Fake SEO Experts - Don't Hire One

Frequently, business proprieters get email spam from individuals claiming that they will increase their rankings in the earch engines. Some of the emails have the most ridiculous stuff in them. Promises of a #1 ranking or tons of traffic within days. Can they really live up to their claims after taking your money?

The truth of it though, because business owners crave more traffic and better rankings, these SEO businesses are forming to capitalize on these desires. Some of these so called SEO companies start up with one business name, and then a few months later, after taking money from the unsuspecting, doing a poor job, shut down and then pop up later with a different business name.

SEO is as much an art as it is a science. There are a number of methods that will have your site ranked higher on Google and Bing but you can't just depend on one way, alone. You risk an algorithm change and then your history.

Ian Scott, SEO expert was overheard not long ago pointing out that there are very few legitimate SEO businesses today.Ian has some expertise in the area of providing legitimate SEO services to clients throughout North America since 1997.

It is best to run from anyone that makes ridiculous claims about how fast you will rank #1 in the search engines. Anyone who makes you that kind of guarantee is just looking to take your money and run.

Some SEO companies will promise you page one Google rankings for the most obscure terms. What's the point of being ranked highly for something no one searches on? A fraudulent SEO expert once promised me number one rankings for a crazy keyword phrase about salt water fish in grand prairie.This was to do with a fly fishing site I had. Well, how many fly fishers would be searching that term in the first place? Because it is doubtful that there are any other websites that would even contain that term, it of course would not be difficult to get ranked for it. But what would it matter? What would that get me for the money they wanted to be paid for?

To see really good results that are useful, one must be patient. The work should be done in a comprehensive manner where a number of methods are used. There is no single SEO method that should be relied upon because Google is constantly adjusting the way it provides results. Search engine optimization requires knowledge of many different aspects and if you don't incorporate them all, you could find your site has dropped like a rock in the results pages the next time there's an algorithmic change.

Learn more about Ontario web consulting here

More On SEO

Do metatags matter these days? Yes and no. While they don't do much to help you get better rankings in the search engines, they do have some very important uses. There are so many myths about metatags these days, and if it's a subject that is important to you, you need to get the facts from someone who has been doing SEO successfully for over 15 years - not just theory, but reality.

Ian Scott writes about the description metatag. You should read the article if you are confused by what is important and what is not.

Dealing With Lightning And Youth Sports

At any given time throughout the world, there are a couple of thousands of lightning storms occuring. Each storm on it's own produces an astounding number of lightning bolts. Every bolt of lightning packs enough energy to keep a 100 watt lighbult lit for more than a quarter of a year. Given how often and how dangerous lightning can be, it is a wonder that more individuals don't suffer injury or death by these potent lightning bolts.

It is during the summer months in North America when most lightning strikes the ground. This is the same time when children are involved in outdoor sports.

In these situations, the adults involved -- the parents, coaches, and officials -- are responsible for ensuring the safety of the child athletes. A lightning policy should be in place and someone at the sports venues needs to be responsible for watching carefully the weather conditions and risks. It is not a good idea to gamble on personal observation of storms that might be brewing. The use of a portable lightning detector at the sports venue can provide superior advance warning and ensuring the safety of those involved.

Officials including convenors, referees and others involved in sports of children should be educated on how to ensure the safety of those attending the games when there is risk of lightning strikes.

If you can see lightning or hear the claps of thunder, it is a good idea to postpone the game and maybe even consider canceling it until another day. The kids you are responsible for are already at risk. Even though there may be no raindrops, the risk of lightning is quite high at your location. Many lightning strike injuries occur as the storm begins as many are just not aware of the risks. Some don't know that lightning strikes might occur fifteen kilometers distant from where the rain is falling.

Louder or more frequent thunder means that the storm is approaching, increasing your risk. When the delay in time between lightning bolt and hearing thunder is less than 30 seconds, your kids should be in a safe place already, or rushing to get there!

Having around weather warning devices including weather radio is important as a credible SkyScan lightning detector. However, do not let this information override good common sense.

Large buildings provide a much safer environment during a storm than smaller ones. Small structures like gazebos and cabanas should be avoided during thunderstorms.

Learn more about the ews pro lightning detector.

It's Not White Lightning - But It's A Killer

One of the most enjoyable things about my business is the wide variety of clients I have. With each one, I get to learn new things, discover things I never knew before and had no idea about.  One of our most recent clients deals with lightning detectors - not the "white lightning" sort but one of the most dangerous weather killers - those electrical storms in the sky that strike the earth.

Did you know that lightning is the second highest storm killer in the United States since 1959? I had no idea that was true, until I started working with SkyScan International, a distributor of the SkyScan brand of lightning detectors.

