The Tech Curtain

More New Stuff

2008-02-21T16:45:00.000-08:00

I finally got my coldwarkid.com and techcurtain.com website hosting settled, and had some time to write a few paragraphs for them.
A new venture that I am giving a whirl is some local advertising. It has met with some success since all the ads I have done so far are on page 1 for the search terms that the advertisers want to be found for. It has been kind of fun doing this, and the advertisers are very pleased!

New Stuff

2008-02-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

Since I last blogged her, (I know, I know, it's been a while!) I have started some new ventures. One is an online, do it yourself pest prevention site: Bugs And Weeds and my brick and mortar site has been updated: TexPest Services and a new site,more closely related to the concepts of this blog, ColdWar Kid. The site covers some of the current event issues as they relate to coldwar issues, and various other things that relate to the coldwar generation and our interests. Drop by for a visit!

Page Rank and The Governator?

2007-11-05T21:03:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, August 16, 2007 I posted my thoughts on page rank,Page And Traffic Rank-Tilting at Windmills! It has pretty much proven to be true. SEOmoz had an interesting post a few days ago that stressed the importance of page rank by posting pictures of Barry Bond and Arnold the Governator, and showing the effects of steroids. OK guys, the steroids helped performance in the short term and artificially, so it is very much the same! The after pic of Arnold is enough to show the outcome!

PR matters to people who are selling ads, because the advertisers have yet to figure out that good search position is better than good pr. The little green phallic symbol is, to many, like the fancy little sports car, a means of compensating...

PR Drops:Does Page Rank Matter?

2007-11-04T20:50:00.000-08:00

With the last round of Google pr drops, came the accompanying cries of foul by webmasters all over the web. This was to be expected. Along with this came a lot of statements like: "page rank doesn't matter any way," Well, there is truth in that statement.

Let's look at this logically.

Page rank means something to seo's who base reputation on it, and publishers who use it as a drawing card for advertisers. That is about it.

I have noticed for quite some time, that there were some inconsistencies between what the seo folks are saying, and what really is. We have a saying around here when someone continues to go on about something that is obviously not true. "He knows a lot of things that just aint so!"

I spent several hours doing searches for keywords related to my industry, to see just how much page rank effects placement. One example is pretty much representative of all, this is what I found:

The phrase I searched: Texas Outdoor Pest Control.
The top 10:
#1 had a pr of 1, and is a service company.
#2 had a pr of 0, the same company.
#3 had a pr of 2, a Texas A&M page.
#4 had a pr of 0, an EPA page.
#5 had a pr of 6, a University of Texas page.
#6 had a pr of 3, and is a service company from Washington state. Didn't I say "Texas?"
#7 had a pr of 3, and is from Pen State, isn't that in Pennsylvania?
#8 had a pr of 0, a service company.
#9 had a pr of 2, a service company.
#10 had a pr of 2, and was the same as number 9.

The number one spot was taken by a page with a pr of one.

2, 4, and 8, had a pr of 0.

3, 9, and 10 had a pr of 2.

6 had a pr of 3

5 had a pr of 6

None of the top 10 had a pr above six. Only 4 were from edu or gov, two of them were out of state, the pr 6 was a page on custodial care, with very little info related to the topic.

The results can be a bit confusing, but they are what they are, and they have been that way for some time.

When the search was repeated, leaving out the word Texas, only one of these was in the top 20, and, you guessed it, it was the number 1 slot in the above list with a pr of 1, at number 20. To be honest, this page changes position from between 10 and 23 on a regular basis, and the only noticeable change is the addition of some advertisements for one or two of the other pages on the list, which seems to bring some of their sub pages up in the search. When the ads are gone, the site useually comes in at 15 or 16.

conclusions:

In all my searches on regular everyday things, pr means nothing. If it influences search placement, it is only to keep a page there that would otherwise not be there. Pages with a lot of information do well without page rank, under a variety of related searches. Pages with high pr and limited information are limited to very specific search placement. The second of the two search results was filled with ecomerce pages, most of them selling gadgets that do not work. I am not sure what that means, it is just an observation. I did the same sort of search an a lot of products and services related to everyday life. You might get different results from an seo related search.

Open Letter to Google

2007-11-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Google;
Hey, this search engine thing looks like it may just stick! Sure am glad you guys were sharp enough to do this.

I see a lot of complaints about buying and selling links, and page rank issues. In general, my thinking is that if they don't like the weather, they should relocate! Links seem to be the focus of this whole issue, so I have a suggestion:

Stop grading by links at all!

The structure being used now was great when there were a lot fewer sites, and a lot less people prowling the web, but now it seems to be getting a little obsolete.

There are a lot of people who have figured out ways to manipulate those links, and thereby get better rank which seems to lead to better placement in some cases. I realize that the better placement is not always the outcome of better rank, and less so all the time. I see a lot of sites that have little to no page rank listed above sites with pretty high page rank, which begs the question:

What purpose does it serve?

A lot of the high ranking sites have almost no important information on them, and a lot have a lot of links because they have a lot of people drop in to see which starlet is in the gutter at the moment, but that hardly seems to be as important as some other issues.

What I would like to see, is a method that would produce search results based solely on the importance of content. It almost seems as if you are already heading in that direction. I know that would lower the rank of a lot of ecommerce sites, and the latest drunk starlet sites, but it would provide true quality results for the end user. Of course, there would be a lot of SEO's out of work, but they are sharp people and could come up with something I am sure.

I have no ideas on how to write such a program, but you guys seem to have half the PHD's on the planet working for you, and I am sure they can figure it out. Anyway, keep up the good work, you provide a great service, and I just wanted to offer a suggestion for making it better, and drop it in your suggestion box.
James
Post Script: If you need a good pest prevention expert, I am available!

SEO Basics, Optimizing For People

2007-08-29T14:26:00.000-07:00

With all the buzz about web 2.0, and social media, sometimes it is easy to lose site of what is basic to the Internet and it's function. Sometimes I just need a checklist for making sure that I have covered the basics! When it comes to search engine optimizing, the basics sometimes seem pretty complex, and there are a lot of opinions on what the basics are. I have set up some elementary steps to this, by looking at SEO from a human standpoint. After all, we are trying to reach people. Even in a web 2.0 world dominated by social media, you need something to be social with. The search engines are a tool for helping people to find information, so optimizing for people should equal optimizing for search engines. This is my basic list:

Basic On Site Optimization.

1. What will potential visitors type into the search box to try to find a site like yours? Determining this will help you to determine what main ideas to present. You may know what they should type in to the box, but is that what they will type? Try to think like someone who doesn't know as much about your subject as you do, but wants to know more. Think about what that person would look for. Knowing what they will likely search for will provide you with a list of keywords. Choose the top ten of these words and phrases.

Use these keywords in your meta keyword tag, no more than ten though. Use them in your title tag, which I now see as being the most important meta information. Write a description for the meta description tag, also using your main key word in it. Meta tags have become less relevant, but not completely irrelevant. The description tag is very often what the engines use to describe the sites content when it is displayed in a search. The title tag information will be displayed in the browser.

2. Put your keywords on the page, where they would naturally occur. Don't over do it though. Use them naturally. If you are writing about your subject these words should automatically appear in the text where they belong. The information that you present should be relevant. This is what your site is all about, providing interesting, informative, helpful information to your visitors. That is what people are looking for.

3. Put your keywords in bold type at least once. Really, one time is enough, just do it, it really helps.

4. Add a link to a relevant, authoritative site. Some SEO people don't agree with that, but it will help. A link to an informative and authoritative .gov, .edu, or .org site that has related information does several things. It brings your site to life. A site with no links is dead! It shows that you are serious about providing information to your visitors.

5. Link internally from one page to another on your site. Try to make it easy for your visitors to get back to your home page, or any other page, from any page on your site.

One of the things you may have noticed is that every feature here is for the benefit of the visitors. Internal links help them navigate. Off site links are to provide them with more information. Key words and keyword meta descriptions, and title tags, are there so that the search engines can learn what your site is about, so that they can give good search results to your visitors. Your domain name is the address that your visitors use to find you. Since the search engines are serving information for visitors, and your site is optimized for visitors, the search engines will reward you with better placement and more visitors.

Basic Off Site SEO.

What we are talking about is the old custom of hospitality. Where I live, it is not just a custom, it is a lifestyle. A code we live by. The same should be true on the world wide web. Don't break that code by buying links for the sake of page rank. That is like buying votes, or influence peddling. It tells a lie to the search engines, that your site is more important than it is, and therefore causes them to serve the user bad results. Just don't do it, and don't deal with an SEO firm that does it. It is really bad manners, and it can get you banned from the major search engines.

In place of that diabolical tactic, there is a tried and true way to accomplish something even better.

If you have done the on site optimizing well, you are on your way, but not finished. There are things you should do off site that will help to get your site noticed by the search engines and potential visitors.

