More Memory For Laptops

I found this great tool that checks your laptop and suggests what add-on memory will help make it more powerful. The tool checks your laptop memory just by clicking the on screen button.

I use USB flash drives. The 8g ones are now only $30.00 when you buy online. Even video cards have dropped to $50 especially if you buy them online.

I find that adding extra memory makes my computer work better. I have 2g of ram in my computer now. The computer is less than 1 year old and I want another 1g to increase my speed.

Blog Review: Personal Finance

I found another blog worth reviewing. The template is nice and clean. The articles are easy to read. I think the thing that caught my attention is that the articles are not the eye-popping 1000 word marathons that run down an entire screen.

The topic of personal finance advice is an interesting one for us all. I think I like some of this author's work better than mine. I tend to say too much at once. I like the 'bite size' articles.

I did like the way the blogroll is NOT on a PHP link. This is so much better for SEO purposes. The writer has a few smart ideas that I haven't seen before. I always look forward to blogs that talk about personal experience. This author makes no excuses when admitting that everything he blogs about was learned from personal experience.

I did take a look at ithemes to see if I could find something more interesting than the templates I currently use.

Search Engines Won’t Index Your Blog: Website Problems

There are a few reasons why a website may not be indexed. First, is broken links. Search engines may stop at a broken link and assume the site is down. They may remove a site that was previously indexed.

Some websites such as Google and HotBot will not index sites with no inbound links. One way to get indexed is to link to a website or blog on a page ‘other’ than the index page.

Flash intros, videos and images may result in the spiders skipping a website. The index page must link to the rest of the site, if not – as in the case of flash intros – there is no links to the index page from the inside pages. Result, search engines will not index the site.

Most search engines will not index a free site.

Linking to a banned or benched website may result in the search engines refusing to index a site.

Submitting the site monthly can result in the site being ‘pruned’ from the database, or just not indexed in the first place.

Dynamic URLs are often overlooked. Any domain name that contains symbols and ? and &, are often ignored.

Only text is indexed. If the page has no text, then there is no index. Search engines cannot enter passwords, fill in forms, sign up for RSS, or newsletters. If the website asks people to do any of these before continuing – the sub pages will not be indexed.

Search engines will not index large pages, or ones that load slow. No web page should be more than 50k

404 message. Web hosting companies are not 100%. If the site is down when the robot comes looking then they will ignore the website.

Scripts cannot be indexed. A scripted menu is harder to index than a static one written in HTML.

Sometimes frames and scripts can make a search engine think they are at the end of the site and leave.

Template may be so complex, with far too many tags. This can make it difficult to get indexed. The webmaster may need to change templates.

What Next?

If the site is still not indexed and has a blog in it, try to manually ping the blog to a service such as pingoat.com or some of the others.

Search Engines Won’t Index Your Blog

I have a couple of blogs that the search engines will not index. I can run the site through my WEBCEO software program and it shows the sites indexed on Google and Yahoo, plus a few others, but when I check out the site, it is not indexed.

In fact, there are websites with PR3 which are still not indexed. Not being indexed does not necessarily mean the webmaster has done something wrong.

SiteMap

There are several ways to index a site. One way is to add a site map to the website. This might not always be possible. If you have a Google account, try adding your FEED file and let Google use that as the site map – as with all Google tools, it doesn’t always work. I find that it works on two-thirds of my blogs.

Google has a hard time verifying Google’s own blogger. I’ve followed 3 sets of instructions and none of them worked. However, I verified Drupal and Wordpress without any problems. If you can get your site verified and use the sitemap tool to get indexed.

I did a little twist and got one of my sites indexed. The site was http://work-at-home-guru.blogspot.com/ WEBCEO said 61 pages were indexed. I did a site and link search and found almost 70 pages. But, when an advertiser did their search they didn’t find any search engines had indexed the site. Google wouldn’t let me ad /feed to the sitemap. I tried to verify the site – wouldn’t work.

So, I made a RSS feed at www.feedburner.com and let Google search that. Do not worry about errors. The objective is not to get the site indexed well, but to make Google take a look at the site.

AdWords

If the site is commercial and the site needs to be indexed quickly, then join Google’s PPC program. Their rules state that there is no minimum, but people I know who have AdWord accounts state that the minimum is $50. This is not bad because you get advertising for it.

The benefit of this program is that Google must index the site before finding websites to advertise on. That means an instant index.

Spring Shopping

I am going shopping tomorrow. I'll be looking at the latest bulbs, garden supplies, and spring furniture. I usually prefer bamboo and teak patio furniture. I love the set on the front page of the thosbaker.com website.

I love to go shopping, but I almsot always buy online. The models and variety at stores is always limited. I live outside in the summer. I want 'real' furniture that won't collapse while I am trying to work.

I also want furniture that will look nice surrounded by gardens. That is not always easy if you think of some bushes being 4' high and 8' wide. They can dwarf some furniture sets.

A Reason to Blog Hop

Have you ever wanted to go blog hopping without the guilt? Smorty has created a new system that allows you to do just that. Much in the same way Diva Network is designed to let bloggers work together to build links, Smorty has added a tool that lets bloggers review each other's work. Best of all, it is free.

It is about time someone created a system where bloggers could support other bloggers. This is a great system. For every review you do for another blogger, someone does one for you. You do not need to activate all the blogs that are listed with smorty. All you need to do is activate the ones that you want to promote.

If you want someone to write a blog review your home blog then you will put the review on your home blog. To make it more 'fair,' smorty also matches blogs by Page Rank. This way, a blogger will not find themselves writing posts for PR0 sites and then posting a review on a PR4 site.

