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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Content - Pictures and Images

There are a lot of resources on the web providing you with free pictures and images that you can use for your blog or website. For many of those resources, exactly how and in what manner you can use the images provided, is not clearly defined.

While you probably will not run into any legal issues even if you misuse the images, why would you want to run the risk when you can find sites in which the terms of use are clearly defined. Besides, you won't like it when somebody misuses your images, right?

I have found the following sites with plenty of images, with clearly defined terms of use. Unless your needs are rather specific, I am quite sure that the images in the following sites will more than adequate for your needs:

PD Photo - Thousands of photos in the public domain.

Public-Domain-Photos.com - Contains 5,000 photos and 8,000 cliparts in the public domain. But do be careful if the image contains logos or products or if there is a recognizable person or persons on it.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net - All images are offered at no cost and royalty free. If you want to use it on your website, you will need to include a link back, or purchase a higher resolution version. As the photographer, you can sell your photos here as well.

Stock.XCHNG - Nearly 400,000 quality stock photos by more than 30.000 photographers. Free for most uses although some restrictions might apply to certain photos.

EveryStockPhoto - This site is a search engine for free photos. Millions of photos are indexed here. Most photos are free to use, under specific licenses. Licenses include a variety of Creative Commons, GNU, public domain, and custom free licenses.

Creative Commons Content Directories - And if all else fails, try this directory. It lists hundreds of directories that has content licensed under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. Types of content include audio, video, text and images. If you can't find what you need here, maybe it's not available. :)

Monday, March 30, 2009

SEO Discovery - Not Ranked III (Part 2 of 4)

Having found that all the pages of other sites of which I am a member of are also not ranked, I experimented a little further. I did a search on Google for "very best business opportunity", and came up with the following:


Url: http://www.wsicorporate.com/article/The_very_best_work_from_home_business
Page Rank: Not ranked

Url: http://www.myworldplusbiz.com/2009/03/15/the-very-best-internet-home-business-opportunity/
Page Rank: Not ranked

Url: http://www.businessopportunitiesandideas.co.uk/454/the-top-100-business-blogs
Page Rank: 4

Url: http://www.home-based-business-world.com/
Page Rank: 3

Url: http://www.amazines.com/Business_Opportunities/article_detail.cfm/831264?articleid=831264
Page Rank: Not ranked

Url: http://www.makeyourich.com.au/the-very-best-business-opportunity-home-based-business.html
Page Rank: Not ranked

Url: http://www.homenetpro.com/home-based-business.html
Page Rank: 3

Url: http://www.best-home-business-ideas.net/
Page Rank: 4

Url: http://www.personaltouchproducts.com/
Page Rank: 3

Url: http://www.ukdropshop.com/
Page Rank: 3


For the top 10 results, 4 of those results were not ranked. Of the 6 that were ranked, 4 were home pages. All ranked pages were ranked 3 or 4. The search yielded a respectable 55,000,000 results.

It seems that page rank is not that big a factor after all. I am quite sure it still plays a part, but how big a part? It is also interesting to note that of the 6 pages ranked, all were ranked either 3 or 4.

And for all the pages which were not ranked, I checked the main page to see the its page ranking. The results are:


Url: http://www.wsicorporate.com/
Page Rank: 6

Url: http://www.myworldplusbiz.com/
Page Rank: 2

Url: http://www.amazines.com/
Page Rank: 4

Url: http://www.makeyourich.com.au/
Page Rank: 2


Although I will need more data to be more sure, it certainly is starting to look like a high ranking in the engines is really about delivering relevant results, with the page's page rank and the page's domain's page rank playing a small part.

It does make sense since Google is in the business of providing the most relevant search result possible. And maybe page rank is a lot of smoke and mirrors, to distract the people trying to game the system.

SEO Discovery - Not Ranked III (Part 1 of 4)

Following the discovery that probably all the pages of my home business site is not ranked except for the home page, I decided to look at a couple of other pages of other sites of which I am a member of.

The result? All the pages that I looked at below are not ranked.