1. Write articles for blogs and ezines on your area of expertise, or have someone write your articles for you. Then publish these, with your url in the authors bio and resource boxes, embedded, on an e magazine. This will give you a link back to your site from a well placed site. Some sites use the nofollow tag, so you may not get page rank help from such sites, but you are getting links where the readers will find you and link to your site. Other publishers will use your article, and your link will be on their site as well. More people will see the article on their site, and provide more links. You are not only gaining page rank and increasing back links, but also good advertisement and exposure all for the cost of the domain, the hosting, and your efforts. The more of these you do, the more exposure and links you will get. You are providing a meaningful service to your visitors. Search engines love it, so do visitors to your site.

2. Build a blog, and write for it regularly. Link it to your site. Other people will discover it and link to it and your site as well. This is a great way to increase your Internet presence, and to help others.

3. Go to forums and post your answers to peoples questions. Places like "Yahoo Answers," will give you an opportunity to help other people, and help yourself by becoming established as an expert in your field.

This Is what I consider to be basic SEO. There are many other factors, but this is what seems to work for me. There is really only one basic rule, and that is to make your site people friendly! Everything else seems to fall in place.

James Burns writes on internet and social issues from a different perspective, from his home in Tyler, Texas. In real life, he is a licensed outdoor pest professional, and also writes on home garden, and environmental issues.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_F._Burns

Email Blocking Your Customers? Email Nazis!

2007-08-16T18:11:00.000-07:00

I have found several cases lately, when clicking on ads, and emailing a company, of having the email bounce back. At first I thought it might be me or my email address, but after thorough testing and having others do the same, I found that it was the filtering that was at fault. This was a little bit disturbing.

Two of the companies are near my location, and are in fields closely related to my profession, so I wanted to contact them, to see what we might be able to do for each other. The only way I became aware of them, was because they appeared on some of my websites, Alien Pest via adsense ads. Lately, I have noticed an increase in adsense activity by both companies, on my sites and related sites. This is what I think is happening:

The ads that they are paying for, appear on high profile sites, in complimentary fields, but they are not seeing the results that they should. So what do they do? Increase the budget! The ads proliferate, and still no increase, so more ad money is spent, etc, etc. Why? Because no one can contact them for their products and services! Why? Because the email filtering devices, are blocking them!

I finally got through to one of them by phone, and told him about the problem, his website and all the other "tech" stuff was being run by an outside company, he contacted them, and they said that they would solve the problem. A few days latter, I tried again, the same problem, the same result. He tried again. The company running his web and email affairs had set up several layers of protection. It was almost like this: "This is a business email, it must be s... This is a private email, it must be s... " In effect, the company got no emails! I will not name the web design company , but it is a very large communications company. Well, they only block email if it is business or personal, so I guess it is OK.

It would behoove all who are involved in some type or another of internet marketing or advertising to become personally involved in the process in more ways than suggesting ads and text.

I know of at least two companies, with good products and good advertising who are being cheated by tight filtering. I suspect that there are many more.

Last week, I got an email from one of my suppliers, complimenting my website, and inviting me to come by for a social/ business call. I hit the reply button, and sent my reply. It came back with this message: "Sender was rejected blocked by anti s... If this is not s..., please contact us, etc. etc. etc." So, I did. I got a message the next day, Sorry about the problem, we have included your information. It still didn't work! If avoiding s... is so important that it necessitates avoiding customers, what exactly is the point? "We don't have any problem with viruses, but we don't have any customers."

What I find interesting is that my information has to be in the system for him to allow me to reply to a message sent by the company he represents! What about the five thousand people contacting them to make purchases? The company tells me that their on line sales have never been very good. Duh! No one can get through with a question or an order, without having to file papers with the email Nazis!

Rational Environmental Solutions: East Texas Outdoor Pest Control

Page AndTraffic Rank-Tilting at Windmills!

2007-08-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

What I am going to say in this post will run afoul of everything that any SEO will ever tell you, but it is completely and utterly absolutely true, and I can prove it with numerous websites!

There is an old joke about a man who comes across another man, searching for his wallet under a street light. The guy tries to help, but in a while it becomes obvious that the wallet is no where to be found. So he asks the other guy, "are you sure you lost it here?" The original searcher says: "No, I lost it in the ally, but the light is better here!"

If you are an advertiser, seeking to sell something, there is a lesson to be learned here. If you choose which sites you want to place your ads with, based on page or traffic rank. you may be searching in the wrong place!

Page and traffic rank, are quite simply gauges, like the fuel gauge on your car. They give you an amount relative to the capacity of your fuel tank, but like fuel tank gauges, they can be inaccurate, broken, or deliberately miss calibrated. If you have ever been stranded as a result of a fuel gauge being inaccurate, you already understand this. Page rank tells us what Google thinks of the importance of a given page, that is the amount of fuel that Google thinks you have. The calibration is set by some factors which are mostly unknown to the average webmaster. The one known factor being links which unite your page with another. this is seen as being important, because it is a metric to tell what others think of your page. There is also a provision of some sort to determine the relative importance of these links, that would be their measurement of fuel quality. Recently this has been a matter of debate, since this gauges one known measure of importance can be affected by buying links, and if this is done, the actual amount of fuel in a tank can not be measured accurately.

Traffic rank is a gauge used to measure traffic, of course. That is the numbers of people visiting a sight. It is impossible to measure the quality of the traffic. There are several tools used to gauge this, and most of them are vulnerable to misunderstanding of one type or another. To put all of this in perspective, let's just say, that neither is very good at doing what it is intended to do, which is to tell you what condition your condition is in.

Is there a gauge to tell what is really going on? I would say yes. The true measure of success is whether or not a page is accomplishing it's intended purpose. This can be one or more of several things, such as conversion. Are people coming to my site and doing what I want? Are they viewing, buying, taking a particular action, for which the website is designed? If the sight is designed to be a catalog of materials and services, are people coming there and seeing what you want them to see? Is it designed for providing information, selling advertisement etc.? If so, is it doing this?

This assumes that the page is visible to viewers. If you are using the site to describe services that your company provides, by sending people to your site from the outside, using such things as business cards, print ads, adwords, fliers, etc. and that works for you, then you have reached your goal. Most of us will use a combination.

Where does my page appear in the search rank pages, when someone types in a keyword? This is what really matters. It does not mean a thing if you have a page rank of seven, but no one can find you when they type in your search phrases. The same is true of traffic rank. If your graphic line is flat, yet you can be found by someone who is typing your business phrases into the browser, then you have success.

I know a site, with several of the pages ranked at two on the green bar, which can be found in the number one to ten slot by typing in almost any word related to the industry. In this case, page rank effectively means nothing. Now, if you are an advertiser, and you want your ads found in that industry, you can go to the dozen or more sites that rank higher in PR, or you could go to the one that is constantly ranked above the rest for searches that are related to your business. Even if the traffic rank was a true measure of the eyes coming to a given site, the traffic would still not be as well targeted Frankly, I am astonished that advertisers haven't figured this out. If and when they do, it will change everything.

Saying: "This website ranks higher, so I want to advertise on it," is tantamount to saying; "I lost my wallet in the ally, but I want to search for it in a place where there is better light!" Page rank as determined by Google, or traffic rank as determined by Alexa, amounts to opinion, and these opinions are basically irrelevant. The only truly significant measure of a page, is whether it can be found when a related search is performed.

Content is King, and getting links by using content, wont get your website banned!

The Rational Gardner: An Aquatic Note

2007-07-10T12:13:00.000-07:00

The Rational Gardner: An Aquatic Note

SEO and The Human Element

2007-07-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

So, some of your pages ended up in the supplemental results. Now what? How do you get them out? Well, the popular short answer is this: "Build page rank!" The obvious next question is: "How do I build page rank?" Again, the popular short answer is: "Build links!" The question that naturally follows is: "How do I build links?" Well, now we are getting somewhere! You could buy them, but that is taboo, and everyone knows it is cheating, but whether you admit it or not, eventually it will lead to trouble.

So, what's a webmaster to do? There is really only one correct answer to this one, and once you know this and really understand it it will be the answer to almost every other page rank problem as well. One simple word, "content!"

How do you get content? You obviously have an interest in a subject. What is your site all about? You probably know quite a bit about your subject, at least some of which, other people might like to learn, so, write about it! Publish it on your site. Publish it in an ezine. Both things will help.

If you don't think you can write about your subject in a way that would engage your audience, hire someone to write your thoughts for you. The money spent on such a project would be worth a lot more than hiring someone to help you fool a search engine, which would eventually backfire on you anyway!

Many webmasters are so busy trying to figure out how to fool the search engines into thinking that their pages are important, that they have forgotten what makes them important. They end up like the guy at work who spends more time and energy avoiding work than he would have spent if he had just done his job to begin with.

If the goal of the search engine is to find useful content and arrange the links to that content in such a way that the searcher can find the good content in the easiest way, and it is, and, if the internet end user is a human being, it stands to reason that websites designed with the human end user in mind, would do well.

If the site has keywords that match what an average human being would type into the browser to look for that particular type of content, and arranged in such a way as to make it easy for a human being to find the content that he or she is looking for on the site, the site should do well.

