Small Business Local SEO Services

Yes, I said, the absolute best article spinner!

I provide content for many of my SEO clients. This content is then distributed to blogs, article directories and other websites that provide an opportunity for content distribution. To get the best use possible for the articles that are written, they need to be spun so that each article is significantly different than the original. I have tried every article spinner available online. Most are a waste of money and time. However, I have tested and approve of what I consider the absolute best article spinner available.

If you need a good article spinner, you need to check it out. I am confident you will be pleased with this article spinning software.

It has been exactly six years ago today that Alex came into our home and never left. He was 18 months old on that day. I still remember his entrance through our front door. Alex had been living with My wife’s mother and Mandi had asked me about Alex living with us a few weeks before that Christmas visit but I really had not given it much thought. If I had, I am not sure he would be with us now. I remember deciding to let God decide.

At that time, I had been going to church on a regular basis for the first time in my life. One of the things that had been coming up on a weekly basis was that I should give my problems to God and he would handle the details. To me, Alex living with us was a potential problem, so I gave the whole issue to God. On that day, when I turned to see Nana and Alex coming through the front door, I knew in my heart that he would never leave.

He didn’t.

Six years later we have almost completed all of the legal requirements to finalize the adoption of Alex. It has taken years and cost greatly but it has been worth every minute and every dime. Alex has made a better man of me than any other person that has ever been in my life. I am sure that will always remain true as we continue through life together.

Just a quick post to praise my long time web host.

This week I had the misfortune to have to deal with a new clients web host. Yes, I will name the company. Network Solutions is a joke. The client has a content management system website through their hosting service. There was a problem creating new pages so the client contacted the support department inquiring about the issue. The next day there was a reply that in no way addressed the question that was asked. A second attempt to find out the problem failed when the reply back again did not address the question that was asked.

As I said, Network Solutions is a joke. At least their support department is a joke.

Anyway. Back to the reason for this post. I have used Hostgator for almost ten years. I have never had a problem with their hosting services. I have had some issues with some of the blog sites that I host with them but the problem was with my sites, not their hosting of the sites. Every problem I have ever had was addressed by a confirmation email instantly and a reply by a knowledgeable support person within an hour at the most.

The best part, the support person in every instance fixed the problem I was having without any further communications with myself. Obviously the support staff at Hostgator is well trained. Never have I ever received a reply to my inquiry that did not directly address the problem at hand. Something Network Solutions might want to work on.

I have to share this because apparently thousands of people a month search for a solution to this problem.

How to uninstall Microsoft Office 2007!

I tried the uninstaller info on the Microsoft website and it did not work. Approximately five minutes into the Microsoft Office 2007 removal, I would get a message saying the removal was not possible, blah, blah, blah.

I tried to remove Office 2007 several times with the same result. Apparently, without the installation CD, removal is impossible. Or is it?

No it is not. I found a way and I have to share it.

Go to this site: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Uninstallers/Remove-Office-2007.shtml

Download the free and safe Microsoft Office 2007 removal tool. Run the program and Office 2007 is removed.

GeoCities, a longtime Internet destination and web space provider is being shut down by Yahoo. The online destination which was bought by Yahoo in 1999 for a hefty $3.6 billion apparently has no value at all according to Yahoo. Although receiving over 10 million unique monthly visitors as recently as last month, Yahoo is closing the doors.

I say this to emphasize the joke Yahoo has become as a online “business”. I am frequently asked by small business owners wanting to rank their business websites, “What about Yahoo?” Well, ranking for Yahoo is hit and miss and there really is no real search volume  there anyway. Yahoo Local has some value but if no one is searching in Yahoo, Yahoo Local’s benefits are minimal.

You can read the full story here.

Google delivers ranking results based on relevancy above all else. The most relevant result for any search in Google will be pulled from sites that are geographically tied to the country of the search origin as a default.

This has been tested and proven by SEO professionals around the world. It can be a little more expensive but it will be difficult to rank a .com in the majority of the search results where a .co.au or .co.uk populates the results.

How many foreign websites do you see in the search results for searches done in the US? I do not see many, unless searching for foreign websites or topics.

I don’t use Internet Explorer as my Internet browser. That is because Internet Explorer sucks. I have felt this way for years. My distaste for IE started several years ago when I started making a living as a web designer. I am not going to get into all of the details here as I have a more recent example as to why Internet Explorer still sucks.

The image above is a screen shot of my homepage to this site in IE7. Do you know what’s missing? If you are using Internet Explorer to visit my site right now you probably do not know what is missing. I will tell you. My sidebars are not there. They are completely gone. Also, the homepage stops about half way down the page. Now the crazy part is, if you click on any of the posts listed on my homepage and go directly to the post pages, the sidebars are then there, but not  on the homepage.

