Helping out Fellow Bloggers
Bloggers have problems too. As much as living the life of avatars and behind the screen name there are real people. Earlier this week on twitter Shana of Social Desire requested help:
Then on her post she requested it again on her blog which you can read about on Social Desire. I submitted a guest post which if it makes it through the vigorous filters of Shanna you should see it soon. Stay tunned for the announcement of my guest blog post helping out a friend.
Around the first of this year I made a charity post and since I am in the feel of donating to an organization I would like to do another one here on the end of this post.
My charity of choice for this post is the American Sleep Apnea Association. The American Sleep Apnea Association is the only non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about sleep apnea and to serving people with this common disorder.
The American Sleep Apnea Association is dedicated to reducing injury, disability, and death from sleep apnea and to enhancing the well-being of those affected by this common disorder. The ASAA promotes education and awareness, the ASAA A.W.A.K.E. Network of voluntary mutual support groups, research, and continuous improvement in care.
From the ASAA Website
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is caused by a blockage of the airway, usually when the soft tissue in the rear of the throat collapses and closes during sleep. In central sleep apnea, the airway is not blocked but the brain fails to signal the muscles to breathe. Mixed apnea, as the name implies, is a combination of the two. With each apnea event, the brain briefly arouses people with sleep apnea in order for them to resume breathing, but consequently sleep is extremely fragmented and of poor quality.
Sleep apnea is very common, as common as adult diabetes, and affects more than twelve million Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health. Risk factors include being male, overweight, and over the age of forty, but sleep apnea can strike anyone at any age, even children. Yet still because of the lack of awareness by the public and healthcare professionals, the vast majority remain undiagnosed and therefore untreated, despite the fact that this serious disorder can have significant consequences.
Untreated, sleep apnea can cause high blood pressure and other cardiovascular disease, memory problems, weight gain, impotency, and headaches. Moreover, untreated sleep apnea may be responsible for job impairment and motor vehicle crashes. Fortunately, sleep apnea can be diagnosed and treated. Several treatment options exist, and research into additional options continues.
Twitter’s Demise
On my personal blog I made announcement that I am once again moving. This time it want be as a big of an adjustment so there shouldn’t be a long gap between post.
I read an article the other day about a “Student Twittering his way out of jail“. I have been hearing all the rave reviews about Twitter. I have had an account for a few months but never used it. Since I am going to be moving and I have a Twitter iPhone application setup now I will try it during the move. Check out my updates and follow me along my journey back to Alabama. Follow Chris on Twitter.
Pardon the actual video footage. I couldn’t find a good video to go along with the video. Taylor Hicks is from Alabama just like me. Enjoy!
SEO Experiment
This SEO test will be a part of a series I want to write about on the effects of the sitemap protocol and if it is really working. Hopefully by the end we will all better understand sitemaps and core principals about XML sitemaps. Stay tuned for more articles on the different sitemap related posts and the tools used.
The experiments
I am going to run an experiment testing sitemap.xml and hanging pages. This will not be a flawless test but it will help me prove my assumptions.
I have been telling clients that if you add a url to an XML sitemap that it will be discovered. Why do I say this? Often times due to different varying factors search engines have a hard time finding pages inside of dynamic content pages. This test is not going to be about accessibility or how content is delivered. The SEO Experiement is only about sitemap files.
The test is going to be limited to hard coding the url into an xml sitemap and see if it can be found. My assumption will not be a solution to linking or standard url structure.
We already know that Google, Yahoo, and MSN will index urls similar to http://www.domain.com/?=123. We also know that pages with session id’s are usually not indexed because of the session variables. What I am trying to prove is that a url listed in an XML sitemap will be found by Google, Yahoo, and MSN without back links and only submitted through the different search engine webmaster tools .
How I am going to do this test is by creating a unique page that is not linked by any other pages and add it to its very own xml sitemap to be discovered. Once I created the pages I will add the sitemap to the webmaster tools section of each search engine. I am going to create another page and add it to a urllist.txt (an old protocol used by Yahoo. In the xml Sitemap I am going to put in 1 page only that is free floating and see how long it takes to get indexed by each search engine. In the urllist.txt file I am going to add another page and see if it is indexed.
Assumptions/problems/and forecast - Hypothesis
The file will be picked up in Yahoo and cached much fast than Google with xml sitemap file. The urllist.txt file will probably not be found on MSN which will be one problem. The other problem with MSN is they don’t yet have a way to add multiple sitemap files through their portal, even though they read robots.txt. The files from the urllist.txt will be picked up first by Yahoo and Google will follow.
Scope
2 html pages
1 sitemap.xml page
1 urllist.txt page
Result
To be continued
Because I don’t want to spoil the experiment I won’t give the specifics locations of the files or exactly how I am going to do it. The experiment could take 1 day or 2 weeks. For now we will see. Stay tuned for the results and summary. More experiments are coming.
Back in the Saddle Again
After a long break from blogging I am back in the saddle again. I moved to New York City a little over a month ago and I am long over due on posting. So over the next few days look for me to publish some new info.
Some friendly reminders:
Don’t forget to up-date your blog software to the new version. - The lastest version comes with some pretty nice additions and cleans up the administration area. Make sure you check it out as it also comes with some DB upgrades.
Windows Vista is still a waste of time. My new job requires me to use it. It does have some promising features but overall it is more problem than good.
SEO World Update
In the world of SEO there is constantly some new tool that is forever popping up. Well I just found a user input search engine that is fully interactive and user contributed, Stumpedia. I have added several keywords and links. I have already found a couple ares that can and will be abused. I am not going to share them as it may cause problems and that isn’t right.
Google is updating
In addition to that gem of a find I have also started noticing a Google update happening. Webmaster tools are updated and Page Rank is being adjusted. I haven’t heard any official word but some major update is going on.
I couldn’t help but share those two bits of information as I begin final preparations for the beginning of the move. I am still seeking Guest Bloggers.
. 29 Feb 08 | Blogging, Fellow Blogger, Google, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, links | Read on | Comments (0)