Dec

10

Comment on Andy Jenkin’s Blog

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If you have anything to do with SEO, or web site optimization you must have head of Stompernet and Andy Jenkins (even though Andy is not with Stompernet any longer – really wonder what happened there.)

By the way, in my eyes stompernet was Andy Jenkins – I still read what Andy has to say, but more and more skip over the emails from stompernet. This is how it happened that I read Andy’s blog on the clarification of the new FTC rules. This blog was more or less a pointer to an interview of an FTC agent by Jim Edwards (an internet marketer.)

You might be aware of the fact that my political tendencies are towards the complete abolishion of the rule by the few (aka government.) This made listening to this interview very taxing for me, as the interviewer acted as if the interviewee was an equal or even higher-up to be bestow his wisdom upon us. For god’s sake, he was talking to a bureaucrat!

I did not think that a comment on Jim Edwards blog would have made any effect, so I did not comment there, but with Andy I had the idea a comment, I would post, would stay there, especially after the great broomstick metaphor in a comment by Dan Thies, another great man in the internet marketing arena.

In order to ensure the survival of this comment I also want to post it here. You might have to go to Andy’s blog and from there to Jim’s interview to get the whole story, but anyway, here is what I had to rant:

Oh man, this got my blood boiling! What’s really frustrating are these comments like “good info, thanks!” The only light in the tunnel was Dan Thies broomstick metaphor, which shows a bit what all ‘agencies’ are about – initiating violence.
Reasonable men, if they have a disagreement, sit together and work it out and come to a mutually acceptable agreement. Not agencies! They work like bullies: “We tell you how it is, and if you don’t do was we say – - – you know where the broomstick is, and how long it is!”
Still, we can learn from them: they came up with the idea that we don’t negotiate with terrorists. That is a good policy particularly if applied to them, because they are, in fact, the terrorists, a they initiate force. You don’t think what they do is initiating force? Think again: they issue a fine (or sue you, which is the same because the courts belong to them and are paid by them), and you don’t pay. Then you see that it IS force – just play it through in your mind.
The only reason I write this is to plant this little seed in your mind, that you all see that ‘agencies’ are agencies not for us but only for themselves, that they are not our friends that will protect consumers. That’s just double talk to hide the fact that they are taking more control by threat of stealing and imprisonment.
Yes, follow the rules (for now) but keep in mind, that the tyrants are not here to help you.
A slave master can only stay what he is as long as the slave behaves as a slave – stop being a  slave. Resist with every fiber, without the need to put yourself in danger, but resists, don’t see them as the benefactor.
And above all, see them as different from you. They are not one of us, where we all work together to make the world a better place. See that anybody who has the idea to know better than you, how to live your life, is to be met with at least suspicion.

Nov

19

Does this Blog have a Theme?

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I sometimes ask myself, if this blog has a theme – and I usually come up with the result that it does not, at least not in the way as internet marketers, bloggers and SEOs define it.

It certainly has the theme of showing all the things that irk or interest me – but I suppose that is a category that is only relevant to me.

Now I got reminded again through Steve Pavlina’s blog article “How to Make Money From Your Blog” that, in order to be able to monetize a blog, it needs some kind of focus on some niche. Does that mean that I will never be able to monetize this blog which has pretty good search engine ranking?

So far I have used this resource of good standing with Google to tell the search giant to come by and take a look at a site that I needed to get indexed quickly. One of these sites was our tie-dye clothing site ThaiDye.com that, whenever I mentioned it here on this blog, gets a visits from Mr. Google the next day.

With a site as broad as this – I mean what could be broader than all the things that irk me? – I probably have to do it the other way around – get a real niche site going very strong and then this can drive traffic to my catch-all site here. And then I might actually be able to monetize this site – huh, maybe…

Feb

6

Searching for the Most Intelligent Guy on the Web

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The Most Intelligent Guy on the InternetAbout a year ago I made this experiment in SEO to see how with a – admittedly – not very often used search term I can dominate the search engines. So I posted this blog post about the most intelligent guy on the whole web and got it to rank #1 on Google quickly.

But today, when checking out something at Google’s webmaster tools I noticed that the link to this post generated a 404 error – oops! It took me a while to notice what was different in the URL that worked and the one that did not. A little sub-directory /blog/ – I had moved Wordpress from it’s directory /blog/ down to the root of the web site.

The whole thing turned out to be a false alarm because Google had also indexed the later version of the site without the /blog/ and the page was found just fine. But as I was already looking into this I thought why not revisit the issue and strengthen my position as the most important guy on the internet and everywhere else.

So, yes, if you ended up here on this page then you probably – for whatever sick reason – searched for the this one totally smart guy on the web. I suppose you were hoping to find your name – sorry – but that position is taken by your’s truly Merlin G. Silk!

So, I would suggest you get a life and do something constructive.

C Ya!

Dec

26

A Lesson in Search Engine Optimization

Filed Under Computer, Marketing | 5 Comments

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a challenging field that I have myself involved in. It is like one big puzzle of little pieces of information how Google is doing this and how Yahoo is doing that. Once the pieces of the puzzle come together closer and closer we actually get an image of how this all might work.

Backlinks are the big item of highest value. A backlink is a link from another site to the one being optimized. Google sees that as a vote for the site – Google listening to the ‘word of mouth’ of the internet.

Now, if an ax murderer is talking highly about you that might not be considered a good vote for you and your character. That means Google is looking for ‘quality’ links, it is disregarding links from sites that just list one site after the other. The question is then what is a ‘good’ link, and this article is an attempt to find out.

I will report how it went.

Feb

20

The Most Intelligent Guy on the Internet

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The Most Intelligent Guy on the InternetYes, you found him – the most intelligent guy on the internet, me, Merlin Silk! Now for me the question arises, why did you actually look for this elusive most intelligent guy on the internet – why not the most handsome guy on the internet.

Admitted, you probably would have come here too.

You might be wondering why there is a page for this oh so intelligent guy making waves on the internet. Let me tell you what’s behind this post here.

It is actually a research project in SEO (Search Engine Optimization for all of you who are not involved in internet marketing.) I thought about a search term like intelligent guy in the world or maybe the internet to optimize a page for to see what I will have to do to rank on the first page of Google.

I did not want to make it too difficult for me by selecting a search term like “coolest guy on the internet” – that is taken by a master of SEO, so I thought I might tackle that later.

There was no page that was actually titled The Most Intelligent Guy on the Internet, so I thought I go for this one.

Search engine optimization is really an interesting game to play. It requires the willingness to play games with the big players on the internet, you certainly need some intelligence to grasp all the rules, but you don’t really have to be a guy, a gal will do just as well.

Often people who do SEO think they are battling the search engines to subdue them to show their pages at the top of search results, but this is actually not true. The real target is the other website that competes for that position in the search engine. If there is no competitor you have it very easy to find you spot at the top of Google. But then again what would it be worth if nobody is interested?

With the internet and so many intelligent guys and gals on it – if nobody is searching what you have to offer there is probably no interest.

Anyway, if you want to help out making me indeed the most intelligent guy on the internet put a link to this article on your web site or blog with the link text that’s a bit varied from the standard title of this page.

Why don’t I give a few examples of what you could paste into your post.

A pretty smart guy

Make sure not to break a line where it should not be broken.

A rather intelligent guy on the internet
The most intelligent guy on the internet
This guy thinks he is so smart on the internet

OK – let this be enough – thanks!