EzineArticles Directory

Url: EzineArticles Profile
Description: Profile page
Page Rank: Not ranked

Url: Start an Internet Business Or Get a Job
Description: Article published a few months ago
Page Rank: Not ranked

Url: Tips on How to Design a Great Site
Description: Article published a few months ago
Page Rank: Not ranked


Twitter

Url: Twitter Profile
Description: Profile page
Page Rank: Not ranked


HubPages

Url: HubPages Profile
Description: Profile page
Page Rank: Not ranked

Url: FAQ: How Do I Make A Lot Of Money On The Internet
Description: Article published a few months ago
Page Rank: Not ranked

Url: Why is a Blue Film Called a Blue Film
Description: Article published one and a half weeks ago and getting a tiny bit of search traffic.
Page Rank: Not ranked

Url: Why Do Unbelievers Always Want Proof
Description: Article published a less than an hour ago
Page Rank: Not ranked

Saturday, March 28, 2009

SEO Discovery - No Rank II (Part 2 of 3)

I got a bit side-tracked in my previous post about the internal pages of my home business site having no page rank. It was really interesting to see that a page that was not even ranked could do well in the search results. I will start taking a closer look at the page rank of the pages and sites that are at the top of the results, but that will be the subject of another post.

In the next 2 or 3 days, I will change the title and description to match the subject matter of the page. And I will check every day to see when Google updates the information and to see if the page rank of any of the internal pages change.

Incidentally, I wonder if you have noticed how I have been linking. In the past, if I had wanted to link to my home business site, I would have asked people to visit my site on home businesses at http://quittingyourjob.com/.

The focus is on the domain name of the site. I wanted to highlight the name so that they can remember and revisit it.

But I have changed my linking strategy so that I link to my site in a different way. I use keywords relating to the subject matter of the site to link to it. Instead of highlighting the domain name, I will ask you to visit my site about running a home business.

In the previous linking method, Google gets nothing but the domain name, which it knows anyway. In the second method, I am telling Google that the site I am linking to is about running a home business.

Stay tuned to see how long it takes for Google to update its info on my site after I have changed the title and description.

Friday, March 27, 2009

SEO Discovery - No Rank II (Part 1 of 3)

Following the discovery that this blog has no Google page rank, I did a check of my website about starting an online business.


The home page returned a page rank of 4. Not bad considering that it is rarely updated, and that I have link exchanges going on in the site where a page can have a lot of outgoing links.


I checked an internal page (not a link page), and it returned a "not ranked". Same thing happened with a few other pages. Apparently, other than the home page, all the rest of the pages on that site is probably not ranked.


The site is an old site so Google would have had plenty of time to crawl the site. Other than link exchanges, I did not engage in any other questionable activites. And link exchanges will not get you banned. What's going on?


I went to Google and typed in "link:quittingyourjob.com". Google returned 145 results, so practically the whole site is indexed. It is possible that the rest of the site is considered supplemental, or having near identical content.


But the content of the site is 100% original, with each page having different content. Why does Google consider the rest of the site supplemental?


I took another look at the results again and discovered something interesting. It seems that every single of the results, with some exceptions, bears the same description. I have reproduced some of the results below:




It's not very clear but you get the picture.

To be expedient, I had simply used the same title and description for every page of my site. To Google, that probably means that the internal page is probably a close duplicate and less important.

I zoomed in on one of the pages about why most people fail at online businesses. First, I confirmed that it does not have a PR rating. Then, I took a phrase from the page, "we live in an impatient society", and did a search on Google for it. I did not use double quotes.

The search returned 332,000 results. The page was not on the first page. I dug deeper in and found the page in 27th spot!

That is definitely a surprise to me as I never expected a page that is not ranked to be so close to the top spot. I checked the page rank of the 5 pages below me and found that there was 1 PR3, 1 PR1, 1 PR0 and 2 pages are not ranked.

It is impossible to come to a definite conclusion as to the implications and significance of this. But I think it would be fair to say that while page rank is a factor, it is not a very big one. Overall, the relevance of the webpage wins hands down when determining its position in the search result.

SEO Discovery - Indexing Time

As an experiment on how long to takes for Google to index a blog post, I took note of the time that I published the last post about this blog having no page rank. The time was 3:48 pm.

I took a phrase from the post, "This blog is not banned by Google", enclosed it in double quotes and did a search on Google. There were no results.

I went about my work, repeating the search every minute or so. At 4:03pm, 15 minutes later, my post popped up in the search results.

Note that all I did was publish the post. I did not do any further actions to promote it.

SEO Discovery - No Rank I

This blog has been online for a few months now. It started as "Five Big Ones", and still is named as such, after my ambition to make an income of $5000 per month by Jan 2009. As they say, life happened, and I fell far from the target. I will write about that one day.

