Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 30th, 2006 in General
I’ll be heading to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in a couple of weeks for the first real vacation I’ve had in many, many years. I’m extremely excited about going. I’ve never been there, and of course, I’ve heard I’ll love it.
Looking for feedback on anything in particular I should do…places to shop…places to eat…etc. I’ve gotten brochures in the mail, and scoured the web for information, but if anyone has any first-hand experience, I’d love to hear about it. Little holes-in-the-wall kinds of places are often the best!
We’ve got a great cabin lined up to stay in, so I don’t need recommendations…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 29th, 2006 in General
Some SEO-related weekend browsing:
Google Cheat Sheets - A list of all Google domains, Company information, Founded Date, Key People, Revenue, Employees, Contact Address, Contact Phone & Fax, PageRank, Googlebot 2.1 Addresses, List of sites with PageRank 10, PageRank formula, Google Form Elements, Google Services, Query structure to access directory listings of Music files and Movie files, List of basic Google Calculator operators, List of advanced Google Search operators, List of Google Investments, List of fun Google services and tools, List of 15 official Google Blogs, Google Calculator examples, Search by number examples, and more.
Advertising Placements by Industry and Top Sponsored Links,…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 28th, 2006 in SEO Tools
Earlier this month, I posted about where local results come from, which referenced Bruce Clay’s Search Engine Relationships Chart - Local Edition. One of the search engines listed on that chart is TrueLocal.
TrueLocal has just launced a new tool that “that aggregates and shows users traffic statistics on TrueLocal. Potential advertisers can type in a zip code and a search term and receive information about TrueLocal traffic from the previous month.”
I know a lot of you spend an enormous amount of time optimizing for local searches, and it seems as though this might be a great way to spend some…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 26th, 2006 in SEO Tips, SEO Tools, Search Engine News
Sorry, I’m late on the draw on this one, but it’s been a busy day for me. Just in case you haven’t already heard, Matt Cutts announced that some webmasters who use Google sitemaps may get notified of certain penalties they are receiving on their sites.
If you are a big time black hat spammer, you won’t get notified, but hey, you already know what you are doing “wrong”, right? If you have an otherwise legitimate site, however, you may be given a broad statement that you aren’t meeting their guidelines, and that after you figure out the problem, you can ask for reinclusion.…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 25th, 2006 in SEO Theories, SEO Tips
When you have a spare hour or two today, head over to this thread at Cre8asite Forums. It is absolutely the best SEO thread you might ever stumble across.
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 25th, 2006 in SEO Theories
I admit it. I have a site that has been dog-ugly for the last two years. I don’t know what I was thinking when I created it, but the design really stunk. It did fine in the SERPs and even converted okay, although there is room for improvement in both aspects, but it was just flat-out ugly.
I finally got around to redesigning it over the last few days. Luckily, it uses included headers and footers, so it wasn’t too difficult to swap out the old design for the new one.
There have been some discussions recently about the positive effect of…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 24th, 2006 in SEO Tips
A month or two ago, I downloaded the Opera browser. Why? I was bored that day and looking for something to do.
I was astonished at the blazing speed of Opera. I mean, I’m talking lightning fast, blink-of-the-eye web page downloads. I’d always thought Firefox was fast, but it was a turtle compared to Opera.
I still use Firefox. Why? Out of pure habit.
Yeah, I have some Firefox extensions that I would miss a little, but really, if I were being totally honest, I wouldn’t miss them all that much. When I moved over from IE to Firefox, it was a pain to…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 21st, 2006 in Search Engine News
According to John Battelle, Steve Berkowitz, head of Ask, is going to run MSN, and various other Microsoft properties, beginning May 8th. Interesting stuff…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 20th, 2006 in SEO Tips
Checking for broken links on my sites is one of the things I tend to forget to do. I bet most of you do as well. But it actually is important, not just from a user-standpoint, but from an SEO standpoint as well.
I have had Google ranking problems in the past simply because of broken links. Yes, I swear, it’s true. Fixing the broken links made everything all happy again.
So, take some time today (or this week, if you really must procrastinate), and check those broken links. A quick way, especially for large sites, is to use Xenu, which can…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 19th, 2006 in SEO Tips
I posted this over at SEORefugee, but it was suggested that I add it here as well, so here it is.
A lot of people seem to be starting WordPress blogs (as newbies) lately, so I thought I would share a tip here. A newly installed wp blog uses the same title across all pages (ew). It also does not come with a meta description tag (which is ok, but if you want it, then you need to make sure you make them unique). Here’s what ya do…
In your theme’s directory, open header.php.
Replace current title with:
<?php if(is_home()) { echo'<title>'; bloginfo('name');…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 18th, 2006 in General
Man, I am dog-tired today. Without boring you to death with my life’s trivialities, let’s just say that one of my “real life duties” is to be the caretaker of a couple of old folks. This involves trips to various doctors several times a week. And with one of the old folks being wheelchair-bound and unable to fend for herself, a trip out of doors is a major undertaking. Today was one of those days for me.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over the years, a visit to a doctor has become almost useless. You sit in the…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 13th, 2006 in Search Engine News
Ok, as everyone is getting all worked up about, Google has finally come out with their calendar. Umm…yippee. I cannot fathom why an online calendar generates so much buzz. Online calendars have been around forever. And let’s face it…it’s just a freaking calendar. Heck, I’ve been selling my own online event calendars for years. It’s just not that innovative, ya know?
But today, there’s a new Google gizmo that at least has some flair and fun to it. Google teamed up with Sony Pictures for a little mystery challenge competition. Go to google.com/davincicode to see what it is all about.
The Da Vinci…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on April 13th, 2006 in SEO Tips
I promised way back in Part One that as an SEO or a webmaster looking to market your website, you don’t need to create the next big Web 2.0 phenomenon. That’s true, but you may want to consider creating your own social network. While this might not be feasible or even useful for everyone, it is something that you should think about. Would your own social network be of benefit to you? Businesses jumped on the blogging bandwagon when they realized that it could help them communicate with their users. Websites added forums to their sites to increase visits, and…
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