If this site has links to useful content on site and off, was designed by a human being, for a human being would end up ranking pretty well. It also stands to reason that a sight designed by any other method, is trying to skew the process by means that would, in any other field of endeavor, be considered dishonest!

Search engines exist to serve people by providing accurate results. These accurate results consist of information that people want and need, whether that is a place to buy merchandise, find services or acquire information. Any attempt to fool the search engine is inherently "black hat."

In the end, the internet is about human beings, for human beings, and the human element should never be left out of the equation.

James Burns writes on internet and social issues from a different perspective, from his home in Tyler, Texas, and his home page can be seen at http://www.dotcomrevolt.com

He is a licensed outdoor pest professional, and also writes on home garden, and environmental issues at http://www.rationalenvironmentalsolutions.com

Three Myths of the Mystical Kingdom of SEO

2007-07-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

Myths. They are everywhere. No where are they more prevalent than in the mystical land of SEO! Some SEO experts seem to encourage an air of mysticism about them and what they do, much the same as the masters of other mystical arts throughout history have used to carve their domains from the lack of knowledge of others. The information that I gleaned from reading hundreds of articles on the subject was so confusing and often contradictory that I eventually gave up. When I did this, and just put the information that I wanted to get out into a logical, people friendly format, I found that I had page rank, and traffic! I am developing a mantra, which goes like this: "Build your site for people, and the search engines, will reward you". I have taken the liberty of listing some of these myths below.

1. I keep seeing this one come up. "Don't put any words on the page 'under the fold'". This seems to indicate that people are incapable of scrolling down the page. What I think is really behind this is that, people will not scroll down the page if the information that they have read so far is not useful to them. According to the word counter on this editor, I have written over 100 words up to this stage, which by the standard set up by most SEO pundits, is more than enough for a page! What I have found is that people will continue to read as long as what I am saying interests them and has bearing on what they are seeking to know.

2. Google penalties for... You name it! "Google penalized my site for..." This one usually has to do with duplicate content. I have found that Google does not punish me for repeating the content on more than one site, the secondary site may not get as much page rank, or popularity, but if it is needed in that location, say, I put the information on "non native plant species" on my business site for my customers, and also on a purely informational site, somehow the big G seems to understand the need for the information to be spread around, and doesn't seem to discount it's value in either place. Now, if you have five pages with the same article on the same site, four of those pages will probably end up in the supplementals or not indexed at all. Can anyone say "DUH"? I have yet to see a "penalty" for anything other than what appears to be, blatant misuse. Having pages listed in supplemental results is not a penalty, just a place to list pages of less importance to the user, usually because they are amazingly similar to other pages.

3. Almost everything ever written about "links". According to popular opinion, you can not attain to the "Kingdom of Page Rank" with out crossing the "Mote of A Thousand Links". To this I say: "Dragon Dung!" Certainly, links help, but the only links that help, are relevant links. Thousands of irrelevant links do not impress search engines. A highly relevant outgoing link will probably do more good. Linking internally is a real help, because, (and this is the real key to the kingdom,) it helps the "User" to navigate the castle. This should teach us something. The key to the kingdom of SEO is user usability! The good outgoing link is a link to help the site user. The internal links are to assist the site user, the incoming links mean that someone else thinks that their users can gain helpful information from the site. This is why buying and selling links for page rank is such an atrocity to Google, and should be considered so by all. It manipulates the search results and sends people down the wrong path. At the end of the day in SEO land, it is the user who should be King!

James Burns is a licensed pest control professional, has been a Certified Professional Turfgrass Manager for more than 16 years, has a lifetime of experience in horticulture and agriculture, and is the owner of Rational Environmental Solutions, an IPM based pest control company in East Texas. He also has many helpful gardening tips at http://www.texpest.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_F._Burns

Domain Age

2007-05-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

First of all, getting page rank, and traffic (the two are not synonymous) takes time. Anyone offering to get it for you in 24 hours, is either lying, or is doing something underhanded that could get your site in serious trouble. Take a page from the old drug war, and "Just Say No".

Search engines prefer domains that have been active for a while, and, they prefer sites that have been active for a while, even if they are small sites, containing minimal information, as long as there are a couple of hundred words with good solid information. If the information is important in the least, it will be indexed. Domains and websites are like fine wines, they get better with age.

It is possible to get to the top of a particular keyword or phrase in a short time, even without page rank. One usually leads to the other. They are symbiotic. This will however, probably not happen with your main keywords, unless, you are in a small niche. One way to do this is to go local. If you have a pizza shop in "Big City" U.S.A., you may want to narrow it down a bit, by narrowing the parameters. Use your part of the city, "South Big City U.S.A.", or "South East Big City U.S.A.", or your street, "Hungry Street, South East Big City U.S.A." Sure, you will be in a smaller pond, but you will be a bigger fish. If you offer the only "mango, pineapple, coconut pizza" in town, use that to help identify the niche. Make your keywords work for your locale, and specialties.

I have one site, that I built soon after the registration by this method that zoomed immediately to the top of a couple of search terms, only to be put into supplemental results a short time afterward. After a quick analysis, I realized that I had used too many keywords (something you should avoid). The horror stories came flooding into my mind, "darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth"! In actuality, after correcting the problem, it only took a few days to get out, and almost back to number 1 again. This leads me to wonder whether the horror stories I hear, may, in some cases, be a result of deliberate manipulation.

That makes me think of another thing. Is it always bad to have a site in the supplemental? Honestly, no! I know that theory will run afoul of all the other webmasters in the world, but because the categories don't always have an exact spot where you fit, it is better to have even supplemental listings than none at all!

Even if you are not the worlds foremost expert on your subject, your views deserve to be heard, even if they are still developing. That is how we hash things out as human beings. Learn to write about your niche. This will give you content for your site, and articles to publish in venues like blogs and ezines. The duplicate content issue, is not as much of an issue as most people think. Google guidelines suggest, that if you use an article being published elsewhere, that you always include the link back to the original, and that this will avoid that problem. Some things need to be heard in more than one quarter, an article on landscaping can be useful in a landscaping category or a homeowner site, and search engines seem to understand this, and make appropriate adjustments.

This leads me to another thing that I think should be looked at. The search engines are trying to make information available to people. At least that should be the goal. That being the case, it would seem logical that if web sites are designed for people as well, the search engines would like them. Pages filled with lots of good content, should automatically place better. Perhaps we should stop trying to think like spyders, and start thinking like people!

The more involved I become with my websites, the more I realize that building a good website is exactly like building any other quality product. Build it with the needs of the user in mind, and promote it to the people who need it.

8 things that work for me: 1. Get your domain registered yesterday! A mature domain is a better domain.

2. Build a few decent web pages, with some decent content. This is relatively easy to do. Most popular sites, are so low on content, that they can barely be called "Web Pages".

3. Link from one page to another, search engines seem to like internal links.

4. Link to at least one, but only one or two, good informative sites on your subject. A site with no links basically goes nowhere. It might be an oasis in the dessert, but people will die of thirst before thy find it.

5. Make sure your keywords, are ones that will get the sight searched.

6. Submit your site to a few search engines. You don't have to submit it to all of them. Once it is indexed by a few, the big boys will find it pretty quickly.

7. Write about your area of expertise, and publish it on your site, and in ezines. This is one of my favorite methods of SEO. No matter what your area of expertise, there is a group of people out there looking for information about it. To me this is about the most important function of the Internet, the sharing of information, from every angle, from every stage of knowledge. Sometimes the new kid has some great ideas that we can all learn from.

8. Make sure your site is what users need, not what you think search engines want. The user is who you want visiting your site. Search engines don't buy products and services.

The main thing, is to get started. Even if you don't have a hundred pages of content, even if you cannot come up with all the best keywords, even if you have to host your site on free hosting.

Yes, I said free hosting! I know it is looked down upon by some, but it works. I have a fairly large number of sites with page rank up to 3, that are on free hosting, building traffic, building page rank, building longevity, and building value. Some are building traffic with no page rank, some are building page rank, with little traffic When they reach a certain point, I either purchase appropriate hosting, or host them on a subdomain of another site, even if I just forward them using a 301 redirect, and yes, they do continue to build, and it is always better to be moving forward and upward, than to be standing still, or lying dead!

James Burns writes on internet and social issues from a different perspective, from his home in Tyler, Texas, and his home page can be seen at http://www.dotcomrevolt.com He is a licensed outdoor pest professional, and also writes on home garden, and environmental issues at http://www.rationalenvironmentalsolutions.com

Domain Names and Cultural Awareness

2007-05-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

While searching through some domain name variations, to use for an East Texas company, I ran across a variant "eastxs" and ran it through the "whois" process. Like many other variations on the same theme, it belonged to a company in the East. Not the Eastern part of my state, or the Eastern part of the country, but the Eastern part of the world. I wondered why someone from that region would use a variant which would seem to indicate an East Texas (East TXS) affiliation. I looked the company up and contacted them. I got a note back with the information I needed to understand the situation on a different level.

The kind gentleman who answered, explained that his company was seeking access to the West, hence, East XS, or East Access. Since many western companies, are now accessing the manpower and intellect of that region, it only seems fair to reciprocate.

