OK, this is an update on the piece I did a while back about so-net sites like .ning and whatever else. They truly blow! The time they consume is not cost efficient for me in the sense that these people are there to promote some mlm scam or hawk their wares and it’s just really a zoo and not only that but as soon as you sign up for one and add a “friend” your email is bombed with “invite” after “invite” from not only your “friend” but all their “friends”.  Don’t need it!, don’t want it!, won’t have it!

I’m really no good at this and I have come to find out that I really do not like dealing with people so after I finish my current commitments I am going to close this site and begin my new career driving 18 wheelers. Bye Bye

Quick update! I have passed my California CDL test and am ready to begin my trucking career! I’ll let you know as soon as I am hired.

I was visiting websites as part of my Link Referral penance when I ran across a website that uses the same template as I do. What a shock! I mean I knew it was open source when I began customizing it for my site but I guess I figured once I took it nobody else would. Then I looked into it a little further I found out two rather distressing things. One, they have been using it longer, and Two, they removed the copyright and by line at the bottom of the page. Now, I respect Andreas Viklund , the designer that created Andreas09, (my template), a great deal and I leave his info at the bottom of the template because it’s the right thing to do. So when I saw this obvious violation of web design etiquette I was angry and began thinking of ways to rectify the situation like sending emails condemning the practice. Then I realized it was not my place to do anything and I took a look at my motivation as well, I think I was jealous because their site is better than mine. That is what this is all about, I’m mad because this person beat me to it and did a better job of customizing it and so I wanted to find anything I could to degrade them. Once I was finished with my introspection I went back to that site and learned all I could about the methods they use and now I am a better designer than I was before I ran across that site. How about that? I turned a neg. into a pos. Well anyway I guess there is still a little envy left in me or I would not have written this at all.

I woke up angry that I had only one shoe and then I met a man with only one foot. So, I stole his shoe! I mean he didnt need it, he only had one foot. I out ran him easily. The moral to this story is no matter how bad the day starts out, With just a little effort you can turn it around.

The webmaster support forum has undergone a major change over the weekend and now runs on PHPbb3 rather than IPB, (Invision Power Board).   Nothing against IPB at all it’s just that our newer board offers more in the way of security and I really like the 28 new theme choices. I have uploaded them all so members will find something that suits their personality I’m sure. The categories have been reordered as well in order to better handle newcomers and process questions. Remember, “The Webmasters” is a support forum first and foremost and answering questions is our top priority. The weekend started out great with my registration at several new social networking sites where I planned to promote the hell out of both websites, HillSiteDesigns and the forum, “The Webmasters”. What prompted this change was an attack of pornbots and viagrabots.     I began receiving several auto registrations a minute at the forum because I had Admin authorization turned off, (rookie mistake). It reached over 320 when I finally realized our forum wasn’t just exploding with unlooked for popularity. I began checking the new “members” and found a great deal of dupe IPs but not before making a fool of myself and asking a friend for help moderating my wildly popular support forum. The worst part is yet to come, as I was purging the fake registrations I blew it and deleted the entire membership! Admittedly, I do not know exactly how many “real” members that was because there were no posts but still. Although heart breaking at first, this whole episode has served to, improve the security of our forum, allow the membership several skin choices, and show me the error of believing what I see. All in all it’s been a hell of a week! OH YEA! If your account was one that was deleted, please forgive my blunder and reregister. Remember this was all because of pornbots and my trust in mankind. Speaking of trust in mankind, NO more of that…..all user accounts must be activated by an admin. This will undoubtedly cause a short wait while forum moderators complete registrations but look at it this way, you won’t be blasted with viagra ads while using the forum! I want to thank you all for your patience and understanding during this time of crisis. I think I heard “W” say that once.

I have figured it out! I am going to build a website…..no wait, that would take effort and require a modicum of skill, not to mention what artistic talent might be involved, why invest all of that unneeded and most probably unappreciated baggage when I can just activate some prefab-notalent-hacksite that my host provides for free? Yea, that’s it, I’ll activate a (ahem) site that sells toilet paper. I’ll write several tutorials on how to wipe your ass or perhaps the ass of others, maybe a video or two and pow! Top of the SERPs! Best selling toilet paper selling (ahem) site on the internet! Why? Quality content, that’s why. If it has passed you by, and given the average IQ on the internet today, I’m sure it has, the internet, that tool of the brilliant minds that gave us quantum physics is not best used to teach the vast majority to wipe their asses but to sell toilet paper for crooks pretending to teach the vast majority to wipe their asses. All one really has to do is write some drivel that only slightly appears to resemble a tutorial and the search engines trip all over themselves trying to rank it up there with the Carl Sagen Cosmos series. They stick their noses in the air and proclaim their quest to provide only the best content to the one who matters most…the user, then they serve up the obvious in tutorial form masquerading as information. I think I need a vacation.

