Five fun smartphone tips
September 28, 2008 at 3:18 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments OffTip #1: See what you’re ordering. You’re at a restaurant and looking over the menu. But you don’t know the difference between a turkey bolognese and a turkey piccata. What to do? Fire up your iPhone, Android, or other smartphone and go to images.google.com and do a search for turkey bolognese. In just a few seconds, you’ll see what to expect:
Ah, turkey-based sauce over spaghetti or pasta. Why couldn’t they just say that? 
Tip #2. Comparison shop. A few days ago I was in a college bookstore that wanted to charge $178.60 for a copy of Mathematical Physics, by Eugene Butkov. $178.60? For a used, paperback book? Grrr. I took a picture of the UPC code and/or ISBN number:
You can search for an ISBN or UPC code (e.g. [9780201007275] ) on Google or other search engines and usually find out a product pretty quickly. I found a copy for $115.34 at Amazon, plus eBay had a hardcover copy with a current bid of $23.20. For a college student, $60 to $150 is a lot of savings.
Tip #3. Make a note to remember later. You’re at IKEA or Petco or someplace where you need to remember a part number or the aisle/bin to pick up some IKEA furniture. Do you need to write the info down with a pen and paper? No! Just whip out your phone and take a picture of the label or part number:
In this case, my cat Ozzie loves the “long boa” cat toy, but two different Petco stores were both sold out. Taking a picture let me order the exact right product from Petco later online.
Tip #4. Archive a brainstorming meeting. If you end up brainstorming on a white board, it’s nice if someone is taking notes. But just to be safe, you can snap pictures of the whiteboard before you leave the room:
Now you can refer back to the notes you made.
Tip #5. Keep a food diary. Some blogs have a direct “email-to-post” address that you can add as a contact in your phone. When you eat interesting food, take a picture of it and email it to that address:
Sometimes it’s fun to remember the more memorable meals you’ve eaten.
Are there smartphone tips you’d like to share? Leave a comment..
Where to submit Chrome feedback?
September 27, 2008 at 4:23 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments OffTags: Chrome, google
The best place to submit Chrome feedback is at
http://groups.google.com/group/google-chrome-help
Not at Search Engine Roundtable. I still see a comment a day or so trickling in over there, probably because the post ranks highly for “Chrome feedback.”
Just to repeat, if you want a Chrome person to see your feedback, the best place to leave comments is at http://groups.google.com/group/google-chrome-help
Article Marketing Can Do Wonders
September 25, 2008 at 7:27 am | Posted in SEO, article marketing | Leave a CommentTags: article directories, article marketing, links, SEO, traffic
Some of you may sniff at article marketing but it is a truly tried and tested method for generating traffic to websites.
Article marketing has been used since the early days of the internet and it’s still effective today. A successful article marketing campaign will bring you a flood of valuable links and a steady stream of visitors for years to come.
How does article marketing work?
Put simply, you write articles for other websites in exchange for a link back to your own site. You should use different articles than the ones already posted to your own website.
The more unique, high-quality articles you can share the better. You’ll get more backlinks and traffic, and you’ll build your reputation as an expert in your niche. It’s possible other websites may start seeking you out for your opinion or for interviews.
How do I start my article marketing campaign?
1. Write some articles (or pay someone to write them for you) of around 300 to 600 words.
Don’t write ads in disguise. Offer genuinely useful information and tips. You wouldn’t want to publish someone else’s garbage on your site, so don’t expect them to publish your leftovers. Write separate articles specifically for your article marketing.
You should also do the same keyword research you would do for your own website. Also spend some time proofreading for typos and grammatical errors.
2. Find places to submit your articles.
Building one-on-one relationships with other website owners in your niche can be beneficial, but it’s time-consuming.
Fortunately, there are many article directories which allow you to post your articles for free. Other websites can then publish your articles on their own sites which helps drive traffic back to you.
How To Overcome Google Penalty?
September 20, 2008 at 9:08 pm | Posted in SEO, blogging | Leave a CommentTags: backlink devaluation, backlinks, blogging, google penalty, reciprocal links, SEO, website ranking
Some webmasters may have been penalized by Google but are not aware of it and do not know how to recover from the penalty. Use the checklist to identify likely causes for a sudden reduction in Google ranking or an major drop in SERPS position for your main keywords.
How do we check for Google penalties?
If your website or blogs experience a sudden reduction in ranking for its main keyword terms it can be caused solely by a Google algorithm change or search results (SERP) update, not a Google penalty.
With any algorithm change or Google SERP update, there are always winners and losers. Google often applies backlink devaluation to links from spam sources which it believes are used to artificially raise the ranking of sites. This is necessary to combat link spam.
Reciprocal links from blogs, link farms and low quality web directory links are usually the culprit for devaluation of website rankings. In addition, backlinks from unrelated theme sites are also experiencing Google devaluation – so if your site heavily relies on these links, then it too may experience a sudden drop in Google rankings.
Check in SEO Forums
If you suspect a Google penalty, you can check in SEO Forum posts as any algorithm changes are usually updated in forums or chat rooms once the effects are felt.
If your web site suffers sudden and dramatic fall in ranking and no Google algorithm changes have been made, then a Google penalty may be the cause, especially if you have been embarking on activities which might have contravened Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
The most severe Google penalties lead to total website de-indexing and where the SEO misdemeanour is serious, a site ban may be imposed by Google, accompanied by a Page Rank reduction to 0 and a greyed out Google Toolbar Page Rank indication.
Whatever the cause, recovering from a Google penalty is a challenge so it is best to keep away from errant practices.