This is not a reciprocal links system. Smorty set up the system so that Blogger A reviews Blogger B. Blogger B reviews Blogger C. Blogger C reviews Blogger A. This keeps all the SEO and Page Rank algorithms clean.

Make Money on YouTube

No one touches the web without learning what YouTube is. Now they are testing a new program in Australia where contributors earn money in exchange for a banner being placed on the ad. This revenue sharing is designed to help contributors who create good content.

http://au.youtube.com/partners

The program has been operating in the United States and United Kingdom for months. Some contributors are already earning thousands of dollars each month.

"It has certainly been an incentive for people to create more content," a YouTube Australia spokesman said.

"There are people overseas who have millions of video views and are earning thousands of dollars."

Many people have worked hard to become celebrities on YouTube. The secret to success is found in building a community and interacting with viewers.

Moving and Movers

I have a client who has been trying to move for almost a month. I remember when I moved, it took almost a month to pack, and then 3 days to move all our furniture to the house. Next time I am moving, I'll use a professional mover. They can box everything, and have the home owner out of the home in hours.

You must use a reliable and responsible mover. I had a friend whose mover worked so slow that she started to help. Then they charged her to store the boxes, in the truck trailer, over night. Cost = $800.00.

A mover NYC has an excellent list of reasons why you need a moving company. They are a great laugh. But they are also an eye opener. I was also amazed to learn that this one company moved 150 000 people left NY in the year after 9/11. I couldn't imagine that many moves.

My Review on AVG 8.0

I upgraded to AVG 8.0 tonight. It was rather easy. I had to save the file to desktop and download both VISTA patches. Once that was done I had the new features that watch for viruses before I download them.

One is the AVG tool bar. I had to turn of Active Surf-Shield and Search-Shield ot download the image in this blog, but they didn't disrupt anything else. My firewall configured itself for all my networks inclusing firewall :) nice!

The only configuration I made was to activate the configure the 'computer scanner' and activate the check for Root. This is what has been missing from virus scan for a long time. I set it to even find locked and hidden files.

I remember once I had Norton and I my tech found more than 30g of hidden files that were running in the background.

I spend most of my time on familiar sites, so I don't need Active Surf on. But, there are times when I am doing research.

If you've followed me over the last year then you'll know that I've crashed twice because of viruses. Both times required a complete reboot.

There is a feature to let users disable the firewall when playing a game. I like this, but I also wish there was a feature to disable the firewall when accessing server based online content management systems. This type of feature will make it easier to administer blogs.

Reports have stated that there are holes in the firewall that protects ports. Keep in mind that we are talking high tech here and most people are protected. However, configuring the system to check these systems and then verifying the data will protect most people (never keep banking or personal information on your computer at any time.)

This does not bother me because I have 2 firewalls as well as Visa's security. But, if you don't have a newer system, you might want to download ZoneAlarm as well.

If there is one tool that cis worth the effort then it is linkscan. Like I said, I didn't like losing about 1 - 2 seconds of browser speed so I turned it off, but if you are afraid of malware then this tool could save you a lot of sleepless nights.

FREE Version

Don't worry if you can only afford the free version. AVG’s anti-virus tool has a 100%detection rate certified by the independent bodies ICSA Labs and VB100.




CNET/ZDNET Review
AVG Anti-Virus 8 scored well in CNET Labs' performance tests and in third-party, independent antivirus testing using live viruses, although not always the top position. On the CNET iTunes test, AVG Anti-Virus 8 came in just 4 seconds above the test system at 272 seconds. On the CNET Microsoft Office test, AVG Anti-Virus 8 finished in 1,413 seconds. In a test scanning a single folder with compressed and media files, AVG Anti-Virus 8 completed it in 550 seconds. And in boot speed, AVG Anti-Virus 8 came in toward the slower end, with a fast 37.95 seconds. Click here to find out more about how we test Antivirus software.

In terms of protecting your PC, we refer readers to two leading independent antivirus testing organizations. In the latest test results from AV-Comparatives.org, gave AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 an Advanced rating (highest) for On Demand protection and Advanced Plus (highest) for heuristic protection, blocking 97 percent of the malicious code used in the test. Our second source of independent antivirus testing, CheckVir.com, ranked AVG Anti-Virus 7.5--the previous version--as one of five products to earn their Standard rating (highest) for identifying malicious software (the products were not tested for removal).

Internet Explorer and AVG 8.0

I've been telling bloggers to use FireFox for a long time. But, I aways keep a copy of IE open to experiment on. I was just running my new version of AVG 8.0. You wouldn't believe the number of mining scripts it was 'locked out' of.

I love the new feature on AVG 8.0 that lets me see all the files, whether the file is locked, and what type of file it is. It tells me what files have macros in it, and which ones are collecting data. No wonder my computer is up to 149 gig of hard drive space used. I am going to delete IE and its applications and reinstall and then see how much room I have cleaned up.

Back and Neck Problems

I've been blogging about different methods of preventing RSI, and back or neck pain. One thing that a lot of people overlook is their bed. A mattress can cause health problems, or prevent them.

What most people don't understand is that everyone does not sleep best if they are flat on their back. If you toss and turn, maybe you are one of them. Some people use body pillows to curl around. Others use a sleep wedge to raise the top part of their body.

Before buying anything take a look at one of the better sites and check out all the different models. Then find out the difference between good mattress quality and poor. There is no use buying a mattress pad from the local department store if it will not improve the quality of your sleep.

