First colour roll on the new cam. Portra 400 expired as a bitch.
Went to Flinders for lunch at the Cafe and Chris set us up.
Saw some punks painting a wall in the dirty Seaford south and got some shots.

The entire STD were finally united for the first time.
Tommy, Yaguchi, Kenchan and Mr. Aoki made the
trek from wintery Tokyo to sunny, summery Batmania!

3 days and 2 nights of BBQs, bikes and bad-ass shit…

The Yaguchinator…

Steady Giggin’…

Kenchan. Model/Karaoke Technician…

Fuck knows?

Up There Cazaly!

We traded this corn for weed – as you do…

Fuck knows?

Sweaty poofs jocked us relentlessly everywhere we went…

Death Or Glory…

Doing Life…

Fuck Knows?

Hungry, Hungry Hippo…

Just like the old days – but nothing like the old days…

STD. Now with Botanicals…

Ballin’…

Riding durrty…

Fuck knows?

Meeting the locals – Pissy the Possum…

Fire It Up!!!

Fed Square Fags…

Flinders Street Fun…

O-nesan no uchi de…

Japs love a train…

Sayoonara suckers!!!

]]> http://jrotman.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/proof-importance-of-keyword-rich-title-and-description-tags/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:16:31 +0000 jrotman http://jrotman.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/proof-importance-of-keyword-rich-title-and-description-tags/

What exactly does Google think about poorly matched or missing meta title and description tags?

Did you know? Google has the capability to change/modify your site page tags–description/search snippet AND page title– if they can build a better search result…good? bad? ugly?

What do the TITLE and page DESCRIPTION meta tags look like in your page html? Here’s an example:

<title>Buy Bass Fishing Lures Online</title>

<meta name=”description” content=”Search our online catalog and buy bass fishing lures, including crankbaits, spinnerbaits, and neon plastic worms. Blah, blah, blah…”/>

Ideally the title tag shows up as a keyword-optimized top line and the description tag — also keyword-optimized– as the search “snippet”– like this….

In this particular example, when your site is optimized and you’re driving traffic you are potentially well-positioned to rank well for the keyphrase,

buy bass fishing lures

buy bass fishing lures online

or something closely related.

Keyword-optimized page title and description are what Google “looks” for when matching a search query to your content. If your keywords are buried in the page, absent from your title and description tag, OR if you have no tags at all, Google could do one of two things:

1. ignore your content altogether because it fails to match the searcher’s query

OR

2. modify your title tag and search result “snippet” with content snagged from deeper within your page. “They” can replace your lousy or completely absent description tag with something the search engine deems relevant. Matt Cutts calls these “useful titles and useful snippets.” And apparently this has been a Google “policy” for some time.

Yes…they can modify title tags.

Here’s the official lowdown on “Google can modify title and search snippets” from Matt Cutts:

]]> http://blackoutxxx.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/more-iphotos/ Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:01:37 +0000 blackoutxxx http://blackoutxxx.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/more-iphotos/

S. Blokes…

= Shoist Blokes…

Good things about Melbourne. ~Bad~ sunsets…

Chucking a fris…

Chucking a wheelman…

Chucking an amp…

Chucking a shirt…

Chucking a stick, cuz…

And making some cool shit – for some other S. Blokes I know…

Ivens came down for a bit of summer fun yesterday. So, we decided to head
to the Pillars in Mt. Martha. It was crazy beautiful and we had some fun
jumping the cliffs and swimming around…

While we were swimming some little fucks stole Ivens phone, wallet,
cigarettes and lighter. Shithouse. We looked around but it was useless.

Later, halfway back to Frankston, to drop him back at the train station,
Mums fan belt snapped and we got stranded on the side of the road!
Ivens decided to walk the rest of the way to the station, which turned out
to be a very smart move…

Road Side Assitance took 1.5 hours to arrive and 30 secs to say “Gotta tow it”

Luckily it had been a beautiful, hot day and I had nowhere else to be because
it took another 1.5 hours for the tow truck to arrive. In the meantime, I
played with my phone and watched the sun set…

Turned out that the tow truck driver and I were the same age, but his life
story was a ~little~ different to mine. He can keep his life though.
Best day / worst day. Funny…

Some bits of life from my iPhone…

I promise I’m not writing this article to brag, but rather to demonstrate my versatility on projects that are sometimes out of my control.

My boast is I can SEO a paper bag to the front page of Google.  More specifically, the front page of Google images.

I’ve had quite a bit of success with spiders and webs and even though Halloween is over, arachnid traffic is still generating a significant portion of my daily visitors.  Thanks to some other key images, I’m now getting traffic from weak links and fish bowls.

Paper bag will be just another of my SEO optimized images where I dominate the search engine results.

What it means for potential clients is much more significant.  After reviewing dozens of sites over the last few weeks, I’ve only found one that doesn’t need some serious on page SEO work.  However, because of my SEO strategies, that doesn’t really matter.  I can literally SEO a paper bag to the top of the SERPs.  In three weeks, I’ll prove it!

Here are five difficult SEO situations I’ve run across, where I can still do SEO and get results:

1.  There is no site to SEO! – I can have a website built or utilize a Facebook business page to provide a solution.

2.  There is no access to the existing site for on page SEO – I can utilize off-page tactics like local directories, press releases and article marketing to attain results.  I currently have a client like this.

