Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 30th, 2005 in General
Well, today is my birthday. Man, the years sure go by quickly. I’m off to go look at some land that I may be interested in buying. With age, comes the desire to get out of the suburbs and into the country. The number one requirement, however, is that the area has high-speed net access availability. Not all rural areas can accomodate that. We’ll see. No matter where I end up, I have to stay connected. So, everyone have a lovely day. I’ll be enjoying myself away from the computer today.
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 29th, 2005 in General
Over at v7n, they are holding a new SEO contest (similar to the nigratude ultramarine one of the past). This one comes with cash prizes. $1000 for first place, $500 for second place, and $100 for third through fifth places. The contest begins January 15, 2006, which is when the keyword phrase to target will be announced. If you want in on the action, go to www.v7n.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22836 for further details.
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 28th, 2005 in SEO Theories
Back on January 13th, 2005, I created a thread over at SEO Chat, entitled Kooky Theory. In it, I said (paraphrased), I have a handful of seasonal sites. These sites are ones that people generally don’t go to unless the time is right - and of course the searches are seasonal too. The odd thing I’ve noticed is that when the season hits, and I start getting traffic to them (say, from yahoo and msn), my google rankings for those sites go up too. As soon as the season is over, the google rankings fall to barely nothing. The backlinks…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 26th, 2005 in SEO Tips
So, one of my Christmas presents this year was an IPod Shuffle. I was pretty excited to receive it. But I was even more excited when I realized I could now download the WebmasterRadio podcasts and listen to them whenever I wanted. You see, I always forget to listen in at the scheduled times, so now I can have my ITunes automatically download them. Way cool. In case you haven’t checked out the WebmasterRadio shows that are available lately, go to www.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/ to see what they have to offer.
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 25th, 2005 in General
MERRY CHRISTMAS! Hope Santa was good to you. 
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 24th, 2005 in SEO Tools
Just got an email from the folks over at LinkAssistant, that for TODAY ONLY, you can download a free registered version of their product, LinkAssistant. All you have to do is go to www.link-assistant.com, fill out the form, and get a registration key. Today only, Saturday, Dec. 24, 2005. If this is something you want or need, grab it now.
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 23rd, 2005 in SEO Tips
So, a few days ago I had an idea for a new site. My family hates hearing me say those words. It always elicits a groan from them, because they know that I go into a new site zone and block out everything else. Anyway, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a cheapskate. I rarely pay for anything if I can accomplish the goal for free. But this time around, I decided to put some actual money into the site.
Instead of using any of the free forum scripts, for instance, I decided to buy vBulletin instead. Wow, I quickly discovered…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 23rd, 2005 in Search Engine News
So, Google has come out on their blog to discuss the AOL deal, and clarifies many of the issues that everyone has been upset about (such as banner ads cluttering the page, preferential treatment in the organic results, etc.). Check it all out at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/about-aol-announcement.html.
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 21st, 2005 in Other (NonSEO) Tools
I assume that many of you, like me, have multiple web sites. If you wear a black hat, you may have hundreds or thousands. However, most of those are throwaway domains, so losing them is probably not a big concern. If you wear a white or gray hat, however, each of your sites is probably very important to you. Managing to backup both a site’s pages and it’s database is fairly trivial, but keeping up with backups of multiple sites and databases can be a daunting task.
I always seem to have somewhere between 20 and 30 sites going at any…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 20th, 2005 in SEO Tips
Barry, of seroundtable.com, is implementing a fun new event at his new forum. Basically, he is setting up a moderator roundtable thread, where you get to ask questions. The mods will then debate the answer to that question in a locked down thread. Once the debate is over, the thread will be opened up to the users for comments. You can ask your questions at http://forums.seroundtable.com/showthread.php?t=115. Once the questions have been chosen, new threads will be opened for the moderator debates. More info from Barry at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002992.html.
So bring on your questions!
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 20th, 2005 in Search Engine News
I have been mulling over the whole Google / AOL deal and trying to figure out why it would be promising so much. For example, Google will be showing AOL ads that link directly to AOL topics which match the search term. At first glance, this sounds like simple favoritism designed to be able to keep AOL as a revenue stream. However, after thinking about it, it may go beyond that. What do MSN and Yahoo! have that Google does not have? Original Content. What does AOL have? Original Content. Just as Google uses the DMOZ directory as if it…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 19th, 2005 in SEO Theories
Ok, I guess it is that time of year to gaze into the SEO crystal ball and make some predictions. My predictions for last year were way off the mark, so hopefully I will do better this time.
- Click fraud will finally be exposed to be worse than anyone imagined, and both Google and Yahoo! will be under heavy scrutiny. Lawsuits will force them both to completely restructure their PPC programs. Microsoft will win this battle because they are so far behind in the PPC game, that they will be able to adjust much more easily.
- Yahoo’s recent and future acquisitions will be…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 17th, 2005 in Search Engine News
I saw basically no changes at all with the Yahoo update, and the forum patter about it seems to be pretty light, so I have to assume it did not do tons of damage to most webmasters. In fact, I saw more positive responses than negative, so I suppose that is a good sign. If anyone knows of any threads I might have missed where mass panic ensued over the update, do let me know.