Up until working with this business, I did not even know that there was such a thing as lightning detectors, and now that I do know, I wonder why more organizations that have employees or run sports programs outdoors don't have them. Instead, they rely on weather forecasts which cannot accurately predict electrical activity in the atmosphere, or they use what they believe to be "safe" ways of counting the number of seconds that pass between a flash of lightning (who knows how far away it is exactly), and the sound of the thunderous boom.

There have been a number of tragic deaths reported in the news in recent years about people being struck by lightning with tragic consequences. Perhaps if a lightning detector had been close by, those tragedies might have been prevented.

Although there are companies that work in mining, forestry, gas and oil, and the military, who have an interest in protecting their employees that work outdoors, lightning detectors are not only for them.  With both permanent detector installation as well as portable lightning detectors like the EWS-PRO, schools and both amateur and professional sports organizations should have them at their venues.

In fact, there are some portable lightning detectors that are quite affordable for many people who enjoy outdoor family activities while camping or hiking - $179.95 for this portable lightning detector isn't a whole lot of money when it involves protecting loved ones while participating in activities during those months of the year when lightning could strike. With the ability to detect lightning within a 40 mile radius, that's a lot of safety time built in.

I think I'll make sure I have one at the camping trailer next summer. And the nice thing is this one is portable and I can take it where ever I go!

Does your school, organization or company that has a lot of outdoor activity going on have access to lightning detectors? Is there a policy in place about what to do under a variety of situations when electrical thunderstorms are in the area?

I had never thought of this myself until I began working with SkyScan International - and that's one of the reasons I love what I do!

 

 

A Radical Change In Search?

I came across an article in CNN this evening that discusses what some are calling a "radical change in search" in the way Google may deliver some search results to you. What's all the fuss?

Well, now if you are logged into your Google account, when you do a search on something, Google will also provide you with what they call your "personal results" as well as other more generic and organic results. Sounds like an interesting concept. Google is talking about it like this on their own blog:

"But clearly, that isn't enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the Web, the people you know and things they've shared with you, as well as the people you don't know but might want to ... all from one search box."

Words can often mean different things. In this case, "radical" isn't quite the word that describes what Google is probably hoping for, and I am personally a bit dubious that this addition of "personal search results" will greatly transform the general internet user's way of searching.  I have several reasons for this dubiousness.

The first one is that I think Google obviously has some work to do on this "personal results" area. I have a Google account (which I will discuss later) and logged into it to see what I could see. Sure enough, when I went to Google.com, and typed in 'fly fishing', I was given an option to see my so called "personal results." All 300 of them, apparently. So out of curiousity, I clicked.

Somehow or other, Google thinks I should be interested in some individuals named "Ed Burgass," "Dean Burris," and "Shannon Long." With all due respect to these three individuals, I have no clue who they are or why Google thinks I should either know them or want to know them, other than that they have some fly fishing related images up somewhere. But surely there are some others interested in fly fishing that might have images up as well? Indeed, while playing around with my Google + part of my Google account, I have friends there that I know quite well and have even competed with in fly fishing competions.

And yet these people are not there in my "personal results" even though in their own web wanderings, they have uploaded fly fishing images (using their Google Account as well).

At the top of the results are "Images for fly fishing." The very first image in the row is an image of a wine bottle beside a wooden fountain pen case sitting on my desk. Sure, it's my image, and it's on my home winemaking site, but it's certainly got nothing to do with fly fishing or my fly fishing site!

The title and file name have nothing to do with fly fishing either. So I am puzzled as to why it would appear there when there are so many other images that I do have that ARE related directly to fly fishing.

The next result in my "personal results" is a link to my above mentioned fly fishing site, but the rest of the results don't make sense to me other than the fact they were "shared" by the above mentioned people, Ed Burgass, Shannon Long, and Dean Burris.

More Dubious Reasons That "This Is Radical"

Personally, more of my friends don't have Google and Gmail addresses than do. I realize that there are lots and lots of individuals that do have Gmail and thereby a Google Account, but from my own unscientific studies, the majority of average internet users do not. They don't see the need for another email address; they are quite happy with what they have.

Don't get me wrong, I love Google and all the nifty features they offer along with a Google account. But there are so many, I really don't even have the time to explore them all! I don't think the average internet user has the time either.  As well, although I have a Gmail account, I use it in a very limited fashion. It's where I subscribe to newsletters like Dr. Mercola.. who has some quacky ideas, but I'm sometimes interested in his quacky ideas but don't want his emails polluting my primary email address and distracting me from my work and close friends.Sometimes there are websites offering "free reports" which might be interested in reading but I don't want to take the chance that they will send me daily email once I subscribe.

I also use when I need to test and diagnose an issue between email servers. And that's about it. I check my gmail address maybe once a week at best.

Having said that, I do use some of the other features of a Google Account regularly.

