Bank Account Codes and Movies

I should be following up with an important post this morning to the issues raised in yesterday's coverage of housing issues in the Buffalo series. Thanks to those who commented to further the discussion. I'll try to return to that, because I think there's more in there.

Instead, I will digress, because I was depositing some checks this morning. I do online banking, and I scan my checks after signing them and writing my account number on the back. You'd think after depositing some fifty checks in the past few years I could remember a simple eight-digit account number, but I have to look it up every stinking time.

Every time I look it up, I'm reminded of those stupid Hollywood thrillers where someone is depositing, withdrawing or transferring ten billion dollars to or from some account in the Cayman Islands or Switzerland with an impossibly long account number that they recall from memory.

BANK MANAGER (summoned from a board meeting just to greet their most important client whom they've never met but who has more money in the bank than the rest of their clients combined):
"Yes [sir/ma'am], may I have your thirty-digit account number, please?"

BANK CLIENT (trying to seem perfectly at ease while glancing at the door and security cameras to discern the level of surveillance being imposed on them while he/she hurries as calmly as possible through the transaction while the music pulses and the antagonist closes in):
"But, of course. Three-seven-five-eight-two-two-one-nine-nine-five-nine-five-seven-three-eight-one-two-seven-six-four-five-two-nine-seven-five-three-one-five-five."

BANK MANAGER (finished typing into the iMac in front of them that would never be in a bank but Apple paid them for product placement, looking up and smiling with a far-away look so we know they're thinking about the boat they'll be purchasing next week with the 1% transfer fee they just earned):
"Now, if you'll just place your thumb here for routine fingerprint confirmation . . ."

BANK CLIENT (freezes, surprised by the request; this wasn't a part of the debriefing and has been added to the bank's security measures since the plan was formed a month ago. stalling for time; hoping for the best):
"Uh, I just burned off my fingerprints accidentally, shooting off fireworks. I'm afraid that won't be possible. Can't I just give you my mother's maiden name?"

Where Vindy Shines

In my earlier post about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I pointed out a few areas where I thought Vindy.com had some work to do. In fairness, I failed to point out several significant queries where Vindy rules. Check out:
[kelly pavlik news]
Notice they beat out ESPN; that ain't bad.

And though I complained they should be at the top for [Youngstown news], they do own:
[youngstown breaking news]
With their online newswatch ticker and RSS feed.

I know Vindy.com has smart people working there and are doing good things. I hope noone took any other implications away from my post. Also, as anyone will tell you, page rankings can be as much art as science.

Getting Found on the Internets: Optimizing your site for search

I've been brushing up on Search Engine Optimization over the last several days. It's a fascinating topic covering how users search for things and how search engines deliver results. Here are some of the take-aways from my research:

• Decide who your target audience is.
• What are they coming to you for and why?
• With whom are you competing?
• How must you distinguish yourself from the competition?
• Narrow your keywords to maximize your chances of capitalizing on your strengths while avoiding being overwhelmed by your competition.
• Be specific with your keywords, usually most effective in two- or three-word combinations.

After my research, I went back and examined the keywords attached to my blog and to my personal site. To my horror, I discovered I was doing it all wrong. At least I'm in good company. Most sites do keywords all wrong, and I'll show you some examples by picking on some other people (after picking on myself first).

The starting point for keywords is in your page title and meta tags. It looks like this in your HTML source code:

<title>Youngstown Renaissance</title>
<meta name="description" content="A blog about Youngstown, technology, music, politics and other interesting topics, but mostly about what is going on in Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley right now." />
<meta name="keywords" content="Youngstown, Tyler S Clark, Tyler Clark, altruism, Fifth Avenue, technology, music, politics, writer, web consultant, musician, Mahoning Valley" />

That was my initial set of keywords, but you might have noticed how general it is. Though I write about technology, imagine for a moment that someone is searching for [technology]; do you imagine they're going to find this little blog in the first page (or ten) of their results? Of course not! There are far better results for the general query of technology. Therefore, technology is a poor keyword choice for my blog. Just by entering [Youngstown technology] into my keywords, I don't expect to be in the top ten results, but it's a far more accurate choice than simply [technology].

