Folks will probably think I’ve been snacking on the crazy cake, but I’ve got a strong feeling that Texas goes blue this year. Here are some select quotes from delegates to this year’s Texas GOP convention:

• But, Etzel said, “I don’t think anybody is all that enthusiastic” about McCain’s candidacy. “McCain is not a very enthusiastic type of guy.”
• “The contrast between John McCain and Barack Obama is so stark,” [Bryant] said, a hint of worry in her voice. “Obama is a charismatic speaker, and John McCain isn’t.”
• Banville called McCain weak, saying, “I don’t see how he has a chance at all unless people vote only because they don’t like black people.”
• “I resent the fact that we were forced into him to represent us,” Martinez said, a reference to the GOP nomination contest all but ending before Texas voted. “I had nothing to do with his picking.”

The fact that there were 4-5 times more people at the state Democratic convention leads me to presume a similar ratio of participation in November. I’ve read many emails and blogs from delegates from all around the state who were shocked and surprised to find other Dems in their crimson Red counties — these folks are organizing and reaching an unprecedented number of folks in rural parts of the state.

It also appears that the conservative religious and evangelical voters bloc the GOP had been able to count upon since the glory days of Reagan has melted away in the ocean of Obamacans. It appears that economy and war issues will trump abortion politics this year, bringing over Catholics, evangelicals, black conservatives, and other issue conservatives who feel that the current administration can do no right.

Finally, looking at this electoral college map, it’s obvious that, although Texas didn’t go for Clinton in ‘92, that race was very much closer than the GOP would like. Clinton did not have anything like the machine that Obama has created, and didn’t spend any attention on Texas, and still nearly won Texas. Obama may not be focusing on Texas, but his 50-state strategy means that he’ll have an active center here in this state to coordinate the organization of long dormant county clubs. Add to this the monumental work the Clinton team did this year in Texas and I think the Democratic party has never had better grassroots organizations, nor has it activated so many communities before.

In sincerely believe that the Democrats, Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and all of their activist faithful across the nation have effectively redrawn the political map of the country, and that we’ll see the surprising results in November.

Jennifer at CK2S Kwips and Kritiques has given Del Fantasma: Texas Tea four klovers and says, in part:

I am not really drawn to ‘ghost stories’. I don’t know why, it’s just not something I’m really into. I don’t dislike them, they are just not usually top of my list unless the plot looks very interesting or the author is one I enjoy. DEL FANTASMA: TEXAS TEA meets both requirements. New author Maura Anderson makes the writing craft look easy with her first published story, and doubtless earned herself a following of her own fans with this sexy little story.

You can read the entire review on the CK2S Kwips and Kritiques website.

Thank you so much, Jennifer!

When you’ve invested in a new website and put in a lot of work you may feel like you have a right to be at the top of a Google search for your chosen keywords. If only it were that simple. The truth is, it’s all but impossible and any company telling you they can build you a new site and get you to the top of the search engines for competitive phrases in a short time are telling fibs, even if they claim to have a special relationship with Google……

It’s true that earth shatteringly good content may create a meteoric rise up the search engine results pages, but this is rare. The fact is you need to work hard to generate free search engine traffic and here are some of the things you could think about.

• Spend a lot of time on your keyword research!
  Ranking for very competitive keywords is a long term game. However, you could rank for less competitive keywords quite quickly. Spend time looking for keywords with search volume but low competition, they are out there. This Google Free Keyword Tool primer will help. Investing time and energy in keyword research will pay dividends. Here are five FREE ways to find keywords.
• Make sure your website is search engine friendly!
  OK this is basic stuff but every day we carry SEO Reviews of sites belonging to established companies that miss even the most basic aspects of a search engine friendly design. Get this bit right! Here’s a simple SEO check list to help you.
• Create a link building strategy!
  Linking is a key aspect of SEO but surprise surprise, securing good links is tough and time consuming. There are some techniques for securing links to your site that are easy, such as contributing to a forum and putting links in your signature, commenting on other people’s blogs etc but these links are low quality. I think linkbait is the best way of securing links.

  This may sound shady but it isn’t. Linkbait is simply great content that attracts links. This isn’t easy either but if you create some link worthy content you’ll be amazed at the results. The golden rule with link building is to acquire relevant links, links that could generate business.

• Buy traffic!
  Buying traffic, using Google Adwords for example, is a guaranteed way of driving people to your website. To many Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a strange concept and if you’ve dabbled and got it wrong a financially painful one. The truth is if you create an effective PPC campaign you will see instant results and the market intelligence that spills out of a successful campaign will help you with your organic SEO work as you will be able to analyse keyword effectiveness, conversions rates and a number of other things.

