Top Ten Music CD’s
I have posted a managed list of the most popular music CD’s, this list updates automatically so as a CD falls down the rating it will be replaced by a higher rated one so that you will always be accessing the latest and up to date list of popular music.
Internet Marketing & SEO
Links Exchange
Lots going on this week, I have been reviewing what the Link Exchange does for me, having added a new links.cgi page to my curtains and cushions website which is automatically formatted by the Link Exchange program when you follow their instructions for creating code and implementing it on your website.
There are 4 options for adding code to create the links page but beware your host needs to support the option you choose. For me it was Perl as that was the only format my host supports (I mentioned this in an earlier post), it was a bit tricky but it’s done now.
As for a verdict I am still out to court, I was hoping to find lots of websites which were looking for links and that had a synergy with curtains and cushions i.e. if the sites you link to are not relevant to your content then you are probably doing more damage than good. Anyway to cut a long story short, of all the categories available I had to rule out probably 80%, then on the categories which were relevant I could only find about 15 sites I was prepared to link to.
The process is manual, you have to apply to link and wait for approval, likewise when people request to link to you then you also approve manually or not as the case may be. So you need to check fairly regularly for requests, doesn’t take long but you still need to do it.
Anyway of the 15 I applied to, only 2 have approved so far and 1 declined (guess that’s the way of the world) so I am still waiting on the other 12. I guess I need to give it a bit more time, there are a lot of busy people out there and they may not have been able to get back to the exchange to review their requests or they may have given up on it, only time will tell. I will keep you posted, but you have the link above if you want to take a look yourself, you never know what you are up to might suit a lot better than what I am doing.
Sitemaps
I finally managed to get my sitemaps sorted out and successfully submitted to google. Whats he talking about I here you asking. Well to improve the way google spiders your website you can create a site map for your website in .xml format, then you upload it to your host and you use the webmaster tools in google to tell them its there. They check it and tell you if it is good to go , unfortunately mine wasn’t and as .xml is new to me I wasn’t too sure why.
Ended up downloading a dedicated .xml writer called XmlStudio which is published by Liquid Technologies Ltd. when you load the file into their program you can validate the code against the format of the required schema and it tells you where all the errors are, cool eh. Well once I had done that it was just a question of correcting the highlighted errors and re-submitting and hey presto google told me all was well in my life, so now I can be spidered more easily and they can find all my content better, sounds a bit painful but believe me this is good.
More Traffic to your Site
Nearly finished (sigh of relief) but I have to tell you about Firestorm, I gave you the link in my previous blog broadcast.
This is well worth checking out if you want traffic, basically you use the social book marking tools like Stumble, Digg, Reddit, Technorati and more to advertise your websites to the world wide web, with a bit of help from some friends and putting a bit of effort in yourself you can create a decent amount of traffic to your websites.
Now if your websites are worth visiting you will find that people come back and recommend to their friends using the social book marking tools, on the other hand if you are asking people to look at a load of rubbish it is unlikely you will ever see them or any of their friends again. So it is still about good content that is relevant, that means make sure you are very clear and tell people what they are about to look at.
Gathering info for a new Hub
Just to let you know, we had a day out in Toulouse last week, had a good old tour around and I am putting a day out article on HubPages to let people know what we got up to. I plan to finish it after I have posted this so you may need to check back before you can see it – good to go now I have finished it.
Anyway that’s it for now, I need to get on with my day in Toulouse so I am off. You may see a few changes coming soon, I think I am beginning to understand this blogging thing now I have been at it for a few weeks so I am probably going to re-organize and split the earning a crust into some distinct categories so people can find what they are interested in more easily. I will explain it all when I do so you know where to go for the stuff you are interested in.
If you need more detail or a clearer explanation on any of the things I have talked about, just subscribe to my blog and drop me a line and I will see what I can do. I realize I am talking about a lot of stuff but not saying exactly how to do it (well I can’t give all my secrets away, well not yet anyway) so if you are interested and have a specific need let me know.