Fear Google - No More

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1422253744/bclid1425858176/bctid1425858171

The net is full of reports by bloggers who have gone from making a good living to zip because of Google's last move. What Google didn't take into account was the fact that most bloggers do not rely on Google for the bulk of their income.

The above video shows the irreverance that bloggers have for Google. In the last two years, many bloggers are receiveing 10 000 hits a month plus, have large RSS subscriptions, lots of comments, and yet they don't make more than $1 a day from Google.

Why should they obey Google anymore when IZEA, payu2blog,and Blogsvertise has been paying the bills for many of them? It will be amazing to see what happens if bloggers totally turn their back on Google.

Blog Hopping: Word Can Be Hacked?

I stopped on seasantos.com.p. At first I was attracted by the unusual URL. Then the first post caught my attention. Apparently this poor blogger was hacked. I know that blogs can be hacked. I don't know why. I just never thought Wordpress was vulnerable. Moreover, why would anyone want to hack a blog?

The site has some value adding, add value qualities. I found this quote on “Hope is the dream of a man awake“. I visited the blog catalogue page to see what else this blogger was doing. It is nice listening to the world according to people in other countries.

He does have one tool on his blog that is valuable to the divanetwork bloggers. He will post a job opportunity on his blog for one week, free. This is a great tool for the writing agents, or people who need help with their code. It gives them a little more exposure. It is an interesting place to stop on when blog hopping.

Do You Need a Brochure?

The quality will depend on the printer and paper chosen. But it is possible to make professional brochures using this tool. I've made a couple of brochures, saved them to PDF and posted them on my website. They are a great branding tool.

I found this great new tool that lets you make brochures with a mailing panel, without mailing panel, or a flier. Best of all, it is free, online, and prints on your home printer. This is not one of those widgets that are hosted by printing companies which force you to buy 250 copies.

Just create a flier by clicking your favorite layout from the selection. Then add your text, front and back. Then print. The brochure maker lets you print front, then back, for people who do not have printers capable of doing both in one action.

The brochure maker has no 'buy ups' or add ons needed. It is perfect for business owners who only need the occasional brochure, and want the freedom to change the content and layout for different clients.

Visiting Other Blogs

I had a client ask me today, 'How do you come up with great ideas all the time.' I had to laugh. I get most of my ideas from the net.

I've been surfing the web, visiting blogs and learning from other bloggers. Today I visited Lakshmi the rattler. I loved her template. Of course, she is a software consultant so she probably has some excellent coding.

I loved her Donkey Story It is kind of the premise that we built this blog & networking group on. One person working alone cannot accomplish what several people working together can accomplish. Lakshmi wrote the story referring to a corporate situation. But it does apply.

I noticed that she has an Alex rank calculator. I've never worried about Alex rank. Has any members used Alex? One things he has that is a great tool is the chatter box. Instead of leaving comments, visitors can leave a comment on the chatter box. What a great idea :)

Does anyone else love blog hopping? It seems to becoming a favorite pastime.

What Happened With Adsense?

All Adsense users signed a new contract recently. For most of them, the change meant very little. For those who make money as bloggers, they either saw their income go up, or down. This may have been totally independent of the number of clicks to their pages.

The murmuring among the web-world blamed Google’s recent acquisition of DoublClick. This includes a new tool (Ad Manager) that should make it easier for advertisers to put their own ads on their pages, free. It also comes with several tools that should make the ad world work better.

Advertisers are complaining. The tool is designed to take a look at all an advertiser’s ads and then put the best one on the page. This tool tracks where visitors are travelling through the web, and then tries to match the ad that is most likely to result in a sale.

Advertisers are saying the new program is not working that way, despite the fact that their costs increased. Some advertisers claim their costs doubled.
There are alternatives. OpenX is a good choice.

The rules have effected how Adsense ads can be placed on a page. There has been a long term practice of placing images above, or beside, Adsense ads. Google will no longer allow this. There must be no images near. This upset some bloggers who positioned the ads so that the Google ads appeared to be alternative links associated with the image.

Publishers may now run Google ads on pages with other ads, such as Adbrite.com chitika.com or without being banned. The only rule is that the ‘other’ contextual ads must not look like the Google ads. Other alternatives are Clicksor, Kanoodle, Contextweb

Many bloggers have started using Kontera. I tried it for a few days, then took it off. It messed up my menus and made the site look like a MFA or splog.
However, is this a smart idea? We will have to see if sites that have multiple ads receive less from Google than those that are ‘pure’ Google. Only time will tell.

Do You Need to Hire a Writer?

Many people wonder why they should hire a freelance writer or ghostwriter. When you look at the industry as a whole, there is no reason to hire a writer. But, if you separate the people who are paying bills from professional writers then you shoud take a moment to see why paying someone to write is a good idea.

SEO and Web Writing

Writers need to be certified in SEO to be able to claim they understand the basics. They should be able to list at least 4 associations, groups, they have been a part of. Search Engine optimization involves balancing keyword phrases, sub titles, word count between sub titles, and even the competitor’s keyword choices.

Pre-Selling

There are so many aspects of marketing and pre-selling that it may be better to hire a writer trained in communication styles, copywriting, personality types, and emotional triggers. A great writer can create a polished draft of an article, but while it may look great, it will have very little effect on the consumer’s ‘decision to buy.’

Branding and Image Building

There is more to an image than bragging about yourself, product, or service. Good Public Relations is a delicate balance. Everything needs to give the same image. The wrong word choice, talking ‘over’ or ‘under’ the client, and ignoring the consumer’s stereotypes can be devastating.

