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Building Web Content

Many people drone on about building “high quality web content.” What they fail to explain is just what content qualifies for such a lofty appraisal. Let’s face it: much web content is junky. And it’s not like it’s a big deal, either. The audience on the web has a short attention span, and is often looking just for the facts. If you can present your story in a clear and understandable manner, using excess verbiage is rarely helpful.

What makes good content? It’s debatable. But it’s safe to say some principles can’t hurt.

1. Easy to read information
2. Links to additional info, if needed
3. Clear navigation and help if necessary
4. Pictures and videos added if they expand the narrative

If people write authoritatively on a subject, readers will learn to trust the website. If the information is schlock and not up to snuff, the low quality will eventually stop people from wanting to investigate the site further.

Quality web content can be short, though. If you answer a question definitively in a concise manner, there’s no point in going long in an attempt to impress your reader.

Posted in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

Google Myths Explored – Duplicate Content

Some Google myths are worth exploring in greater detail. Certainly much of what is written about the world’s largest search engine is merely wishful thinking, or just plain crap. The only way to figure out what really happens in Google is to test. Most people don’t have the time or inclination to do rigorous testing, so many of them will just end up parroting what others have told them.

The idea of duplicate content scares people

Webmasters seem particularly worried about what will happen if they have duplicate content on their websites. They seem to think it will result in an instant and damaging penalty. But in reality, Google tends to be very forgiving of duplicate content.

Testing shows that duplicate content won’t necessarily rank well, but it doesn’t affect the ability of your website to rank. You won’t be penalized for it, you just not might rank. This is especially true if there are better linked domains publishing the same content as you.

In reality, a lot of the web consists of duplicate content, for nefarious reasons as well as legitimate ones. If you’re really worried that duplicate content is bringing you down, you can always use the noindex meta tag to tell the search engines to drop the pages.

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PHP Warnings Off

Turning off all PHP warnings. Depending on your set up, you might be getting a large number of warnings from a PHP script that are written into you Apache log files. Normally, the correct solution would be to fix the script, and all warnings would be eliminated. But on certain occasions, this isn’t an option.

NOTE: Keep a record of any changes you make to your configuration. If you turn off php warnings and don’t remember doing it, you might run into a snag later.

If you’re pressed for time and want to stifle all warnings, add this to the top of any file that is included from your main PHP script.

<br /> <?php include error_reporting(0); ?><br />

Now, this won’t just stop the warnings from being printed on the site, but it will also kill all errors being written to your website’s error_log.

If you want to just suppress warnings on your site, and you have access to your .htaccess file, then make a simple edit.


php_value display_errors 0


In order to add error checking back to your website:


php_value display_errors 1
php_value error_reporting 2047


It’s totally up to you how you want to handle error checking, but if you have a script that you don’t plan on changing that is creating error log files of huge sizes, then patching the code as illustrated in example one should do the trick.

Posted in This and That | No Comments »

Writings Tips For Internet Marketers

Use the “Hourglass Method” to Write Faster

It’s not what you think.

Using the “Hourglass” method has nothing to do with putting yourself on a timer to see how many articles you can write in an hour. It is, rather, a way for you to visualize the “shape” your article will take before you even begin to write it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

Redirecting All Traffic From A Subdirectory To The Root

If you want to permanently redirect all the traffic from a subdirectory to the root domain, and you’re running Apache, the job is quite simple. All you need to do is make sure you mod_alias installed, and then you can a simple command to your .htaccess file.

Here’s example code.


RedirectMatch 301 ^/old/(.*)/$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1/


That would take all the requests for files located in the /old/ directory and redirect them permanently their new location at the root. This might come in handy for someone who has a blog installed in a subdirectory and wants to promote it to the root.

You can also exclude directories, in case you need to. Use the following syntax:


Redirect permanent ^/(?!category/)(?!tag/)(.*)/(.*)/$


Redirect match supports regex so anything that can be done in regex can be done using redirectmatch. The documentation from Apache is typically obtuse.

“This directive is equivalent to Redirect, but makes use of standard regular expressions, instead of simple prefix matching. The supplied regular expression is matched against the URL-path, and if it matches, the server will substitute any parenthesized matches into the given string and use it as a filename.”

In any event, redirectmatch is an extremely powerful and easy to use way to do redirection.

Posted in SEM | 1 Comment »

Finding The Best Link Exchange

Tips on finding the best link exchanges

To publicize a Web page, it’s always a difficult task and one of the first steps you can do is to ensure that popular search engines index your website properly. One way to do this for people who have more time than money is by exchanging links with related websites. Although the practice has been frowned on to a degree by search engines, the one reason webmasters to continue to exchange links is because link exchanges have their roots in the earliest days of the internet.

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Jeremy Pivens Has High Mercury Levels

Poor Jeremy Pivens. The guys been eating so much fish, apparently, he’s developed unusually high levels of mercury in his blood stream. Or at least that’s the line he used to bow out of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow on Broadway.

The line sounds like a bunch of crap when you hear it. You can sense David Mamet’s skepticism by what he said upon hearing the news.

“I talked to Jeremy on the phone, and he told me that he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury,” Mamet said. “So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.”

Ha ha. Now that’s the type of wit you might just expect from the man who wrote Glengary Glenross

Pivens rep said the actor would have liked to continue with the play, but his doctors recommended against it. 300 people demanded refunds today upon learning the news.

Posted in This and That | No Comments »

301 Redirection Gotchas

301 Redirection is a great thing, if you do it right. 301 redirection is a great way to move content to new locations while preserving your incoming links. If you use PHP and mod_rewrite already, implementing 301 redirects is a snap.

Either way, if you plan on moving some files, you can preserve rankings for your website content with careful planning. It’s all just part of your normal website maintenance.

Posted in SEM | No Comments »

SEOs A Bunch Of Drunken Wahoos?

If you don’t know who Michael Martinez is, he’s one of the best people writing about SEO right now at his blog, SEO Theory. Today he takes a look at the SEO business, and where things are headed for some companies.

But mostly, I enjoyed his take on the SEO Conferences.

The SEO conferences are notorious party magnets and most conference insiders willingly admit that you get more and “better” information after the panels have ended for the day. What does it say about our industry that people are getting the best technical advice from other folks with drinks or drugs in their hands? Alcohol-based SEO instruction is not optimal, so there is considerable irony in the notion that you’re learning how to optimize from someone who may be three sheets to the wind and is willing to mumble something about how to steal links from Web sites.

If that is the best this industry has to offer, I can almost guarantee you that government mandated licensing, certification, and regulation are only a few years away. All the professional organizations and training programs in the world won’t stop the lawsuits, coinsumer complaints, and search engine penalties.

Haha, ain’t that the truth? As a teetotaler, I only attended one SEO Conference. I never did learn any “big secrets”, even at the bar. My sense of the event was it was more of a social event, where people are traveling on someone else’s expense account. Not exactly the type of place for small businessmen and non-drinkers like myself and my wife.

In the end, Michael’s conclusion that change may very well be forced upon the industry seems likely. If the issue of SEO Malpractice becomes big enough, the whole game will change overnight. Bad SEOs hurt everyone, the same way scammers do in any industry.

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Lee Haney

Lee Haney is making the news today because he appeared on the Steve Harvey show.

Lee Haney is an eight time winner of Bodybuilding’s Mr. Olympia contest. Lee Haney was well known for his balance of symmetry and huge muscularity.

For more information: Lee Haney.

Posted in People | Comments Off