TONI ZOVA

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A Design/Development/SEO blog with bits of randomness

Blackhat SEO Explained


Beyond the title, I can’t post anything related to this topic without first posting a little disclaimer that may or may not serve it’s purpose:

DISCLAIMER:
I’m not promoting black hat SEO. I do not practice blackhat SEO on any of my sites or any of my clients sites. I don’t work for a search engine but I have in the past so much of what I’m going to be writing here is based on observation and speculation as well as past experience that in no way divulges information of any kind that I may have learned from working for a Search Engine in the past that i’m in some way forbidden to discuss. I have been wrong before and could be wrong here so I can’t be held responsible for anything you misinterpret or act upon thereby getting screwed over royally as a result of what i write here. I’m also not trying to convince you that white hat is better or worse than black hat SEO. I’m not trying to defend the existence of blackhat seo nor am I in any way justifying its use.

With that, I’m going to start off by making this simple statement that i’ll end up elaborating on and explaining in detail in the next couple of posts:

Blackhat SEO is WhiteHat SEO, but automated.

I know a few of you are a little dense so i’ll go into a little detail. First off, what the hell is blackhat seo? This is asked over and over, and wherever you look, it’s answered in very similar ways. In my opinion, it depends on ‘who’ you ask. Ask a WhiteHat SEO what BH SEO is and they’ll recite the Google Webmaster Guidelines like a bunch of fanboys&girls. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I mean, ‘the sheep dog can’t bark without the sheep’…right?

Google publishes those guidelines because they know as well as you and I that they have no way of detecting or preventing what they preach so loudly. They rely on droves of webmasters to blindly repeat everything they say because they are an internet powerhouse and they have everyone brainwashed into believing anything they tell them. What this means is that the vast majority of internet marketers and SEO professionals are completely blind to the vast array of tools at their disposal that not only increase traffic to their sites, but also make Blackhat SEOs hundreds of thousands, if not millions in revenue every year.

As I stated above, in my opinion, Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO are almost no different. White hat web masters spend time carefully finding link partners to increase rankings for their keywords, Black Hats do the same thing, but they write automated scripts to do it while they sleep. White hat SEO’s spend months perfecting the on page SEO of their sites for maximum rankings, black hat SEO’s use content generators to spit out thousands of generated pages to see which version works best.

Are you starting to see a pattern here? You should, Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO are one in the same with one key difference. Black Hats are lazy. They like things automated. Have you ever heard the phrase “Work smarter not harder?” Most real blackhat’s live by those words. Why spend weeks or months building pages only to have Google slap them down with some obscure penalty?

You see, some WhiteHat SEO’s will argue that “the search engines will ban your sites if you use Black Hat techniques”. Sure, this is true if you have no understanding of the basic principals or practices. If you jump in with no knowledge you are going to fail, as is the case with anything in life.

Remember that a search engine can’t possibly penalize you for outside influences that are beyond your control. They can’t penalize you for incoming links, nor can they penalize you for sending traffic to your domain from other doorway pages outside of that domain. If they could, I one could simply point doorway pages and spam links at their competitors to knock them out of the SERPS. It’s Common sense. If Google and other major search engines can’t point a finger at you that you did something they frown upon, you’re in the clear.

Another thing people confuse is the fact that Blackhat SEO is NOT illegal. Spamming maybe illegal in most countries but spamming is NOT a technique real blackhat’s use. The problem is people take what Google has written in it’s webmaster guideline as law. It’s not, it’s one companies terms of services. If you don’t follow them they’re entitled to knock you out of their search results. That’s it though.

Who elected the search engines the “internet police”? I certainly didn’t, so why play by their rules? Black Hat SEO is thinking outside the box the corporate industry has built around everyone.

I’ll discuss some of the blackhat techniques used these days in my next post.

PS. Dear Google, i really don’t want to have to egg the google complex so don’t slam me in the rankings for this post…First Amendment, freedom of speech. Peace ;]

Paint Shop Pro Brushes


Oh the agony, the horror. Posting this is going to be a traumatizing experience. In fact, it’s going to scar me for life. So I’m going to insert a quick disclaimer here.