3.  Big corporate doesn’t utilize local web marketing -  If you’re an agent or representative of a big company that won’t target market, I can still help you brand yourself or your local market with my SEO tactics.

4.  The existing site is poorly optimized, but there’s no budget for web design changes – Some of the best ranked sites I’ve seen have this problem.  Off site optimization or popularity trumps this weakness.  If you have a clear call to action on your site, you’ve got the heart of a web marketing campaign.  Why not take advantage?

5.  It’s a template, CMS, blog or other site that doesn’t allow significant on page optimization – It doesn’t matter!  There’s a reason I’ve chosen a WordPress hosted blog for my business site…to prove I can optimize it.

Some people argue I need a self-hosted site, or a better e-mail address or business cards.  I say, “NO!”  If I can get ranked on the front page of Google for the term “Utah SEM,” I can achieve similar success with your website.  I have no shortage of meetings with potential clients even though I’m using Yahoo! email.  I refuse to use an analog business card when my digital card is yielding the results it is.  I actually had a business coach apologize to me today for suggesting otherwise.

When I show the results I’m getting to technically inclined people, they’re absolutely amazed.  I purposefully picked difficult site options so I could show my abilities.  My old goal of “Salt Lake City SEO” has been crushed.  The last time I checked, four of the top ten spots had my press releases or directory listing.  That means I sent four of my competitors to SERP oblivion.  Good riddance!

My strategy towards my competitors is scorched earth.  I am going to leave them in my dust.  I’ve never been on my own in this business and I am taking no prisoners.  I already have a toehold on “Utah SEM” and “Utah SEO” is my next target.  The fact the number one SERP holder recently started following me on Twitter gives me confidence.  I am not going to stop working on these keywords until I occupy every position on Google’s front page.  It is not enough just to get there,  I intend to dominate.

I’ll admit some of it’s a little bit personal.  The only company I believe offers any significant competition to me, told me I was “overqualified” to work for them.  I’ll show them “overqualified” by locking them out of any local keyword SERP they ever wanted.  Trouble is, they’re not my competition.  They’re far too expensive for anybody in my target market to afford.  I’m going to show them exactly how “overqualified” I am anyway…without really expending much effort.

I do have a “beef” with two other companies.  Only one of them directly competes with me here in Utah, so that’s the only one I’m even thinking about.  It doesn’t matter.  There’s plenty of SEO business to go around for everybody.

I just need these SERPs to show what I can do against my competition, which means I can do the same against your competition…

So much happened – in so little time…

Met a talking Chinese banana – who turned out to be Lady Murasaki…

Me and N8 made some new friends – and some new enemies…

Ate some oishii mango…

Found another rat in my room…

Still sleeping…

Said sayoonara to Japan-land in style…

Thanks to some friends, of course.

Came back to Oz and the Wizard of Wol setup a little Serpy soirée…

Went to Franga and hung with my dawgs

Unleashed my inner tradie…

And built a deck with Dad…

Played the most and realised my wurth…

And got back to my roots…

Let the Summer Rubbin’ begin!

]]> http://seobyswaby.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/internet-marketing-the-best-article-submission-sites/ Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:00:38 +0000 seobyswaby http://seobyswaby.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/internet-marketing-the-best-article-submission-sites/

Another tool in the SEO toolbox is article marketing.  An effective SEO article contains a keyword rich headline that is eye-catching and body content containing anchor text links to specific pages of the site you are trying to optimize.

The biggest benefit of an article marketing campaign is you can distribute it globally utilizing RSS.  Once article can be reposted over and over again with links to the site you’re trying to optimize.

I prefer to write interesting, quality articles that publishers will want to include on their site like this one on temporary workers and this one on LG cell phones.  Other Internet marketers prefer quantity to quality because many article sites limit anchor text in the body to only three outbound links.

Once you write the articles, where do you go to distribute them?  My friends at iXod Conversion Marketing have been kind enough to share their authoritative list of article submission sites.

These sites are listed in order of Google page rank and I’ve added some notes about each one.  This is not the complete list, but it contains the highest ranking article submission sites available.

Notes:

1.  Not every article submission site allows anchor text in the body of the article.  Some of them only allow it in the author’s resource box.  Some of them don’t allow anchor text at all.  You can still get results by having a keyword rich title which will show up in the SERPs and utilize direct links to the optimized site.

2.  I prefer to only submit to sites that allow anchor text in the body.

The Best Article Submission Sites Part 1

ezinearticles.com

This is the best site on the Internet for submitting articles.  It’s also the hardest to get accepted.  Articles need to be unique and you can’t just repost blog articles you’ve written.  Human editors approve or deny all submissions.

goarticles.com

This site is my second choice and also a very good source.  It is easier to be accepted here than ezinearticles.com

articlesbase.com

Very good site and easy to get started.

articlealley.com

Also pretty easy.

articledashboard.com

This is a good site I’ve used before.  I’m currently having some technical difficulties with it.

articlecity.com

Doesn’t allow anchor text anywhere.  You can still use a direct URL like http://seobyswaby.wordpress.com

articlepool.com

Anchor text in resource box only.

submityourarticle.com

You have to pay to submit your article here.  I don’t know if it’s worth it or not.

abcarticledirectory.com

Resource box anchor text only.

free-articles-zone.com

Resource box only.

articlesfactory.com

Resource box only.

dime-co.com

Resource box only.

articleslash.net

Resource box only.

simplysearch4it.com

Resource box only.

impactarticles.com

Allows anchor text, but is for business related articles only.

ideamarketers.com

This is a great site.  I’ve submitted dozens of articles to it in the past.  I don’t know why it’s so low on the Page Rank!

