SEO Search Terms Tagging 2

This plugin keeps track of what search terms bring people to your site.   You can put a widget on your sidebar that links to the pages where people are going with the text that they are searching for.  This can give you some benefit in search engines and raise your ranking for those particular search terms because they are now used as anchor text in link.  Of course you’ll get more search engine benefit if the links are on other domains, but it can still help within your own domain.

You can also display search terms at the bottom of the page.  So if someone ends up on Page A looking for “blue poodles” the term “blue poodles” will get added to a list at the bottom of the page.  This means that if people start coming to one of your pages for a particular search phrase, your page will automatically optimize to include that phrase in the content.  You can also show a count of the number of times that phrase has sent visitors to the page. Beyond optimizing the page with the specific keyphrases people are using, it makes it easy to look at a page and see how people are getting there.  This can help give you ideas for future posts or may point to a way to optimize the content to draw more traffic.

LJ Longtail SEO

LJ Longtail SEO is similar, but it allows you to add a widget that shows phrases where people are clicking through from the second page of the search results.  So if you have a page that ranks for “free podcasts” on the second page of Google, once someone follows the Google link to your site, LJ Longtail SEO will add the term “free podcasts” and link to the page your sidebar widget.  This helps optimize your site for terms that you may not even realize you are ranking for.  The majority of web users click on a link on the first page of their search results. Since it often takes only a minimal amount of optimization to move from a second page position to a first page position, this can be a very effective way to increase the amount of traffic you get automatically.

A while back I wrote what I thought was a humorous post about some odd trading in the stock market being proof of time travel.  Evidently not everyone thought it was funny. Here is a comment I received.

You’re clearly an idiot for thinking this, also if you’re saying this as a joke, you’re not funny.

I have no idea why this frustrated me enough to have to come up with a fake emial and write some **** down, but it has

So here is the funny part:  I wondered, “how did this person find my site?”  I mean he seemed pretty upset with the fact that I’m either a) an idiot or b) not funny.  It turns out he came from Google and was looking for “proof of time travel”. I’m afraid my post didn’t meet his needs.

Now I have no idea who this person is, but all I can picture is uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite who bought a time machine off eBay. Somewhere there is someone who is trying to find a way to go back in time to save his high school football game.  As he desperately searches the Internet he somehow ends up on my website and is filled with rage!

People Found This When Looking For:

• a website for angry people (1)
• angry people time travel (1)
• loocking for time (1)
• looking for time travel (1)
• time travel and people (1)

I just ran across a device called a hovermower. It looks like it is basically a hovercraft push lawn mower. Instead of using wheels, it forces air down into the deck and this creates a cushion for it to ride on. It is an interesting idea. The market it as being ideal for mowing steep inclines and around ponds.

I suppose there is some advantage in not having wheels that can get stuck when you try to pull it back up the hill, but it still seems a bit odd. The video makes it look like more of a replacement for a weedeater around ponds and on slopes.

People Found This When Looking For:

• hover mower (38)
• hover mower review (1)
• hovercraft mowing around ponds (1)
• hovermower (1)

These are my links for March 9th from 21:12 to 21:15:

• How I Learned Racial Discrimination – Teaching people to discriminate
• Tips for Effective Meetings – Use your meetings for arguing and get more done.
• Powerful Presentations – Present well.
• Parking Strategies – Save time, park fast.
• Income Diversification – Don't get too dependent on your job for your income.
• On the Job MBA – How to get an education while you are getting paid for it.

It sounds like the NY Times is planning on charging for online content.  Right now they ask you to register, but the content is free.  Rumors are that they will let you read a few articles for free before asking you to subscribe.

Maybe this will work, but I think it ignores the way the web is fundamentally different than a newspaper.  When I subscribe to a newspaper, I’ll probably read a good portion of it.  When I’m reading news on the web, I will read the articles I find interesting from a variety of different sites.  Subscribing to a newspaper that gives you 75% of your news probably makes sense.  Subscribing to a newspaper where you get 5% of your news is a harder sell.

For a subscription model to work well, I think you’d either need something like micro-payments or a subscription to a group of online resources. Micro-payments are problematic because they are confusing and because Americans seem to prefer unlimited or package options.  Subscriptions that give you access to a bunch of different web sites might work, but it would require publishers to work together.

Imagine a subscription where you can pay $20 per month and get access to the 20 top papers in the US, plus some sites like Britannica, etc.  Your subscription could be divided up between the publishers based on the number of articles, page views or time spent on each site.  As the number of subscribers grew, more publishers would want to be part of it to get some of the income pie.  As the number of publishers grew, more individuals would be interested in subscribing.

The company who seems uniquely positioned to pull something like this off is Google.  They could easily show subscribers results that they have access to, while showing non-subscribers what they are missing. Since Google controls a good percentage of the traffic for many of these sites, they would be a good company to handle the subscription process.  More importantly, if these companies simply start restricting access to their content, Google will probably stop showing their content in the search results.

So if you subscribe to WIRED magazine what do you get for free?  A wireless mouse of course.  In other news, Field & Stream is giving away chunks of asphalt and Scientific American is giving away dowser rods.

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less.

via Wall Street’s Naked Swindle

And it worked.  In less than a week, the trader turned his money into over a quarter of a billion dollars.  Funny thing is, no one knows who did it.

Some unimaginative types consider this to be a case of insider trading, but I prefer to think it proves the existence of time travel.

People Found This When Looking For:

• proof of time travel (34)
• time travel proof (21)
• Time traveler Bear Stearns (2)
• proff of time travel (1)
• timet travel proof (1)
• time travelling (1)
• time traveller with proof (1)
• time traveller proof (1)
• time traveler any proof (1)
• time travel proofs (1)

From the Wikipedia page on Brainstorming:

Some governmental organisations (The Welsh Development Agency and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Belfast) have reached the conclusion that the term ‘brainstorming’ is offensive to people with epilepsy. Some organisations have suggested the alternative “mind shower”. However, research by the National Society for Epilepsy found of those affected by epilepsy questioned, 93% found the term inoffensive. Some resented the term “mind shower” because of the suggestion that people with epilepsy were, as a group, easily offended.

I just finished watching a NOVA show on the Panama canal.  It was very fascinating.  A few things of interest:

• A private corporation in France started building the canal in 1881, but collapsed.  It was the biggest financial collapse up to that point in time.
• Approximately 22,000 people died while working there for the French corporation–primarily from malaria.
• Malaria was thought to come from the mist in the area and from rotting vegetation.  Doctors advised people not to breath the night air to avoid getting sick.
• The hospital during the French effort protected their lawn plants with a ring of water–which of course was a perfect mosquito breeding pool.
• When the US efforts started in 1904, there was a much better understanding of malaria and the disease was pretty much eradicated from the area.
• The locks don’t operate using gravity so pumps are not needed in their operation.
• The rainforests in the area fill a large lake that covers most of the distance between the two coasts.  The locks have to raise and lower the ships to the level of this lake.
• Moving a ship through the Panama Canal requires the release of around 52 million gallons of water from the lake to the ocean. This lake is replenished by the rain forest drainage.

Overheard about a mutual acquaintance:

He has pretty socialistic leanings–although they aren’t quite as strong as they were before he made a million dollars.