NickONeill.com

Today I finally got the html version of my RSS feed running on my new blog The Webpreneur. For some reason the wordpress documentation only states the feed that doesn’t utilize html. I learned that prior versions of RSS didn’t utilize html in the feeds (at least not properly). As of version 2.0 you can use html. Anyways, if you have a wordpress blog and want to find out where you can find the RSS 2.0 feed, it is located at the directory: /feed/rss2. So if you have installed wordpress in a directory called “blog”, the url would be: http://YOURDOMAIN/blog/feed/rss2. If you need help, let me know and I’d be happy to show you how to do it.

So for all of you that have been visiting my site, you may have noticed that there haven’t been as many updates to the sites as usual, especially the links section. This is because I set up a new blog called The Webpreneur. The blog focuses on all things web and business. I try to make a posting at least once a day, but this has proven to be a difficult task. The good news is that it is a significant increase in my total blogging volume. Let’s have a party and celebrate! I will continue to update this blog, but check out my other one on a regular basis. Thanks!

Ok, so I’m a huge dork. This morning I waited in line to try to make a quick buck off the Nintendo Wii. As of now I have 3 Nintendo Wiis selling on Ebay and hopefully I at least make back my money that I spent. Either way, I definitely learned about making a huge business mistake. Sony Playstation 3 came out with all sorts of hype about their new game system last week and the press latched on to the conecpt of there being a major battle among Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft for the gaming market. As a result the extreme shortage of Playstation 3s there was a huge unfulfilled demand (and justifiably some enormous prices paid on Ebay) for a new video game system. Two days later, Nintendo came a long and provided the solution with four times the supply and more to quickly follow.

I was amazed to see as many people as I did waiting for the Nintendo. Even though there were four times the supply of the Playstation release, each one of the stores I visited had sold out. We’ll see what the final result is after the holiday season … but it seems as though this initial win in terms of marketing strategy (and greater ability to meet demand) may give Nintedo a competitive advandtage. Additionally, Nintendo targeted a nice price point since the PS3 was steeply priced for the average gamer. With so much hype for such and expensive entertainment system, many consumers are going to be left purchasing the alternative XBox 360 and Nintedo Wii.

So I’ve been reading a bazillion blogs during the past week since I am temporarily unemployed (for 1 week only). There is definitely a lot of buzz about Web 2.0, and each person seems to have their own definition. Check out this funny chart titled The Habits of Highly Effective Web 2.0 Sites. Anyways, I decided to write this entry to rescind part of what I said yesterday about there being no stop to the seemingly endless influx of capital in the Web world. After reading the Wall Street Journal Article titled “TechCrunch Site Makes Arrington a Power Broker”, I’ve concluded that there definitely is a lot of hype surrounding each of these new web start-ups that are popping up everyday, similar to the sort of hype we saw prior to the first bubble.

I found it particularly startling that simply being listed in Arrington’s blog resulted in a group of venture capitalists knocking at your door the next day. I am partially disappointed that it took so long for a blog like TechCrunch, to appear because maybe I could have had some more money to fund one of my early projects Frusic (Frusic is definitely a Web 2.0 name that I came up with 4 years ago) as a result of a short write-up in a popular blog. Well, maybe I’m just a little bitter :) Anyways, while there will continue to be plenty of venture capital floating around, one has to wonder when this second wave of web startups will come to an end.

As mentioned in Techcrunch today, Yahoo has acquired two new companies MyBlogLog and Bix. It seems as though there is a new acquisition just about everyday. Earlier this week Google acquired iRows, an Israeli web company, and acquired another site JotSpot last week. There is a nice list of Web 2.0 websites at Go2Web2.0, provided by Orli Yakuel and Eyal Shahar. If you scoll through the list you can find an array of companies that have already been acquired or are soon to be acquired.

To be honest, I hate using the phrase “Web 2.0” but it is hard to deny that there seems to be a massive influx of capital into new web based ventures. Will this influx disappear? I’m sure there will be an eventual slowdown of capital but to be honest, I don’t see it having any significant impact on the growth of web entrepreneurs. During the first wave of web startups most companies’ exit strategies was to go public. Now the trend is to become acquired by Google or Yahoo. Another interesting note about the new startups is that they are recieving significantly less startup capital. For example, the venture capital company YCombinator as a rule of thumb provides only $6,000 for each employee in the company (approximately 3 months worth of living expenses for a 20-something entrepreneur). There is a great article in the New York Times titled “For Start-Ups, Web Success on the Cheap ”, which highlights this new trend toward lower startup capital.

