Facebook Annoyance and Safety

Here are two very helpful guides that will show you step by step how to make Facebook more secure.

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/facebook-privacy-new/ - This is a great article on the new (i.e., less private) settings in Facebook and how to increase the security levels.

http://www.facebook.com/help/?safety - This is Facebook's online security center. You don't have to login to use it. This is a good page to scan now and then so you know what's in it if you need it.

In security, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Choose your friends carefully, limit the personal information you publish and keep your password strong and safe. These simple proactive measures will go a long way to enhance the safety and effectiveness of Facebook.
Read more: http://www.site-reference.com/articles/General/Stopping-Unwanted-Communications-in-Facebook.html#ixzz0lagNbg1y

A Note

I won't be taking on any additional clients for website design, I am swamped. My theory of keeping things simple and  being a little patient with marketing is working. I am currently getting the hang of social networking. Since I'm not a full time web designer any longer I have the time to do the research I like to do before I "buy" into any of the SEO "you have to" stuff. The SEO business changes rapidly, in my opinion, and I don't see much change in SEO know it alls. Sorry for being blunt, but if someone wants you to fork over $400 a month plus, I want major performance, not just the same old thing.

What I am finding that really works with regard to social networking is:
Attend events - show up consistently
Join organizations and get involved in mommittees
Network with other trade partners
Invest you time
Volumteer
Build relationships
Recognize those who have helped you out
Be authentic
Don't act desperate
Listen to what people are saying, and follow through
Share your experiences
Be a mentor
Fous on giving, not getting
Let people know what your expertise is
Follow up with people
Learn about other trades
Don't be afraid to give feed-back
Ask lots of questions
Be respectful of your peers and their existing relationships
Set goals and manage your time
Maximize customer service
Treat everything you do as a networking opportunity.

Social Networking is not just for the internet, facebook, twitter, etc.

Page Rank, was it ever worth it?

It isn't often that I find a article worth linking to but I believe this is important to those people who struggle to understand how to get more traffic. In the SEO world it seems like little is ever explained about statements made revelant to how much we are charged for SEO work.

I personally have never believed much in Page Rank, I tend to go with Key Words and Key Phrases. Putting myself in the shoes of the seacher. In other words, if I'm looking for X product, what words would I use to find that product on the web; and it works.

I've posted an article here about Google and Page Rank. I hope it sheds a little light on the subject; there are some good comments also, I said "some" good comments. (I also posted a link here so you can read comments.)

Google Ditches PageRank in Webmaster Tools
By Chris Crum

Google has quietly gotten rid of PageRank in Webmaster Tools. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a thread featuring an explanation from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa.

"We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true," says Moskwa. "We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it."

Search marketers are wondering why Google tells people not to focus on PageRank and removes it from Webmaster Tools, but still keeps it in the Google Toolbar. "Back in 2007, Google wanted feedback on removing PageRank from the Toolbar," says Schwartz. "I felt it was a good idea but the idea died out. Google cannot remove PageRank from the Toolbar, it is too much of their branding. No matter how much Matt Cutts and the Google search quality and webmaster trends team want it removed, I cannot see Google's executives allowing it."

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim says the role of PageRank has been reduced to nothing more than a "comfort blanket for SEO Noobs." He adds, "I say this, with a high degree of confidence that most experienced SEOs pour over the data in Google Webmaster Tools, whereas those new to the industry likely let the toolbar be their only guiding light."

He also notes, however, that PageRank data can still be useful. For example, it can be a good indicator of a site's behavior in Google's index. "Any green means 'go.' No green, means there's something to investigate," says Beal.

Despite this usefulness though, Moskwa pretty much closes the case on Google's position on it. In fact, she even points to a FAQ page about crawling, indexing, and ranking, which says that webmasters shouldn't even bother thinking about it. It also says that PageRank is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed, and ranked.

Cross Browser Testing

I’m guilty, yes it is true I have not tested my website in the different browsers to see exactly what others see if they don’t use the browser I use all the time. I am a creature of habit like many people are; it is the convenience, comfort level, ease of use when you are using something all the time. This is not good when it comes to your website!

www.GotRocks4Sale.com screen shot example:



I recently discovered http://browsershots.org It’s a handy webmaster tool to see, all in one place, how your front page looks in several different browsers. It is a free tool and very easy to use. You can type in any of your web pages not just your front page.

The process takes a little time to upload the screenshots but it is worth it. I discovered that the text you choose to use on your website is not necessarily the text that your viewers are going to see. If you have labored over which text to use on your web site you may be wasting your time.

