Ask Steve

There was a time when listing your web site in a search engine meant simply placing every word you could think of in your meta keyword and then submitting your web site to alta vista or other such sites with as many keywords as you could. It seemed like everyone had the words sex and money in their keywords. And to some extent this worked as well as it could. Each word was seperated by a comma and the search engine would result any site that had any of those single words in the keywords. As search matured so did the need for a more mature approach and logging process. With billions of web sites available search engines started storing keyphrases. These days the more you know about your ideal or target customer the better. This allows you to refine the content and the keywords to as specific of a group as possible. If you are a auto repair shop specializing in hondas you know a few things about what your customers will be looking for; obviously they will be searching the words auto repair and probably honda, so there is a keyword phrase for you “auto repair honda”. But what else do we know? We can make a very educated guess that someone is not going to drive very far to get their car fixed. So how about we add some locality to our keyword phrase and now we have “auto repair honda portland oregon”. Go to Google right now and compare the result between “auto repair honda” and “auto repair honda portland oregon”. though even the phrase “auto repair honda” is specific enough that there are only 20,000 to 30,000 results when we add locality to it we can drop the result down to almost no one. You could have a 1st page listing day one with your site AND when you start to advertise you will find that you get much better ad results and that companies like displaying your ads because when a customer clicks on it they get what they want.

Before anyone emails me. YES! I know there is way more to SEO then just this one thing, but before you throw rocks think about how happy webpage owner would be with the results from just this.

For those of you that own a web site and just had a light bulb moment YES there is even more that can go with that to make your web site perform even better

The “pop-up” is perhaps one of the smartest, and most annoying, features ever created for the internet. A pop-up allows another webpage to open up The problem is that some smart person figured out that they could make the new page pop-up without asking you and could basically show you anything they wanted. EEK!! Don’t let that worry you though there are settings on your computer as well as programs you can install that will allow you to be in control of whether a web site and pop something up and you. Though you may find that using Firefox or another such browser is the sultions perhaps the easiest of all of these is to simply download Google’s version of Internet Explorer and just like that most all of your pop-up troubles will go away

When you search Google for any word often you will see two columns of information. These listing come from two seperate places. The main results which make up the left hand column are the results that Google has found from the stored information on the words you are searching. The right hand column are ads that have been purchased. Google does require these ads to still be relevant to the word(s) you searched. However, unlike the main search results where the listing are in order of their relevance to your search, the order the ads appear is based on how much the person is willing to pay for the ad. Each time one of these links are clicked on the company that has purchased the ad pays a small amount for this click. These links can be very good resources especially when you are looking for the best place to buy a particular item. On the other hand if you are looking for information, particularly free information, you will most of the time have better results from the main search results

If you have done many searches lately you have probably seen some results from many of the different Wiki’s. The most prominent of these is probably Wikipedia. Listed as an online dictionary, Wikipedia CAN be a great source for informaton, but that reccommendation comes with a caution.

A Wiki is a collaberative collection of information, normally open to all to post. Though many of these sites, incluiding Wikipedia, are moderated this doesnt mean that all the information contained there is accurate. Some Wiki’s like Wikipedia try to list information that has not been verified by an outside source as unconfirmed.

The advantage of a Wiki is the age old adage “two heads are better then one”. By allowing collaberation a Wiki can bring a collection of experts to a topic and give you the best and more up to date information available. Give a Wiki a try.

Some of you may be wondering about the dates on some of these posts. Some of them predate blog technology so why are they dated that way?

Over the last 15 or more years I have been answering internet and computer technology questions. Wherever possible I have copy and pasted the question and the response from the email or it came from. Many of these questions I get almost every day. As best as is possible I have posted the 1st time I can find this question was asked of me to as the intial date for the posting. I continuously pour over the old questions and answers, usually because they are asked again and make updates to any answer listed here as needed to insure that the answer is current, up to date and accurate for where we are today.

What this means to you is that rather then the old posts being out of date they are in fact the ones that are asked the most and the MOST up to date. So rest assured dear reader, I know that the internet is an ever changing universe and that you do not wish to know what was but rather what IS. As long as the internet has users there will be questions, as long as there are questions I will keep studying, and helping and providing you with the answer you need today for today.

Our internet company is more then 12 years old now. This years expansion is already record-breaking and the year has just begun.

Here comes our network of blogs and we want YOU as part of our team!

If you have ever been interested in blogging but didn’t know where to start or you want a web company of your own we can help. 

We have all the knowledge, domains, software, sales, marketing, business, as well as any other tools needed, the only thing we don’t have enough of is hours in the day. 

That is where YOU come in. 

We offer a complete training program that will teach you everything you need to know, all the same skill being employed by blogs making hundred of thousands and even millions of dollars monthly. 

Not only will you learn the skills, but you will be given an opportunity to share in profit of not just one blog but a whole channel of blogs! 

Sound like something you would be interested in! 

Other companies charge thousands of dollars for this same training that we are going to give to you ABSOLUTELY FREE!! 

This is your chance to be a part of a long term, well established internet service company that makes money blogging everyday. 