Tutorial Skill Level: Intermediate

Words to know

1.SEO   2.keywords  3.search engine   4.demographic(s)   5.KEI   6.sales copy   7.content   8.conversion

In the first part of this series, “Exploring SEO, (without getting lost)” we briefly touched on the subject of keywords. In this second part, “Keywords, The foundation of your SEO campaign” we will take a closer look at keywords and their functions as well as explaining how to go about choosing the most effective ones for your website in order to have the best chance of making it to that coveted number one SERPs position.

Choosing the best keywords to optimize for is arguably the most important part of planning the design of a website. Thought must go into who will be using the website because different groups use different search terms to find the same thing. The most direct approach would be to talk to your target demographic and ask what they would type into the search engine to find your product or service. You will find that people use vastly different search terms.  Let’s say you own a dog grooming business and you want to optimize your home page. The first thing you must do is find out what search terms pet owners, (your target demographic) use to find the service you provide. This can be accomplished in several ways. Use your imagination and come up with a way to ask your current customers how they would find you on the internet. Polls, quizzes and questionnaires in the waiting room or on the sales receipt, or just asking. This is the real world and these are the people you want to find you so trust what they say. Once you have come up with maybe 10 good search terms, it is time to do some research.  The easiest way to research these keywords is to use one of the keyword tools such as http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com which is, as the name implies, free and very effective. With this tool you can generate hundreds of potential keywords from the ten you already have and even get the KEI, (keyword effectiveness index) of each word. Briefly explained, the higher the KEI, the more popular the keywords are, and the less competition they have, which means they have a better chance of getting to the top of the SERPs. One thing to keep in mind when choosing keywords is that you will be using these words to describe your good or service within the content of your website pages. Words that will be hard to integrate into your written sales copy may not be as good a choice as more “natural sounding words” no matter their KEI. Search engines are surprisingly “smart” and are getting smarter all the time. If your written sales copy or page content does not “flow” or sounds “forced” and littered or “salted” with unnatural keywords you could get tagged as spam and this will negate all of your efforts. A good rule is to write for your human visitors using keywords with strategic purpose, always trying to sound natural. To hear Google tell it you would think page optimization is right on the verge of cheating, but as contradictory as it my sound they also offer advice on how to do it. A search on Google for keyword suggestion tools will deliver many very good and free tools to help you choose but the one way that I have found to be most effective is talking directly to the target demographic and using the words they use. This will bring users who are actively looking for your product and the chances of a conversion is far greater than if the visitor just stumbles on your site by accident.
Once you have the best keywords chosen it is time to begin optimizing your pages. A good practice is to start with your home page and when that has reached the top, move on to other pages of your website. When the search engine spiders crawl your website they begin from top to bottom and from left to right, just like humans. It is for this reason that your keywords must be at the top of your source code. It is a good Idea to use css for page formatting and to keep the navigation below your content. Because we are getting into the next subject of the series, “Keyword placement within your source code” I will pause here until the next installment. Look for it around mid Oct. Definitely before Halloween!……….. Boo!

You know those old western movies where the cowboy rides into the ghost town and the wind is whistling and blowing tumble weeds across the dirt street. The saloon doors swing back and fourth, he looks up to the second story of the hotel and the curtains snap shut, Aha! life! Well thats what my forum looks like except for the curtains. If anyone is reading this, first comment, then join and post in the forum! It needs a jump start. If people see posts they will post but nobody wants to be the only resident of a ghost town. Help me out!

I have been to a good deal of websites devoted to web design and SEO or search engine optimization and I can never get over the ones that advertise “guaranteed #1 placement on Google”! I often wonder how many people fall for this blatant misrepresentation of the facts. You see, it is possible to get to number one on Google, and every other search engine for that matter, as long as you target keywords that no one else is using. I do know of a few website owners who made it to number one and then  jumped for joy until it was made clear to them that everyone should be number one for their own name. The problem is, how many users will search for them by name? Worse yet is the unsuspecting website owner who hires one of these “SEO pros” and pays a lump of money only to find out that their site is ranked number one for a search term that no one would ever use to find a business such as theirs. The “SEO guy” has met his obligation and delivered the promised number one placement and the client is left scratching their head wondering how they could have been taken for a ride so easily. I guess the moral of the story is check the SERPs, (search engine results pages) placement of the SEO firms website and ask what search terms they are optimized for. Also you should determine the search terms that your website is to be optimized for. There are many very good tools that can help to determine the best keywords for you. Make sure that people in the real world would use the keywords you choose to find your business and last but not least, NEVER fall for an “SEO guarantee”!