I had been working under a mistaken presupposition. A realization that my spot in the world, is not the center of the universe came upon me. That is hard for a Texan to take! My focus was too narrow. A more "global" approach was needed, to understand the situation.

The world is becoming smaller, and the Internet has had a lot to do with this. I have been reprinted in at least six languages that I am aware of, and that would not have been a possibility a few years ago. I still have difficulty believing that free press exists in Eastern Europe! This is a wonderful time to live.

I now wonder what other tidbits of information elude us, preventing us from understanding each other, how many wars have been fought over an idea or concept or words, poorly understood. I wonder at the possibly, innumerable disasters brought on by a poorly pondered, or tragically translated scribble. This is not a new idea to me, but searching for that "just right" domain name seems to bring this sort of thing up pretty often.

Being the introspective sort of guy I am, it made me ask the obvious question, why is this so? I think I understand at least part of it. When we search for domain names, we are attempting to get to the "nitty gritty", of what we or our company is about, in the most concise way possible. We want what we find, to be us in a nutshell. It gets down to the way we use words to convey, not just ideas and concepts, but emotions and feelings as well. We have made the domain, our name, an extension of who and what we are.

Why we choose a certain domain name says something about us, and makes us think about what we really want to get across. It causes us to question. The domain we choose, says something to others about us, and we want to be sure that we are saying the right thing in this short summery of ourselves.

James Burns writes on internet and social issues from a different perspective, from his home in Tyler, Texas, and his home page can be seen at http://www.dotcomrevolt.com

The Buzz!

2007-04-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

The Buzz!

I am a relative newbie to the sport of building websites. It is very much like golf to me, both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. I am sure that it is the same to many of you. Part of my excitement is that of new discoveries, and this sport is a never ending source of twists and turns, that can keep the wayward sportsman occupied for days on end. Unlike most sports, in this one, the rules are constantly changing, and that, in itself, is enough to keep the mind occupied.

Some of this will just be so much drivel to those of you advanced in the sport, who know all the techniques, and have mastered them. Some of it would seem astonishing to someone who had never practiced the art. The one thing, that I think really drives my interest, is the very real practice, and possibility of thinking "outside the box", and the fact that it is entirely possible for a neophyte, to score, because of the fact that he or she, is not embedded in the system. Sometimes we all get so close to our situation, to notice the obvious, and a new pair of eyes may be just the thing to shake things up. While everyone else, is speaking the same language, following the same training patterns, reading from the same rule book, a new person can come along, question everything, and lead the whole pack. I will probably never be one of those people, but it is something to think about.

I have seen many different methods of getting people to a web site. The first, and most obvious I suppose, is:

1. Optimize the meta information, and key words. I have spent a great deal of time doing this, and have had mixed results. When I go to Alexa, and check my seo by their method on some of my sites, I have a score of 95% or better, with 100% keyword relevance.

2. Advertising, which can be both on the Internet, and in the older forms of media. One of the popular ways it is done in my area, is to put up small yard signs with a pithy little saying, and the URL in bright letters, newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio are other means. On the Internet, there is direct advertising through email, which is the tech version of mail out fliers, advertising on other sites, and links. Buying links, looks very much like advertising to me, and the links are often used as an artificial means of increasing page rank, because of the way that some top search engines use to rank pages. Google is now moving to change this.

3. Buzz. Buzz is sort of, the unknown, or variable in the equation. An event that is capitalized on by a webmaster, or something of that nature. It can be naturally occurring, or the result of a well thought out plan. Boring, non creative neophytes such as me, can create a little, by writing on subjects of our expertise, and publishing this material in blogs and ezines. So far, this seems to be my best method.

When I write a story on pruning a tree, or lawncare, or pest control, or my experiences as a neophyte, Internet outsider, those pieces of my brain, are picked up by others who are trying to provide information to their customers, and they in turn make money from the adds placed on their sites, and my URL gets noticed a bit. Then people come to my site. I have noticed a lot of my stuff, when I search my keywords these days. For me, maxing out my meta and keywords, and advertising, are way back on the list, and my traffic is on a steady rise.

Have you ever checked the seo score and keyword relevance of Google, Yahoo, or any other major search engine? Try it. You will find it to be pretty low. What drives traffic to them, is the service they provide, and the buzz!

James Burns is a licensed pest control professional, has been a Certified Professional Turfgrass Manager for more than 16 years, has a lifetime of experience in horticulture and agriculture, and is the owner of Rational Environmental Solutions, an IPM based pest control company in East Texas. He also has many helpful gardening tips at http://www.texpest.com, and also has a web site on Internet topics, www.dotcomrevolt.com

Domain Names and Original Thought

2007-04-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

I suppose we all spend a good deal of mental energy in pursuit of useless, well, for lack of a better word, pursuits. One of my favorites is to trace the steps back to the source of what made that idea come to my mind.

I was driving along near my hometown one day, and happened upon a Taxidermy shop. The words Taxidermy Cafe, came to mind! Strange. My brain ran around in circles trying to find something to connect to, and finally, it came to me. Every time I see the word Taxidermy, it reminds me of a friend who was a Taxidermist, and had the strange habit, of chopping off little slivers of meat from the projects he was working on, as a snack during the project.

I thought, "Taxidermy Cafe". When I got home, I searched "Who Is" for the name www.taxidermycafe.com. Unsurprisingly, it was available, so I got it and the info version as well. OK, it just needed a home! I still haven't developed it, I have it on a free hosting page with some vulture vomit jokes, and the words "Eat Here, Get Gas" now, but haven't had time to work on much else. That is just a little insight into my sick mind.

I am always integrating what goes on around me, into some strange symbiotic relationship or another. My registrar, sometimes offers "dot info's"for a dollar, I told a friend, that I could build a short website for a buck, and then went online, registered builtforabuck.info, and proceeded to do it. Actually, I didn't get it for a buck, it cost me a buck and a quarter, but builtforabuckandaquarter.info just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it is my guess, that your mind works in a similar fashion, probably not as sick as mine, but at least in some of the same patterns. If you are looking for a really cool domain, following that instinct, might be a good idea, since there will be others who are thinking along the same lines.

I admit, I have what might be considered, some odd domains, but I have to think that some of them are relevant to others besides me. Otherwise, I might be accused of being an original thinker, and I don't believe any of us are all that original. Most of the time when I come up with what I think was an original thought, It turns out that Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, stole it from me!

James Burns writes on internet and social issues from a different perspective, from his home in Tyler, Texas, and his home page can be seen at ,WWW.DOTCOMREVOLT.COM

Google and the linkmongers

2007-04-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

Google sent out a pretty clear message to the internet community concerning the purchase of links for the purpose of page rank, and as you might imagine it set off a lot of heat, but very little light. I blogged almost all night, and was amazed at the numbers of people who agreed that something should be done about linkmongoring. It has turned into page rank to the highest bidder on the web, and there are a lot of unhappy people out there right now!

As I wrote earlier in an article on the subject, something needs to be done, and apparently now, it will be done!

This should give a lot of you who have something interesting and content filled to say, a chance to have it read, until they figure out how to manipulate some other part of SEO!

Hey, by the way, check out my new site at www.dotcomrevolt.com.

Choosing Domain Names:avoidlongunreasonabledomainnames

2007-04-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

Choosing a domain name can be a challenging and frustrating experience. It can also be a fun filled and rewarding experience, a test of your creative skills, and self revealing on a lot of different levels!

My business name is Rational Environmental Solutions, I had tried several different variations, such as replacing solutions, with services, or just calling it solutions, so that I could later add more divisions, but what finaly settled me on this variation, was that it said what I wanted it to say, and the domain, www.rationalenvironmentalsolutions.com, was available. As you have already guessed, that was not a good choice for a domain name, although as a business name, it seems to work just fine. It says what I want it to say, and it gets a good look from my home states various agencies when they are looking for eco friendly companies to do jobs for the state. It just doesn't work well as a domain name, because of it's length, and the very good chance, that it will be misspelled when typing it into a browser.

So, I went looking for another domain name, that would at least offer some idea and association to what I do. Most were just as long and unruly as the original, so I thought that since the business name said what I wanted it to say, that the domain didn't necessarily have to completely describe the business. I found the domain name TEXPEST, that describes where I am and what I do, (not, as I am sure some of you are thinking, what I am.) So TEXPEST, became my domain name. While I was searching, I ran across several others that I liked as well. Let me explain a little bit about why I did not choose them for my primary domain, but registered them anyway.

I came across my home town version of the name I chose, TYLERPEST, Since my hometown is one of the largest rose growing areas in the country, and because it has the largest Municipal rose garden in the country, it is sometimes called, the "Rose City". ROSECITYPEST was available. I live in the Eastern part of the state of Texas, so since EASTTEXASPEST, is both long and difficult, and has the double letters to contend with, I decided against that. I did however find that ETEXPEST. ETEX, being a in common use in the area, was much more appealing, but was rejected because it "could be" confusing. TYLERLAWN, was also available, but didn't say what I wanted to say. I settled on TEXPEST, because it was broad enough to cover work in the entire state, and short enough to be easily remembered and typed.

