Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Colbert Once Again The Greatest Living American

The Greatest Living American SERPS 09252007
After having his site taken off Google for the term, "The Greatest Living American" for being Google bombed to the number one spot. Stephen Colbert is back with a vengeance. The Cobertnation is now winning for the term "The Greatest Living American" both with and without quotes. I guess Google's work around for Google Bombing isn't working again.



Update 10.01.07 Looks like this was very short lived. Google updated the day after I posted this blog. I also fixed the typos. Sorry to all who were offended over two typos.



Colbert Once Again The Greatest Living American

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Mystery Meat Navigation

Mystery Meat Navigation (MMN) is something that is one of my major pet peeves. I run into at least one new site a day that has Mystery Meat Navigation. Lets take a look at a really bad old site that has Mystery Meat Navigation and once you see how bad this method can be. You will be more wary of using Mystery Meat Navigation in your next web design.

Reggaereport

Look at the left Menu on this site. What do you see? Mystery Meat Navigation!! Now quickly! What do this icons do? Do they help you find useful information on the site? Or do they confuse you? Now if you were able to tell those links are: Irie 'Tings, World a'Reggae News, New Releases, CD Reviews, Crucial Cuts, Photo Album, Fan Mail, About Us, Advertise; without looking at the source code. Thats great. Granted the old designer put alt tags in his Mystery Meat Navigation, but they aren't working in Firefox. Avoid doing your next cool menu with Mystery Meat Navigation if you can.

Mystery Meat Navigation

Monday, July 23, 2007

The Difference Between SEO and SEM

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are Two different things altogether. The two things go hand in hand but are often thought of as one thing. Search Engine Optimization is what is done to your site to ensure that the end users have a friendly easy to use web site with SEF Menus and SEF URLS that Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com crawl through and find your content. Search Engine Marketing is doing the advertising and marketing of your site. Ironical this is all done "offsite" whereas SEO is mostly done "onsite". SEO is a more technical process than SEM and involves a deeper understanding of search engine algorithms.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves advertising and target marketing in order to draw traffic to websites. This includes:

Pay-for-inclusion - Many SEM companies guarantee your site will be indexed by the search engines within a short period of time, and if you really want to you can directly submit your site to the engines. DO NOT DO THIS until your site is done. Also do not go around your SEO/SEM advertiser's back and do this multiple times, this is a form of spam which you are penalized for. Patience is the key. Submission fees are required for submissions to search engines and directories.

Email Marketing (aka "Email Blasts" and "Spamming") - I firmly do not believe in Email Marketing. Unless you already have your own list of clients that read your emails, don't Email Market. I never open spam and everyone I know hates being spammed. So why pay to piss off 10,000 people or more every week? Conversely the Email Marketer will tell you not to SEO or SEM your web site in more cost effective ways. They want you to keep paying for Email Blasts. I think spending your time and money on natural position on Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com is a much better business model then sending out 10,000 emails where 90% of them are not even read.

Traditional Ads (PPC - Pay Per Click) - Ads are displayed on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) generally these are text based ads, where the copy is written by the SEO/SEM advertiser. Ads are based on the Keyword entered in the search and fees are triggered by impressions. You pay for the ad even if it's not clicked through. You want to work with your SEO/SEM advertiser so that your ads Click Through Rate has a high percentage. You can easily spend hundreds a day for very little ROI.

Link Exchanging - The SEO/SEM advertiser trades for one way, reciprocal and three way link exchanges while making sure they are of the same niche as you web site is and not spammy web sites. Its the hardest part of getting your web site going.

ROI tracking - The SEO/SEM advertiser tracks your Web Site's stats

SEM and SEO are both a necessary evil if you want a successful web site. Make sure that you work with your SEO/SEM advertiser to Market your web site very strongly both before and after you enjoy organic listings in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Remember if you website is brand new and has no content its going to go no where fast. Content is King. Listen to your SEO/SEM advertiser.