There are many more article sites on iXod marketing’s enormous list.  I just haven’t tested them yet.  Look for part two coming soon.

Looked at engines and algorithms, designing databases for the useful retrieval of information, and search interface design. 

Assignment:

Design ”Magizoologoogle”  – a search engine that allows wizards to find relevant information about fantastic creatures.

1.Define what documents on the web the engine will crawl?

2.What information the engine will retrieve from each document?

3.How will that information be indexed?

- Requirements Analysis

- Conceptual Design (graph)

- Logical Design (Boolean, other?)

- Database Design (Database and Tables)

4. Write a proprietary algorithm that will returns the most relevant results based on the requirements analysis

5.Develop a wireframe for the search engine results page

6.Show a search engine results page populated with real data

View Presentation:

http://infoarchway.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/ia-class-9.ppt

By David Walsh
4 November 2009

http://wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/reti-n04.shtml

A recent study conducted by Sun Life Financial, whose findings surprised even its own authors, revealed that some 65 percent of Americans now believe they will have to work longer than they had anticipated, up 11 percent since a similar poll carried out at the end of 2008.

Sun Life notes: “The Index also indicates 27 percent of Americans now believe they will need to work at least five years longer than expected because of the current economic environment.” The financial company’s research indicates that 55 percent of Americans think they will be working full- or part-time at 67, “and another new high of 28 percent of US workers across all age groups are planning to work full time past the age of 67.”

Wes Thompson, president of Sun Life’s US division, told Time magazine, “Clearly the notion of retiring at age 67 or 65 is behind us. People are looking at that through the rearview mirror.” Time continues, “Workers have been rattled by the lost equity in their homes, retirement-plan losses and long-term concerns about Social Security.”

Only 22 percent of American workers, according to Sun Life, are “very confident” that they will be able to take care of medical expenses and less than half (40 percent) are confident that they will have enough money for “basic living expenses” in retirement. “Overall, less than one in four workers are very confident they will be able to live the kind of life they want in retirement.”

No such problems for the American corporate elite, who are making sure a considerable portion of the national wealth is set aside for their golden years.

Two Wall Street Journal reporters sifted through the company filings of 340 large US firms and discovered that pensions for their top executives rose by an average of 19 percent last year (“Pensions for Executives on Rise,” November 4, 2009). More than 200 CEOs and other executives received increases in their retirement savings by as much as 50 percent, even as their companies’ stock prices fell by an average of 37 percent and, in many cases, the benefits of employees were frozen or slashed.

Perhaps not too many will be shocked by the revelations, but the level of corporate looting, which must, in many cases, have a detrimental long-term impact on the firms themselves, is nonetheless remarkable.

The Journal notes, “The executive-pension growth stemmed partly from generous pension formulas, which are based on executive pay, according to the filings. Also adding to the pension jumps are arcane techniques that have received little scrutiny, including increases triggered when an executive reaches a certain age or when companies change interest rates used to calculate the pensions.”

The amount owed in pensions to the top executives (4 to 6 people) of General Electric, for example, increased by 13 percent to $140.7 million in 2008; at Exxon Mobil, it increased by 18 percent to 108.2 million; at ConocoPhillips, by 21 percent, to $100.9 million. And so forth down the line.

Even as public outrage over executive pay swelled this year, and certain companies made token efforts to restrain CEO salaries in the interests of better public relations, the Journal points out, the growth of “supplemental executive retirement plans, or SERPs—which can be worth tens of millions of dollars to executives—largely has been overlooked.”

Companies used a variety of means to pour wealth into their executives’ pockets. Since such pensions are generally calculated by multiplying pay by years of service, increasing either one multiplies the value of retirement plans.

Appropriately, with the need to “cut healthcare costs” emphasized in countless speeches and editorials, Richard T. Clark, the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co, had “the portion of his compensation used to calculate his pension rise more than $6 million in 2008, which in turn helped boost the value of his pension to $21.7 million from $11.9 million,” explains the newspaper.

Executives at energy titans ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil also fared well in 2008. The former used “certain incentive payments” in calculating CEO Jim Mulva’s generous retirement package, increasing its value by $9.5 million, to $68.5 million.

At ExxonMobil, the firm uses the three highest bonuses in the five years before an individual’s retirement to determine the amount of his or her pension. Thus, a $4 million bonus paid to CEO Rex Tillerson in 2008 bumped his pension up to $31 million from $23 million.