I registered the reasonably good other choices as well, to keep the competition from encroaching, and to protect my "branding". I also wanted to use them to cover a lot of other bases. When someone types a service need into a browser, they often, out of habit, type .com at the end, so if they are looking for info on a Tyler pest, and type it in as, tylerpest.com, they will go directly to a very short page that I have done, that ends something like this: : "If this is your problem, don't push the panic button, push the solution button." Bellow, or even in the sentence, the word SOLUTIONS is highlighted, because I typed the "meta" information into the html, that points to my texpest site. I did this with several of the variations, and the rest I "forwarded", using a 301 redirect, to the main website. If you want, you are of course, welcome to try it out, and see for yourself. It allowed me to say some things, in a little less of a professional tone than I would have on my website proper. (Look at www.etexpest.com, for a chuckle or two, particularly, if you live in a rural area!)

Now, when I search some of my keywords, I run across all sorts of little variations, that when clicked, will send people directly to me! When it was all said and done, I did a lot of good advertising for my business, and had a lot of fun doing it.

James Burns writes on internet and social issues from a different perspective, from his home in Tyler, Texas, and his home page can be seen at http://www.dotcomrevolt.com

KISS Are You Guys In Sales Listening?

2007-04-19T21:50:00.001-07:00

The new computer came with a very nice software package, and a lot of trial packages already installed. Some of it was virtually useless to me for my purposes, but one in particular was very helpful, so we decided to buy it. My wife, who teaches computer technology locally, sat down at the computer to do this. Thirty frustrating minutes later, she stood up, and said, "I am going to Bxxx Xxy, and I will just buy the disk!"

The problem was not the installation, nor the checkout, the difficulty that drove her to drive off to the tech shop, was maneuvering through the software companies website! The irony is utterly overwhelming to me!

We have a well educated, intelligent, well trained, multi lingual woman, having difficulty getting to the right page of a software manufacturer, which specializes in making it easier, to build and move through web pages!

I had a similar experience earlier in the week, dealing with a hosting company. The idea was to buy a short term hosting package to play with, and decide on whether or not I liked the way it worked before signing on for the long haul. I had already been burned by one company who promised the world, but only gave me a piece of it at a time, in the form of mud balls. I wanted to be more cautious before making the plunge. I bought a month of hosting.

I had a test page built up, and started trying to download, I tried the hosts provided ftp, I tried cute ftp, I tried netscape communicator, I tried others. I switched browsers, and did it over again. I did this with four browsers. I called there help line, and sat for thirty minutes listening and typing, still nothing. My wife tried, nothing!

I decided that the package was not what I needed! The company graciously offered a refund. I accepted. At first I thought it was me, then maybe the computer, or the browser, or the ftp program. I was wrong. I talked to others, on and off line, who have met with similar trouble. It is apparently widespread. Systems so convoluted, and confusing that people give up and walk away. Customer service so bad, that it seems the goal is to drive you away, and websites devised so poorly, that people leave in frustration before buying the product.

Are you guys in sales hearing this? Your products and services are becoming so difficult, that you are losing customers! The automation is great, I know it helps you sell your products more cheaply, but if it begins to drive consumers away from your goods and services, you might want to give that "live talk" program a little re thinking.

The really ironic part, was what happened after I canceled the hosting package, and went back to check on the status of my domain. I typed it into the browser, clicked the mouse, and there before my eyes, was the page I had been trying to transfer!

James Burns writes on internet and social issues from a different perspective, from his home in Tyler, Texas, and his home page can be seen at http://www.dotcomrevolt.com

An Untapped Market

2007-04-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

I once managed a large athletic park. It was a difficult job, fraught with all the troubles that any oversight job has, probably much like yours. From time to time, I would have the chance to give a tour of the place to someone who had never been there before. I always loved the opportunity. Being able to have a fresh set of eyes looking at your work, can be very revealing.

I would tour them around, watching their reactions, listening to their comments, and asking them questions about what they were seeing, then attempting to act on this new information to improve our service. What they saw was different from what I saw, because I was there every day, and my focus had become limited as a result. Try it at your job sometimes, you would be amazed, at what a different perspective can do to sharpen, and broaden your own focus.

The internet entities, who provide services for web users, could learn from this model. I took a tour through one of the major services, of their local small business listings, it took nine clicks, just to find my listing, and I knew where it was! I was not surprised that I had gotten no contacts through them.

A far worse plight awaits those who are not familiar, with all the technical jargon that has become so wide spread among internet based companies and their avid users. An outsider has no idea what is being said, and learning the stuff is worse than any language that I have ever tackled, and I know several!

With all the talk of domain names, "URL's", "ISP", "SE", "SEO", "Nameservers", "ftp", "html", "java script", etc (those are the easy ones) anyone wanting to build a family website is left to find a company with a nice set of templates, and even then, much explanation is in order.

What I propose, is that providers of internet services, work on making the language a little easier to understand. Call one of your neighbors over and have them shop your business services. Find the most low tech human being you can find, and build your services around them! I really believe, that if this was done, many companies would be surprised at just how far from the reality of day to day life, that they have slipped.

There are many people who do not venture onto the internet, because of this gap in information. There are many more, who are interested, and may use their computers for e mail, or some searching, who would love to venture in further, but who will not do so, because of the language barrier.

Why should this be of interest to you if you are inside the business? Simple. You are missing out on an untapped market, thousands of potential customers, because you are speaking a different language!

Some Good News From the Front

2007-04-19T21:47:00.000-07:00

I had been bemoaning the fact that many search engines seem to give high rank to pages with little content, many ads, lots of paid links, and some obvious to readers, but not to bots, paid ads cleverly disguised as information links, while many deserving sites, full of good info, but not as seo savy, went virtually unnoticed, and then, a bit of information popped up in an seo newsletter that cheered me up a little. They are taking notice! There is some sanity in the search engine world after all!

This should really come as no surprise, since most of us think very similarly, either as a result of our Aristotelian thought training, or just a general sense of fair play, which seems to pervade much human thought in an open society. In other words, if I am thinking about it, there must be others doing the same.

Comments made to Rand Fishkin, by Vanesa Fox of Google, seem to indicate that Google is trying to pay more attention to at least one, and it looks like more, of the concerns many of us share. In particular, the issue of paid links. Paid links, seem to be a part of what looks a lot like "paid page rank", and this is not always a cash exchange, it may come in the form of mutual back scratching, or what used to be called the "Old Boy" or "Good Old Boy" network or system.

In the system as it is at the moment, a website may be penalized for linking to it's own, or other informational sites which might share certain key information content, or even appear to be link farms, while pages with little relevant information, might be ranked higher due to having great links. I understand the need to do this in the current "algorithm" structure since a pages importance is ranked by it's perceived popularity, and hence, it's usefulness, but if popularity can be bought, or faked, as it obviously is, then the system needs adjusting.

This seems to be what Google is doing.

Here is another thing that the bots inside my head tell me that there is a need to look into. If someone writes a useful article on a given subject, which is then picked up by other publishers, or is quoted from extensively, in very short order, it may propagate itself throughout the Internet, and become a liability to publishers, and the original writer, because of "duplicate content", and could eventually become a problem, for writers, ezines, and news aggregators as well. This may encourage new content, or newly redesigned content, but not necessarily relevant or important content.

The duplicate content issue needs to be revisited, and revised. It can be skirted by the linguistically clever. Content can be manipulated by being professorial on one hand and doing the old "fatback and grits" routine on the other. True, it may appeal to different audiences, and therefore may be valid in some respects, which only serves to strengthen the above stated opinions. If it is relevant, it is relevant, and it may be relevant to different people, in different ways, so why punish it's author, and publishers for disseminating it widely in it's original form?

If an article on irrigation is relevant to the contractor who does installations, it may also be relevant to the home owner having the system installed, who will look for the information in a different place. Why is it bad for this information to be both in the "Irrigation Contractors Weekly" and in the "Wary Home Owners Corner"? It may be relevant to both, but they will search for it in different ways.

Well, at least, Google seems to be taking some steps to level at least part of the playing field, and the system is always in a state of flux, so there is always hope that the changes will be good ones.

An Untapped Market!

2007-04-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

The Bots In My Head

2007-04-13T05:38:00.000-07:00

I had been bemoaning the fact that many search engines seem to rank pages with little content, many ads, lots of paid links, and some obvious to readers, but not to bots, paid ads cleverly disguised as information links were getting great "page rank" while many deserving sites, full of good info, but not as seo savy, went virtually unnoticed, and then, a bit of information popped up in an seo newsletter that cheered me up a little. They are taking notice! There is some sanity in the search engine world after all!

This should really come as no surprise, since most of us think very similarly, either as a result of our Aristotelian thought training, or just a general sense of fair play, which seems to pervade much human thought in an open society. In other words, if I am thinking about it, there must be others doing the same.