Anyway, the point that I'm trying to make is that is blog has been around for at least half a year. I decided to check its PR rating using the Page Rank Tool in the previous post. I expected a page rank of 0 or 1 as this blog is not really promoted.

To my surprise, this blog is not ranked. There appear to be 4 possible reasons:

1. This blog is new and not indexed yet.
2. This blog has been indexed but not ranked yet.
3. This blog has been indexed but is recognized as supplemental.
4. This blog has been banned by Google.

I did a search for links to this blog using "link:fivebigones.blogspot.com" and google returned no results, although I know that there are at least a few links out there. Maybe those links does not count towards the page ranking of this blog. Anyway, I'll explore that another time.

What I want to establish is whether any page of this blog will show up in any search results at all, and whether this blog is in Google's index.

So, I looked up a former post about hyped up information on the Internet, and zeroed in on the phrase "misleading and hyped up information". I did a search on Google and came up with 89,200 matching sites. I went through the first few pages of results and my post did not come up.

I typed in the same phrase again, this time enclosing it in double quotes. There were 2 results, with my post taking the top spot.

Although not the subject of this post, I thought that it would be interesting to mention that "search bar" on the Google site says the following:

Results 1 - 2 of 2 for "misleading and hyped up information". (0.18 seconds)

Notice that "hyped up" is underlined together. Might have some implications when targetting keywords but that's another story for another day.

For now, the only definite conclusions are:

1. This blog is not banned by Google.
2. This blog is indexed and does show up in the search result, although it is very poorly ranked.

SEO Discovery - Introduction

I have decided to focus my efforts more on search engine optimization, as well as link building and other strategies. It is the result of various posts and articles that I have read recently. I'm too lazy to look up the links now. I will put it up later under "SEO Discovery - Resources"

In the past, I have not focused much of my efforts on SEO. I know basic search optimization, I do it for my sites when it is convenient, and ignore it when it is not. I preferred to build using other strategies.

My thinking was that even if I could get to the top of Google, I have no control over their search algorithm. I could be at the top one day, and completely disappear from their rankings the next, with no idea of what I did wrong. I felt that search engine traffic was not something I could depend on and worked on developing other sources of traffic.

But, looking at it from the point of view of Google, if I deliver relevant, high quality content, it is in their best interest to rank me well.

In fact, after learning basic SEO techniques and applying it to your content, the following might be all you need to do:

1. Develop high-quality, relevant content.
2. Go to step 1.

In other words, just keep developing high quality content.

But, with regards to the field of SEO, there is so much information. A lot of it are vague, some misleading, some downright wrong, and the worst of it is that you really do not know which is what.

So, I have decided to be an "expert" at SEO. I will learn whatever I can about SEO, but take nothing at face value, and observe and experiment as much as I can, so as to confirm or debunk the conventional wisdom.

And I will always be asking, "If I was Google, would I do this?", keeping in mind that Google is in the business of delivering search results and key to their survival is that they must deliver the most relevant and the most high quality content that they can find.

And I will tell all here. It serves as a documentation of what I have learnt, and to focus my efforts, and might be the starting point for an ebook. If you are a beginner to SEO, or even a veteran, look through my future posts and you might just find something you don't know.

All future posts with relation to this will start with "SEO Discovery"

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

SEO - Page Rank Tool

Been reading up on the Google PageRank. For those of you who does not know what it is, it is a number from 0 to 10 assigned to a web page by Google to determine how important a page is. The higher the page rank the better.

To find out the page rank of a web page, you can install the Google Toolbar onto your browser. But when browsing the web, I found this cool script that you can add to your website, and I though I would see if I can get it installed here.











Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:




This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service


I had to change some of the html but it still doesn't display properly. I think Blogger doesn't recognize the table attribute, but it works! :)

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Jobs

It was about a month ago that I read a comment in the papers by a graduate. Apparently, he has been looking for a job without success for sometime. He commented that he can't be self-reliant, as the government expects him to be, because he cannot get a job.

I felt that there was something wrong with what he said. One can infer from what he said 2 points. Firstly, one cannot be self-reliant if one does not have an income or money. And secondly, to get an income, one must get a job.

I can generally agree with the first point. I mean, if you keep going home to mummy every time you run short of cash, I would hardly call that self-reliant.