Creating a successful website is a huge undertaking. Anyone who thinks building the site is the hard bit is in for a shock! Prepare yourself for a lot of hard work and consider the list above and you can succeed online.

TTFN

d

To see the total blogpoll, click here for the poll and analysis by Brian Cook of MgoBlog.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	2
2	Penn State	–
3	Texas Tech	7
4	Texas	3
5	Oklahoma State	–
6	Florida	–
7	Oklahoma	3
8	Southern Cal	1
9	TCU	3
10	Boise State	1
11	Utah	2
12	Missouri	1
13	Georgia	5
14	Ball State	–
15	LSU	3
16	Ohio State	–
17	Michigan State	2
18	Northwestern	8
19	California	4
20	Maryland	6
21	Brigham Young	–
22	Oregon State	4
23	West Virginia	3
24	North Carolina	–
25	Minnesota	8

SF Beta is San Francisco’s largest monthly web startup mixer. Since launching in September 2006, SF Beta has brought together thousands of people from hundreds of startups, offering ample opportunities for them to spread the word about what they do best. With big name sponsors and partners like Lucky Oliver, ServePath, TechCrunch, CNET’s Webware, Justin.tv, Bub.blicio.us, Linden Lab and Future Works, it’s no surprise some call it the king of Web 2.0 mixers!

In celebration of SF Beta’s one year anniversary, Blogging Squared was hired to revamp their blog. We worked directly with the event producer, Christian Perry, to develop a completely new look and feel for the site. The new design is now live (see screen shots below). If you have a moment to visit the blog, I’d love to hear your feedback.

(more…)

Artikel seo. Dalam SEO content is the king, namun bagaimana jika kita tidak pandai menulis dan melakukan copy paste ke blog kita. Atau orang lain mengkopi content blog Anda seutuhnya. Inilah yang disebut dengan duplicate content yaitu content atau isi yang sama ada di beberapa website atau blog.

Seperti kita ketahui google selalu berusaha untuk memberikan hasil pencarian yang relevan dan lengkap. Bagi mereka duplicate content tidak ada gunanya bagi mereka. Sehingga mereka memberikan pengurangan nilai atau pinalty bagi blog yang memiliki duplicate content.

Namun duplicate content sering kali membingungkan bagi para blogger atau pemilik website. Apalagi banyak mitos yang beredar tentang hal ini.

Untuk menanggapi kebenaran dari mitos-mitos ini ada seorang blogger yang memberikan jawaban atau tanggapan tentang beberapa mitos yang beredar masalah duplicate content. Jawaban dari mitos ini merupakan hasil dari pengalamannya, yaitu sebagai berikut :

1. Pengurangan nilai atas duplicate content tidak ada sama sekali : Menurut TrafficLegacy, pengurangan nilai ini ada dan google pun menyebutkan ada.
2. Anda hanya perlu berhati-hati dengan duplicate content di situs Anda, tidak ketika menaruh content di situs orang lain : tidak hanya content di halaman-halaman situs Anda tetapi juga content dari situs orang lain.
3. Anda hanya perlu berhati-hati dengan duplicate content di situs orang lain : ini jawabannya sama dengan nomor 2, kita harus berhati-hati dengan duplicate content di situs kita dan di situs orang lain
4. Pengurangan nilai hanya berlaku pada situs-situs spam : google memberikan hasil pencarian sesuai algoritmanya. Kita tidak bisa mengontrol hal ini, jadi sebaiknya kontrol content Anda.
5. Jika situs anda berada di urutan teratas, kemudian anda menuliskan content yang sama ke situs lain maka Anda akan menjadi pemilik dan tidak akan ada duplicate content : informasi ini menyesatkan
6. Pinalty terhadap duplicate content adalah halaman atau situs anda dihilangkan dari halaman google : situs anda tidak muncul di search engine bukan hanya karena duplicate content dan juga menurut google mereka lebih suka melakukan filter atau penyaringan di index mereka.
7. Jika saya men-submit sebuah artikel ke situs directory artikel, kemudian ada situs lain yang mempublikasikan artikel Anda sama persis maka situs Anda akan terkena pinalty : selama artikel tersebut tidak berada di situs Anda maka situs Anda tidak akan terkena duplicate content.
8. Saya tidak akan memiliki rangking tinggi jika menggunakan duplicate content : kadang kala posisi kita akan lebih baik dari situs aslinya jika situs kita memiliki kelebihan, seperti navigasi yang baik, inbound dan outbound link.
9. Saya tidak perlu kawatir jika situs lain menggunakan content saya, karena anda adalah penulisnya : kepemilikan artikel tidak bisa menentukan situs anda lebih relevan dari situs orang lain.