Disclaimer: I, Toni Zova, in no way thinkg Paint Pro should be used by any professional in the design industry. I also never have, and never will use Paint Shop Pro in my life, so don’t judge!

Alright, now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, let’s get right down to what this post is really about. Paint Shop Pro…Yeah. Truth is, so many people still use Paint Shop today and I’ve had friends admit they still use Paint Shop to this day (Yes, they remained friends after that despicable confession.) Anyway, they all feel weird, because there’s very little quality resources online for Paint Shop users, so I decided to oblige. (i’m going to hell after this post, not that I wasn’t before, now it’s a first class ticket, damn it…)

Below is a collection of some of the webs, dare i say, best paint shop brushes….enjoy?

psp splatter brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Splatter Brushes

PSP Snowflakes brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Snowflake Brushes

psp curly brushes
Download Paint Shop Curly Brushes

psp arrow brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Arrow Brushes

psp blood splatter brush
Download Paint Shop Pro Blood Splatter Brush

psp spotty star brush
Download Paint Shop Pro Spotty Star Brushes

psp heart shaped brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Heart Brushes

psp smoke brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Smoke Brushes

Yeah, these are the best I could find online for Paint Shop Pro, but hey, I said they were the best I could find online, I never said they were any good :P Oh well, here’s to all you paint shop pro users, hope you put these brushes to good use ;D

Free Vcard Template


Alright, a quick post because i’m in a hurry. This was created by Trevor and he sent it me to share with you guys, it’s a VCard Styled website template, also works great on the iphone etc. It’s dark, minimal and right down sexy, if only sexy was a crime, this sucker would end up behind bars.

zova-vcard

Includes:

  • Home page link
  • Business card link
  • Direct Email To link
  • delicious.com profile link
  • dopplr.com profile link
  • emberapp.com profile link
  • flickr.com profile link
  • linkedin.com profile link
  • last.fm user link
  • twitter.com @profile link
  • also shows you latest tweet at the bottom of the page

So, a killer freebie for you lot to enjoy, I call it, (yes, vein is my style and i have an ego to look after), the ZOVA Vcard. Ha. Has a ring to it.

Here’s a Demo.
download vcardDownload the free vcard template files here (rar).
download vcardDownload the free vcard template files here (zip).

Free Photoshop Pattern Collection


Today I’ll be sharing 5 sets of patterned textures, 25textures in total, vintage/retro styled for all you pattern/texture addicts, so enjoy.

First off is this pack of large (740px * 740px) seamless Vintage Green textures in .jpg format as well as a corresponding Photoshop tileable pattern (.pat) set.

vintage green photoshop patterns

download freebies Download the Free Tileable Vintage Green Photoshop Pattern Set & JPGs Textures.

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Here’s a pack of large (1024px * 1024px) seamless Retro Autumn textures in .jpg format as well as a corresponding Photoshop tileable pattern (.pat) set.

retro autumn photoshop patterns

download freebies Download the Free Tileable Retro Autumn Photoshop Pattern Set & JPGs Textures.

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Below is a wicked cool pack of 9 free tileable blue retro like striped Photoshop patterns (.pat) and a corresponding set of seamless images in jpg format (.jpg).

retro photoshop stripes

download freebies Download this Retro Striped Photoshop Pattern Set & JPGs

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One of my favorite sets is this combo pack of large (740px * 740px) seamless Vintage Dot textures in .jpg format as well as a corresponding Photoshop tileable pattern (.pat) set.

vintage dot photoshop pattern

download freebies Download the Free Tileable Vintage Dot Photoshop Pattern Set & JPGs Textures

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Finally, this awesome combo pack of tileable grungy striped Photoshop patterns (.pat) and a corresponding seamless grungy texture pack (.jpg). The resolution for both textures and patterns is 740px * 740px.

grungy striped photoshop texture

download freebies Download the Grungy Stripes Photoshop Patterns and the JPGs texture Pack.