Companies also tack on years of service to reward executives even bigger retirement payoffs. Constellation Energy Group’s compensation committee decided to count Chairman and CEO Mayo Shattuck’s years as a director at the company to figure out how much he would receive in retirement benefits designed for an active corporate executive. That added more than $10 million to his pension payments, a 45 percent increase.

Reaching a birthday can mean a great deal of money to some executives. Altria Group’s CEO Michael E. Szymanczyk saw his pension rise “when he turned 60 last year, triggering a subsidy built into the pension formula, boosting its total value to $23.5 million,” writes the Journal.

Goodyear Tire increased the pension of CEO Robert Keegan by $6.2 million in 2008. Meanwhile, the Journal reporters point out, Goodyear froze salaried employees’ pensions at the end of the year, declaring further increases “could impair our ability to achieve or sustain future profitability.”

In an accompanying article (“Filings Don’t Tell Full Pension Story”), the Journal notes that while companies “are required to report the size of their top executives’ pensions…sizing up the IOUs can require sleuthing through financial filings.”

Firms, for example, may publicly reveal pension tables that disclose minimum payouts, but reward executives higher amounts “by using different assumptions than the ones they use for the pension table.”

Corporations give deliberately confusing or obscure names to their pensions. Omnicom Group invented a “Senior Executive Restricted Covenant & Retention Plan” in 2006. The company neatly refers to benefits as “post-termination compensation.”

Or a corporation may deliberately calculate pensions on the assumption that an officer will retire at 60 or 62, and when he or she works until the age of 65, provide a large lump sum that includes the value of additional years of payments.

In its filing, drug wholesaler McKesson Corp. (another combatant in the war to lower healthcare costs) estimates the value of CEO John Hammergren’s pension at $49.7 million in 2008. Elsewhere, however, the firm “noted that Mr. Hammergren’s pension is potentially worth $92 million, partly because of different assumptions used to calculate the lump sum. Another major reason: Mr. Hammergren’s lump-sum payment assumes a retirement age of 55 plus one month; this boosts its total value by $23 million, according to company filings.”

In short, American corporations are using all manner of ingenious means to further enrich the already fabulously wealthy corporate aristocracy.

Meanwhile, according to Retirement USA, an organization set up by the AFL-CIO, SEIU and various advocacy groups, for workers ages 55-64, the average 401(k) account—on which millions now solely rely for their retirement—was $40,000 in 2006.

A Florida newspaper observes understatedly, “Making $40,000 last for 20 years of retirement is difficult, especially when you consider that the average yearly Social Security benefit is $13,929.”

Approximately one-third of American households have no retirement savings whatsoever.

When I started blogging, one of the concepts I struggled with was that of “tagging” a blog post.  A tag is a description given to the post that talks about subject matter.

During my days as a real estate blog author, I would create tags that had a few specific points from the post.  I was also using the blog software from Google called Blogger.  It took me a while, but I finally figured out I probably shouldn’t create new tags for each post.  I should be more generic.

My SEO breakthrough for that old real estate blog was when I put a link to all the tags as a menu on my sidebar.  Once I did that, my search traffic tripled.  With WordPress, it’s a lot easier.  Add the tag cloud widget to your sidebar, tag every post and you’re in business.

I take it one step further, because I want every article I write on this blog to have a link to another article.  That way they’re all connected.

WordPress has another advantage and that is the tag categories show up in Google as their own entry.  I just discovered a keyphrase “seo friendly filenames for photos” is showing up on Google under my “bing” tag.  It’s interesting the article which contained many words in that keyphrase didn’t show up, but the tag for Bing did.  Thank goodness I used the tags!

Here are five easy steps to get great SEO results from tags:

1.  Tag every post, even if you only use one description.

2.  Be generic in your descriptions, unless you have a very specific keyphrase you’re trying to rank on.

3.  Make sure your tags show up on your sidebar as a menu.  It could be a tag cloud or a link list.

4.  Add new tags when necessary.  Don’t create them if there isn’t something relevant to link to it.

5.  Match tags with your keyword list.  Those top search result positions you want may come from having the right tag.

I’m revealing all my secrets – every single thing I use to generate over $15k a month less than 12 months after discovering Internet Marketing…

Last night I glanced over a site for a potential SEO client.  My understanding is it had recently been redone or “refreshed.”  From a design standpoint it looks pretty good.  From an SEO standpoint it needs a lot of work.  I mean a LOT!

That’s good for me if I get hired on, but it’s not good for my potential client.  They just paid probably some pretty decent money to get a site redesigned and they’re going to hate to hear some of that money will have to be respent either to me or the web design company to make the “on page” changes I’ll recommend.  If only they had hired me first.

There’s a few good points to think about in this example.

1.  Despite the awareness and knowledge about SEO, web design companies are still not offering it.

2.  There are web design companies out there that don’t know anything about SEO.

3.  Businesses are following the same process for the web they did ten years ago.  If I build it, they will come.

Good questions to ask your web design company are how much SEO experience do they have and what kind of SEO considerations will they make in designing the site.

Website redesigns are fraught with peril especially if the current site already has some good rankings.  Changing hosts, changing the software running the site (ASP, PHP, HTML) and changing the site structure or page names will KILL your current traffic.

Here are some SEO considerations to think about when redesigning a website:

1.  Do you want a custom description on the search engine results page depending on which page your visitor finds you on?