Color can be another issue. There are colors you can use that are ‘safe’ colors and will remain true in any browser.

Tips and advice on how to get the most out of your classifieds

The title of your ad is arguably the most important aspect as this is what people see in the categories and search results and that is what is clicked on in order to view the rest of your ad.

By default, when somebody runs a search, it's your ad title that is searched so your title must contain descriptive words that describe what you're offering.
If your ad title doesn't describe what you're advertising, it can't be returned in the results when somebody runs a search.

Your title should be short and concise and should accurately describe what is being offered in your ad.

Bad titles include generic phrases such as "For Sale" or "Best Offer" as titles like those give potential buyers no idea what you're offering so they will be unlikely to click on your ad to view the rest of it.



Having a good description can be the difference between making the sale or not making the sale.

It's important to try and put yourself in the position of the kind of person you're trying to attract to your ad and ask yourself what information you'd like to see in the ad if you were the person looking to buy.

Short ads with little information rarely perform well while the most successful ads are the ones that include lots of information and descriptions and clear photo's which answer people's questions before they ask them.

It's important to include as much information as possible and include details such as shipping terms, costs, your returns policy if you have one, the total cost, when the buyer can expect to receive the item, if you provide tracking information etc.

Generally speaking, the more information the better as this helps the buyer make an informed decision without having to contact you for clarification on anything that you may have overlooked when creating your ad.

For more information on What makes a good ad?
The most successful ads are usually ones that have a clear concise title, a thorough and accurate description with good punctuation, clear pricing, excellent im...


What to avoid when creating an ad
When creating an ad you should avoid adding any irrelevant information that doesn't relate directly to the content of the ad as this can confuse buyers. Spelli...

Using appropriate images in your ads
Having a premium membership or a Photo Pack allows you to upload up to 12 images to each ad. Uploading multiple images of the item you're advertising allows yo...

My ad is getting a lot of views but not many replies
If your ad is getting a lot of views but not many replies, that's a good indication that you've created an ad with a good title which is attracting people to cl...

My ad is not getting many views
If your ad is not getting many views, it usually means that you've either placed your ad in completely the wrong category so the potential customers browsing th...

You can go here:
">classifieds to buy, sell or advertise anything!

LOL Get this one = well dah!

Addurl-free.com is charging $40 for each URL review.

OR: Pricing:
•We make submissions at the cost of 14 cents per directory submission. This means, an order placed for 100 submissions would cost you just $14. This is a one-time, all inclusive fee. There are no hidden or recurring costs involved.

But: Save Precious Time in Getting Quality One-Way Links
Benefit from our experience of over 5,000,000 submissions oh please
There is a 24 page list of their submission targets. Hmmm. . . . I suspect something rotten in India here, but then maybe I am wrong.

Google says do not use submissions services, automated anyway.

Some advice: Beware of some sites that offer you submission to "350" directories or listings for money. They provide you with a list of hundreds of directories that "they" will submit your site and get you a listing. What I found from testing them is that most of the directories that they show you can be bogus, not there, charge for submission or a list of free url submission sites that are google ads that they are getting paid on. I don't have a problem (obviously) with google ads, but to trick you into clicking through to find the "free" submission is down right unethical.

Google Checkout store gadget (experimental)

It's about time! For the life of me I have not understood why Google with all their experience and expertise hasn't offered this before. Yes it might be experimental but hey, you have to start somewhere, right?

I'm excited about this because it gives all of use and EASY way to put a shopping cart on our blogs. You have choices now within your blog for placement and size etc.

Overview
The Google Checkout store gadget allows you to quickly and easily create an online store using a Google Docs spreadsheet.

No complicated coding or technical tasks are required. You can get your first online store up-and-running in under five minutes.

Get all the power of the Checkout shopping cart in just three easy steps:

Sign up for a Google Checkout merchant account
List the products you want to sell in a Google spreadsheet
Embed your new online store in any website

Get the details here

Delete A Blogger Comment 1.0

I found this utility Delete A Blogger Comment 1.0 on Blogger Tips and Tricks. It's a great site with lotz of information. The problem I have is a "jerk" who posts a comment on one of my other blogs Private Stock Jewelry.blogspot.com and makes some stupid statement, not derogatory, just stupid and then puts links to his site. It is solely for the purpose of recording his/her link. If the statement made any sense at all I'd leave it up.