Training will include: 

 - How to blog 

 - What to blog 

 - How your blog can make more money then you ever imagined 

 - How to make money from the revenue from an entire channel of blogs 

 - Successful internet sales, marketing and support 

 - And Much, Much more 

This is a work from home, telecommuting full or part time opportunity 

You WILL NOT be asked to give us any money - ALL the training is FREE 

If you are an Aggressive, Competitive, Hard working, Self Motivated individual who want more then just a paycheck.  If you want to learn more then what you need to advance in our company, but what it take to succeed in business. Then you are the person we are looking for 

No Experience Needed

Training to Start IMMEDIATELY

Top performance individuals with entrepreneurial aspirations may be given the needed start up and funding items necessary to establish their own company or to make more money then you ever dreamt with ours. 

Stay at home moms and dads, college students and those new to the work place accepted 

Email us immediately! 

DONT MISS THIS OPPORTUNTIY 

As some of you may have seen on our about us page we have decided to come out of the shadows and build our own blog network.  Over the last several decades our sales and marketing techniques, both on and off of the internet, have been used by many other companies and have caused monumental results.  Growth in sales and as an overall company.  now it is out turn!

We are stepping out into the light with our own blog network. And the best part is you can be involved too.

Want to know more?

Check back here more details will be posted:)

In the new today Microsoft is again making an offer to Yahoo.  This 44.6 BILLION dollar merger offer which was announced on the 2nd of February would be a monumental combination.  Today there is even talks that Microsoft may up their offer to make the deal even more irressitable to Yahoo.

What would a merget like this mean to the internet.  Google has dominated the search engine market for the past several years with no real competition.  Some of the search engines simply went out of business, other have bought content from Google, and though Yahoo would be the closest competitor the competition isnt even close.  Can the power and resources or Microsoft turn this around?  Would Microsoft be able to do to Google like they did to resently shut down Netscape that was once the standard for web browsers?

As an internet user this really only means two possible outcomes to you.  Option one is that the new Micsrosoft owned Yahoo would need to learn the lesson of relevant content and provide much more accurate and relevant results.  This seems to be something that currently only Google has been able to provide. The other option is that Google will listen to their customers and step up to a much greater level of customer service then it has had to date. 

In either of these cases you will be the real winner.  Better quality and reliabilty and/or better service is always a good thing.

Some times when you click on a link you will get go to a “secure” page. Secure pages are special web pages designed for the secure transfer of sensitive information like for example your credit card information when you buy something online. You can always double check to see if you are on a secure page by look at the lock symbol in the bottom corner

That image means that you are on a site that is guaranteed to allow the safe passage of your sensitive information. If you remember from lesson one I stated that the internet is probably the safest place to use your credit card and the secure pages are why. In order for the lock symbol to show up on your page there are many things that have happened to protect you. First the ISP has to apply for a “Secure Certificate”. A Secure Certificate is sold them from a company that specializes in verifying that the information being passed from your computer across the internet to their server is safe. Once the web site is set up to use this certificate the lock will appear at the bottom of the page.
When you get to this web site and decide to buy something you the process of securing your transaction begins. Your computer sends a request to the server requesting a secure channel. The server that the web site you are buying from is on sends an identification number (certificate ID) both to you and to company that is securing the transaction. Think of this as it telling you its special secret password that only it and the security company know. The even better news is that before hand the web site and the security company have worked a special way of creating a unique password that applies only to you, only to this transaction and will only ever be used once. Now that your computer has the password and the name of the security company, your computer sends to the special security number to the security company. The security company verifies that the website you are buying from gave it the special arranged unique information in the proper format. Then the security company verifies that you and only you are the only one that has been given this information. Then it verifies that you are you by checking your password and your connection to the website. After the security company has verified that the information that is being passed is being done so only between you and the web site it then tells the web sites computer and your computer a special code called 128bit Encryption that you can use to pass information back and forth to each other while you are in this secure mode. So not only is the transaction specially checked to be sure no one is watching but even after all that for lack of a better term the 2 computers talk in a brand new language to each other the whole time they are passing the information so that IF anyone figured out how to listen all they would hear is a foreign language they don’t know.
Like any other form of security there are, of course, ways that it can be broken, however the work that is required to do so is more complex then literally any other means of credit card transaction that exists.

So often I find myself repeating the phrase “form follows function”  I cant even tell you anymore who told me that first, but I live by it every day.  I have seen some incredible website that were amazingly designed.  The sad part of that is that in almost every case the web sites that are the most hideous are the ones that make the most money.  All the research teaches you about the use of white space and how to focus your content to a single call to action and yet there are far too many affiliate marketers (and bloggers) who have no focus at all (ok lets call it what is is “clutter”) and yet they often consistantly make money — WHY?

The answer comes back to the same basic statement I made at the beginning. “form follows function” meaning that the way something looks is not nearly as important as the fact that it works.  Do you you have what the customer is looking for?  Have your words made it clear that what they are seeking you have?

And most importantly when it comes to your web site — GET STARTED