2.  Do you want your site navigation to be easy for your visitors and search spiders?

3.  Do you want your page names to be descriptive of the content that resides on them?

4.  Do you want images on your site to be descriptive of their content?

5.  Do you want every opportunity to use descriptive text for your navigation?

6.  Do you want a clear call to action on every page your visitor sees?

The answer to all these questions is YES!  The question to your web design company…before they start designing…is HOW?  If they don’t have an answer, you need to hire an SEO company.

Yesterday, we talked about the hypocrisy of reputation management.  In that example, I showed a convicted felon who had gone out of his way to create a perfect Internet image.

Today, I’m going to discuss someone with a potentially soiled Internet image.  Me.

I’ve mentioned several times I used to have a real estate blog, but I never provided the proper context of its existence.  I began it in the Fall of 2006 just when many popular real estate markets were beginning to see a top in housing prices.  From my perspective in Utah, I didn’t see a problem.  As I continued writing, it became apparent that I, along with many others, had misjudged.

What I didn’t realize when I started blogging was how passionate (read angry) many people who had been priced out of the housing boom in markets like California, Arizona and Florida had become.

On top of all this, I chose to associate myself with a failed real estate investor from California to help promote my newly launched blog.  I soon discovered the perils of blogging under my real name.

You can still see remnants of those times when you do a Google search for me.  The Internet never forgets.  Sure I’m not going to Federal prison, or pictured doing keg stands with loose fitting clothing, but in these tight economic times, why risk hiring a guy who some anonymous Internet commenter wrote, “Swaby was initially known online as a prime example of how virtually anyone can enter the real estate business with few, if any, credentials.”

That anonymous commenter was right.  At the time I began my real estate blog, I had only earned two different licenses and had personal experience with buying and selling five different properties.  Since any record of my blog is gone from the search engines, they win by default.  I must be the person they say I am, because no Internet record for the defense has been entered.  Not true!  It was asked, answered and then deleted by Google.  But that’s another story.

The interesting thing about this Google entry is the description text that shows up on the search result is fairly innocuous.  Indeed, it’s a direct quote from a press release I wrote.  Only if one clicks on the article do they see the criticism leveled at me.

Another of the three negative entries that shows up on the first page of Google for my name is a parody site mourning my absence.  It was last updated two and a half years ago.

My reputation management nightmare is also Chloe Sevigny’s reputation management nightmare.  I am but a shred in the site called Twelve Years Of Being Annoyed By Chloe Sevigny. However, its SERP description is the worst of those that appear on Google’s front page. If you actually click through to read the article it’s got a lot of quotes from me that explain my position.  Ultimately it is up to the reader to draw their own conclusions for the arguments that were presented at the time.  If you’ve followed the story’s conclusion at all, you will know that my stance proved to be truthful and not some ruse.  Indeed Caseypedia, the other negative entry on my name, records the history afterwords and shows my assertions to be true.  Negative comments about me stopped years ago.

Anonymous or not?

At the root of any Internet criticism is the source and the evidence.  It is quite easy to be anonymous on the web, it is much harder not to be.  Consider the founder of Tech Crunch -

Michael Arrington, whose TechCrunch blog empire attracts 6 million readers each month, has gone on a monthlong hiatus after three years of nonstop blogging. His break was prompted, he says, by burnout and by the craziness of the blogosphere (he says he’s been stalked, threatened and spat on)

I can personally assure you such offenses and much worse occur on the web.  Funny enough they are always committed by anonymous individuals.  The biggest criticism my few remaining detractors have about me concerns anonymity.  It has been said you shouldn’t bring a knife to a gun fight.  I didn’t.  When confronted with anonymous attackers, I removed their masks.  Some hated me for it.  Aspeth wrote -

To clarify, in just March of this year, Nigel Swaby, a licensed mortgage broker who has access to financial and credit software, decided to post the identities of three frequent posters at EN. I don’t know if he abused his professional position in order to triangulate his information. But it is incredibly unsettling that someone in this position would do that, particularly considering the “grand offense” that catalyzed his actions.

It’s actually funny reviewing this statement.  It confirms the ignorance of people like “Aspeth.”  No financial or credit software revealed any identities…it was the WordPress commenting software.  It’s also interesting to note that of the three “outed” people who were so violated by my behavior, two of them are my friends of Facebook.  If you tear away the masks, you only reveal the humanity behind them.  The third “outed” person has called me on several occasions and I consider her a friend.  Yet this potentially negative Internet reputation still remains.

Dare to speak online?

One of the points made in CNN’s article about online dirt was you shouldn’t express an opinion online for fear of alienating an employer.  This website questioned this logic.

In the article, the writer dishes up “five ways to build a digital footprint that won’t scare away future employers”   Point four, “Avoid joining groups or engaging in online activities that could embarrass or restrict opportunities,” states:

Of course, during a job hunt you should consider your overtly controversial activities such as political, religious or social movements, Merritt says.
No, the above paragraph was not translated from the Russian out of a 30-year-old issue of Pravda.  I found this article on CNN’s website!

