Archive for: April 2005

Another thing I’ve done to this website/blog is I’ve found a mob that have put together a live RSS feed that displays in HTML… that’s it in the sidebar on the right. About 4 or 5 news articles. I don’t know how often they update the articles as yet, but it’ll do until I find something better.

They do have a few links that go with the feed, but it’s a small price to pay if the feeds refresh every few days.

This version of WordPress I’m using has my “categories” RSS linked if you want to follow them without visiting all the time. For instance, if you just want my “$100’s a day” news, copy the RSS address from the little orange RSS tag thingumyjig in the “Categories” menu, and enter it into your feed reader. Then whenever I add a new article here to do with the Challenge, it will display in your feed reader… too kewl.

Speaking of the Challenge, it’s time for an update… later. I’ve got to get on a conference right now.

Google have been updating their dumb little green bar that everyone loves to hate… and this blog is officially a PR4. Must be doing something right, because all the individual blog pages are PR4 also. And the static article pages I added a few months ago are all PR4 too… don’t you just hate that?

Honestly I don’t know how Google work it out, there’s that many links leaving these pages that there should be no PR left.

If anyone’s wondering about these links in the text, but has not been clicking on them, they are Tecnorati “Tags” … something to do with linking to relevant content.

I first read about them on Pakii Pierce’s blog, I still don’t have time to try and understand what they do, but it looks like I do. A bit like people who wear Sunglasses. They looks kewl.

Google has at last indexed my main page and Sitemap now. Next visit should see the Gogglebot begin the crawl of my article pages. I’ve got more articles on order for this site for delivery early next week.

Speaking of Google… my adsense on this site went through the roof today for some reason. Normally nobody clicks the ads here, but today my visitors went on a clickin’ spree… don’t you hate that?

This is Karma or something… I started a new website on Contact Lenses and Vision last week, and this week I need a new set of reading glasses. Mmmm… anyways, I went into town today and had my eyes tested. I found that they’ve deteriorated slightly in the 5 years since the last test. The tests showed that my distance vision has deteriorated. My Optometrist Warren has a 2 for 1 deal on eye glasses, so I’m getting two pairs… one for reading and one for driving.

My $100 a day challenge update - there’s not a lot to report.

I’ve now got a Contact Lenses site uploaded and ready to fire. It was started a week or two ago. I originally put up a barebones site structure of 6 pages, home page, sitemap and articles page with SEO website builder.

Only the home page and one other page had content for 2 weeks, but MSN and Yahoo both indexed a few pages. Googlebot has visited, but there was not enough content to interest it I’d say… dammit.

That’s all changed now… this site now comprises 7 main pages and 48 articles. The 7 main pages are based on high competition keywords - bi-focal contact lenses, soft contact lenses, colored contact lenses etc, while the articles are all based on low competition pages… these are keywords with less than 5,000 competing pages. The secondary keywords in these articles have even less competition… under 250 competing pages, with some having less than ten.

I’m running only Adsense ads on the article pages, and affiliate programs on the 7 main pages. The idea is that if the articles don’t interest them they’ll leave the site via adsense. If the article does interest them and they want to know more, they’ll visit my home page, and find my affiliate pages from there. It’s a sort of filtering process I guess.

I used Content Publisher to put the articles on the server… it is still not released to the public, but believe me, when it is, it will “sell like hot cakes”. Anyone who builds content sites or sites in the James Martell mold, will jump all over this.

I’ve got another 75 articles ready to build another website with, but I need to register a Domain name and organise hosting first. I’ll do that tomorrow, and start to work on the main pages for that website.

I’ve taken a week off work because I’ve got a virus in my throat, so I should be able to build 3 or 4 new websites this week, all with at least 50 pages of content… I hope. I’ve got the keyword lists already, it’s just a matter of getting the articles organised.

How to get a web page or site indexed in record time.

What does getting indexed mean?

The search engines keep a cache of every web page in their index.

In English, this means:
The search engines make a copy of every web page they visit and put in their records… ummm, I think that’s what I mean.

When you use a search engine the results list relevant pages to your search, usually ten results per page.

Each result includes a live “link” to the page, and a “cache” or “snap-shot” of the page, recorded the last time the spider visited that page, at some time in the past.

