I found myself at a get together the other night and was asked What is it that you do, exactly?
I found myself trying to explain search engine optimization, search engine marketing and things like viral marketing to people who had never heard of them. I went on for a bit and I think that they had a bit of a clue, but no more.
Today I happened upon an article by William Flaiz on Search Engine Watch that speaks to this. I’m not sure if it was a coincidence or not.
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A Favorite New Site -
I have a page on my site with some of my favorite new sites that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of things that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these sites, they all look good and are clear and easy to use. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of them are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called MIT OpenCourseWare.
When a website is giving away a free MIT education the best thing a site can do is to just stay out of the way. Keep the site simply designed and easy to use and navigate.
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Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
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I like to read the Wall Street Journal’s Small Business section. It seems there are always good ideas for business looking to promote themselves in new and unusual ways.
I find myself paying close attention to their blog and often following their related content as more of it becomes free. Recently I read and enjoyed their story By Teri Evans about ways to make your company more creative and I would like to share it.
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As another year comes to a close I like to look back at the current year and review the progress that I have made in my business.
Looking back seems to be the thing to do this time of year and I think that it’s important. Knowing where things have been is the very best way to help us understand where we are today and possibly where we are going tomorrow.
I found an article by Donovan Baldwin on the SEO News site that looks at the history of search engine optimization.
This article is well worth reading for anyone interested in SEO, it’s not just for newbies.
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Hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. Mine was hectic, but very nice.
In the last couple of days I have experienced two different servers that I have my sites or my customers sites on go down for several hours for different reasons. On Sunday one was down for almost eight hours and yesterday another one was not available for almost seven. If you do the math a 99.9% uptime guarantee (what most web hosts give) will give you an hour of downtime every couple of months. If they any problems for a year that downtime could be several hours and still be within the 99.9%.
I’m not blaming the webhosts for this, in fact I think most of them do a fine job maintaining their equipment. The fact of the matter is that all machines will occasionally fail and you need to be prepared for this. In the case of the servers that I use both were brought back without any loss of data, but what if they had failed and had to be replaced without any of the data or an old backup?
I keep many backups for my clients data, in several locations, but this situation made me realize that with the holidays and all the rushing around that I had gone several weeks without backing up this blog. Word Press makes it terribly easy to do. You just go to the manage and backup tabs and click backup. Can’t get any easier and I still ignored it for too long.
It’s done now, but it made me realize that if your website is part of your business you need to back that up just as diligently as any other data that you own. If you don’t have a regular backup plan for your data, make one now and stick to it or hire someone to do it.
Dear Friends and Family,
Nancy and Jim Wish You MERRY CHRISTMAS
and A New Year Filled With Good Health & Pleasant Dreams.
May All Of Your Wishes Come True.
Feel free to Share your Holiday Cheer and spread some warm well wishes!
Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
Simon Sez Santa will do whatever you tell him to. There is a naughty and a nice version.
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One of my customers showed a site to me called Blog Talk Radio and asked what I thought of his using it for promoting his business. He is a big listener to talk radio and was looking for a similar way to get his message out to the world. What Blog Talk Radio does it to give you your own Internet talk show. Listeners have the ability to call in to your “live show” with questions and comments.
I think that this could be a wonderful tool for businesses looking to promote themselves. It’s a free way to have your own “talk show” without needing a radio station.
I did advise him that in order for this to work well you would probably need to have your show on a regular schedule. Even though people could listen to it anytime that they want, if you are going to have some good conversations (that were not planned and rehearsed) you would need to have your live show on a consistent day and time so your fans would know when they could participate. Of course, for the first show or two you would need to have planned callers.
I thought it would be best if he was not to be too ambitious with this. It was much better to have a regular show on a monthly basis than a weekly or daily show all over the clock. If he could put together some interesting shows and could do it on a regular basis it could be something that could really benefit any business or cause.
It could be great, but those are also a couple of big ifs.
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I have had customers ask me about putting audio or podcasts on their site. Most of them are also looking for a good tool to help them with recording or editing of their content.
Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
Audacity can record, import , export, edit and even add special effects. Best of all it’s free, open source and runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and GNU/Linux.
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