That author has a good point.  Why should you fear to express yourself on the Internet?  My honest answer is the Internet is scary.  Hide behind an alias or protect your Facebook account if you want to be controversial or political.  In real life you hold back on your political and religious opinions at work.  Why wouldn’t you behave with the same discretion online?  I would have loved to have talked about President Obama’s Nobel Prize when it was announced, but I let that traffic go.  Ultimately, that’s the only reason I would have to talk about politics…traffic.  I’m not a political blogger, so I keep that away from my business.

What expectations should be made for reputation management?

1.  Expect negative – Unless you’re Mary Poppins, something negative is going to turn up.  You simply can’t please everybody.  How you deal with the negative is more important than there being anything negative to begin with.

2.  The good should outweigh the bad – If you haven’t had a hate campaign engaged against you, what shows up on the Internet should be overwhelmingly representative of who you are.  For my SERP, 7 out of 10 are my creation or even positive.

3.  What isn’t said, speaks volumes – Does nothing show up when you search for your name, company or brand?  That’s worse than something negative, because it says you’re ignoring opportunities on the Internet.

4.  If it’s too good to be true, it probably is – Like Steve Cloward’s online profile, perfection doesn’t mean anything.  Perfection invites a closer look because none of us are perfect.

5.  Old issues have probably been dealt with – If something negative shows up from a while ago, find out how it was resolved.  If it’s not a burning issue for the critic any more, it probably shouldn’t be a burning issue for a vetter.

If you’ve got an opinion, someone on the Internet has a counter opinion.  Sometimes they’ll provide a well-reasoned, cogent argument against you.  Other times they’ll call you a “dooty head” in an ad hominem attack.  Either way they do it, on the Internet it’s permanent.  How are you going to manage your Internet reputation?

This is just a quick little post to discuss some things that are floating around in my head.  I’ve got a couple great ideas for post subjects, I just haven’t had time to sit down and put them all together.

This week I promise.

Timing and Traffic

I’m wondering why Friday’s are such a slow day for this site.  I’ve managed enough websites that I know each one has its “slow” day or days.  For business sites that’s typically the weekends.  Entertainment sites I’ve managed pick up on the weekends.  For this site, it’s Fridays.  It’s just such a huge drop off and I don’t know why.

Should I even make fresh posts on Fridays?  I guess that’s the question blog authors that aren’t getting any traffic ask.  Why write for nobody?  The answer is you may not be writing for anybody today, but you will be writing for someone in the future.

When I wrote my web copywriting article, it immediately got ranked on Google, but then quickly faded.  Now it’s my most popular page, but I wrote it over a month ago.  So I guess I’ll keep writing on Fridays.  You never know what will become popular.

What do you want to know about social media?

I’ve been selected to write an upcoming article in Utah Pulse for the Social Media Minute.  What should I write about?  Facebook?  Twitter?  Sidewiki?  Let me know if you have a burning question and I’ll come up with the answer.

How your visitors see your site.

I had my site reviewed this week by a member over at Bloggeries.  She liked the site, but wrote

My only complaint is that I couldn’t find a way to follow you through Facebook, Networked blogs or google friend (my favorite ways to follow). I am following via twitter.

My link to Twitter is about 12 pixels away from my link to Facebook.  But the Facebook link is text, not a graphic.  This is good feedback.  I now have some cool graphic links for social media at the top right side of the site.  Did I remove the text links?  No.  Some people will see those, while others will see the graphics.  I’ll let you know how well this works out.

Upcoming posts

Tomorrow we’ll have the weekly carnival recap.  I know of four carnivals I got published in this week.  There might be more.  Sometime in the coming week, I’ll take you on a Facebook phishing expedition.  And I’ll talk about some reputation management.

Thanks for listening to me think out loud.  Feel free to leave a comment or question.

It’s interesting what will bring traffic to a website.  A little while ago I wrote about optimizing images for SEO.  That’s an opportunity I believe I’ve missed in the past.  Not this time around!

A few weeks ago, I noticed a strange keyword turning up in my analytics software; “surprise party.”  One disadvantage of the WordPress analytics is it doesn’t link directly to a source of search engine traffic like others do, so I have to do a bit of guessing.  I typed surprise party into Google and came up blank.  Then I tried the blog search.  Still nothing.  Then I tried images.  Bingo!

I don’t know why this turns up, because the photo is called “cocktail party” and I didn’t use the word surprise anywhere in the article about Facebook.  That image search result is good for a few clicks a week.

Saturday night I noticed search engine traffic coming from terms related to spiders…not the web robots…the real life icky, scary arachnids.

2009-10-03

I did know what that came from – my cleverly titled article on web copywriting.  I didn’t think much of it until Sunday, when the numbers increased unbelievably.  Why were all these people searching about spiders?  Oh yeah…Halloween!  It’s October!  Because of the title of my post and the title of the image, this site is turning up quite well for an image search on spiders…

and spider webs!