Contract

The contract should cover both the client and the writer. Most contracts state that the client has no rights to the Work until it is paid in full. Retainers are never returned. Good writers ask for a retainer. They don’t have time to waste on people who are not serious.

Fees vary greatly. Articles run $5 - $20.00 for an article. Ebooks or ‘non bookstore’ books coast $1000 - $3000. Full Release/Published books cost $5000 - $20 000 depending on the time needed to write.

A book that makes a business owner look like an industry guru can run $10 000 plus. However, most of these books can be sold for $10 profit and open up public speaking venues. That means the business owner only needs to sell 1000 books to make their money back – the rest is pure profit.

Don’t try to get great writers to lower their price. You just look like an amateur. Good writers cannot get the job done this week. In fact, being over demanding and getting the cheapest writer almost guarantees that the freelance writers who bid on your project are all unemployed people trying to pay the bills.

Union Writers

Most people do not need a union writer. Professionals rarely write for less than .10 a word. But, finding a professional can be hard. They usually write for ‘good’ agents who do the bidding for them. Or, they write for associations/companies that protect them from non-payment and abusive clients.

Disrupted Sleep Causes Anxiety

I was stunned to learn that disturbed sleep, waking at night for a few minutes at a time, waking up to roll over, and waking feeling sore can cause some of the most common anxiety disorders. In fact, my husband suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. His doctor gave him sleeping pills to help him cope.

Within a few days of taking the medication and getting the first good night's sleep in years, he started to relax.

I want a new mattress so he can sleep better. I've also wondered how my productivity can improve if I sleep better. I've talked about this to a few of my friends. Most of us are suffering from various stages of RSI, or the effects of stress.

Most of my friends know they need something, but cannot afford a new mattress. I felt the same, until I learned that I can buy a mattress topper for as little as $120. I prefer the memory foam styles over the fiber. I'm going to take a closer look. It is well worth the money if I get a better night's sleep.

Is SocialSpark a Good Thing?

I've been reading everything I can on the new social spark. What I've read is not very heartening. I've seen the banners in use - it makes the blog look like it is owned by SocialSpark... not me. I am secondary in the marketing process.

There are reasons to go with SocialSpark.com - and those against.

The no-follow links are good. This may look great to the amateur bloggers, but all of us pros know that Google is going to find some code in the Socialspark code to tag it. I remember when we were all told to stick the 'disclosure badges' on our blogs. Within weeks my PR4 blogs were PR0 - but only on the Paid Post blogs that had the badge.

There is an audit trail that will let people follow links to see if the blogger was forced to use certain links.

I like PayPerPost as it is. I am not 100% sure I want to change, and hope the issue will not be forced. For one, it seriously hinders the other blogging Ad companies. Many of them are unhappy with the new banners and program. They don't mind the competition they do mind having all the blogs look like they belong to SocialSpark.com

There is a lot of hype over the system. But it won't work without the help of the big search engines, no matter what IZEA is saying. Even now, websites are being hit with a -2 if they 'appear' to sell links.

This is unfair. I have a major website that doesn't sell links, but it has been hit with a -1 from the Google toolbar's rank, because of the number of links. I've triggered a red flag, so I get the penalty.

I don't see that I sell page rank. The Paid ads on my page buy the space, like an ad in a newspaper. There is certainly no value to having a post on my blog with a page rank of PR0 for the posts page. And, I don't sell links on the home page of my PR4 and higher blogs.

I review for pay. But I reject a lot of paid posts. I reject at least 50% from ReviewMe, and 80% from sponsored reviews. I also reject at least 20 - 40% from PPP depending on the week and the opportunities.

I don't want the first thing visitors to see when they come to my blog is an invitation to advertise on my blogs. Most of my visitors are not businesses. They are people who come to my sites looking for information.

I've just started reviewing. Some of the pro Bloggers have been given access to the program that started to be released in January. I'll keep you posted with what I learn.

Wealth Building Goals

There is no secret to building wealth, despite what the gurus say. If there were secrets, they were released in the major recession of the 1990s. However, there are a few basics.

The first, and most important basic, is that wealth is not measured in money. It is measured in assets – things you can hold that have a value. There are many people in the world who are wealthy but still have a hard time paying their bills.

Goal One: Set Goals

You need to understand what wealth is before you can create goals for yourself. To some wealth means power. Others believe wealth is found at the bottom of a balance sheet. Others think it means having extra money in your pocket to waste on indulgences. Some measure believe wealth is measured by the amount they will leave to their kids.

The important thing to remember is that wealth is something personal. Your goals should not be based on what someone else believes wealth is.

Goal Two: Pay Down Debts

The first step to building wealth is to pay down your debts. Most adults pay more than $5000USD a year in unnecessary interest. That is wealth. If you could pay down your debts and stay out of debt, then you would have an increase of $5000 a year in expendable income.

After you set your goals, you need to work on different methods of reducing your debt. Many people can do this just by altering their budget for one year. Others can save a few hundred dollars (to use paying down debt) by changing to a more affordable credit card.

Some people learn how to do this by planning a trip. They must pay down their debt, and save the money for the trip before they can go. By the time this is done, they have learned more responsible spending habits, and taught themselves the art of budgeting money.

Goal Three: Motivation

Desire creates ambition and ambition creates action. This action generates cash – sometimes. Most of the wealthy people do not spend 5 hours a day in front of the television, or out entertaining themselves.

People need to learn how to work smart, not hard. That means that they must learn how to determine which wealth generating strategy will work in your situation. The budget has already increased income. Look for other ways to generate a passive income. Just make sure it involves you.