Comments made to Rand Fishkin, by Vanesa Fox of Google, seem to indicate that Google is trying to pay more attention to at least one, and it looks like more, of the concerns many of us share. In particular, the issue of paid links. Paid links, seem to be a part of what looks a lot like "paid page rank", and this is not always a cash exchange, it may come in the form of mutual back scratching, or what used to be called the "Old Boy" or "Good Old Boy" network or system.

In the system as it is at the moment, a website may be penalized for linking to it's own, or other informational sites which might share certain key information content, or even appear to be link farms, while pages with little relevant information, might be ranked higher due to having great links. I understand the need to do this in the current "algorithm" structure since a pages importance is ranked by it's perceived popularity, and hence, it's usefulness, but if popularity can be bought, or faked, as it obviously is, then the system needs adjusting.

This seems to be what Google is doing.

Here is another thing that the bots inside my head tell me that there is a need to look into. If someone writes a useful article on a given subject, which is then picked up by other publishers, or is quoted from extensively, in very short order, it may propagate itself throughout the Internet, and become a liability to publishers, and the original writer, because of "duplicate content", and could eventually become a problem, for writers, ezines, and news aggregators as well. This may encourage new content, or newly redesigned content, but not necessarily relevant or important content.

The duplicate content issue needs to be revisited, and revised. It can be skirted by the linguistically clever. Content can be manipulated by being professorial on one hand and doing the old "fatback and grits" routine on the other. True, it may appeal to different audiences, and therefore may be valid in some respects, which only serves to strengthen the above stated opinions. If it is relevant, it is relevant, and it may be relevant to different people, in different ways, so why punish it's author, and publishers for disseminating it widely in it's original form?

If an article on irrigation is relevant to the contractor who does installations, it may also be relevant to the home owner having the system installed, who will look for the information in a different place. Why is it bad for this information to be both in the "Irrigation Contractors Weekly" and in the "Wary Home Owners Corner"? It may be relevant to both, but they will search for it in different ways.

Well, at least, Google seems to be taking some steps to level at least part of the playing field, and the system is always in a state of flux, so there is always hope that the changes will be good ones.

SEO, Webolitics, and Link Lodges

2007-04-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

I got another lesson in SEO today, It wasn't meant to be, it was a rejection of sorts, I think that it was more of a lesson in webolitics.

My main site for my business is a paid site, but I had been writing a lot of stuff on landscaping, lawn and garden, things of that nature quite frankly, because I get a lot of questions and that provided the topics. It is something akin to an online form letter or FAQ. How do I do this? "Well, Mary, you first need to..."

I bought some extra domains, that I had forwarded to my main site, and thought since I get free ad supported hosting, I can just put the articles on some of those pages, dress them up the same, and link to them by a series of buttons: Lawn, Garden, IPM, Landscape, etc. My Main site space is limited, so it seemed like a good Idea.

Today I got a message from a guy, who said that he wouldn't list my business site on his "link lodge"(my term) because it was X0 XXXXY ad supported, and it was a link farm. I found that to be pretty ironic!

Now, this dosesn't really affect my business. That is the main thing. It did however bother me, and I spent the rest of the evening thinking about why it did.

As I was browsing the net using some of my keywords to see what condition my condition was in, I ran across a lot of pages with my main URL featured prominently, and snooped around a bit.

I was mildly surprised to find that many of the links were to either articles I had written on a variety of subjects, quotations directly from some of my hobby sites, (which are ad supported), and sections from one or the other of my blogs, almost all being used on pages with pretty high page rank, full of ads, using my content, and the content of others to sell ad space. This is how business is done on the internet, and it is beneficial to all of us. I get a little name recognition and some links to my home page from people who are interested in what I do and write about, because it helps them sell ads or products, they get to target ads related to what I have to say, the customer gets information for free, and a chance to browse products from advertisers, that suit their area of interest, and everyone is happy! The arrangement is good for all.

In the course of doing this, I discovered the source of my irritation.

I write the content that helps my customers, and others, to know how to plant a tree, or prune a tree, or save money on fertilizer, or anything else, publish it on an ad supported site, free of charge, and it is looked down upon by many internet purist snobs because of the ad support, while someone else can take the material that I have written, build a page around it, and fill it up with ads, for their reasonable, personal gain, and that is considered ok. Isn't it actually the same thing?

It was my sense of fair play that was insulted.

There may have been a hint of something else within the guys email. He chose to mention my registrar and host pretty prominently in his letter. As I read it, I could almost see the sneer on his face as he typed in my registrars name. If, as I suspect, some sites are down graded, because of a companies dislike for another, that would seem to be unfair to the site owner. I personally love the way my host does business, they offer a lot of free stuff, which makes it possible for some people, who's valid thoughts might otherwise be left out of the mix, to have a voice!
dotcomrevolt.com

A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole

2007-04-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

When I built my first website it was for the purpose of having a place for my customers, both potential and actual to go to check out my services. I was not seeking to make any ad money, or to max out my SEO, just an online catalogue of what I do for the public to earn my daily bread.

The site works pretty well for this, I drop off some of my cards at local, related businesses, and they are handed out to people needing my service, they go to the site, and if they like what they see, they call or email me, and I give them a bid. Standard business practices. I needed the site to explain a little about my philosophy, since my business is a little out of the ordinary for this industry. A nice arrangement for all.

Winter is a slow time for me, so I found myself in front of the computer screen a lot, working out details, laying the groundwork for the springtime. I picked up some domains related to my main site, and started down the rabbit hole. I put together a site or two for information that I thought my customers could use, Thinking it would be helpful and promotional at the same time. Then someone suggested "monitizing" my sites, so I figured out how to add, adsense. In a few weeks, I was making enough to help pay for my little winter time project.

I built some more sites. I found some affiliates, I began to put ads on for my friends, and their businesses. I built more sites. To promote the sites, I began to write more. More writing meant more content, so, you guessed it, I built more sites!

It hasn't gone too far, only about a hundred domains, and something over thirty sites, (Hi, I am James, and I am a webaholic.) but it all takes time, and I will soon be running short on that, and am now scrambling to get them into good shape, and make them easy to maintain, so that I can manage them properly when the time gets short.

The thing that really amazes me, is that while my sites, and other sites rich in content, get some traffic, and may even get to number one on specific key words, they still have no page rank. I know that some of my keywords are a little out of the ordinary, but they are honest. I am not complaining, just observing.

I can say most of this as a novice, and an "almost" disinterested bystander, as I said, my sites are doing what I need them to do and more. I never expected to use the sites for advertising my business, or to make advertising money. To me, they are more like books than billboards.

The current trend of link buying and selling, which reminds me of junior high school and the kid who was always trying to leverage friendship with money, the use of surgically accurate advertising, come very close, to buying page rank, and I think it actually crosses the line sometimes. I see a huge number of sites, with links which are obviously placed there for remuneration, purporting to be directories of one type or another, with two or three lines of dubious text, then a line of ads, more links, and a few lines of text, which max out my google page rank bar, while other, truly informative and instructional sites, don't even break the white.

Perhaps we need separate ranking systems for the two types of pages, but apparently the bots can't tell the difference. I was lead to believe that the search engines ranked sites based on content relevance, looked with an evil eye, upon pages loaded with outgoing links, looked for keyword relevance in the text, and looked down on duplicate content, but I suppose you can say the same thing over and over, if you say it with different words. You can say that they get better ranking than other sites, because they get more traffic, I counter, that without the page rank, some of them would be unknown!

I have a lot of sites, which share some basic content, but it doesn't worry me, because my goal is to get the information to my customers, who will in all likelihood be typing in the information from a business card. I have already noticed that some of the smaller search engines favor one site, over another, this is fine, both sites will get some traffic, my customers will get what they need.

It is comforting to know, that I am getting what I need from the sites, without having to stoop to deceptive practices. If all goes the way that the search engines say that it will, my sites will eventually pick up, and the rank will do the same. Time and content are great equalizers.

The KID goes International!

2007-03-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

This is a little bizzare to me but it is fun. This is a true story. I know I am not realy going "International", but it does prove certain points, about how the world has changed, about how the internet is changing it, and the irony is amazing!

I have 4 . mobi's, ahotbiz, acoolspot, sweetsite, and my personal favorite, coldwarkid. I mentioned that in an earlier blog, the same blog that caused me to write this one. It may help to know that the earlier blog was also printed as an ezine article. I was browsing through my sites, and tried to get to one of my mobi's, (they are just barely set up), and I noticed I couldn't get to it. I am not sure what the reason is, but it will work itself out.

While I was searching for coldwarkid, I thought I would check my dot com by that name, so I googled it. What I found was very interesting. There were a couple of my quotations, from ezine articles, a blurb from one of my websites, and a paragraph from one of my pieces- in Russian! This is how it reads in the English translation from the Russin translation of my original English version: (you may want to skip through some of this, but it is worth a look. By the way, I am not EVEN going to spell check this!)
You can find the original of this article by scrolling down.