If you wish to get a website indexed first you must have a website… preferably a real one that you own, not a “free” website a’ la Geocities etc.

It only costs about $8 to register a domain name, and about $5 a month for cheap hosting, while $10 a month will get you very good quality hosting.

To get indexed fast, I recommend you start a blog on your site. This can be with any blog software, but I think that WordPress is the best…

If you get good quality hosting, it will include cPanel and Fantastico scripts. In fantastico scripts are about 50 scripts you can automatically install on your server with one click… and WordPress is one of them. The alternative is to manually install wordpress yourself.

Once you have built the basic barebones website (Main page, ½ a dozen content pages, and a sitemap linking them together, it’s time to get indexed in the search engines.

You can “submit” your site to the search engines if you wish, but that is too slow.

Here’s where the blog comes into play… post articles or messages to your blog on a daily basis, and don’t miss a day for the first few weeks at least. The posts must be interesting, and relevant to your site.

Configure your blog to automaticlly “ping” the blog directories every time you publish a new post.

Here’s what happens…
Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other search engines are always looking for fresh content to serve up to their search visitors or clients, and one place they look for fresh content is in blogs.
Search engines absolutely love blogs, because they are dynamic — updated on a regular basis by their owners – as apposed to normal website pages which largely remain static –unchanged for months on end.

If you update your blog every day by adding fresh articles or other content, the search engines will notice, and they will soon be visiting your blog every day like clockwork.

I include a link to my regular website pages by adding a link to either my homepage or sitemap, in the sidebar (menu) of my blog.

The second best thing Search Engines love after fresh content is “links”… they will litterally die for links, and if they find a link anywhere that they’ve not seen before, they make a record of it, then follow to to where ever it may lead… and if the link they find is on your blog, you better make sure it leads to the sitemap of your website. Double check that it does, by clicking on it after you make it.

Yahoo and MSN will list your website pages as soon as they visit them, and will usually index them within a few days. As soon as they are indexed, people can find them in search results.

And that’s how easy it is to get indexed.

A quick update on my court appearance.

My attacker pleaded guilty before we entered the courtroom, so it was a bit of a non-event. Idiots like this should be locked up, but he’ll probably just get a rap over the knuckles and a good behavior bond. I didn’t stick around to find out, but will likely hear from the coppers as to what sentence he received.

I’m very nervous about tomorrow.

It’s got nothing to do with the Internet… you see, I was the victim of a violent attack 16 months ago. I was attacked from behind (I was kinghit) … just one blow, but it knocked me out cold, broke my nose and crushed my cheekbone and fractured and depressed my eyesocket.

It required an operation to lift my cheekbone back up and relocate my eyesocket to about where it used to be. I still need another operation on my nose… it is partially blocked, so needs re-breaking to fix it.

So, what happens tomorrow? The idiot that did it appears in court after being charged by the police, and I’ve got to go, as a witness I guess, although I didn’t see anything. I wonder if I can get some compensation? … it’s hard to say I guess.

I’ve found one very good writer who will work for a very reasonable rate, and says she can produce 100 articles a week. That’s great, now I just need one more writer to do the same, and I’m set.

I uploaded 100 pages of content Thursday and Saturday, and my Adsense income has already started to surge up. Not on my new sites at this stage though. It has doubled on one established site, in the last 2 days.

I beta tested a new product from Andy Williams with these articles… it is called Content Publisher, and all I can say is WOW!

Look out for the public release, possibly in the next week.

Good God, time is getting away from me… it’s now 3 weeks since I took up this challenge, and it seems like I’m getting nowhere. I’ve registered one new site, and put up some pages to it, and they are indexed already.

I contracted a writer at Elance 2 weeks ago, and he is hopeless… I pulled the plug on him after 30 articles… too much copy and pasting similar content from article to article, and poor grammar. I then posted a new project of 150 articles, and got 18 bids ranging from $4.50 up to $10 an article. I selected 5 of them and they each have keyword phrases to write 25 articles around. If they are good enough I’ll give them more work, if not… it’s “hasta la vista baby” you lose.

The first one has sent me 5 articles for review, and it looks like he knows what he’s doing. Who knows, they may all be good, in which case, I’ll run out of money pretty quick. I’m paying them $6 per article for the first 25, and then $5 after that, if they are any good… and a total of 150 articles each if they make it.