I knew one person who wrote a list of all the things everyone else could do to fix their financial problems. Of course this didn’t work. You need to start with yourself and then draw everyone else in.


Goal Four: Learn to Generate Wealh

Passive income doesn’t mean that you are doing nothing. You need to spend time with your family or your spouse and children will disappear. You need to spend time at work or your boss will fire you. The same goes for passive income. The money is there, but you need to invest time and effort into making it come to you.

However, many ‘work at home’ professionals do everything but generate income. They spend all their time marketing, creating a network, building reports, learning, and never seem to get around to the task of making money.

The people who succeed follow a certain behavior pattern. Those who fail also follow a certain set of behavioral patterns. Those who build wealth do not have a ‘turn off’ switch. They see no difference between spending the weekend at a flea market earning money than spending it at the beach. Of course, they also go to the beach…after the market closes.

More Thoughts on SocialSpark

SocialSpark

What exactly is SocialSpark?

I found the answer – finally. It is a social network with a twist. Instead of meeting friends, bloggers get to meet advertisers. In theory. PPP is banking on its 85000 bloggers either dropping out, or signing up. Either way, the blogsphere is served.

I think it is suppose to work sort of like SponsoredReviews or ReviewMe, with a twist. The ad is placed on your blog. It pops up to cover most of your screen when someone visits your blog. Then it minimizes in the upper left corner.

Draw back #1. You must put a disclosure badge in the blog post – or you don’t get paid.

Bonus #1. IZEA’s RealRank can possibly kill Alex – finally. They are proposing a widget that brags about your rank.

Draw back #2. Google and Other Ad sites want to squash it.

Bonus #2. The blog success will be free from Google’s slanted Page Rank System

Bonus #3. No haunting the PPP site for 5 hours a day trying to ‘catch’ opportunities.

Bonus #4. NO armatures allowed. Well- they are allowed, but putting Advertisers in charge will mean that bloggers must hustle their butts and do some work. They need to attract traffic. They need page hits. They need subscribers.
Bonus #5. No more Page Rank…did I say that already?

Bonus #6. Public API so my friend Mark can waste another 5 years making toys for cyber geeks to use on their blogs.

Will PayPerPost die? Everyone thinks so. Fact 1: They changed the name to IZEA. Fact 2: They launched a new system Fact3: They have no bad press associated with the new system…yet. I hate change, so you won’t see any WhooHa’s from me. I don’t think Ted is going to send any perks my way, so I’ll save my dignity.
How will bloggers survive?

I think the first step will be to create blogs for SocialSpark, and ‘main’ blogs.
My only question is…Didn’t we have something like this a year or so ago? I kinda remember a couple of the blog ad companies telling us to place widgets on our blogs the advertisers will come. They didn’t and the program failed. Oh yea, I remember – it was PPP.

It is hard to get a straight answer. There are a few gurus who were fortunate enough to attend Posticon. The rest are just regurgitating information without fully understanding it. For example, one blogger announced IZEA’s release of a NEW page rank system – sigh.

I’ll keep you posted. I am not going to explain it in full, Andy Beard did an excellent job of that http://andybeard.eu/2007/11/socialspark.html I will wait with the rest of the smucks for the public release before I can tell you much more.

Cheap Glasses

I've blogged about this site on a few other blogs, and I wanted to pass it on. You can buy cheap glasses even prescriptions for less than $30 each. In fact, my husband recently purchased a pair for $12 + $10 of ad-dons. This is a fraction of the $300 we normally pay for glasses. It is a good deal, no matter how you look at it, and no matter what type of glasses you need.

SEO Myths and Facts 2008: Different Types and Values of Links

Different links have different values. To understand the value of links, a webmaster or blog owner must first be able to identify different types of links. There are two basic types of links, keyword anchored and unanchored. The last blog post SEO Myths and Facts 2008: Inbound Links and Page Rank explained what a keyword anchored link was. This article will go the next step and divide the different types of links.
Keyword Anchored Links

Keyword Anchored Links earn the highest value. Most new writers are not sure what the term keyword anchored means. It means that you type a keyword phrase and then hyperlink it to another page. For example, Value Of Inbound Links, might be your keyword link. You add www.yourfriendsbestarticle.com is the URL. You link the words so that when you click them, you are taken to your friend’s best article.

Signature Tags are those cool little sales lines that include URLs at the bottom of your comments, posts, or in forums. Signature lines are automatically generated. Even if you type it yourself, if you don’t keyword anchor your URL, and surround it with content, it will receive very little (if any) value.

I’ve personally did research, and never found an article in the search engine ‘cache’ or indexed because of a signature line, making me believe that sig lines have no value at all.

This is important for anyone hoping to attract visitors to their websites. Instead of pitching something with 3 or 4 links in it, just write a short ‘hope to see you’ message with your URL spelled out so people can remember it.

Directory Links can cause problems. Linking in directories use to be important. Now that Google is benching blogs that buy links, listing in directories ‘may’ cause a blog to be benched (which means the same as banned in the SEO world.)

It is always important to list with search engines. This will not give a website higher relevance or more Page Rank, but it may help get pages indexed faster.

Menu Links often have no value. If the link is not a keyword anchored one, then it has very little value. For example ‘home’ is found on every website, but as ‘home’ is not a keyword people use when searching for information then ‘home.’

Other menu links are generated from databases meaning that they are hard for search engines to value them. If you can ‘hand code’ a sidebar, then that is the best thing to do.

No-Follow Links have Zero Value. The no-follow code tell search engines not to count the link.