What’s the moral of the story? With all the hype surrounding Web 2.0, one may expect the hype to die down soon. Unfortunately for many of the nay-sayers, the hype isn’t dying any time soon. Rather than throwing massive amounts of capital at a few interesting start-ups, venture capital companies can now diversify across a wider range of start-ups requiring significantly less capital. Bottom line, the internet industry is where it’s at; you can either hop on board, or let the train roll on past you, and trust me the train ain’t stopping any time soon.

In conclusion, search engine optimization in an effective method for website marketing. Although SEO can take a serious time (and possibly financial) investment, simple steps can be taken to improve your search engine effectiveness.

Remember to choose keywords that you can be competitive in. Also, take advantage of XHTML/CSS to improve your code to text ratio (while the text to code ratio is debatable, more content can never hurt). Additionally, swapping links with fellow bloggers/web masters can help boost your page rank.

Remember though, that the best search engine optimization in the world can not increase your recurring visitors if you don’t provide high quality content. In the world of user generated content (blogs, portals, video sites, etc), there is nothing better than having great content on your site. While search engine optimization can provide you with drastic results, creating valuable websites requires a significant investment of time (and sometimes money). SEO should be used as one of the many web marketing tools in your promotional arsenal … not the only one.

By: Nick O’Neill

According to Google:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

I wish there was a quick and easy way to do this but there isn’t. As stated before, Google is a democratic search engine. Using the strategies outlined in the previous articles you will slowly build your pagerank. Ultimately, each page that links to you should have a higher page rank then you. The higher the page rank on the pages that link to you; the higher your page rank becomes.

Also, remember that each page a person links to on your site should target a specific keyword. The links from the outside sites should link to your page using the targeted keyword. In the end, page rank is a function of how long you spend using the tactics previously mentioned.

This one is pretty straightforward. If you are trying to optimize your site to a specific keyword, then you need other people that link to your site, referencing that keyword. One way of thinking about incoming links is that Google is a democratic search engine, and each link to your site acts as a vote for your site. Reverse links, pointing back to the page that linked to you also increases the value of the incoming links. There are a few key things to note (for these examples I will be optimizing for the keyword “Nick O’Neill”):

• The link to the page must be in the following format

<a href="http://www.nickoneill.com">Nick O'Neill</a>

• It is best if the page that is linking to you contains the same keyword as the one you are linking for. For example if the site that contains the link above has multiple occurences of the phrase “Nick O’Neill”, the link will weigh higher.

This article is not to suggest that you should go out and start plastering links to your site in forums and the like. The only links that are truly valuable are links that you have earned. If you have a link from an article on another site, or a friend’s blog that has a high page ranking (e.g. Jess3.com boosted my search results to the top), that would work well.

Earlier today I had a problem mounting a .bin file on my G5. After looking around for 45 minutes I finally came up with a solution. I thought I would share it with anyone that is having the same problem.

Step 1: Install Toast 7 Titanium . Since I’m sure you don’t want to pay $80, you can download a trial.

Step 2: Click “Utilities” -> “Mount Disc Image”

It’s as simple as that!

Now that you have an understanding of optimized URLs and choosing keywords, we will move on to optimizing the heart of your content. There are numerous factors that play a role in having content which is search engine friendly. Search engine optimization relies primarily on your content. There is nothing better than having high quality original content. After you have created original content, you should optimize how you mark-up your content using HTML/XHTML.

One thing that I have started to realize is websites designed using XHTML and CSS are more effective than generic HTML with table based layouts for showing up in search engines. Why? There is a simple answer: it takes less html to code a site using xhtml and css. With an XHTML website, the html is simply used to markup your content, and all of the design is provided by the CSS. If possible use XHTML and CSS over table based HTML, you’ll be glad that you did.

Achor Text – Achor text refers to the clickable text of a hyperlink. When you create a link (e.g. Nick O’Neill) the text that you put between the < a > < /a > tags is very important. One way of thinking of google is as a democratic search engine. Every link that you place, is a vote for the page that you are linking to. So the link that I just created is a vote for my name, for this page. I would not suggest browsing around the web carlessly (or targeting) specific places to put links that will link back to your site. Rather, creating useful links internally is very useful. Make sure that all of your links contain good descriptions of the pages that they link to. Also, if you are using images as links, place good descriptions in the alt propery of the < img tag.

Heading Tags (H1 through H6) – Heading tags are used to provide emphasis to certain text on your page. If you emphasize important phrases (keywords) on your page, your page will rank higher. Do not get too carried away with this.

In summary, make your code easy to read using XHTML and CSS. There is a great article about the shift from regular HTML to XHTML and CSS here. Use descriptive anchor tags on your site, and finally, use heading tags to emphasize important text on your page.