Dengan mengetahui duplicate content dengan baik, maka Anda akan memiliki perencanaan website atau blog lebih baik. Usahakan untuk mencantumkan artikel yang unik dan ketika Anda melakukan sindikasi atau publikasi di situs lain, maka usahakan untuk menulis ulang sehingga tetap unik.

Je viens de tomber la dessus sur un blog de libération : Sandrine Camus a suivi plusieurs tournois de jeux video et en a resorti un paquet de photos vraiment très belles et même parfois touchantes. Ces photos contrastent énormément avec celles que l’on retrouve habituellement sur les Lan parties et apporte un point de vue extérieur tout à fait intéressant tout en étant bien évidement magnifique pour certaines.

Si comme moi (dans une moindre mesure) vous avez cotoyé ces tournois, vous ne pouvez pas ne pas être touchés par ces photos : ici et là pour Istanbul, ou là et là pour Dallas.

Recently I ran across a major problem with a client’s website. It was quite by accident really. I discovered that a large portion of the copy on their website was canned copy.

Well, no big deal you say? Actually it is. This is known as a duplicate content issue, and is something that can get your results hammered in Google. What ends up happening is that if Google sees your page being substantially the same as another, it may put it in the supplemental results.

This is not good. It means your page won’t show up in the search results. No offense to everyone out there, but most surfers aren’t that sophisticated and won’t click on that message you see below your search results.

But even if they do, where will your results appear? Do you really think potential site visitors will search through 1,000 or more repeated results just to find your page? I doubt it.

All the money you’ve spent getting your website up and running and hopefully pulling in business for you is essentially wasted because your site has been pushed into the supplemental results.

Solution to duplicate content

The solution to this issue really is quite simple. Get a professional writer to produce your content. It doesn’t have to be expensive, and good writers are worth the money.

A good writer knows how to get to the point and will word things differently so you don’t run into the duplicate content issue.

If you’re looking at a content management system for your business, resist the urge to use canned copy that might be included with it. You’re not their only client. Don’t take the easy way if you want to see your site appear in the search results.

Rewriting content

A good portion of my day today will be rewriting that client’s content so he won’t be stuck in the supplemental results. It will take a bit of time to get out of there, but it will be worth it. Of course I’ll do the proper search engine optimization on the copy to make sure the right keywords are in his copy, while making sure it speaks to the site visitor.

This client is looking forward to seeing his site actually appearing in the search results now.

Alain Saffel

If you suspect you have a problem with your site content, Clearpath SEO can help. Whether your site isn’t getting the results you expected in terms of visitors, conversions or sales, you just need to freshen up your site content, or need help with all forms of Internet marketing, Clearpath SEO can advise you on the best course of action.

Clearpath SEO is an Edmonton company with branches in Calgary and Scottsdale. The company’s primary focus is on search engine optimization and Internet marketing, such as Google AdWords and Facebook ads. Clearpath also can help with all forms of content writing, having a solid writing staff ready to roll on your project.

For the first time, I was called (by one of my favorite Twitter buds Eduardo Peirano) an edupunk. In keeping with that, here’s a list of free web technologies and accounts I’ve cobbled together into my own peculiar learning and organizational environment:

• Zoho - Writer for making notes and to-do lists for myself that I can access from anywhere, Show for quick slideshows on the fly
• Tumblr - for storing quick things I find just for myself, without organizational format
• Flickr - for creating the occasional annotated image for teaching, storing other people’s images I may want to use later
• Del.icio.us - for storing bookmarks easily with the Firefox plug-in; it also helps me learn how to tag effectively for later retrieval
• Wordpress - for this blog, and now the professional development blog too - it’s so wonderfully stable (till you upgrade, of course)
• Gmail - to combine my various email accounts, and I’m enjoying the chat feature (though I really wish I could download my mail and save it — I’m using Thunderbird too, just to archive!)
• Moodle - my course management system of choice (obviously!)
• Feedraider - for reading my RSS feeds from other people’s blogs etc, though I’m hating how difficult it is to move things around and I’m shopping for something better
• Nucleus - for my history blog
• Twitter - for my daily contact with wonderful IT folks

  And which have proven disappointing:

  • Facebook - yeah, I know I said it before, but honestly I’m not seeing its use, and I do resent that you can never, ever leave (only deactivate temporarily)
  • FriendFeed - without access to Feedraider and the other programs I used, aggregating what was left wasn’t worth it

Did you know that there is an SEO company offering to do SEO for free until you get results? I didn’t until my friend Costas wrote this post on re-route.co.uk. Apparantly they will only accept payment once you have reached page one for a set keyword and you only pay if you stay there. Sounds great. Does anyone know about this.