Anyway, the reason for the utility is that sometimes that little trash can doesn't show up and you really need to delete a comment. On one occasion I had to delete the entire post and then re- post. Hope this helps someone.

Meta Tags for Newbies

When you are new to putting up a website you may not know about Meta Tags. I'm not so sure if it is absolutely necessary to know all the gory details about Meta Tags as it is important to have them on your website. I've posted an Advanced Meta Tag Generator for you in the side bar. The tool is from SEO Chat. It is all "no charge" information. You will find it helpful in regard to your traffic and building and updating your website(s). There are other tools and analysers to help you there; far more extensive than I can elaborate on here. In case you don't know the meta tags go in the Head of your web page. They identify you and the content of your website so the search engines can find you.

Copyrights

While viewing Sue Runyon Designs I noticed a small picture at the end of the page. After clicking on it I found a remarkable resource for copyright information.

If you are going to do some article writing to promote your site(s) you might find this helpful itscopyrighted.com If you are creating jewelry or writing articles make sure you are not violating copyrights. There is a hefty fine for doing so. Ignorance is no excuse!

What we have here is a Lack of Communication!

Feel the need to communicate your expertise? Need Traffic? Need Links?
Try: http://www.buzzle.com/ With categories covering everything from animals to tourism, Buzzle.com is your complete source for news, articles and information. Get the latest buzz, interact with authors and other readers on message boards, or add to the buzz by becoming a Buzzle.com author.

Here is another great way to get "your words" out: Ezine Articles

EzineArticles For Authors
Submit Articles
Members Login
Benefits
Expert Authors
Most Emailed
Most Viewed
Article Rating
Read Endorsements
Send Testimonials
Editorial Guidelines
Author TOS

This is an enormous site, well organized with very helpful information. You can communicate 'til your heart is content! Give and Get Back.

Easy Thumbnails

Easy Thumbnails is a great tool for taking any number of photos and making thumbnails is litterally a flash. Since I am totally redesigning two websites with vast amounts of photos that need to be used as a visual index (one picture is worth a thousand words)I needed a quick and easy way to make thumbnails.

I found Fookes Software, It is Great!



Easy Thumbnails is a popular free Windows utility for creating accurate thumbnail images and scaled-down/up copies from a wide range of popular picture formats. An elegant interface makes it a snap to find your images and select them for processing individually, in groups, or in whole folders, using a simple file selector and built-in image viewer. You can use slider controls to rotate images and adjust their contrast, brightness, sharpness and quality, and check out the results with the built-in viewer.



Thumbnails can be created in any existing folder or a new folder, and you can identify them clearly by adding a prefix or suffix to their filename. If you're an image-processing enthusiast, you'll enjoy having a choice of eleven resampling filters for the best possible results. You can convert small batches of images inside Windows Explorer from the File menu or with a right-click of the mouse, display thumbnails in your browser, and even take advantage of command-line switches to generate thumbnails seamlessly from other programs. You can also save your thumbnails to a Web page using a HTML template that you can easily customize to create your own layouts, and there's helpful documentation that includes full instructions and some useful tips.

Easy Thumbnails is a genuine freeware product that will not annoy you with advertising, intrusive spyware components or nag screens. It comes from the developers of the award-winning NoteTab text editors.

If you need to make thumbnails, I highly recommend this and yes I have used it many times. I give it a 10 out of 10!

Getting the Word Out about You

Some of you might be interested in publicizing your product, service or whatever you are all about. You might consider checking this out.

Big News.biz

The purpose of this site is to give businesses, individuals and journalists a trusted venue to post news and press releases. Our goal is to provide quality content from sources that are accountable for what they submit.

Every author / publisher who posts to this site is vetted through the double opt in registration. They also time-stamp and record their IP address during registration confirmation as well as for each submission. Under every approved article you can see the contact information for the publisher account and the person that submitted the article.

All content is reviewed prior to publication and must include a URL for a Web site that pertains to the article. Approved content is then published online and made available to the media, the public, search engines and other Web sites on behalf of the publisher.

Guidelines for the types of press releases and news articles we will accept are available on the -Terms of Service- page. For more information, see: http://www.bignews.biz/?go=terms

BigNews.biz is a registered LLC in the State of New York. The founders have over 30 years of experience doing staff and freelance work for major media such as Newsday, The Los Angeles Times and the AP, covering both U.S. and International stories.

