Archive for September, 2009

How To Find Out When You’re Getting Lucky

Friday, September 18th, 2009

This isn’t anything new, it’s pretty old hat, and it’s pretty obvious too, but it is what I am doing.

One thing Eben Pagan pointed out in his Altitude program is that you need to know when you are getting lucky in business, and follow that route.

I’ve been figuring out where I’ve been getting lucky by digging in to the search result keywords for my blogs. Google Analytics has a neat feature that let’s you see what keywords people are searching for to find your site. These keywords make great titles and content for new posts and articles! You have proof that people are looking for this information, and they are finding your site, so you might as well produce this content, or more content, or better content on these subjects.

On one of my blogs, I have a certain keyword search (after my name and the name of the site) that has given me the highest number of hits from search engines. All of this is because of one post I wrote on this subject, which is showing up on the first page of google for that search. I have an opportunity to create more content on this subject and provide it to these people.

This is a win-win situation. I know I can create better content on this subject than the other search results are providing. I also get more people exposed to that blog, with the chance of converting them to ongoing readers.

I am borrowing from my buddy Dr. Wordpress who wrote a series of posts with practical blogging tips, and I am going to write a series of practical tips discussing the subject matter of that key word search.

I got lucky by writing an article that has gotten highly ranked by search engines for a search on that subject, now, I need to capitalize on that and be thankful that I got lucky.

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Posted in Projects | 2 Comments »

Viva Blog Vegas

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

I just found out that I won a pass to Blog World Expo from Mashable.com. Folks entered by leaving a comment about why they wanted to attend Blog World.

I’m hoping to get a lot of good information and inspiration that will help take my websites to the next level of performance. Plus, I might have a little bit of fun in Las Vegas.

Here was my entry:

I’m actually not a very good writer.

I can’t effortlessly whip out a thousand words or two on a subject. I struggle to find the words that will communicate with my readers, and inspire or inform them to make their life better. I write, and re-write, and it sometimes takes hours to craft a post that I think others may think is worth reading.

And I do it anyway.

The things about writing, and specifically blogging, that are a struggle are the things that make me do it. It is a challenge, and because of that challenge, I am drawn to it. I love that writing isn’t easy for me, and because of that, writing is far more rewarding than other things that I have a natural knack for.

Blogs have levelled the playing field and removed the barriers to entry. Anyone can have a blog up and running in just a few minutes these days. People all around the world can read what you and I write seconds after we decide to share it.

I’ve chosen blogs as my primary way of sharing what I have to offer with other people. Now I am faced with the giant task of writing compelling content, and finding ways to show people what I have to offer. Blog World Expo will teach me how I can keep working to do this.

I admit, I am greedy. I don’t want to sit in a cubicle my whole life. I don’t want to work form 9 to 5 every day, and dress up in slacks and a shirt to go in to the office. I want out. Specifically, I want out by communicating and creating value to share with other people. I want to learn how to make my writing, and my blogs, more compelling. I want to improve my life, and I want to do that by making other people’s lives better.

Blog World Expo is right for me.

You can see the comment on the blog post by clicking here.

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Posted in Projects | 2 Comments »

Still Using IE6?

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Are you using Internet Explorer 6 to look at this website?

If you are, you might think I am an incompetent web designer. (You may also just know that you are using bad software, but I’ll get to that)

Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) still has a considerable amount of people using it. The numbers range from just under 15% of users to just over 30% of users using IE6, depending on which source you check.

Of course, IE6 is the browser that many businesses have decided is their official supported browser, so many people in Corporate America use IE6. This is very frustrating for those of us that know better, but are required to use certain software.

So why is this site jacked?

IE6 has a bug (one of many) that doubles the margin on floated elements. The columns on this site are “floated”, so that they can be displayed next to each other. There are also margins between them and the side of the page, so that they will be spaced properly. IE6 doubles these margins, which squeezes out one of the columns, because there isn’t enough room on the page. The last column ends up underneath the other columns.

Why does IE6 double these margins? This practice is clearly counter to the specifications for HTML and CSS, the programming languages that this determine what you see in your browser.

IE6 is just bad software that holds back the web. It is the stupid kid in the classroom that holds back all the smarter kids from moving on to the next lesson.

I recommend using Firefox or Chrome, but even upgrading to Internet Explorer 7 or 8 will fix a lot of the problems.

Maybe I’ll get around to including some hacks to get around this into the code for this site, but really, should I have to hack my site so it looks vaguely how it should in a browser as widely used as IE6?

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Posted in Pains | 1 Comment »