Some SEO experts tell people that posting comments in high ranking blogs will give them a better rank. This will only work if the comment section doesn’t include a no-follow link.

SEO Myths and Facts 2008: Search Engines Rank Pages not Websites

One of the most important things to realize is that Google ranks pages, not websites. If the home URL has PR6, that doesn’t mean that every page has PR6. In fact, most websites have only 1 or 2 pages with a high PR, the rest are PR0. When a web visitor leaves a comment on a post, or sees a free content article at a website, then their link’s value depends on 2 things.

1. Is the link a keyword anchored link inside the article. If not, then a low value (if any) is given to signature lines, or URLs at the bottom of the page.

2. Does the web page that the link is on have a Page Rank higher than zero. If the web page is PR0, then the link will have little value – regardless of the home page’s Page Rank.

3. Does the web site that hosts the link have more than 50 outgoing links? This is important. Google does not give a website a ‘value’ until it has more than 50 inbound links. That means, if you leave a link on that page, it will have almost no value.

4. Count the links on the page. You want to leave a comment on a high ranking blog or forum, hoping to earn some Page Rank points. Step one should be counting the number of hyperlinks on the page. All links on that page receive a portion of that page’s PR value.

Let’s say that your article appears on a webpage with PR6. This is great news right? Maybe not. Each of the links on a page receives a portion of the Page’s PR value. More than 40 links, and there is almost no value to pass on.

This is why it offers no Page Rank or SEO value to pay for a link in a blog directory or buy a link on a page that sells links. This is because these scam artists play on blog and website owners ignorance of the system. They create a page with PR6 – PR8 and then sell links for $50 - $200. They put 100 links on a page, and make $10 000 + a month – but pass on no value to any of the links on the page.

SEO Myths and Facts 2008: Inbound Links and Page Rank

There are several aspects of SEO that most bloggers never understand. They can make the difference between a PR4 and PR2. I’ve talked to dozens of bloggers who languish at PR3 for months, or years, never understanding why they cannot achieve a higher rank.

The truth is, if you know how to understand the rules of writing good content, and soliciting inbound links, then you can earn PR4, and even PR5 without taking an SEO course.

Understand Inbound Links

Most writers do not understand the purpose of inbound links. When search engines rank articles by importance, the most important element is not keywords, but inbound links. Search engines give the most importance to the keywords used in the links and web page the links appear on, but only if they match the keywords in the page they point to.

Page 1 (keyword: writing) has a link that leads to Page 2 (keyword: writing)

In this example, search engines gives Page 2 more importance because of the link. The more links, the more importance. That is why I always advice blog owners and webmasters to pick 5 or 10 good articles that were written for SEO purposes and then point keywords to those pages NOT the home page. This is because the home page rarely has good keywords, or they continually change.

However, writing 10 blogs and linking them together, or listing 100 articles on blogsvine or dig. Search engines look for links on different web pages. The more web pages that link to Page 2 (not the number of links) the higher the value.

Search Engine Value of Inbound Links

Not all inbound links are equal. Adding a URL at the end of an article is not as valuable as including a ‘keyword anchored’ link in the body of an article. And, adding the link 300 words down is not as valuable as adding the link in the first 20 words.

A link from a Page Rank 5 page is more valuable than one from a PR3 page. One link from a PR5 blog may (depending on other factors) be 200 times more valuable than a PR3 page, and 3000 times more valuable than a PR0 page (PR0 – a page with no page rank)

I’ve written several detailed blog posts on how search engines calculate page rank, and how you can use this to increase your page rank. I won’t go into much detail here. Except to offer some advice on where to get links, and how to value them.

Travel With Good Luggage

I've always pushed new writers to explore travel writing. It is one of the most profitable, yet underserviced writing niches in the writing worlds. There are so many magazines and blogs who need people familiar with travel to write about travel. I can write a blog on Briggs and Riley luggage. I know it is a good product by repitation.

When I travel I've always used good luggage. It is time to buy more, and I'll be looking to a good brand. I've learned through experience that good luggage makes it easier to transport your luggage between vehicles, buildings, and airports.

SEO Myths and Facts 2008: How to Use Meta Tags

There is so much information floating around the net on SEO that most blog owners don’t know what to do. Google changes their rules so often, that it is easy for people to become confused and frustrated. This is the goal of most of webmasters hoping to sell SEO books for $50. The simple truth is, you don’t need to pay $50 for an ebook. There are excellent books in the bookstore for $15.99 that will tell you 10x more information.

I upgraded my SEO marketing last summer. However, I have recently learned a bit about Google’s most recent changes. I’ve been posting about the new rules for Page Rank. You’ll notice that I dated this post. I want you to know that in 2009, you need to move farther through my blog and learn the new rules. Things will change. Google changed their rules twice in 2007 sending many high ranking blogs and websites into the ‘ban’ bin permanently, and rising many small blogs to PR4.

I hope this will help.

Meta Tag Density

The whole concept of meta tag density is so old that it is pre millennia, in the days of ‘meta tag search engines.’ There hasn’t been one of those dinosaurs for years. Today, meta tags are used to help match Ads to web page content, rank websites, and organizing searches.
Google currently penalizes any blog web page with more than 5% keyword density. Other search engines penalize more than 3%. That means if you use a keyword more than 5 times per 100 words, you risk your article being dropped from searches.

It is more important where the keyword appears, than how many times it appears. A keyword in a link that is found within content, or a title is more valued than a keyword inside an article. It is also important to remember that search engines only read 150 or so words. That means, unless you use ‘sub headings’ every 150 – 200 words, the search engines never read the entire article.