I am troubled by the second point. He is a graduate, and as a consequence, have a good head on his shoulders, have access to resources, and be exposed to all the different opportunities and options that his country and the world have to offer.

And the only way he can think of to make money is to get a job. Or, at the very least, that is his attitude at an unconscious level.

I would have expected more from a graduate. He has had the best of what the country has to offer, and as such, I would have expected more ambition, more drive and more passion from him.

I would have expected him to want to be the CEO or founder of the next Fortune 500 company, or to invent the first human powered craft, or to eradicate poverty, or something. I expected him to dream.

Never did I expect him to just want to get a job.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Follow These People On Twitter

These are twitters that I am promoting from time to time in my timeline. Follow them! ;)

If you would like to join this list, click here.

Do visit my other blog if you want to promote your Twitter url even more.


Websure url: http://www.detector-pro.com/
Twitter url: http://twitter.com/ukion
Twitter Message: Follow @ukion to get ultimate guide for Comp Software, Operating Systems, Internet, Tech News, How-to-s and the best Tips and tricks in IT.
Last promoted: 13 Aug 2009
No of times: 5

Twitter url: http://twitter.com/clatko
Twitter Message: If you are interested in anything tech, follow @clatko. He follows back too. :)
Last promoted: 01 Aug 2009
No of times: 3

Website url: http://www.shubee.com/
Twitter url: http://twitter.com/shubee
Twitter Message: For plumbing/HVAC news, tips, insights and more, follow @shubee
Last promoted: 27 Jul 2009
No of times: 4

Twitter url: http://twitter.com/michaelbehlen
Twitter Message: His name is Michael and he takes photos with a rented camera. @michaelbehlen
Last promoted: 24 Jul 2009
No of times: 3

Twitter url: http://twitter.com/abonadim
Twitter Message: Follow @abonadim if you want free leads.
Last promoted: 19 Jul 2009
No of times: 4

Website url: http://www.blogger.com/profile/16037474518517806258
Twitter url: http://twitter.com/GraceBarkwell
Twitter Message: Entrepreneur, poet, writer, editor, health nut (Longevity Advisor). Follow @GraceBarkwell
Last promoted: 18 Jul 2009
No of times: 3

Website url: http://www.blogger.com/profile/14061993351298263164
Twitter url: http://twitter.com/nicolaquinn
Twitter Message: Want to follow a genius at @nicolaquinn? It just might make you smarter. :)
Last promoted: 16 Jul 2009
No of times: 3

Website url: http://www.shrimp-magic.com/
Twitter url: http://twitter.com/shrimp_wizard
Twitter Message: Especially for lover of shrimps & prawns ... recipes & tips. Follow @shrimp_wizard
Last promoted: 14 Jul 2009
No of times: 4

Twitter url: http://twitter.com/ukion
Twitter Message: Follow @jocheema, he throws out interesting but random stuff at you.
Last promoted: 07 Jul 2009
No of times: 4

Twitter url: http://twitter.com/louislandon
Twitter Message: Please follow @louislandon for love and peace always.
Last promoted: 4 Jul 2009
No of times: 3

Website url: http://wallblank.com/
Twitter url: http://twitter.com/wallblank
Twitter Message: Follow @wallblank for great new limited edition art for your walls. A new print every weekday!
Last promoted: 30 Jun 2009
No of times: 3

Website url: http://www.howtomakemoneyonlinetheezway.com/twittermoney.htm
Twitter url: http://twitter.com/Godzilla
Twitter Message: The Twitter little secrets: No-one will tell you how to make money but it's damn easy! Follow @Godzilla to find out.
Last promoted: 24 Jun 2009
No of times: 3

Twitter url: http://twitter.com/qutequte
Twitter Message: Follow @qutequte. #food #music #health #toxic #food #vegetarian #recipes #againstcorruption
Last promoted: 17 Jun 2009
No of times: 3

Friday, March 6, 2009

Free Twitter Advertising

This free advertising offer is specially for Twitter users. Just leave your Twitter url and your message in the comments and I will promote you in my timeline.

Some simple ground rules:

- I will definitely not spam your Twitter account once you accept this offer
- we must be following each other
- no other urls except your Twitter url should be in your message
- this is only for promoting your Twitter account

My Twitter account: http://twitter.com/wanderert


Note: After leaving your message, click here for a list of people that have taken advantage of this and follow them!