The Difference Between SEO And SEM

Friday, June 29, 2007

HBO: Too Hot Not to Handle

Heat waves. Melting glaciers. Rising sea levels. Catastrophic storms. Migrating viruses. Population displacement. Over the past 100 years, the mass consumption of fossil fuels, especially in America, has contributed to a dangerous warming of the earth that has adversely impacted the way we live.

read more | digg story

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Search Engine Friendly Web Design

A search engine friendly design can greatly decrease other search engine marketing and advertising costs. Search engine friendly web design is often an after thought when someone has the idea for a flash web site. People rarely start out thinking about search engine friendly web design in the early stages of their web development. Search engine friendly Web design, Good content and usability should the corner stones of your web site. Flash should be an afterthought or used in small doses.

What is search engine friendly web design? Your web site should have: Search Engine Friendly URLs (SEF URLS), Search Engine Friendly Menus (SEF Menus), dynamic titles, and dynamic headers. Never use Flash or JS scripts in your web site's menus if you want your web site spidered by any of the search engines. A menu that looks just as good if not better than flash can be done with CSS, XHTML or DHTML. A lot of web sites have the same header on every page, a bad header or a non matching header.

If your site is brand new, it will take three to six months to get listed on the major search engines. Have us use our Search Engine Friendly Web design methods to help your web site have a strong foundation so you can get into the search engines. Search engine friendly web design should never be an after thought.

Search Engine Friendly Web Design

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Facebook is Selling YOUR Information - Repost

Apparently Facebook has started SELLING user information (surprise, surprise!) to third parties. They call it the "Facebook Development Platform."

To restrict use of your information, do the following:
Click "Privacy" on top right.
Under the "Facebook Platform" section click"Edit Settings".
Scroll down to the bottom and UNCHECK ALL of the items under facebook platform.

Most creepy is the inclusion of photographs!
(Do your friends a favor and repost this as your own note.)

Does what happen in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

Friday, May 04, 2007

Is Stephen Colbert the Greatest Living American?

It seems that Google bombing isn't going away. The internet nerds are all doing the dance to make Stephen Colbert the Greatest Living American. In less than two weeks the position for the term "the greatest living American" in Google has gone up to the number one spot in Google for the www.colbertnation.com. Now I am sure Stephen is a great guy, but is he really the greatest living American?

The cool people over at Digg seem to be getting behind this Google bomb of "greatest living American" so they can win the top spot for the term in Google for Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Nation - www.colbertnation.com. As of today The Colbert Nation only has spot six in yahoo, spot two in MSN and its not listed in Ask.com on page one at all. However the number one spot in Ask seems to be the Google bomber:


SEOmoz | Help Make Stephen Colbert the "Greatest Living American"
Help Make Stephen Colbert the "Greatest Living American" ... Use the anchor text "Greatest Living American" ...
www.seomoz.org/blog/stephen-colbert-the-greatest-living-American-... www.seomoz.org/blog/stephen-colbert-the-greatest-living-American-a-Googlebombing-campaign

Notice that the SEOMOZ.ORG site has a good Header with the title of "Greatest Living American", keywording of the term "greatest living American" and it has "greatest living American" in the URL as well.

This proves to me that Google's removal of older Google bombings were a limited manual process to appease President Bush, not in anyway an improvement in their Search Engine. It also shows the power of one way linking. Google needs to start working on their code to keep up with Ask.com now. I think they are getting away from being a leader in good search and trying so much to be a profit machine. Maybe we should Google bomb Google as "talentless hacks"(the first Google bomb) and see how quickly they fix the Google bombing issue.

I bet Stephen Colbert loves being the greatest living American on the internet. Stephen Colbert might be the best fake Neocon Demagogue but he is not the greatest living American. Why can't I be the greatest living American instead? I like to think Eddie Van Halen is the greatest living American. Or maybe Micheal Moore is the greatest living American.