Tip: Meta tags that do help are found in the blog/web page templates. This is fairly easy for websites such as blogger and Wordpress. The web is full of tutorials that will help.

Meta Tags in Titles and Sub Titles

Using the correct keywords in a page title promotes higher rankings, and increases the click-through from PayPerClick ads. The following article titles show good title examples and bad ones.

How to Write an Article

Earn One Thousand Dollars Writing Articles

The Art of Writing Articles

The objective is to ‘think’ like someone who wants to learn how to write articles. If you want to learn how to do something, you’d never type The Art of Writing Articles into your computer’s browser. Most of us would type in example one. That means example one will rank higher.

However, it is also important to use keywords in the sub titles every 150 – 200 words. Search engines see sub headings as PAGE BREAKS. This mean that each section is a new page.

Writing articles in Word lets ‘non HTML’ buffs add heading titles. Just use ‘change styles, or the heading 1, heading 2, heading 3 titles. One of the benefits of writing in word and using copy and paste to transfer an article to a web is that the Heading titles can be resized to ‘normal.’ Most people do not like the different sizes of titles. Adjusting the font size offers web writers the best of both worlds.

Don’t Buy Directory Links

Buying links in directories, for a few pennies may seem like a good bargain. You’ll get more traffic, but at what cost? September 2008, when Google decided that buying links was illegal, webmasters were in a rage. Blogs were dropping from PR4 to PR0 over night.

The only blog I had that dropped was a PR3, it went down to PR0 – and has never started to climb up. I looked at all 30 blogs I manage, and the only thing that made this blog stand out was that I had bought $500 worth of directory links.
This has made me afraid of listing in the directories – just in-case Google sees the website as ‘suspect’ and drops the PR. It is very frustrating. Google has made it almost impossible to follow their rules.

It is making me so frustrated with Google that I am starting to favor RealRank, at least they are honest about their algorithms.

Don't Submit All Blogs to Paid Posts

It is a hard decision to make. I have 30 blogs. They are not all submitted to PayPerPal, Smorty, etc. I have two trains of thought on the purpose. I do have blogs that will earn money at all. I think I would probably make $500 - $1000 more a month if I submit to all.

The problem is, can my blogs carry 30% more load for every new agency? If I submit a blog to all of the big three, that might mean I will need to post 5 – 10 new posts per blog, per agency. This translates into 15 – 30 new blog posts.

This doesn’t count the ‘real content.’ I do use free content, but each of those posts start with up to 100 words of my own thoughts. I already write about 30 posts a week, with 60 more ‘real content’

Not only would my workload increase if I submitted all blogs to all PayPerPost agencies, but so would my subscriber load. I currently have about 35 subscribers. Each of these receive up to 30 posts a week in their email. Doubling this would not only be rude, they would leave me.

It is something a blogger needs to consider. Even paid post blogs have loyal subscribers and they have people who visit their website on a regular basis. I have about 300 return visitors on one blog. I consider them more valuable.

So, what do you do if you need to make more money? The solution is either to increase your page rank so you earn more money per post (I have earned as much as $50 for a post). Or, you can just create more blogs. (note: I said blogs not splogs)
Before answering the question you need to determine which blogs you want to selectively choose the blog posts you want to be on your site, and which ones you don’t mind having ads on.

This will organically divide your blogs. If you are striving for PR4 or higher on a blog, then don’t sign with a company like blogsvertise which doesn’t give you a choice and penalizes you if you continually reject blog posts.

Should You Control Google’s Adsense Ads?

There is a lot of controversy over whether a blogger should put meta code in their blog templates, and use H1, H2, H3, heading tags to control the ads Google puts on their blog.

I am on the pro side. I find that the meta tags and heading codes gives me the freedom to go a little ‘off topic’ without worrying about having random, low paying, and off topic ads appear in my Google Adsense towers.

That said, many bloggers think they are missing Google’s highest paid opportunities by trying to control the system. They argue that the click through rate may be lower, and that google’s sliding scale will slide farther down in Google’s favor. All – reasonable and realistic possibilities.

The answer to the question is personal, but should also depend on whether you expect to earn most of your revenue from Google. Most bloggers do not.

In fact, most bloggers are lucky to receive one or two checks a year. Not Google’s fault. They tell you how bloggers how to succeed. There are a lot of blogs like this one that teach bloggers how to succeed. The problem is that most bloggers do not get it.

I’ve talked to many new bloggers who think that posting 10 articles a month is horrible, let alone 50 or 100. Yet, they want the same income as bloggers who do post this number of blogs. The facts are clear. Bloggers cannot work on their blog ‘in their spare time’ and expect to earn a full time income.

But, if the blogger does put the work into their blog, I think they should stick with the ads that have proven to pay in the past, the ones which their readers click through most often…and to do that, you need to control Google using legal SEO tricks.

Spring Renovations

I've been working inside too long. I've been giving myself a lift by looking at ways to renovate my home. The new products are making home renovations fun. I've been looking into fiberglass columns as an addition to my home. I have been looking into quite a few stylish, low flammable, building products.

I'm thinking of these shutters. It will set our house's brick off nicely. The most important thing to remember is to think of the entire house before done. We want an antique look to the house, but trying to use old products makes the house look dirty or worn. Instead, we want to use new products that stand out and 'frame' our house.

30 Days to a Pro Blogging Career: Pt3

The last 10 days should be the easiest. There are a lot of thing that you are just repeating. You've already registered with the services. Now you just need to promote.

Day 20

Learn how to optimize the templates, adding meta information, and learning how to optimize for the Pay Per Click programs.