Seventy percent of searchers today are using two-to-three word queries at a minimum in their searches to locate what they want to find. So, you can be more specific with how you describe the information (or products or services) you have to offer. So, I reworked my keywords to be more specific:

<meta name="keywords" content="Youngstown, Tyler S Clark, Tyler Clark, altruism, Fifth Avenue, youngstown technology, youngstown music, youngstown politics, youngstown blogger, youngstown writer, youngstown web consultant, youngstown musician, Mahoning Valley" />

The more interesting experiment was adding a new page to my personal site devoted to my program notes writing. I actually went the whole nine yards with this project, spending all day on the page and signing up for a Google AdWords campaign.

Check out the AdWords Keyword Tool that allows you to enter keywords, determine the level of competition for the term(s), the level of search interest by users and possible synonyms and their respective strengths. I entered these keywords in the header: tyler s clark, youngstown writer, youngstown musician, program notes writer. I included my keywords [program notes writer] in the page title and in the header and page content. Then I created a blog post linking to the page with my keyword as the text of the link.

The next day, Google listed my page fifth for [program notes writer], and today it's up to fourth. These listings fluctuate constantly based on a number of factors, so content optimization requires regular attention.

I decided to do a test. I Googled [Youngstown news] with the expectation that the Vindicator would be the top result. However, the top result is wfmj.com. They have a simple, direct page title: "21 News Now, More Local News for Youngstown, Ohio." The Vindicator, on the other hand, since removing "Youngstown" from its name, has tried to regionalize, it has lost its localized identity--despite its Vindicator Square headquarters in the heart of downtown Youngstown.

The page title does include [Youngstown]: "Vindy.com News Youngstown, Warren, Columbiana Ohio," but the site could make more effective use of its meta keywords (especially since its competition, wfmj.com, uses none): "The Vindicator, business, advertise, economy, ohio, pennsylvania, youngstown, mahoning, columbiana, mercer, trumbull, warren, niles, traficant, dining guide, restaurant, hotels, expert, movie times, blitz, high school football, cleveland browns, pittsburgh steelers, cleveland indians, pittsburgh pirates, mahoning valley scrappers, bertram desouza."

The Vindicator's keywords are mostly too general: business, advertise, economy, hotels. Even sports-related keywords like [cleveland browns] would be better as [cleveland browns news] or [cleveland browns scores]. Because of the area The Vindicator wants to cover, optimizing its meta keywords likely aren't the answer to this particular problem. Their landing pages must be optimized to ensure the page content contains keywords in the header and body text so the pages are effectively indexed and ranked.

[Youngstown dining guide] works for Vindy.com but [Youngstown hotels] doesn't, nor does [Youngstown restaurant] nor [Youngstown movie times], just to pick a few at random. These keywords need to be reimplemented and their pages optimized, if they're going to be seriously pursued. A cursory look at the competition suggests it wouldn't take much effort to show up fairly high in the rankings in any of these queries, particularly with the volume of content at the Vindy's disposal.

Search ranking is not solely about content optimization, however. One of the most important factors is links to your pages. In the most stark example of this, the query [laptop] has for several years turned up the Apple MacBook at or near the top of the list, even though the word laptop is not used on the page. Apple didn't even previously use the word as a keyword and it appeared third in the rankings. Now it does use the word--just once--as a meta keyword, and its product is #1 in Google for the query [laptop]. The reason? More pages link to http://www.apple.com/macbook/ with the link text "laptop" than any other.

That means that if enough people link to a page with the same link text, you can make it appear as anything you want. In 2004, you could Google "miserable failure" and find the official White House bio for George W. Bush in an example of Google bombing. Start a legitimate bombing campaign to your advantage through friends and colleagues to help your site appear highly in search rankings with the right words by getting them to link to you with your preferred keywords.

Firefox 3 and updated extensions

I've updated my browser to Firefox 3. (I still have Firefox 2 running as well, just by installing 3 in a different folder.) Two of my favorite extensions, however, have not been updated by their respective authors, so I opened them (.xpi is really just an archive format that can be opened with a .zip reader) and updated the .rdf files so that the maximum application version includes the current Firefox version.