Доменные имена и социальной мысли - 'холодной войны' и Kid 'холодной войны малышейSelf Writer.info / Domain names and social thought-'Cold War', and Kid 'Cold War kids Доменные имена и социальной мысли - 'холодной войны' и Kid 'холодной войны малышейDomain names and social thought-'Cold War', and Kid 'Cold War kids

Я домена, www.coldwarkid.com я также имею несколько вариантов одного и того же.I domain www.coldwarkid.com I also have several options for the same things. Информации.Information. Нетто, так далее.Net, among others. Я не сделал ничего с ними пока они на стоянку с объявлениями на данный момент.I did not do anything with them while they are parked in ads for the time being. Я даже не знаю, что банды детей холодной войны, очень популярен в диапазоне, еще не существовало, пока я на стоянку одной из страниц с компанией, брокеров, объявления, связанные с моих доменов название и один из показа на 2-й в 'холодной войны детей.I did not even know that gangs of children Cold War, a very popular band, did not exist, while I parked one of the pages with a company brokers ads related to my domain name and a preview on the 2nd in 'cold war-affected children. Я получил доменное имя, потому что хотел рода общее доменное имя, которые я мог бы использовать несколько целей, таких, как поощрение и расширение моих страничек о военных винтовок на www.milgun.info, сайт посвящен винтовок в ходе первой и второй мировых войн и 'холодной войны', или, ы рода низкие технологии памяти несколько страниц на создании простых веб-сайтов для Интернет dissposesed ж моего поколения.I got the domain name, because I wanted to sort of a common domain name, which I could use a few goals, such as promoting and expanding my pages of military rifles at www.milgun.info site with rifles at the first and second world wars and the cold war, 'or, s kind of low memory technology several pages on the creation of simple websites for the Internet dissposesed Well my generation. Мне понравилось название столько, что я даже купила Гасымова домена!I liked the name so much that I even bought Gasimov domain!

Я также хотел бы, чтобы название более эфирных Поэтому представляется дать определение lostness, и социального нервозность моего поколения.I also would like to see a more volatile Therefore, it seems to define the lostness, and the social unrest of my generation. Мы собрались вместе во второй половине века, что видел Великая депрессия, расположен между двух мировых войн, которые помогли определить поколения до нас как 'Великих поколения', и это они действительно являются.We have come together in the second half of the century that saw the Great Depression, is situated between two world wars that have helped define the generation before us as a 'Great Generation', and that they truly are. Мы обязаны огромным долгом признательности к предыдущему поколению за то, что он рассказал нам плоды своих 'кровь, пота, труда и слез '.We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the previous generation for bringing us the fruits of their "blood, sweat, work and tears'. Мое поколение Однако, не менее определения, но в настоящее время это определение в истории этапе.My generation, however, it is equally definition, but now that definition in the history of time. Мы действительно Вьетнаме, движения за гражданские права, космической программы, и много других социальных вопросов, однако.We Vietnam, of the civil rights movement, the space program and many other social issues, however. Кто бы мог подумать, что первое поколение о существенном мира, таких, как он, были бы столь неуправляемой?Who would have thought that the first generation of a significant world, such as he would have been so volatile? Возможно, это unruliness, является необходимым фактором для нашей демократии, перестройки, чтобы у нас была сбалансированная.Perhaps this unruliness is essential to our democracy, adjustment to keep us in balance. Только время действительно рассказать.Only time will really tell. В конечном счете, это означает, что оно означает.Ultimately, it means what it means.

Впрочем, найти холодной войны Детские объявление, мне кажется, вновь путь Я взглянул на домены, и направила меня в 'Google Me' режиме.However, a cold war's announcement, it seems to me, to the way I looked at domains, and sent me to 'Google Me' mode. Я googled сам, и большинство людей, которых я знал, и нашел много интересного материала.I googled myself, and the majority of the people that I knew, and found a lot of interesting material. Я могу говорить о том, что некоторые будущие статьи.I can say that some future article. Я слушал некоторые из их музыки, и пользовался он очень много.I listened to some of their music, and enjoyed it very much. От меня к поколению решений и прослушивания музыки и сегодня : развлекаться, и не позволил никому сообщить, что Вы можете не достичь Ваших целей.From me to the next and listening to music today : fun, and not let anyone tell you that you can not achieve your goals. Храните ваши мечты живы, и не сдавайтесь и 'урегулирование', есть много людей моего возраста, страдающие от сожалению, не идти по пути они выбрали, и теперь понимаю, было бы в рамках своей расширенной досягаемости для этого.Keep your dreams alive, and do not give up and 'solution', there are a lot of people my age who suffer from it is not to follow the path they chose, and the understanding that it would be within their extended reach to do so. Мы только что слушали по ошибке.We have just listened to the wrong people. Мы ж ---- d виду не веря в наших собственных инстинктов в меньшинстве ведь неизбежные неудачи того времени.We f ---- d mind not trusting our own instincts in the minority but inevitable setbacks at the time. Мне жаль, что мы не оставили мир в лучшем состоянии, для Вас, возможно, мы не создали шаблон для вас сделать некоторые усовершенствования.I am sorry that we have not left the world a better place for you, we may not have a template for you to make some improvements. Мы можем вести эту работу совместно.We can work on that together. Мы сделали то, что мы понимаем, сделать в то время, и она такова, какова она есть.We have done what we mean to do at the time, and it is what it is.

Для диапазона, Дети холодной войны, поддерживать хорошую работу ребята.The range Children cold war, support the good work of students. Музыка великолепно!Music great! Оберегайте его течению.Keep it current. Я желаю Вам удачи, и спасибо за прозрения.I wish you good luck, and thank you for the insights.

Well, that was strange. It was also kind of fun. It is also a little ironic. The order has definitley changed in the world. It wasn't to long ago that there was no free press in the now, former, Soviet Union, and now, even with the nickname Cold War Kid, I am being reprinted in Russian.

Parked Pages, Valet or Self Parking?

2007-03-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

I am taking another trip down a side road on the super highway again today. I will get back onto the right road as soon as I get my GPS on line. Some of the bill boards stole my attention. I have as many questions as answers on this one, and am thinking out loud more than anything else.

Bare with me.

Self parking, or Valet parking?

I have been looking at domain parking, including cash parking. I had quite a few domains that I didn't have much of any ting planned for. I bought them while trying to fill out orders, and sometimes the lure of dollar .info's is like the lure of a cold one on a hot dusty Texas day after a hard day at work. Well, that's how I got them, now what to do with them?

I built the websites that I wanted, all that I could get to in my allotted time. And there they were, staring me in the face, each time I went to the control panel.

I realized, that just leaving them for someone else to collect money from posted ads, didn't make much sense, although my very gracious registrar, provides a multitude of great free services, free ad supported hosting, very good prices, and I am amazed by their quality of customer service, quick responsive, thorough, friendly and accurate. The best I have experienced!

Still, I wanted to do more. I looked at cash parking options. There was a wide, almost bewildering range in price, service, user control, percentage of return,etc.
Then there was the question of honesty, and there are some kinda shady lookin companies parked along that stretch of road!

My company offers cash parking for a fee, but most of my domains, won't attract much attention on their own.

It offers starter web pages, which might be useful in driving traffic to the other pages you have that they let you list, and gives you the option of selling the domain from that location. And a chance that if someone stumbles by, they might take interest, and build a little traffic.

It offers for sale pages, but you have no choice in how it is displayed, or the ads placed on it, and of course, the company collects any revenue while it is there.

Basically, it goes like this:

you can leave them parked with the registrar, where if any ad money is made, it is made by their parking attendants.

You can have them valet parked, but I never liked handing my keys over to one of those guys. Besides, you have limited control of the meta info.

You can park it yourself, if you have a parking lot or billboard (hosting)

You are not going to build any search engine traffic parked in one of those services. Even though most sites I see on the web, are little more than glorified bill boards or parked pages, a lot of ads and links, and a little text between them. I am not sure what the difference between a page full of ads, and a page full of links with a minimum of text means to search engines, but sometimes the lines are blurred, and the bots can't see.

The only way they get traffic on their own is if it is misdirected due to spelling errors,like my unfortunate attempt to get to an international relief organization that I really like. I misspelled "heifer" and almost never got away, then spelled it correctly, but left out the "International" and got stuck in the ditch again!

I think that parking pages is less like a parking lot and more like a billboard on the Internet super highway.

So, using that analogy, this is what I am doing:

I am building pages, fast and furious!

I am building pages, with all the content I can muster,

I am adding ads, as fast as I can click,

I am forwarding domains to the sites I have built. This is really a pretty good Idea. If you build a page, and forward 10 similar domains that might draw that type of traffic, then you have, in effect, 11 monitized pages, but there is still the issue of traffic, and whether that past traffic from a forwarded domain, will register when it comes time to build a site, or sell the name. Maybe some of you more experienced guys can tell me the answer to that.

I am linking pages, to get whatever traffic I can from my other pages,

I am switching material, which the search engines seem to like. There again, I wonder at the validity of search engines wanting new info, and wonder if the future of the Internet may be in the blogosphere. If change is what they want, then, that is the place to find it!

At least, if you park it yourself, you have the chance to get search engine traffic, which usually leads to some real traffic. You might build some brand name recognition, and you might get a few ads clicked on. You can also promote your other sites, as ads, or links. There is that question again!

