Custom Web Designs by Bay Area Web Design Company MJS Web Solutions Building Websites That Can
   Actually be Found		 Contact Us | Our Company | Home
510.523.7312
MJS Blog
Thoughts :: Opinions :: Trends

Monday, August 27, 2007
Keep On Track With a Simple To Do List

To Much To Do List Post ItEveryone has got their own way of keeping track of projects and tasks.

For larger projects, I use the Project Manager solution in Goldmine. For most of my everyday work and personal tasks, I use a simple customized spreadsheet.

I used to just use a plain piece of paper, but now my to do list has gotten much larger and in dire need of some improvements.

Here is my new simple to do list (.pdf).

I print out a blank sheet and fill it in for a few days, cross off (my favorite part) completed items and migrate ‘open’ items to a new sheet. It works for me.

Mike Swartz says, “Check it out”.

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 2:36 pm

Comments: None | Filed under: Personal, Business


Monday, August 20, 2007
Ask.com Still Doesn’t Provide Relevant Search Results

Don't Ask.comI have a post called How to Get the Highest Price on eBay. If you type “how to get the highest price on ebay” into Google, our post is #1.

I thought I would give Ask.com a try (a chance). I typed in, “how to get the highest price on ebay”. The first result is “How to get the highest price for your home - Jupiter, FL – Carole …”

I understand maybe why my page wouldn’t be number one, but the first page is not even about eBay. It’s about “your home”. I didn’t ask (pun intended) how to get the highest price for my home.

I click on the link to give ask.com the benefit of the doubt…maybe the page will be about “your home” on eBay? Nope. The word “ebay” doesn’t even exist on the page.

Don’t Ask. They Still Don’t Know

Apparently, Ask.com still needs a lot of work to provide a more relevant search. This is why I continue to use Google and NOT ask.com.

P.S. I noticed the paid searches had no problem finding the word eBay. Is there something to this? Does Ask.com want to make money or provide better searches for the user? You tell me.

Mike Swartz says, “Don’t check it out.”

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 8:58 am

Comments: None | Filed under: Web General, SEO


Monday, August 13, 2007
Partnerships in Business

Though I am not a big fan of the extra fees Ticketmaster applies to each ticket purchase, I have to commend them on their partnership business deals.

You can see in the image below, Ticketmaster has teamed up with iTunes and Facebook (and vice versa). I have iTunes and I did go to the iTunes store and download the sampler. Everyone benefited from my one action: Ticketmaster, iTunes and the bands on the sampler.

Ticketmaster Business Partnerships with iTunes and Facebook

The most important business partner piece is the Facebook Users reference, “Are You Going to This Show”? Facebook is becoming the next revolution on the internet and what better way to promote Ticketmaster - and the band that I purchased - than to recommend them to my friends, immediately, on Facebook.

More…

After I purchased my tickets, it wasn’t over yet. I received a coupon from Netflix, with the tickets, asking me to sign up to receive 3 free rentals.

Creating and establishing partnerships in the online world is more important than ever. Facebook, Yelp, MySpace and other social networking sites are becoming the future of the internet.

Creating Business Partnerships

Who can you partner up with? If you’re a Realtor, you can partner up with Title companies, mortgage brokers, real estate lawyers, home inspectors, etc. How? Ads on each other’s websites or being included in their newsletters.

Mike Swartz says, “Check it Out”.

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 1:07 pm

Comments: None | Filed under: Web Marketing


Monday, August 6, 2007
How I Got My WordPress Blog Posts Out of Google’s Supplemental Results

Google's Supplemental ResultsWhoohoo!

Thanks to cheesehead2 on Web Master World’s forum, all of my WordPress blog posts have been removed from Google’s supplemental results.

Here is the code I used:

< ?php if(is_home() || is_single() || is_page()){
echo '‘;
} else {
echo ‘‘;
}?>

Just add the above code into the HEAD tag of your header.php file.

The Problem Was…

I was wondering why I wasn’t getting the traffic I expected from my new WordPress blog, so I did a search on Google (site:www.mjswebsolutions.com) to find out what web files Google was indexing on my site.

Apparently Google had indexed my blog posts, but they put them in the Supplemental Results. Supplemental results are just that…supplemental. They don’t show up when you do a regular search.

Doing some detective work I found out that when WordPress is setup, it creates many links to the same page (i.e. Calendar, categories, etc.). Google was recognizing this as duplicate content, so I implemented the fix above.

The fix above basically says: index only the blog homepage and each blog post and do not index anything else (i.e. category pages, calendar pages, etc.). As soon as I implemented the fix, my blog posts appeared within the regular search results and were removed from supplemental hell. A proud day. :-)

UPDATE: As soon as I implemented this fix, Google ups and decides to ‘hide’ the Supplemental Result indicator from their results. Whaaaa?

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 5:18 pm

Comments: None | Filed under: SEO


Support  |  Partners  |  Site Map
Alameda Chamber of Commerce Member
West Alameda Business Association Member (WABA)		 © Copyright 2008 MJS Blog. All rights reserved.
Powered by WordPress.
Login