Because most of the information is the same and never changes it’s always great to come across a new voice that puts things into a short, understandable and usable format.  I mean really do we need a 3,000 word dissertation stating that good content and quality links help with SEO and site traffic?  Pfffft

This is why I like the site put together by Eugen Oprea.  The site is easy to navigate.  The stories are short and have useful information.  In fact with all my studies his recent post that Google+ is one of the few sites that has “dofollow” links was new news to me!

But don’t just take my word for it.  Check out his site today.  You won’t be disappointed!

Eugen Opera and I both use SEOMoz – check it out at http://mz.cm/t6wjyw

I’ve been working on websites for a looong time now.  This have changed over the years but basic html is still the same.  With everything and everyone basically living in the digital space it is more important than ever that everyone should know some html.  This is especially true if you own a business or have a hobby that you want to make some extra money off or promote.

Today I came across this great little site with some fantastic training videos.  If you ever wanted to know about building a website this is a great was to commit to a 30 day program.  Easy to understand and only 1 month!  How can you loose.  And did I mention that it’s FREE?

Check it out – http://learncss.tutsplus.com/

I have to say that I really like Google+ and having setup a brand page 24 hours ago I really like the pages.  They are clean and easy to use and understand.

How much this will have an effect on Google search results will be seen.  I really hope that Google keeps the interface clean and the experience nice.

Of course all the people that seem to be on Google+ right now are techies and early web adaptors.  I hope that more people start using this fantastic platform.

Recently I came across this article from a Charlotte web development company – http://www.theideapeople.com/our-blog/internet-marketing-charlotte/google-accounts-businesses-09112011/ – and although I don’t know anything about this company if you live in or around Charlotte you may want to check them out.  They seem to be up on the online marketing trends.

Within the past two days a lot of photographers have shown up on Google+ but how about models?  I’m having a hard time finding them.  Are you a model and want to Google+ page?  If you are in the Charlotte area contact The Idea People, if you are in the Great Lakes Bay Region of Michigan contact me!

David

With Google and Bing announcing that they are now going to use the schema.org format as a standard – how many man-hours is this going to waste for web designers?  Are web designers going to update all their pages or just hope to move forward and perhaps update the most popular pages on the sites to make sure they stay indexed or increase the exposure.  I’m sure if I ran a review site I’d be working overtime to get the code updated.

I know that I’m at least using the LocalBusiness itemscope for all the websites that I manage ASAP!  There is also a lot of question about what will and won’t work for specific types of content.  I’ve played with the Thing>CreativeWork>Photograph properties and found the basics to work when tested with the google tool.  For many of the properties schema.org doesn’t have good examples and the format seems to be to new for a lot of working examples to be out yet.

It will be interesting to see what and if the schema will make any significant result changes.

Now for the stats:

February showed 155 visits with 558 page views.
March showed 435 visits with 967 page views.  That’s a 180% increase in visits for one month!

If we can get another month of 180% increase April should have 783 visits.  Not to bad for 4 months work.  I think we should actually see a higher increase because we will be going from 100 businesses listed to 300.  Therefore I predict that your visits will be over 1,000.

So how many visits do we need to make some money?  My son is working for a cell phone.  The phone is $100 and the plan is $26.50 per month.  Because he gets 1/2 of the profit of the website we need to generate $250 in profit.  I think we are a few months off from that – unless we can get a sponsor or nice local ad contract.

Check out the site at:  http://saginawbusinesslistings.com

• WordPress SEO by Yoast – there is a little bit of setup but once it is installed it just runs.  Be sure to optimize the settings from the first time.
• WordTwit – I’ve tried a bunch of Twitter posting plug-ins and some worked, some didn’t at all and most were hit or miss.  This plug-in worked great from day 1 and has never let me down.
• WP-PageNavi – this seems to be the tried and true page navigation plugin to replace the back and next and number your pages.  Easy to use with most themes a little coding is required.
• Contact Form 7 – I have used a few other contact form plugins but always end up removing them and going back to this one.  Easy to use and works great.
• Micro Anywhere – not perfect but it works.  Depending on the theme some of the information may not look very clean and puts in extra spaces.
• GD Star Rating – get your website visitors to rate anything – posts, businesses, images – this is a fantastic easy-to-use plugin.