If you want to download either of these, you can do so from these (unofficial) links:
Autocopy 0.6.5 (FFX 3 compatible)
Restart Firefox 0.3.1 (FFX 3 compatible)

Some of the reasons to upgrade include:
One-click bookmarking: The address bar now has a star on it that, with a single click, will bookmark the current page. Another click will bring up a small panel allowing you to file and tag the bookmark. Ctrl+D will bring up the panel immediately.

Speed: Version 3 really does seem faster. Though the extensions are the real memory-eaters, I find Firefox 3 takes far longer to slow down even packed with add-ons.

Password manager: Instead of getting a popup every time you enter a password asking if you want the password remembered, an unobtrusive bar appears at the top of the browser window awaiting your command. Ignore it if you want, or respond at your leisure, even after the page has password-protected page has finished loading.

Smart location bar: This is perhaps the most impressive feature. Start typing a word into the address/location bar, and a list of matches based on URL and Page Title begins to take shape allowing you to quickly find where you want to go (see screenshot at the start of this post).

Get yours here!

Farewell, Windows XP

Sadly, Windows XP will stop being sold today. I can assure you it will be a long time before I ever (if I ever) buy a computer with Windows Vista in it. Jaci has one that she inherited, and the thing is so slow. Plus, there's the annoying feeling that Vista just should have been something much more than it is.

At least I have a couple of XP CDs that I can install on any new computers I do have to get. That should tide me over for now. That is, if I have to buy Windows at all.

Finding Things: Google Alerts

One of the comments on yesterday's post was, "Where/how do you find these things?" The simple answer is: I let them come to me.

Google Alerts is a service that allows you to search on any term or phrase you might otherwise Google and get alerted to any new appearances of that query on the Web. You can specify whether you want a search limited to appearances of your query in News, Blogs, Web pages, Video, Groups, or across all of these ("Comprehensive"). Then you can dictate how frequently you want to be notified of the new items: weekly, daily or as they appear (as they are added to Google's index).

Sit back and let the information come to you. For your first alert, start with daily to get a feel for what's out there, then if you feel you're getting too much information, you can edit your alert and pull back to a weekly notification. Google Alerts are also great for vanity searches, if you're so inclined. See what people are saying about you and where the information you're putting out there is being referenced.

Keeping track of it all

You want to stay on top of everything that's going on, but you don't know how. There's too much information, and keeping track of who's posted a new article consists of running through a list of a dozen blogs individually, then feeling frustrated when the only one with something new was number eleven. Let me suggest a better way.

I've been in technology literally since I was a kid. My mom worked for IBM back in the day (actually, she works for them again now as a contractor, but that's another story), and my brother and I learned to program in BASICA on a PCjr. Obviously, we played River Raid and Jumpman, but we also wrote our own primitive software that flashed colors on the screen and moved dots around. My brother, in a memorably awful tone that haunts me to this day, taught the computer to bleep and bloop the melody to Billy Joel's Honesty.

All that to say, I take it for granted sometimes all the ways in which computers can make life easier, not to mention all the Web-based applications these days that allow you to completely customize your own Web experience. So, when a friend was recently bemoaning the tedium of trying to keep track of all the blogs she wanted to read, I shared with her some of my tools, and now she's able to see at a glance what's new for all the blogs she wants.

iGoogle is where I recommend starting. I think you'll find it fairly straightforward. (Here's a link to help if you get stuck.) Start with the "Add Stuff" link on the right. You'll be presented with lots of prepackaged content, but you can also just add the individual blogs or sites you want to track. For example, to the right, you'll see a "Subscribe in a reader" link. You may be able to simply click that link and add it to your Google homepage, though you might first have to install the Google toolbar (and if you haven't, I highly recommend it; lots of useful features like highlighting, translation, spell-checking, and bookmarking).

If that doesn't work for you, right-click and "Copy Link Location" (Firefox) or "Copy Shortcut" (Internet Explorer) from the blog or site you like, then on the Google Homepage Content Directory, click the small "Add by URL" link to the right of the Search Homepage Content button. Paste the URL into the field and click "Add". Back on your homepage, you can adjust the number of headlines you want to see from each feed and drag the box around where you like. Once you accumulate many, you'll want to group them, and Google lets you create and label tabs to accomplish that.

If you get stuck, feel free to ask me questions and I'll be glad to help. There's so much going on in Youngstown right now, it would be a shame to miss a minute of it!