I also will often create Google and Gmail accounts on behalf of my clients and provide them with the login credentials out of transparency, but I know for a fact they have no interest in logging in. They just want me to do the work I have promised and send them reports. They don't have time to mess around.

Finally, Google+ is so unintuitive in my opinion, that the average internet user will not ever really use it to it's full potential. I'm pretty smart and internet savvy, and I even get confused and am sort of "not quite getting it" as far as how Google+ is organized, or what's going to happen if I share "publically" or just in "circles" or what have you.  There really isn't much reason for the average internet user and consumer to jump into Google+ and leave Facebook, in my opinion.

However, we do know from seeing some search results, that Google appears to have at least a litte bit of ranking built into their algorithms that they use Google+'s even in their organic search, and not just in what you and your friends may have "plussed" while logged into  Google accounts. So for those of us involved in search engine optimization, we need to learn as much as we can and make adjustments - but at this juncture, I'm not so sure we're going to see any "radical" changes in the typical meaning of the word.

 

 

 

Linux, A Laptop & A Laser Printer

I don't own a USB printer other than a fairly poor quality Lexmark which is an ink jet printer. I really dislike using it, and it won't run under Linux which is my preferred operating system on my laptop. So when I need something printed in good quality, up to now I've been emailing the document to my business partner who then prints it off on her printer.

However, I do own a huge Tektronix Phasar 560 laser printer which, except for its size, I like. It is very fast and does a nice job for my needs. But, it uses a parallel port which my laptop does not have.

I have managed to get it working though! I need to print a large number of documents over the next several days so I was looking for a solution and discovered that I could purchase a parallel usb converter cable. I did not know that such a thing existed, but they do. After purchasing the cable, and with a bit of research, I managed to get the laptop with the Linux operating system to print to the Phasar.

In case anyone else has a similar issue, I am providing the solution here. First, I needed to download the driver for the printer. My version of CUPS did not have it, but I found it here.With the print configure tool in OpenSuse 11.2, I installed the driver, but that was not enough to get the laptop to recognize the printer. The operating system did detected that there was a printer but it was in an "unknown location."

So my next stop was to manually enter the device uri location like this:

parallel:/dev/usb/lp0

After doing that, the laptop was able to communicate with the printer, and I can now print!

For some reason though, the operating system changed the device uri location to:

usb://Tektronix/Phaser%20560P which I don't understand, but I don't really care as long as it works.

I was thinking that I might try to sell the Phasar as I thought it was going to be useless to me with my laptop.  However, I also have several ink cartridges for it, and they are very expensive but last a long long time.

So, if anyone else has a laser printer with the parallel port, you can still keep it and make it work with your laptop's USB port.

 

 

 

 

The SEO Industry Today

I have been involved in search engine optimization since 1997 - back when the major search engines consisted of WebCrawler, Hotbot, Infoseek, AltaVista, and a few others. They were all fighting for attention, trying to improve how they offered search results and even came up with some interesting ways to determine what websites should rank the highest for a given search term.

Today, their are really only ways that most people conduct searches, and that is with Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google of course is still considered the King of search engines and although many of my sites rank quite high on Bing for relevant search terms, Microsoft's search engine really does not send me that much traffic.

With an emphasis on getting as much traffic as possible to their websites, many businesses are realizing the importance of good search engine optimization in both organic search results and local search. This has spawned a huge growth in the SEO industry with many businesses springing up and making promises that they have no business making.

Some of the tactics they use to get clients are simply immoral as well as using sales email letters that are pathetic. Today, I received one such email in which a so-called SEO expert advised me that my website was not ranking very well on the search engines for relevant search terms. The problem is the email contained a website which has nothing to do with me, and for which I have never had any interest in whatsoever. I do not own, did not work on it, and there is no contact information on the website that was referred to in the email.

I do however have a competing website in the same niche. And it gets very good results in both Google and Bing.

Some time ago, I wrote about another person who noted that my fly fishing site did not rank very well for the most ridiculous of terms and she promised she could have me on the first page of Google for the term. I managed to get do that myself in 24 hours just by writing about her email. But it's a pretty useless term for me to rank well for as no one would be searching on it. You can read more about that in this article on SEO companies.

Over the years, I have seen so much garbage spewed about in regard to search engine optimization that I wonder how some of these so called specialists stay in business. It is almost as if many of them want to come up with a theory that sounds good (the more complicated the theory, it seems the more likely others will accept the author of the theory as an "expert"), but has no basis in reality.

I've even come across individuals who have taken a short course on SEO and with little experience behind them, call themselves an "SEO expert."

If you own a business, it's likely that you could use some degree of search engine optimization along with maintenance. Be sure you find out exactly what the SEO company that is offering to help you has done in the past and ask for referrals.