Those image results have catapulted my web traffic:

10-04-09

Search	Views
spiders	34
spider web	33
spider webs	16
a spider web	2
spider webs pics	2
picture of spider webs	2
pictures of spider webs	2
spider web pictures	1
rss site penalties	1
spiders web	1
photos of spider webs	1
spiders pictures	1

Yesterday

Search	Views
spiders	34
spider web	33
spider webs	16
a spider web	2
spider webs pics	2
picture of spider webs	2
pictures of spider webs	2
spider web pictures	1
rss site penalties	1
spiders web	1
photos of spider webs	1
spiders pictures	1

Quantity vs. Quality Web Traffic

This is the question that perplexes web marketers and businesses the most.  Do I want more traffic even if it doesn’t convert?  Or do I want a trickle of highly targeted traffic that will buy my product or hire my service?  It certainly is a balancing act.  Starting up a website from scratch with no advertising is a challenging prospect.  Blogging is hard!  These visitors coming to see spider pictures are leaving quickly.  My page views have decreased from 2:1 to slightly above 1:1 in the past few days.  Clearly this is a result of my new source of traffic.

When I started this blog I was really surprised at how quickly it started getting traffic.  When I had my Salt Lake real estate blog, I was averaging slightly over 100 visitors a day at the peak.  In good months that would triple.  For this blog, once I started going, I figured 50 a day would be a good start and maybe by month three, I could get to 100 a day.  Ideally, I’d like to have a 1000 visitors a day.

I’m trying to get a good mix of traffic sources.  So far I’ve got Facebook and Twitter and a few directories.  Last week I published my first press release and I’m beginning to get inbound links from Utah’s top blogger nominees.  The blog carnivals are beginning to pay off with inbound links and quality traffic that is signing up for my Facebook business page.  I’m getting bits of traffic from ping backs to other blogs and news sites.  As I generate traffic from all these sources, I will be helped on popularity based sites like this.  I’ve gone from the middle of the second page to the middle of the first page in the last three days.

As long as I continue to have multiple sources of traffic I will get the quality I need and the quantity I desire.

Tips and tricks for SEO – good and bad

In Search Engine Optimization, the best trick is to avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself: “How does this benefit the visitors to the website?” If you can justify that, then go ahead and use the “trick”.

Below are good tricks to use. And here are some to avoid like the plauge:

What NOT to do in Search Engine Optimization

Things that will ruin your ratings and annoy your visitors

Don’t use unautorized webpages and programs to submit pages

Google the words “submit pages” and you will find a thousand web pages offering this service – sending automatic submissions to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. Don’t use them. They may violate Googles Terms of Service, and other search engines Terms of Service, which in turn may cause you to get shut off.

Don’t take part in link schemes

Link farms, link schemes and sites peppered with links to other sites should be avoided. Spend your time instead building a good network of websites with similar content to your website, and exchange real, good quality links.

Building SEO landing pages and cloaking

An often employed tactic is to build a custom made landing page to improve hits for a website. This page is riddled with search words, links to other pages, content that looks odd to the visitor, because it’s stuffed with keywords. All it contains is Search Engine “candy”. Presenting different content to search engines than to users is called “cloaking”. It may well work in the short term, but instead, use your energy and time to build web pages with good content. Build pages for your visitors, not for search engines.

Meta refresh

A redirect is a page you come to and immediately and automatically get sent on to another page. This is called a redirect or meta refresh. A meta tag is used to do this, or sometimes Java script. Don’t do this. Search engines are allergic to these.

Invisible text

Sometimes webmasters try using invisible text and keywords, for example, white text on a white background, or an invisible layer, to fool the Search Engine spiders. The text won’t disturb the user experience, because the user can’t see it, only the search engines will pick up the text. This way the webmaster is hoping to get a higher page rank. Don’t do it. It is bad practice and you risk getting banned.

Misleading title tags and descriptions

Meta data, like title and description is an excellent tool to help Search Engine spiders finding your website. Don’t misuse them by adding non-relevant content in the titles and the description. Google will scan the content of the page and read the title. If they don’t match you may be punished. Keep the title and the description good.

Misleading links

Same as other misleading content. Don’t do it.

Getting caught

If you use any of the above “techniques” and get caught, your website may be removed from Google all together. It can be a painful experience, especially harming the traffic to your website. It is not worth the temporary increase in traffic. Search Engine Optimization is a long term job, built up with good website content.

What to do to IMPROVE your websites ratings

Good tricks – guidelines to filling your website with good content.

Using a clear structure

Make sure the navigation is clear and easy to understand. A clear hierarchy where all pages are reachable from at least one link, and main pages are reachable from a site map. Site maps are especially useful for websites with over 100 pages.

Put your visitor first

Create useful pages – that is useful for your visitor or user in the first place, and for Search Engines second. Label the pages accurately, with proper titles and descriptions that describe your content.

Keywords

Think about the words that a visitor would type in to Google and use to find your website. Make sure those words are included, preferably both in the headline, the body text, the title and the description, in a natural way.

Images

Don’t use images to display headlines. Use the h1, h2, h3… tags in the html code. Google can’t “see” images, so if you use an image for content, make sure you use the “alt” tag to include descriptive text.

Links

Use links to relevant websites with relevant content. Check your website for broken links regularly, and fix and replace any broken links.

All of this is described in more detailed in the free SEO guide.

Taking on the big dogs is always hard to do.  That’s what I did when I started optimizing for “Salt Lake City SEO.”

One of the fundamentals of SEO is established sites tend to out rank new sites because they have more links and more content.