I tried updating to IE8 hoping that might correct the problem but it did not.

So, Internet Explorer still sucks.

If you want a much better web surfing experience, I recommend you do what I did several years ago and start using the Firefox browser. You can download it here.

Luckily, the majority of my visitors already use Firefox.

The image is a little hard to read. The blue part of the graph is my Firefox visitors and the green part of the graph is my Internet Explorer visitors. The good news is, the majority of my website visitors are seeing my site just as it was designed.

I have posted some very important information on this site. I have received emails thanking me for my post on locating blogspot blogs for links. Blogspot blogs carry tremendous authority and a link from almost any of these blogs will greatly help your website’s rankings.

I have also received positive feedback from my post on directory listings. Both of these posts deal with the benefits of links for your website’s rankings. It is, after all, links pointed toward your site and the link text in those links that makes your website rank.

Links are the most important element of SEO.

That being said, I have to report, the absolute only way some websites will ever get to the first page of any very competitive Google search is through paid links.

I know some of you have read about the dangers of link buying. How Google will penalize your website rankings if you buy links. I have read the same articles and guess what? Paid links still dominate the majority of the most competitive search results. I have seen over the last year or so that paid links are also very popular with many search results that are not as competitive.

This is because paid links rank a site.

Literally a hand full of paid links costing on average of $500.00 to $1,000.00 a month will rank almost any business website for any relevant search phrase that makes that business money. These paid links will put you in first position for that very important money phrase and many related phrases as well. First, second and even third position for many online businesses equals huge revenue month in and month out.

The cost of the links are more than worth the expense.

I have wanted to post this info for quite some time. However, as a “SEO”, discussing link buying out loud is considered taboo. I’m not scared by much. My job is to increase website traffic, SEO is the process that makes that happen. Specifically, inbound links make that happen. It takes links to rank. It takes large numbers of inbound links to rank and for an increasing number of online businesses of all sizes, it will also take very high authority, high quality links to rank and these links are what you get when you buy links.

Every website can benefit from high authority links. If you would like to discuss the benefits of these types of links on your website’s rankings, contact me today. In a few minutes on the phone, I can do a little research and tell you if the sites that rank where you want to rank are buying links.

If you can’t beat’em join’em

The search industry is filled with more than it’s share of information sources, some good, in my opinion, most not quite up to par. Of these information sources, a few I consider very good. One such source, Web Pro News.

One of the things I hear repeatedly on those less than cutting edge SEO blogs and even many websites of providers of SEO is talk of keyword density. This is my opinion of keyword density:

This went out with 1999. Actually, many top SEO professionals have stated publicly that keyword density never really existed, except as a part of a service that could be sold to the unsuspecting website owner. There are still many so called SEOs who reference this relic of an idea but it really tells more about their lack of SEO knowledge more than anything else.

Do not concern yourself with keyword density.

This is posted here.

It would seem that one of my favorite sources of real SEO and search marketing information has the same opinion as I do.

Keyword Density – This one might surprise you a little bit.  Keyword density is kind of a joke.  It is in fact NOT desirable to work 500 instances of your target keyphrase into the text of your target page.  I know this seems counter intuitive to some, but I for one was very glad to see this claim supported by some data in the Ranking Factors session.

If your page is about Blue Beach Widgets, you have Blue Beach Widgets in your title and you have pages linking to your blue beach widgets page with the terms ‘blue beach widgets’ in the anchor text THAT is good.

You do NOT have to whore out the content of your page to have ‘blue beach widgets’ repeated 50 times in the description.  I know you have seen these pages…  they look like:
“Bob’s Blue Beach Widget Emporium has the finest selection of blue beach widgets on the web.  Our blue beach widgets are so much better than our competitor’s blue beach widgets, that all of our blue beach widget customers all think our blue beach widgets are the best blue beach widgets ever. So if you need a blue beach widget, or have a friend that needs a blue beach widget, tell them to visit the blue beach widget emporium to find the best blue beach widgets in the blue beach widget business”

This has to stop people. It makes your site read like a bad skit on the Muppet Show. This kind of thing makes me cringe, and it’s ruining the Internet.  Well maybe it isn’t ruining the Internet like MTV ruined America, but it does make for some horrible web pages.  I still hear SEOs talking keyword density to site owners.  If you are a site owner and some SEO comes talking to you about increasing your keyword density, do everybody a big favor and throw something at them.  Please.

The entire article summarizing ranking factors for 2009 can be read here.

Other than my site, Web Pro News is an excellent source of REAL search engine optimization information that can be put into use on your website today.