09/8/08
One of the most common mistakes I see many web developers make is trying to hide webpages from search engines while making it incredibly easy for people to discover those pages. Your eyes may start to glaze while reading this, but stay with me…this will save your booty at some point. The first and most common mistake is the use of a robots.txt file. Basically what this file does is tells spiders (search engines) what files and directories to scan. You can usually see if a website has one by simply adding a /robots.txt after their domain name. For example, you could see Google’s by going to http://www.google.com/robots.txt, which reveals numerous directories they don’t want search engines to scan…interesting stuff if you’re into that sort of thing.
So…how can this be a bad thing? Well, take a look at Google’s robots.txt again and notice how they disallow directories, which is the proper way of doing it. The mistake that some websites make is to disallow actual pages. It could say something like:
08/25/08
I’ve come across quite a few internet marketing ebooks over the years and thought I’d share some that I have gathered nuggets of info from along the way. All of these are free, but some require you to submit an email address before being able to download them…not a huge price to pay for what you get in return. Some of these are great to print out and take on a flight, outside on the porch, or even the bathroom (don’t act like you don’t take “reading material” to the bathroom). There are great pieces of info in all of these ebooks and I can fully suggest each of them.
Here they are in no particular order:
- Authority Black Book by Jack Humphrey (email submission required)
- Bend the Web by Jack Humphrey (email submission required)
- Link Building Secrets
- Blog Profits Blueprint by Yaro Starak (email submission required)
- Any of Michael Campbell’s free ebooks at Internet Marketing Secrets
- Wordtracker’s Keyword Research Guide
- Internet Business Manifesto by Rich Schefren (email submission required)
- The Attention Age Doctrine Part 2 by Rich Schefren (email submission required)
- Zero Dollars a Little Talent and Thirty Days by Jennifer Laycock
If you have found other free internet marketing ebooks that have helped you, please share it in the comments section below!
This post was inspired by the Group Writing Project over at PloBlogger…a website I highly recommend for anyone interested in internet marketing.
08/23/08
Is it just me or does Joe Biden remind you of Jeff Dunham’s Walter???
07/27/08
If you run any type of website aside from your dayjob, then you may or may not have some sort of goal to make enough extra funds from the site to do something “substantial” with. I put substantial in quotes as it is a relevant term to different people. Buying a house may be substantial to one person while buying lunch is more like it to someone else. For me, the goal was to take my family on a week-long vacation using only the funds made from a few blogs that I run in my spare time. If you would have told me a few months ago that this would be possible, I would have laughed as I knew the amount of time & energy I would have had to pour into making it happen. There probably wouldn’t have even been a family to take on vacation had I tried to “work harder” and “make more money online”. So what did I do? What changed? Simple…I worked smarter.
04/13/08
If you have been to this website prior to April, 2008 then you know that it looked very different and was primarily a portfolio of my projects that I completed mostly while I was attending The Art Institute Online up until I graduated in 2006. I’m sure you’re wildly thrilled to see the things that I’ve done in the past, but I’m switching gears and will be starting to use this site differently…to benefit you.
I’ve been involved in interactive media and marketing since 1996 and I’ve not shared as much as I could have as far as what I’ve learned along the way. All of that is about to change. I’ll soon be revealing all of the tips, tricks, and advice I’ve picked up along the way that cover design, development, search engine optimization, internet marketing, offline marketing, and so much more. I’ll cover a wide gamut of topics that all involve interactive media in some way, so if you get geeky about any of these things then I suggest you stay tuned. Keep track of me using the icons to the right, underneath my mugshot. You can subscribe to the rss feed, follow me on Twitter, add me to LinkedIn, or view my facebook profile. Whatever you do…follow my tidbits and you’ll be sure to pick up all sorts of ideas to improve your interactive projects!
Shane Eubanks