The sad thing is, that a site could potentially get a very high page rank, and be of no use to anyone. As wittiness to this I call to the stand the "Lupine Glupe" experiment, I just googled it, and most of it is gone now, but there is one page that said, "you must be looking for...I deleted it because it was full of stupid content, and if you are looking for it, you must be stupid too! Don't feel to bad though...." It even had a fake 404 error page! Anyway, it is possible to say nothing of value, and still have a highly ranked, and possibly well traveled web page.

Search engines don't seem to like parked pages, but there again, I suppose a clever person could emulate the work of other clever webmasters, who seem to be adept at disguising the fact that they are parked by shifting a little content, offering a link index to related sites,(perhaps even their own) which appears to be helpful, although the same thing could be done with a group of disjointed words and sentences, while an Einstein quality theory went un noticed!

I'm not sure what the answer is, not really even sure what the question is, but I know that I need to make my domains as pleasing as possible, offer good content, even if it seems boring by contrast with some of the fakes, and let the things go where they will. All the while, hoping for some sanity.

From the Cold War Kid, to the Cold War Kids

2007-03-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

I have a domain name, www.Coldwarkid.com, I also have several varients of the same, .info, .net, so on. I haven't realy done anything with them yet, they are parked with ads for the moment. I didn't even know that the band Cold War Kids even existed until I parked one of the pages with a company that brokers ads related to my domains title, and one of the ads was for a C.D. by the band Cold War Kids. I got the domain name because I wanted a sort of general domain name that I could use for several purposes, such as promoting and extending my pages on military rifles at www.milgun.info a website devoted to military rifles of the first and second world wars and the Cold War, or, as a sort of low tech sight for a few pages on building simple web sites for the internet dissposesed of my generation. I liked the name so much, that I even bought the mobi domain!

I also wanted the name for a more etherial reason, it seems to give some definition to the lostness, and social restlessnes of my generation. We came along in the last half of a century that saw The Great Deppresion, sandwiched between two World Wars, which helped to define the generation before us as "the Great Generation", and this, they truly are. We owe a tremendous debt of grattitude to the preceding generation for bringing us the benifits of their "blood, sweat, toil, and tears". My generation however, had less definition, but is now undergoing it's definition by history phase. We did have Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the space program, and a lot of other social issues though. Who would have thought that the first generation to see substantial peace, such as it was, would have been so unruly? Perhaps this unruliness, was a necessary factor for our democracy, an adjustment to keep us in ballance. Only time will truly tell. In the end, it means whatever it means.

Anyway, finding the Cold War Kids ad, made me re think the way I looked at domains, and sent me into the "Google Me" mode. I googled myself, and most of the people I knew, and found a lot of interesting stuff. I may talk about that some in a future article. I listened to some of their music, and enjoyed it very much. From me to the generation making and listening to the music today: Have fun, and don't let anyone tell you that you can't accomplish your goals. Keep your dreams alive, and don't give up and "settle", there are a lot of people my age suffering from the regret of not having follow the path they would have chosen, and now understanding that it would have been within their extended grasp to do so. We just listened to the wrong people. We were mind f----d into not trusting our own instincts by a minority of nay sayers of the time. I am sorry that we didn't leave the world in better condition for you, perhaps we did set up a template for you to make some improvements. we can work on that together. We did what we understood to do at the time, and it is what it is.

To the band, Cold War Kids, keep up the good work guys. The music is great! Keep it flowing. I wish you the best of luck, and thanks for the reminder.

More From behind the Tech Curtain

2007-03-08T12:14:00.000-08:00

Who could blame us if we seem to be a little paranoid about technology. We were trained that way. We spent much of our lives learning not to trust anyone, or anything having to do with it, all the time, embracing it with hope that it might just save the day. We are, to say the least, a bit confused. Most of us, human beings in general, have a common paranoia that the rest of the world, or at least a few powerful members of some clandestine, secretive organization, know something that we don't. This has lead to many of our modern day, ever increasing, conspiracy theories. In truth some of this is true, but most is just normal human paranoia. Yes, you don't have to ask, your neighbor and your spouse have it too!

A lot of people feel that they are not capable of understanding the difficult content of science, technology, or philosophy, so they leave it to the "experts", the specialists, giving them, the power of having and maintaining the knowledge base for the world.
The result is that most people spend their lives letting other people, more "qualified" people, tell them what and how to think. This, in turn, leads to another layer of separation between the scientists/technologists and the average person, which leads to another, and another, and another. "I know I could never understand Plato, so I read the commentary on the Republic"." I will let the Minister tell me what the Bible says." I have actually heard both of those. The truth is, that you CAN understand Plato and the Bible, you just have to get over the mental block, and the jargon! That is where we stopped the last time, with the Jargon.

Now It's time for something we hope you will really like! (email me the answer to who used that phrase, and I will make you a special offer)!!!!

LET"S BUILD A WEB PAGE!

HUH?
How much do you know about building a web site? Nothing? Well, then, how do you know that you can't build one? That is the approach I would like to instill in every person I know! How do you know until you try. You as an individual have a lot of information, and unique outlooks, that the world needs to know of. Build a web page, and share it!

I am just learning this for myself, and I have found that the best time to teach something is when you are learning it, conversely, the best way to learn something is to teach it. This is not my first attempt. I have a business web site, and have been playing with a few hobby sites, but they are in the early stages. For my first site, I used "html" that is, HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE, it is a series of symbols that computers understand that tell everything on your page where to go. I knew nothing about it, and had to begin at the beginning, just like we had to do when we were learning to read. After I had built it, I bought a new computer which gave me the tools to use "wysiwyg". What is that? believe it or not, it stands for WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET! It is a text managing tool, that does the html for you.

I need to give a few definitions before I go any further. You will run across phrases like this all over the place: "Enter your URL here." So you look up URL, and the chance that what you find will be even more confusing is pretty high. Let me explain a little about this. Remember, this is just verbal shorthand.
URL means Uniform Resource Locator it is your home along the Internet highway, your address.
ISP means, Internet Service Provider, technically, that is you, or your computer. The Internet, is just a series of computers linked together by some form of communication line such as telephone or cable. YOU are the Internet! You share and transfer information, to others, who do the same.
SE This means Search Engine. A search engine is a tool to gather, store, and re direct information, it is like a library, and a traffic directer along the highway. It helps you to locate and access the information you need. That is enough for now. I just felt that it was important to clarify what the Internet is. It is you, and me and our computers.

Back to html. next time.

The Tech Curtain

2007-03-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

etexbiz@gmail.com

Why we don't understand:
I am a child of the cold war era, one who remembers communism, bomb shelters, Soviet aggressions in Eastern Europe, and the various curtains. The "bamboo curtain" in Southeast Asia, and the "iron curtain" in Europe, these were linguistic symbols of communist aggression throughout the world, and the good news is, that we won! Well mostly. People my age are facing another wall, not from communism, but technology. I thought I would be dramatic and call it the "Tech Curtain"

If you are an old guy like me, there is a lot that you don't understand out here in cyberspace, even here in the blogosphere, where things are a little easier, and all you have to do is pick a template, pick a topic, and peck away on your keyboard therapeutically until you have spoken your piece and appeased your frustrations on the subject at hand.

Now, this lack of understanding doesn't come from a lack of intelligence. There are a lot of highly intelligent, well educated, (the two are not always found together) people in the world who are confused and bewildered when it comes to the influx of new stuff on the tech market.

Is it a conspiracy?

Well, there have been notable times in history, when some men have withheld knowledge from others in order to get an upper hand. There are obvious instances, where it is legal and proper, such as trademarked recipes, and safety issues like the manufacturing process for nerve gas, but that is, at least, a little different from what we are talking about here.
The ancient Egyptians who were sharp enough to notice the changes in seasons and the attending changes in the floodwater levels of the Nile valley, were able to use this secret knowledge to propel themselves into leadership roles by keeping it secret. There have been many such cases, and they still happen today. No I don't think this is a case of the Technocrats of the world withholding knowledge to gain world domination at the expense of the poor bewildered peasantry, it is simply that most people my age just haven't really made an effort to keep up with the ever expanding technology. Science and technology have moved so rapidly, and we half expected or wished that it would turn around, but it hasn't and now we have to catch up or be left behind. It is not however, as bad as it may seem. Most of it has to do with Jargon.

Jargon.

If we don't understand html, it is in all likelihood because we don't know what it stands for. When someone in science or computers says something we don't understand it is confusing, because it sounds as though they are speaking another language. The truth? They are. They are speaking the language of jargon. We all use it, especially in the workplace, and much of it has made it's way into everyday language. It is a means of communicating using words to avoid describing the process or tools we use. It is much easier to say to someone: "Hand me that trowel". Than to say "would you hand me that thin, flat, rectangular piece of metal with a handle on the top that we use to smooth down this mixture of sand, gravel, and cement we use to build this flat area to put a house on." That's what jargon is, and that's what's eating our tech lunch. I will try to give definitions as we go along.

I am just learning most of this for myself, so why don't we learn together?