Day 21

Time to post again. Post articles regularly to keep the search engine’s interested in your blogs.

Day 22

Find a bunch of free for use images and post them to Flicker, and publish them in your posts. This will create interest in the posts as well as bring traffic to the site.

Day 23

Interview a few gurus in the industry to add credibility to the blog’s topic.

Day 24

Subscribe to industry blogs and associations, newsletters, or RSS feeds so you can keep ‘cutting edge’ information on your blog.

Day 25

Start looking at plug-ins to make your blog work better. It is vital that you learn how to use widgets and plug-ins. There is no need to learn code.

Day 26


Time to learn how to read your stats. It will take months, if not years to learn how to properly translate the data offered by webstats, but you need to get started now.

Day 27

Start soliciting writers. I find that offering to trade free promotion on sites that receive 10 000 hits a month or more, in exchange for first crack at a public article, is enough to attract writers.

Day 28

Join some of the larger blog communities such as bloggerparty.com and communati.com to use as promotion tools.

Day 29

Want to know who is linking to your blog, use: http://www.wholinks2me.com/link/blog-dir.blogspot.com

Adding this code to your blogs will help you manage a link campaign, and know if your ‘paid inclusion’ program is giving you at least 60% links

Day 30

Create a brand for yourself. People use blogs. They want to meet you. They want to know who you are. Branding is the first step to become a recognized figure in the world.

30 Days to a Pro Blogging Career: Pt2

Joining a course or working with a networking group will help with motivation and help you answer questions. We answer questions in the divanetworking group, or you might want to look for a yahoo group.

Day 11

Add advertising to the site, whether Google’s Adsense, Affiliates, or others. Make sure the widgets are installed and everything looks good.

Day 12

Start buying traffic. Don’t invest a lot. It may take a month or two of experimentation before success is achieved.

Day 13

Start a PPC campaign with Google’s Adsense. This makes Google index the site immediately. The cost is worth it.

Day 14Use a program such as WEBCEO to submit your blog to search engines.
However, they have not created a Vista version. Hopefully, they will. This is one of the best SEO and keyword marketing tools I’ve ever found.

Day 15

Find a few good free content sites. Contacting good authors and asking them for new articles directly for perks …such as picture included is a great way to stay at the top of the pack and add seemingly ‘original’ content.

Day 16

Upload articles in your website until there are 50 articles. Start doing this twice daily so that your blog is pinged twice a day to the search engines.

Day 17

Go to the social networking sites and tag your articles to create a stir.

Day 18

Write articles on your niches. Add links to your blogs, then submit them to free content sites. Use paid submission services, or take a chance on buying a software program to do the work for you.

Day 19

Have some fun. Create banners for your blogs to personalize them and take away the cookie cutter look of the main blog platforms.

30 Days to a Pro Blgging Career

That is right, it doesn’t take years to make a blog. In fact, the only people I see that make claims that it takes months or years to make money from a blog are people who have a secret or $50 ebook to sell. The secret of blogging is working 10 hours a day for 4 - 5 days a week - for 30 days. Don't fluff. Work hard. This tutorial will help you get started.

I don’t trust people who sell ebooks for $50, when I can buy the same thing from a bookstore for $14.99.

Day 1

Do some blog research. Take a look at keywords and ideas. Create a niche or target site. Buy domain names.

Day 2

Find a web host that lets you make multiple blogs on one site. Make 10 wordpress blogs. If this is too complicated, then make 10 blogs at www.blogger.com.

Spend the rest of the day looking at topics and keywords to bring focus to your blogs. Do not make them general – the more niche or focused the blogs are, the more profitable they would be.
On place to find topics is to
hit the free article sites and look at their categories, or look at the ‘buy traffic’ site you are working with and then customize the site for the topics available.

Day 3

Start writing. I start all blogs with 10 articles of original content. I will use free content later, but not to start the blog.

Day 4

In the signature box, create 2 or 3 links to other blogs in your network. This will help with the link building campaign.

Day 5

Go to www.feedburner.com and create RSS feeds for your blogs. Blogger’s blogspot blogs can link directly to this feed. It is important to put the links on your blog so people can subscribe. You’d be surprised to realize how many people create feeds but never publish them.

Day 6

Subscribe to a ping service. Some sites have ‘auto ping’ others do not. If you haven’t already, start a Google Adsense account.

Day 7

Subscribe to social networking tools so your subscribers can ‘tag’ articles, and you can use the tools for promotion. I subscribe to Blog Catalogue as well as Delicious, Digg, and Technorati. I also create a lens at Squidoo which directs to all the other blogs.

Day 8

Subscribe your blog to directories. There are services that will auto subscribe blogs, with no link-back, for as low as $150 per 1000 directories.

Day 9

Consider adding blog tools: polls, bookmark us code, and learn what it means to ‘pip your blog.’

Day 10

Upload enough articles to have 25 articles in each blog.

New Keyword Tool a Must for SEO Keyword Optimization

I've been working this morning on keywords using a new tool, NavWord. This is a powerful tool in the right hands. It only takes a few seconds to use, and can be mastered by any 'new to net' ecommerce owner or blog owner.



Step #1: Enter your keyword
Step #2: Enter URL you want to point to
Step #3: Click Save

That is all. You can use this site to build links to network member's blogs or articles, your own websites. Any site you want to direct using a specific keyword.

I did a site: and links: check on the site and there are already

The best bonus is that only one keyword phrase is accepted - ever. Once you grab your keyword then you are locked in, with your domain name - until the rules change. No one else can have that keyword.