BigNews.biz LLC
16 Heath Place
Garden City, New York
11530-3005 US

http://www.bignews.biz/blog/

Link Referral Update

If you are unhappy about reviews, your rating or any other problem you can remove your listing by going to the "contact page".

You will see:

"I wish to discontinue mailings or retire my account: login to your account and change your preferences and follow the instructions."

However, if you want to share your reviews you can post them on your site, html will be generated for you so you can copy and paste the reviews. If you scroll down on the side bar you will see and example.

Traffic - Traffic Falling? No Traffic:

Check out Google Trends, you can learn about the trend of your market. Becasue I am a Home Based Jeweler I checked http://www.google.com/trends?q=handcrafted+jewelry. In an effort to promote traffic and sales of Handcrafted Jewelry on http:homebasedjewelers.blogspot.com I checked the "trend" of handcrafted jewelry and this is what I found:



Google states: "Trends scales the first term you’ve entered so that its average search traffic in the chosen time period is 1.0; subsequent terms are then scaled relative to the first term. Note that all numbers are relative to total traffic."

Checking Jewelry the trend shows:



basically the same trend.

People get so frustrated becasue they don't get enough traffic and I ask, how may of the same people really work at "getting traffic". Are you using the tremendous tools that are available at no charge. SEO's charge big bucks to "guarantee" top listings and what tools do you think they may be using?

Go to http://www.google.com/trends to check out what your market looks like.

Simple Things: Html

Below are simple things that can help you control the look of your posting in your blog. By typing these into the code you can, for example, put a widget in the center of a column. The picture below illustrates what the characters look like but can’t be typed here because it won’t show up. Put the first character set before your text or widget and the second set directly after.

The br is for a break in a line. It creates a new line.

Strong means the text will be bold.

Strike means there will be a strike through a word.
As in the price was 49.95 Now 39.95. There is a character set of html before and after the 49.95 that you don't see.

Straight from Blogger Buzz!

Third Party Templates for Blogger

BTemplates.
A free directory of user-submitted templates, classified by type and/or features.

The Cutest Blog on the Block
Run by Becky and Ashley of 2 Moms Talk, this site offers free, premade layouts, as well as customizable backgrounds.

Blogger Styles
Gallery of submitted templates, ranked by visitors and includes detailed configuration instructions.

FalconHive
Conversions of WordPress templates upon request, along with archive of past conversions.

All Blogspot Templates
Templates in 1-, 2- and 3-column options. Also includes AdSense-ready templates.

Zona Cerebral
Spanish site with dozens of templates to choose from, including several converted WordPress themes.

Quite Random
A number of free templates, and several Blogger-specific tutorials regarding setup and layout editing.

ChicaBlogger
In Spanish, templates designed primarily for women.

Deluxe Templates
Hundreds of templates, including many converted WordPress themes. Also has a nice "tips & tricks" section for customizing Blogger.

Pyzam
Thousands of templates, browsable by category and sortable by recency or popularity.

Our Blog Templates
160+ free templates, all well-labeled for easy browsing to find the one you want.

eBlogTemplates
Combination of free and premium templates, and a wealth of tips for tweaking your Blogger blog.

You must understand blogger.com does not provide support for third party templates. When I imported the template for Wear My Blues I had great insturction from the website eBlogTemplates.

I also started with a blank Blog, I did not move anything. The entire setup was a breeze!

How to make your blog unique

Article by: ~David Cowgill
Founder, eBlog Templates
http://www.eblogtemplates.com


Having a unique design for your blog can cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars to have made by a professional designer.

Most people that I know (including myself) don't want to spend that sort of money and end up searching Google for free blogger templates (isn't that how you found eBlog Templates in the first place? :-) ).

Well now that you've got your nice free template, it's time to customize it so you've got a unique blog, right? Easier said that done.

One of the top questions people ask me on eBlog Templates is, "David, how can I create a beautiful header image on my blog?". It's a good question because everyone wants a unique blog and any template that you end up using, isn't personalized for you.

Sure, the template usually looks good (that's why you downloaded it in the first place) but you just aren't satisfied until you can get a design just for you or your business.

After having to answer this question literally dozens of times through email and responding to comments, I decided to write a detailed article on my recommendations. People's feedback has been great and it's amazing what some have done to their blogs. Now I invite you to try the same and impress me with your creativity.

The article includes several free blogger header image sites and also a few pay for image sites. If you can find something for free, then great. If not, then you at least have some more options to choose from.

http://www.eblogtemplates.com/free-blog-header-images/


To Your Blogging Success,