Posted by: Cheryl Allin in Untagged on
Apr 24, 2007
I usually review my website statistics every morning to track who's coming to my website and where they're referred from. Statcounter.com offers a nice, easy interface and their free service keeps me informed. However, today I got a nasty surprise. I found a referrer link and after taking a closer look at the site that referred to mine, I noticed they had copied just about every page of my website and even foolishly linked to my own portfolio (very dumb). Normally, I try to track nasty plagiarists via CopyScape.com , but their dumb mistake led me right to them.
WannaGirlFriday.com is the site in question, and they've just been reported to Google for copy theft. Why should I bother? Because Google hates duplicate content - and while Google might realize that my content is the original, I'm not willing to take any chances on getting a ranking hit.
Just about every single page of this site is a carbon copy of mine - the owner even put a Meebo widget on her contact page! While this angers me, if I suddenly have less relevant content at Google because of it - I'd take an economic hit.
The lesson to everyone: Once you achieve high ranking, you absolutely need to take time to hunt down and deal with thieves.
Posted by: Cheryl Allin in Untagged on
Apr 09, 2007
Another late night, uploading files and cleaning up some of my bookmarks. While I was browsing through
Del.icio.us , I found a really terrific website to help with your Search Engine Optimization!
Posted by: Cheryl Allin in Untagged on
Apr 09, 2007
There is a Virtual Assistant that I owe a great deal of gratitude to - today she saved my hard earned Google ranking simply by being kind enough to let me know that I was asleep at the wheel.
Posted by: Cheryl Allin in Untagged on
Mar 23, 2007
One of the biggest hurdles in my business so far has been effective communication - keeping clients updated, returning calls and emails promptly and just ensuring my valued partners know I haven't died or dropped off the face of the earth. When you're deep into an exciting new website design, sometimes you look up and realize it's three days later...2:00am....and you forgot to eat again.
As a person who balances analytical and creative skills daily, I've often found communicating effectively difficult. There have been times where my communication has been excellent (several calls and emails per day) and my turnaround time stellar (same day results) with a brand new client yet they've expressed disfavor due to some unexpressed need.
Posted by: Cheryl Allin in Untagged on
Mar 22, 2007
Yes, I'm still alive - although rather sleep deprived due to a gigantic influx of prospective new clients. I'm not sure who's been out there raving about me or if it's just a search engine thing, but my phone is ringing off the hook! Bear with me if you're waiting to hear back, I haven't yet gotten my new assistant up to speed.
Posted by: Cheryl Allin in Untagged on
Jan 26, 2007
I was doing my usual morning search at Google News for real estate items when I stumbled on an investing blog hosted at Blogger and now I'm seeing spots! While the content of this blog - The Millionaires Blog is interesting and worth grabbing the RSS feed, the layout of his blog is awful on the eyes. The Millionaire's Blog has a 100% black background with white text - and while this format may capture attention for its' uniqueness in a world stuffed with white backgrounds, the content is difficult for the eyes to adjust to and once I left to view another site with a typical white background, my eyes were burning and seeing black horizontal lines.
Posted by: Cheryl Allin in myblog on
Jan 18, 2007
Hello,
Thank you for using MyBlog!, the premier blogging tool for the popular Content Management System - Joomla!. MyBlog! is a feature packed, AJAX enabled replacement for the Joomla! Blog component.
Among the features currently implemented are:
- Quick search and linking of previous posts while writing a blog entry
- Tags / Tagclouds
- Easy image upload and browsing using
Posted by: Cheryl Allin in Untagged on
Jan 16, 2007
Once again, we've been hit with a blast of snow which is quite unusual for the North West. In the last ten years, I can count on one hand the number of times we've seen snow and it's only ever been a wee bit - but this year, our weather has been quite volatile.
Of course, us Washingtonians barely know how to drive in the rain (if you can believe that, with 99% of our days being rainy) not to mention how bad we can be trying to navigate in the snow.
Posted by: Cheryl Allin in Untagged on
Jan 04, 2007
Lately, despite my conviction that blogging is a terrific and necessary tool to market your business online in the world of Web 2.0, I've discovered that in the real world daily grind, blogging often ends up way at the bottom of the priority list. I have a short litmus test that I try to reference whenever I get that haze of "what precise next action should now be taken" at any point in the day. It's ranked on a point system:
When is something worth doing?
Posted by: Cheryl Allin in Untagged on
Dec 16, 2006
Well, we're finally back online after the giant storm late Thursday evening. We had wind gusts up to 70 mph and the giant oak in the backyard seemed so close to toppling that I was having a bit of a panic attack. <grin> We lost power about midnight and broke out the flashlights and radio. Thanks to having a gas stove, water heater and fireplace - we weren't as bad off as many all over the state, but it still was very trying. We could see transformers blowing on the horizon every few minutes and knew we'd be in for quite a bit of damage and the reports were widespread from Issaquah in the north to Olympia to the south.
Update Jan 5th, 2007: Well, after two weeks of nearly no service, Comcast has finally fixed whatever infrastructure that kept our internet service offline. Do they offer a discount? Duh, of course not... :(
