is same as hotel site
Isaac R. : I would be happy to answer your question!
Isaac R. : Correct, this hotel is an agency property and a pay when you stay. They provide us their rates directly.
customer : but it says best rates guaranteed
Isaac R. : Correct. We offer our best price guarantee.
Isaac R. : If you find a better published price online for the exact same hotel and itinerary within 24 hours and prior to your check in date, we'll refund you 100% of the difference if you qualify.
Isaac R. : For customers with a U.S. billing address, we'll throw in an extra $50 off your vacation package.
customer : i dont get it. its the same price though
customer : i see
customer : so no point in using your site
Isaac R. : I understand, but if you find a better ate on another sire we will match it and give you $50 off your next package.
I was holding a baby in one arm, and using one to type, so I typed a minimum as possible, but you can see that there is absolutely no advantage in using Priceline. Also, he must have known what hotel I was looking at due to the way he answered my question... unless if all hotels have the same rules.
I don't get it... what's the big deal with Priceline? How do they have so much money that they have big ad campaigns? I won't be using them again. It also gets to me how these guys can't spell... "better ate on another sire"?
Post Panda SEO – How to optimize after Google Panda Update
The Google Panda update has many webmasters scratching their heads. After many years of having a quality website, getting high authority links, and creating unique compelling content, the Google Panda update rolls out, and takes with it half of their organic search traffic. Ouch.
In February 2011, Google launched it's Panda Update. The update was designed to get more quality into their search results by removing websites that they determine - through a series of algorithms - to be high quality. It's named the Panda update after one Google engineer that has the nickname of Panda, and came up with this idea. I'm all for higher quality in the Google search results, but this update missed it's mark. The result was that while it did remove a lot of spam from the Google search results, it also took with it a lot of good sites, and pushed up a lot of bad sites. It's a mess.
There has been lots of discussion around the internet from concerned webmasters on what to do to bring their traffic back. Many of them have tried everything and have not regained their rankings. The point of this post isn't to talk about the Panda update itself, but rather trying to determine what the Panda update was going after, since Google is very secret about it.
After doing a lot of research, and speaking with a lot of people, I am going to try and debunk some myths, and give my opinion on my observations through my sites as well as some customer sites.
Panda Update Myths
I keep hearing things such as The Panda update targeted Adsense sites to such extreme thoughs as the Panda update targeted only sites that have dark backgrounds. The fact is that the update did not target only sites that have Adsense, it also targeted E-Commerce sites. It also didn't target a specific background color - let's be realistic. It's not one specific target that people hope to fix in a second and regain their rankings. It's much deeper than that.
It's a site wide penalty
Wrong. Just because many of your pages were devalued doesn't mean it's site wide. On many sites I work on, lots of terms still rank high even through the site took a 30-50% traffic hit. Take a look at your site and look for how many thin pages you have. I know many people generate tons of thin pages with little to no content so they can rank for long tail. However, how many of these pages actually rank? You're diluting your site with garbage pages.
People forget the rule that the general rule of thumb is the amount of PR you have is proportional to your Google allotment. What this means is that if you have a PR10 site, you can bet that every url on your site will be indexed and cached. If you have a PR1, and 1 million generated pages, you can except only a few thousand of thoses pages to be indexed and ranked. Grow your site proportional to your page rank. People can argue that page rank means nothing, but it's an easy measure for an overview site status.
Panda update was to promote big brands
This isn't true overall. Many of the sites that still rank high are smaller sites that are simply better. Just because you are a brand site doesn't necessarily mean you have what I'm looking for. Many big brands are out of touch with the people, and smaller sites fill that need.
Panda update went against ecommerce sites that used manufacture descriptions
Besides the fact that many manufactures require for you to use their description, I don't agree with this. Build an extra link or two to this product page, and you'll outrank 90% of your competitors. Why rewrite descriptions? It's the same thing just in your words... if you think that in 2011 Google can't figure this out, maybe you should be doing something else 
You have a high bounce rate
This is also a myth. Google doesn't calculate bounce rates for their Panda ranking algorithm, but they do measure how many people click on your link, and then click back to go back to Google search. Bounce rates can't be a measure because think of how many sites could have a high bounce rate... Groupon - People go to the site, check the deal, and leave if it's not interesting to them. CNN - Hit the homepage, scan the news stories, and leave if it's not interesting to them. Does this mean the site is low quality? No.
Article Submission Sites and Press Release Sites
These are some of the hardest hit sites, and rightfully so. Most of the content on these sites is regurgitated garbage. Sure, some sites review articles submitted to make sure they aren't duplicated through other sites, and so forth, but most of the articles are poorly written, offer the user little or no information, and are only done for link backs. Now imagine this... these article sites have gained huge popularity because of one indicator - their page rank. If an articles site has a page rank of 6, it's going to get flooded with people trying to fill it with articles to link back to them. But step back and think of how that article site got to a PR6 in the first place. Do you think CNN linked to it? How about Yahoo News? It got it's PR6 from hundreds of thousands of links from poor quality SEO sites encouraging you to submit articles. So naturally, when Panda rolled out, and devalued all of these junk SEO sites and blogs, it devalued the authority of article submission sites. Therefore, your articles on there, were devalued, and those links pointing to your site were devalued as well. The result? A chain of lowered search results from your site, to article sites, to all these bunk SEO sites.
Press release sites aren't far from it either. Many sites don't even review the Press release being submitted, it's usually bogus or junk. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, but that is the minority and not the majority.
User Generated Content
People complained that their sites that are 100% user generated content took a hit, and cried about it since they believe it to be unique content. Sure, I agree it's likely to be unique content. But 90% of it is junk. Take a reviews site or forums site for example. The person asks about a review of a certain product. Of the replies that come in, how many are longer than a sentence? How many are "this tv is great, thumbs up". Same with a forum. Someone asks a question, and have of the replies are "why don't you search?" or "bump". User generated content yes... junk? yes.
But my site has a lot of links from authority sites
Awesome, that's great news for your site! But you still got hit in Panda right? It's because the other links to your site were devalued, still causing some devaluing of your site, so you still took a hit. Imagine if you didn't have those authority links. You'd be laying off staff like Mahalo or some online furniture stores.
So what do I do post Panda SEO?
If you were doing white hat SEO before, and took a hit, and aren't sure what else to do to regain your traffic, go back to the drawing board of building links. Do this in addition to making sure you have:
1) Good site navigation.
2) Compelling content that makes the user want to come back.
3) Nothing black hat or fishy like having H1 tags, and then changing the CSS to make them 12px. You think Google is dumb?
4) NoIndex your thin pages (quantity does not equal quality)
5) Build high quality links to deep inner pages
6) Don't pay for links. It's expensive, and it's a short term gain. When Google finds out you paid, then not only will you get deranked, but the years you spent building your brand is down the tubes.
7) If you are an affiliate site, give a reason to go to your site. Just copying a description and posting a link is short term, and won't last. If you can't come up with a unique idea, then this isn't for you.
Think about it this way. If 1,000,000 sites are doing what you are doing, only 10 can appear on the first page of Google search. The top 10 do something differently to differentiate themselves. Take this advise.