I’m sure I will be updating this post and I use more plugins.  Remember that plugins can send information to the author or other sources to do a little research and make sure that the plugin is recommended and has a lot of downloads.

Fast forward about 10 years and I was reading on SEOMoz that local directories are a becoming a huge part of a successful SEO campaign.  Once again I figured I was WAY ahead of my time on this idea.  In fact I read on a few SEO websites that they see local directories as a huge area of growth and opportunity for 2011.

I figured it was time to give the local directory a shot again.  I got some software and purchased the domain saginawbusinesslistings.com

Utilizing the search engines reliance on microformats I have made sure that the site is as up-to-date with search compatibility as possible.  This will give local businesses that want to participate in the directory a shot in the arm not just in organic search placement will boost the relevance in maps and local search.

Like most business websites there is a pay section on the site.  I’m trying to keep the cost very low to get a lot of businesses to jump on board.  Doing a manual website is a lot of work and a labor of love.  It would be nice if this could become a full-time business but only time will tell on that one.  Why would a business want to pay a little for an updated listing?  The main reason is to get an external link to their businesses website.  Why is an external so important?  Top SEOs believe that external links are the most important source of ranking power.  In fact most experts agree that of the top 5 ranking factors the amount and quality of external links is the #2 factor in getting a good search engine ranking. 

I am going to work hard to make sure that the search engines love this site and that it is not considered a link selling or link bait website.  I am not selling links – I am selling additional information about a local business.  Currently this site is a one man show and I don’t have the time or inside information to write a good business description for each business.  I can get an address, phone number and picture of the business very easily. 

So help me out – visit my site and give me information about your Saginaw County business.  I’ll list it for free even if you don’t want to pay!

For the first two years of my wifes store we were running ZenCart.  After having the shopping cart and email portions of that ecommerce system hacked, I deleted it off the account.  So since the website was created using WordPress we decided to use WP-Commerce.  The backend of this is so clunky that my wife was complaining all the time that she it takes to long to add products and it’s just not worth it and to take the online store down.

Years ago I had run many eCommerce sites using osCommerce on a Unix system.  I figured I would give it a shot again.  I have to admit that osCommerce may not be as plug-and-play friendly as ZenCart but the programming is a lot cleaner and hopefully more secure.

The template was fairly easy to modify – I did have to brush up on some advanced css coding.  The new online storefront is still a work in progress.  My wife likes the backend of osCommerce and I’m happy with the modification that I’ve done.    Thumbs up and lets see the sales start pouring in!

For the hottest fashions in Michigan visit - http://shop.a-girlygirl.com

Need your osCommerce site tweeked?  Want a custom template?  Contact me for a quote.

To test this theory I created a video blog and started putting the vehicle videos from YouTube on the blog.  I created a video XML site map and submitted it through Google Webmaster tools.  Most of the pages of the video blog were not indexed yet.  1 week into the experiment I’m not seeing any movement or improvement of the site at all.

http://labadieusedcars.com/

I’m attempting to make 3 posts per day and will re-upload the video sitemap once per week.

Related articles

• Video and Google TV (bruceclay.com.au)
• 3 YouTube Tools To Create An Easy Lean-Back TV Experience (makeuseof.com)
• New Local Opportunities: How To Rank Higher In Google Place Search (searchengineland.com)

This plug-in is simple to use and works exactly as it says it does.  Once installed you click on the MP3 Player from the “Insert” selection and add the URL for the MP3 file.  Because I can’t upload a file over 2MB using the WordPress backend I had to FTP the file to the server.

You can see my first post using MP3 Player at:  http://petethehammer.com/2010/10/zombie-debt-z93-radio-show/