But who knows? One thing is for sure, The greatest living American isn't President Bush.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Advanced Search Options for Google

Here is a short list of useful Advanced Search options for Google:

cache:www .example.com Google's cache of example.com
link:www .example.com List of websites that link to example.com
related:www.example.com List web pages similar to www.example.com
info:www.example.com Show information that Google has about www.example.com
site:www.example.com List all web pages hosted at www.example.com
allintitle:query Restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title.
intitle:query Restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title.
allinurl:query Restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the URL.
inurl:query Restrict the results to documents containing that word in the URL.
apple * sauce the words apple and sauce separated by exactly one word
Nokia phone $100...300 Search within a range of numbers for a Nokia phone between $100...300
safesearch: sex education Search for sex education material without returning adult sites

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Frappr Map

Friday, March 16, 2007

Tivo 30 sec Skip Remote Hack

Watch a recorded show on your Tivo.

On your Tivo Remote press the following combo: select, play, select. 3. 0. and select.

You will hear three happy thumbs up beeps

Now to use it see the key above the "3" ->|

Every time you use that key you skip 30 secs. Hit it 4-6 times and you are all good.

This hack will have to be redone anytime you lose power on your Tivo or on reboots.

Heiko is a Douche that doesn't know what RSS is.

Heiko is a Douche that doen't know what RSS is.


http://muds.multiply.com/journal/item/239?mark_read=muds:journal:239&replies_read=1

Monday, February 19, 2007

Content Management System

I am part of a cutting-edge graphic design firm located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I help businesses throughout South Florida create innovative, eye-catching Websites with Content Management Systems. A Content Management System (CMS) makes it a breeze to update your web site's content. With an open source Content Management System Adding web pages is a breeze.

We don't just install a Content Management System and call it a day. We make the Content Management System look like your own personal website and not just another template site. We also make sure that the Content Management System is Search Engine Optimized, with the meta tags in the right place and SEF URLS. We design a custom look for your site and make sure that the CMS doesn't look default.

We also train you to use your Content Management System, so you can login and make your own content. We maintain your Content Management System after we design your website, and will do software updates as needed. Why would you want a five page site without a Content Management System? I have met with clients that spent $5000 on a basic seven page site that wasn't search engine optimized and it did NOT have a Content Management System.

Here's just a few things that you get from a Content Management System

* You can add your own images to your website without a webmaster
* You can make unlimited updates to your website without the need for a webmaster
* You can add unlimited pages to your websites anytime you want without a webmaster
* You can add all the links you want without a webmaster
* You can add music with a simple add-on
* You can add streaming video with a simple add-on
* You can gather email addresses from your customers
* You can have email enabled contact forms on your sites
* Manage Banners and Ads easily
* Have a completely searchable website
* You can conduct polls
* Detailed Page and Hit statistics
* and much much more!

Become your own Web Master today!

Sunday, February 18, 2007

George Bush No Longer a Miserable Failure

At least thats what Google not says. Google removed the link to the white house page of GW Bush recently as the number one hit for the search "Miserable Failure" They have also undone a few other Google bombs such as the one that was making the site for the movie "Super Size Me" win for the term "McDonald's" This looks like a crack down on Google bombing in general.

Also the White House has changed the URL for the target link from:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html
The old link redirects here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/

I used to think that the people at Google have a sense of humor. This change seems to have a human hand to it. It was good while it lasted. However they still keep the term "leave" results as Disney.com Most porno sites link their "Leave" button on their splash page to Disney.com. So it looks like they don't have this feature fully fleshed out just yet.


In case you don't know what all this Google bombing stuff is about, I have it explained here

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Haiku Windows Error Messages.

A friend posted this on myspace, I had to share.


Enjoy...

The Web site you seek cannot be located, but countless more exist.
-------------------------------------------------
Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.
-------------------------------------------------
Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You ask far too much.
-------------------------------------------------
Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams.
-------------------------------------------------
Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.
-------------------------------------------------
Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone.
-------------------------------------------------
Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is down.
-------------------------------------------------
A crash reduces your expensive computer to a simple stone.
-------------------------------------------------
Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Guess which has occurred.
-------------------------------------------------
You step in the stream, but the water has moved on. This page is not here.
-------------------------------------------------
Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, but we never will.
-------------------------------------------------
Having been erased, The document you're seeking must now be retyped.
-------------------------------------------------
Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

Just to note, these are an urban legend thats been around the net a few times. These are not real errors, but they should be.

Share The Dude Dean!