While researching for that post, I found I could easily out rank my competition on the blog side, but out ranking on the website side would be much more difficult.  That’s OK.  I have a plan.

Use established sites to gain search engine ranking -

There are probably a million sites to leverage to get a good ranking, but I like to submit to sites that will duplicate my work through RSS.

Article Directories

The easiest way to do this is submit content to article sites.  Article sites have been around a lot longer than any new websites, so they’ll show up in search engine results higher and sooner than anything else.  They also act as a filter for the visitor because if someone reads my article, then comes to my site for more information, it seems they are becoming a pretty well qualified prospect.  I only submit to article sites that allow anchor text so I am maximizing my time.  Other websites that use syndicated content take those feeds as is, so my anchor text gets duplicated all over the web.  I can even submit older articles from this site verbatim without worrying about a duplicate content penalty.

I am currently submitting articles to three of my favorite directories.  I will let you know how that turns out.

Press Releases

Press releases are one of my favorite ways to generate buzz, branding and inbound links.  They are great for new sites because the fact you’re launching a site is newsworthy in itself.  Press release sites not only distribute to major news sites, they also utilize RSS so blogs and other news aggregators scrape and publish your content.  To get the best distribution and the ability to use anchor text, it will cost you money, but the exposure is well worth it.

The key to writing a successful press release is making it newsworthy.  While it’s worth the money spent just for the links and the distribution, ideally you want to generate a release that will create press.  Too many web marketers submit press releases that are poorly written or just plain spam.  By taking the time to write something newsworthy, you will create something worth your effort.

I have not submitted any press releases yet, but I came up with two newsworthy ideas I think will generate some press.  I’m still working on some details, but plan to have idea one fully implemented this week.

Directory Sites

While doing some research on my targeted key words, I found some localized directory sites I thought would be worth submitting to.  Besides Blogtopsites and Blogtoplist which I always submit to, I found Blogcatalog and MerchantCircle.  Much to my surprise, I found the following for my key phrase a couple days ago:

Hi front page of Google!

Over time and after implementing some of my other strategies, I believe this site will rank in the top ten, but for now I’m pretty pleased.  Look out big dogs, I’m nipping at your heels!

If you want a hint about the future of SEO, this is it.  Other sites are the place you want to be; Facebook, Twitter, Directories, Google Maps, etc.  Don’t believe me?  Ask Seth Godin.  He’s launching Brands in Public, a content aggregator for companies.  For $400 a month you can get some pretty cheap SEO, but the idea has its detractors.  No matter how much people hate it, it’s going to happen.

Embrace change.

Had a killer little roof bbq session last night…

A few vegies from the supermarket and a few digitally discounted items
and we were eating like kings, on a peasants salary…

Yaki-niku Vs. Straight Vedge

And finished off with a couple of tasty little Whacko-Jackos…

Total cost: ¥275 each.

N8wog and I decided to go on a little urban camping expedition.

Day 1: We headed to Kyoto in an attempt to catch our fellow Serps show.
It didn’t work out, but we found a good spot next to the river and slept in.

Day 2: Climbed Mt. Inari (Fushimi-Inari Shrine) and visited Kiyomizudera.
Then headed to Osaka, saw the show and then slept in the back of a tiny park.

Day 3: We saw a funny little fellow with a fob watch running around,
saying something about being late, so we decided to follow him…

Where we came across a mock turtle, aliens, vikings and slept in a mountain…

And even when we weren’t needing trains, they still showed up…

Day 4: We hopped a train to Hiroshima, ate Okonomiyaki at a really
awesome back-alley-family-restaurant, then sussed the A-Bomb Dome…

That’s not lighting – it’s actually still fizzing with raditation.
We then bunked down next to the river. Great, until it started raining…

Day 5: We peaced out in the park and went to the utterly disturbing Musuem…

After that we jumped a street car over to “Miyajima” Island and saw this…

There were deer everywhere all over the island, just hanging and eating.
This one was HANGING to eat the fresh shit out of that kids nappy…

We did our best Anthony Kiedis impersonations for the locals…

Bush-bashed up a river, through countless, insane spider webs…

And climbed up/down Mt. Misen in the dark…

Back to Hiroshima and we crashed at a capsule hotel – where I couldn’t
shower because I happen to have some dumb shit on my back.

Day 6: Back to the station and off to Kyushu. We got done by a ticket dog
and actually had to pay for some of our journey. Very disappointing.
It wasn’t too much though and we arrived in Fukuoka just after dark…

We hit up this heavenly little burger place and I had the best nuggets that
I have had the joy of eating since Feast On closed down (RIP)…

Central Park offered us a pretty nice little camp site…

Day 7: The ferry to Iki Island was too expensive/long for us, so we ventured
to the closest beach we could find, to the disbelief of the information staff…

Then in the evening we snaked a train up to Kita-Kyushu and boarded
an over-night ferry back to Osaka…

It had a wide selection of vending machines, including this bad boy…

Day 8: Pulled into port in the morning sunlight and frenched our way back to
Tokyo and our home-away-from-home, Sun Heights…

Steal. Trains. Daily.

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Please ignore this post.  There is nothing to see or learn here.