Tips For Home Business Keyword Research
September 10, 2008 at 9:45 am | Posted in SEO, home business | Leave a CommentTags: backlinks, home business, keyword matrix, keywords, PR, SEO
To have a successful home business, you need to do internet keyword research based on SEO or niche marketing principles.
Of course, you need solid content for readers to visit regularly but the correct SEO is what gets your home business opportunities in front of the readers.
The keywords must fulfill these criterias: they mus be relevant to your home business, they must be realistic and have only moderate competition. The target is to rank high on the search engine result page with the used keyword. Below are some tips to conduct keyword research.
1. Google Internet Keyword Tool
There are free tools, like SEO Book or Google which are effective in picking out long tail keywords. Choose those which have 100 daily searches and to research the present top sites from the search engines result page.
2. Check Backlinks, PR and The Competition Of Each Site.
These figures tell you, whether you have chances to rank high with your home based business opportunity. Backlinks are critical, if you have more or better backlinks than your competitor, you will rank higher. PR is the Google figure, which is usable but not accurate. Keyword results can be found by typing quotes around your term and if the figure you will get is lower than 10.000 you have a winner.
3. Build A Keyword Matrix
Your home based business opportunity keywords must be long tail ones and highly related ones. The keyword set can contain both popular or low demand keywords. Or you can start with a general term and add some words in front and after that term and you will get a nice list of keywords. Then do the competition research.
4. Use The Keyword List
First, put all the keywords into your keyword list. Most article directories accept long keyword list. Then put your main keyword into the headline, teaser, many times into the body of the text and hyperlinked into the Author Box.
Use your secondary keywords at least once in the copy. You can pick the main keyword so that it includes all the other ones, i.e. the main keyword is the longest long tail keyword. This way your headline keyword includes all the other keywords, which helps your article to rank high on many result pages.
It is effective to use long keyword list with many keywords, because the keyword software figures are not accurate, so in this way you can ensure that your home based business opportunity gets the biggest power.
The keyword research is very important and when you follow the development of your rankings, you will get the feeling, which search terms response to your efforts and which are non-working ones.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
September 6, 2008 at 12:02 am | Posted in SEO, home business | Leave a CommentTags: PageRank, search engine optimization, SEO
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, MSN, etc. are actually robots programmed to read internet pages, index them, and rank them according to some predetermined rules (algorithm).
The World Wide Web is like one BIG book, where each website is a chapter, and each web-page is a page in that chapter. At the end of this book there is an index.
For example, next to the term ‘SEO’ in the index, there will be a list of all pages related to SEO. While pages in books are listed in sequential order, the internet is not sequential. Each web page, as denoted by its URL are grouped in relevant indexes (of certain terms) and sorted according to their rank.
This rank is so important that depending on it, your page may or may not appear when someone searches for relevant terms on Google, which explains why some sites have huge traffic but others don’t. The algorithms behind this ranking is complex, and many factors are taken into account.
Frequency of terms occurrence is only one of about hundred different factors. What other pages link to your page is another. What words those pages use in links to your pages is yet another. And so on…
Because of the complexity, and importance of this algorithm, optimizing pages for search engines became a specialized field, even an industry that is now full of ‘consultants’, ‘experts’, ‘specialists’, ‘engineers’, and similar titles. It is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Note that ranking high on search engines is not the same as Google PageRank (PR), which determines a popularity and importance of a page, and depends primarily on the number of other pages linking to it as well as importance (PR) of those pages.
Comparing SEO To Ants
September 1, 2008 at 8:03 am | Posted in SEO | Leave a CommentTags: business, SEO
There are parallels between SEO campaigns and Aesop’s fable about the ant and the grasshopper, which is basically a lesson in proper preparation. In that story, the carefree grasshopper played all through the summer, while the industrious ant worked hard to store food for the winter.
When the winter came, the grasshopper was ill prepared for it. The lesson is simple. It is best to prepare for the days of necessity before those days come.
If, down the road, you would like to have a perpetual marketing system that requires a minimal investment of time and money, then you must be like the industrious ant here in the present.
By starting a search engine optimization campaign now, you will enjoy a steady stream of business later on.
![before the second collision [EXPLORED HIGHEST POSITION # 1]](http://static.flickr.com/4085/4967941658_a1e665797c_t.jpg "before the second collision [EXPLORED HIGHEST POSITION # 1]")
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When To Use NoFollow Attribute?
September 15, 2008 at 10:21 pm | Posted in blogging | Leave a CommentTags: blog comment, blogging, nofollow attribute, nofollow links, spam
The rel=”nofollow” attribute is an easy way for a website to tell search engines that the website can’t or doesn’t want to vouch for a link. The best-known use for nofollow is blog comment spam, but the mechanism is completely general. Nofollow is recommended anywhere that links can’t be vouched for.
If your logs analysis program shows referrers as hyperlinks, nofollow should be used on those links. If you have a wiki that anyone on the web can edit, I’d recommend nofollow on those links until you can find a way to trust those links. In general, if you have an application that allows others to add links, web spammers will eventually find your pages and start annoying you.
In an ideal world, nofollow would only be for untrusted links. Let’s take the example of a forum that wants to avoid linking to spam, but the same advice applies to wikis or any other web software.
If an off-domain link is made by an anonymous or unauthenticated user, I’d use nofollow on that link. Once a user has done a certain number of posts/edits, or has been around for long enough to build up trust, then those nofollows could be removed and the links could be trusted.
Anytime you have a user that you’d trust, there’s no need to use nofollow links.