I have to admit that Windows Live Writer is not too shabby at all.  It’s super easy.  Go to your Windows Update on your PC/laptop and look for ‘Custom Updates’ and you should find Live Writer.

Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: windows live writer,wordpress,live write,xp,vista,7,tutorial,how to,how-to,blog,blogging,windows phone 7,windows 7

Sorry for the lack of posting.  I’ll be short and just take this post to recommend a book I’ve been reading, titled ‘Predictably Irrational‘ (home page).  The book basically covers a wide scope of consumer and social behavior.  For example, every buyer decides whether or not to purchase something by weighing the positives and negatives.  By including the word “FREE” into your promotions (like free car wash with gas, buy one get one free, etc), you greatly decrease that negative consciousness and thus increase your sales.

Definitely a book worth reading for 2009.

peace

Keyword Research

I use Google’s Adword’s keyword volume tool to look to see if a keyword is even worth targeting in the search engines.

[ https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal ]

Backlink Analyzer

I use this tool every so often when I want to see how many backlinks my site is getting.  Occasionally I’ll use it to spy on a few of my competitors – but don’t tell any one that .

[ http://sitening.com/seo-tools/backlink-analyzer/ ]

Page Rank Checker

Okay, page rank has NOTHING to do with how well your website performs in the search engines.  Are you sure Kyle?  Yes, I’m sure.  I’ve experienced a complete page rank stripping (from PR4 to PR0) overnight, and my website’s search engine result pages (SERPs) continued to go UP!  Page rank is simply Google’s attempt at giving a website a “rating”.  I do use it occasionally because advertisers consider page rank when buying links from you.

[ http://sitening.com/seo-tools/page-rank/ ]

Google Analytics

Are you not running Google Analytics or some other kind of website statistic harvester?  The information I get from my Analytics reports dictates to me about 75% of the work I do.  It’s free and awesome.

[ http://analytics.google.com ]

SEO Analyzer

This tool tells you the top 5 keywords you’re getting traffic from, as well as a wide array of other useful information about your web presence.

[ http://sitening.com/seo-tools/seo-report/ ]

Again, these aren’t just any SEO tools.  These come from my own, personal collection of bookmarks that I visit frequently.  Consider them very resourceful for you and website(s).  Hope this helps!

I’m all about major upgrades.  Did you know that WordPress has received almost 2 Million downloads since 2.3 was released?  WordPress is free, easy to use, but most important, stable.  Since WordPress has become such a widely used Content Management System (CMS), the coders on the dark side are always trying to breach its security to take advantage of people’s websites.  So, here is 2.5 to keep up with the security issues, as well as a few more features the WordPress team added.

If you’re upgrading: ALWAYS backup your MySQL database and your WordPress directory files.

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

“The winning bids totaled $19,592,420,000. That’s nearly double the amount the commission had hoped to raise from the spectrum being abandoned next year as television stations switch to new frequencies”. -NyTimes.com

Why is this such a big deal?

If you aren’t aware, the wireless spectrum up for grabs here will give the winning bidder

access to some of the best remaining spectrum — enabling them to send signals farther from a cell tower with far less power, through dense walls in cities and over wider territories in rural areas that are now underserved. – NyTimes.com

What we the consumers can expect…
Expect a higher demand in mobile devices. Data will be pushed across this wireless spectrum much more freely.  I predict to see a massive explosion of mobile internet browsing and sharing (right now, only about 10% of mobile phone users use the internet).  Bittorrent P2P sharing will boom as people will be more willing to share data if the speeds are faster.  Very exciting stuff…

In order to make this post qualify for the subject of this blog (SEO/SEM marketing), I should mention that funny videos are great link bait for your website. Link bait refers to content that most web publishers or bloggers would want to link to you. Everybody loves to laugh, which is why CollegeHumor.com has such high link authority, page rank, and rank highly for most competitive keyword terms. I’m not talking about simply embedding funny videos into your website, but making your own. It takes time, but it has a high success rate.

TLA’s Text Link Price Calculator requires you to enter your website address, website category, # of text links to be sold, and to choose between site-wide or single-page links. To the right of this form is a “map” of a standard website layout. You choose where you plan on placing the text links and the price is weighted accordingly.

The results aren’t that accurate – as in, the tool doesn’t consider many other factors that might affect the price you might charge your advertisers. There is definitely room for improvement. Right now it seems their algorithm for finding an estimated price is based on link popularity, link position on page, single or site-wide, quantity of links being sold, and possibly some other calculations made behind the scenes.  For noobs or semi-experienced people, this tool might give a good example of the “going rates” for text link these days.

You might also be interested in Patrick Gavin’s Link Building Blog.

One of the best online tools I’ve seen to this very day.  Sign up at Mint.com.  Best of all, it’s free.

Surprised to hear that? It’s true though. At this time at least. I wanted to be clear that I’m not trying to paint Google as a potential candidate as a monopoly. However, I really do believe that Google will be going under review by U.S. Authorities (in due time) for breaching some anti-trust laws.

Here’s how to look at it: You have 3 large web engines (note how I replaced ‘search engine’ with ‘web engine’) – Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Each of which are located on Alexa’s top 10 websites. Would it surprise you to find out that Google is actually ranked 3rd out of Yahoo! and MSN?

What I’m trying to get at is this: Google seems HUGE doesn’t it? Google SEEMS to be the largest site in America – but it’s not.

Why?

For one it’s not as old as Yahoo! or MSN. Google started gaining most of its popularity in 2000/2001. I remember when I was sitting in class one day in 8th grade, my computer teacher recommended that we stop using Yahoo! for web searches and start using Google from now on. Why? She said “because it’s better”. Oh. Well thanks for teaching me that, teacher.

What really started happening was Google began focusing on power. Yes, power. Not energy power; more like social, political, and economic power.

Google has about 100 established web applications currently available to the world. And here’s the thing – THEY’RE FREE! This is what sets Google apart from MSN and Yahoo! – Freeness. Google giving the public free access to applications that can help benefit the user is a brilliant business model. Why? Because Google knows that the strongest commodity you can own is a user base (or information). Not just any user base, but a user base with EXTREMELY detailed statistics about either the user or their website – wait, or their videos, or their pictures, or their revenue, or their ad budget.  Are you catching on?

And this is what Google is working on right now. They want information about everything. So they create these web applications (free of charge, of course) and basically watch the internet (or the world for that matter) pour in and give them the information or database that they want.

This is why it’s at least a legitimate claim to say that Google has the potential of being accussed a monopoly. Google would be stupid for buying out any website before it gets too big. Why? Well, say Google buys out Yahoo! and MSN. Google will then be held responsible for most of the web’s traffic – literally. This will raise so many lawsuits between Google and individuals, companies, and yes, the Federal Government.

Either way, there’s not much stopping it.  I would hope Google has smart enough staff to realize the potential harm the company can have if they ever get too big.  What?  You didn’t know there was such a thing as being too big? Companies that are driven by greed rather than intelligence are those who fall into evil – and nothing good comes from evil.