20 Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials


You probably know a lot of good text effect tutorials out there on the web and maybe  you already tried some of them and you have your own top list of best text effect tutorials.  In this post I’m showing you 20 of the best text tutorials I know and I really like, check them out as it’s possible you have  missed some of them:

1. How to Create a Richly Ornate Typographic Illustration

How to Create a Richly Ornate Typographic Illustration image

2.How to Create Eroded Metal Text with Photoshop

Eroded Metal Text with Photoshop IMAGE

3. 3D text effect - 2009

3D text effect 2009

4. Advanced Glow Effects

Advanced Glow Effects IMAGE

5. Retro Text

Retro text image

6.How to Create High Quality Metal 3D Text in Photoshop

metal 3d text image

7.Wood Inlay Text

wood inlay text iamge

8. Moon Shine Text Effect

Moon shine text iamge

9.Colorful Glowing Text Effect

Colorfull glowing text effect image

10. Awesome Grunge Text Effect

Awesome Grunge Text Effect image

11.Chain Text

http://www.flash-game-design.com/tutorials/chainedText-photoshop-tutorial-6.html

12.  Bubble Text

Bubble text image

13. Aqua Text Photoshop Tutorial

aqua text iamge

14. Oily and Shinny Text Effect in Photoshop

oily and shiny image resul

15. Vanity License Plate

vanity license plate image result

16. Add Fantastic Color to 3D Text

fantastic color to 3d text image

17. Cloudy Tex

cloudy image

18. Vibrant Pop Text Effect

vibrant pop text effect image

19. Wanted Sign Into A Piece of Wood

20. Creating the Sky Logo

sky image

With this post I am also saying Thank you to all these designers who have made these tutorials. And I hope we’ll see a lot of new and cool tutorials like this in future. Also thanks to T-P!

Guest Author: Andrey

MyBB Theme: JERO


This MyBB Theme has been a long time coming, I know. I started working on this back in 2008, Nov 14th actually, so yeah (been busy, life, work, Asian girl called Luanne…long story there), I know a LOT of you want to download and use this baby. With over 19,000 views to the original thread and over 150 comments it’s finally done!

jero

A few things before you download it and run around woooping for joy, it’s got a couple bugs I just don’t have the time right now to fix, tiny bugs, nothing that will actually effect your use of the theme or make it unusable. I’ll try to get to these next week but can’t put off publishing the theme for people to use any longer, so consider this Jero V1.0

There will be a Jero V1.1 very soon with sexier effects to navigation, no bugs and some other nifty stuff here and there, I’m also preparing to work on a ‘light’ version of JERO, so stay tuned for that. It will be delicious as a white macbook pro, lame but yeah it’ll be hot.

So without further mombojumbo, download away!
JERO MyBB Theme Download
Here’s a Demo of the JERO Mybb Theme (offline atm for an hour due to update)

SIDE NOTE: A huge thank you to labrocca of MyBB Central and all the great members there who provided me with valuable feedback and constant support! Without you guys I honestly would not have bothered to complete this theme…so thank you.

Update: Buttons etc will be customized in the next update too, thanks for pointing that out. Also the rounded corner bug will be fixed

My Social Media Icons


So I’m slowly redesigning parts of this blog, soon it’ll be the icons/some of the graphics, then later the header, then the nav and probably the footer etc.

So today I spent a few minutes knocking up a few social media icons for myself to use, but…butttt i’m a nice guy and gonna share them with you buggers to use. Nothing at all unique, very basic and goes with where my blog design will be headed.

free papercut icons

There’s 7 icons, I’ll be updating the package fir 8 others when I have time tomorrow or something so if you like them in the first place and want them, check back some time. For the sake of making these into a pack i’m going to come up with a name for them, a really lame name mind you, PAPERCUT ICONS. Woohooo right? I know, I’ve got to get out more. So, enjoy…

Click the following link to >> download the free Papercut Icons

A Quik Disclaimer

I can't get in trouble for anything posted on this site, even if I do post it myself knowingly breaking any law. This is a disclaimer; so really, you can't sue me, because I'm stating so, here, in my disclaimer.

Also, if I use you graphics, quote you and don't give you credit, post naked pictures of you drunk at some party or call you out on something, cry me a river, you should be honored I bothered with you in the first place.

Of course, it goes without saying that I curse a lot, so if you're fucking offended by words like shit, or fuck then you need to leave.

Some Stats:

Note:

If you're looking for passwords to some of the posts, don't. If you don't have the password then I prob don't want you reading the post, sorry.