Archive for July, 2009

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Video Series – Traffic Generation

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

There are methods other than SEO to generate Web Traffic.  This post will discuss other methods to get visitors to your website, it’s not all about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

Welcome to the final video in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Video Series.  This video has a rather long running time of 24 minutes, but it is well worth it. 

You will learn how to increase your website traffic using:

Link Bait – Something compelling that brings in visitors
Landing Page Tips – How to make your pages stand out 
Email Marketing Tips – Get visitors to subscribe to your content

Search Engine Optimization – Video 3

As with the other two video tutorials, this final clip has some great tips on getting more relevant visitors to your blog or website.  The instructor gives out ideas and theories, and then follows up with practical examples. 

This third video concludes the series.  I hope that you have enjoyed these videos on Search Engine Optimization.  I really enjoyed them, and learned a couple new tricks to help bring more visitors to my sites.  Let me know what you think!
 
-Loren

Just in case you missed them, here are links to the first two Videos in in the SEO Series.

SEO Fundamentals - In this first video you will get an introduction to the Top 10 On Site SEO Fundamentals and how to implement them on your site. 
 
SEO – The Power of Linking – In the second video in the series you will learn about what linking is, and how you can use it to increase your website traffic and ranking.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Video Series – Linking

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Search Engine Optimization – The Power of Linking.  The Second Video in this Series deals with Linking.  Linking is a powerful SEO tool.  In this video tutorial on Search Engine Optimization you will learn strategies to increase your ranking using linking methods.  Here is a short summary:

  • The SEO power of Linking
  • Home page Linking
  • Article Directory Linking
  • Getting your site into DMOZ
  • Linking through Comments

Search Engine Optimization – Video 2

This video has a lot of good tips on getting traffic to your blog through linking.  It lasts about 20 minutes, and is well worth the time if you want to increase the ranking and therefore the visitors to your website or blog.  I feel this is a good tutorial in that it provides enough technical background on how Google and other Search Engines utilize linking both internal and external to rank your site, but then goes directly into practical application examples.  If you like this one, stay tuned, Video 3 has even more valuable information. 

Enjoy the Video!

-Loren

As usual I will include the links to the videos I have already covered in the series:

SEO Fundamentals – In this first video you will get an introduction to the Top 10 On Site SEO Fundamentals and how to implement them on your site. 

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Store Your Files Online With SkyDrive

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Online file storage is a critical feature in todays mobile computing world.  We have large hard drives, but flexibility is important.  In my opinion SkyDrive is the best online file storage system today.

Many people have Windows Live logins for their MSN Messenger (now called Windows Live Messenger) account.  If this is true for you, head over to http://skydrive.live.com and claim your 25GB of free online storage.  I have checked around the net, and have not found any other systems that match the Microsoft SkyDrive product. 

Before I get a bunch of flame e-mails, NO I am not a Microsoft Apologist.  If a product is good, I will recommend it.  This post is just a short review on the pros and cons of this online storage product.

Pros -

  • Size – 25 GB is a lot of storage space
  • Free – Free is always good
  • Stability – Microsoft is going to be around to keep SkyDrive from disappearing
  • Flexibility – Works with the Gladinet Cloud Desktop Client to mount Drives on your PC 

 Cons -

  • File Size Limit – 50 MB maximum file size (still pretty large)
  • Drag and Drop interface only works with Internet Explorer
  • Some people are Against Everything Microsoft so they cannot be convinced it is a good product
  • Full Functionality assumes you are a PC user – I haven’t tried it on my Mac yet.

I personally use SkyDrive because of the Pros I have listed above.  The Gladinet Cloud Desktop client is great.  I use the free version, and have found it to be pretty stable.  It allows you to create a mounted drive letter on your Windows PC.  It does a good job of synchronizing and moving files in the background. 

Even if you chose not to install the Gladinet driver you can drag and drop files using Internet Explorer.  Maybe there will be some sort of Firefox Plugin in the future, but I wouldn’t hold out waiting for one. 

For the Anti-Microsoft folks out there, actually SkyDrive is a winner, the problem with many "FREE" programs and services on the internet, is that you are at the whim of the company.  So many of them just disappear overnight, or are purchased by another company and phased out.  Nevertheless I do warn people not to trust these free online file storage systems, make sure you have a local backup Just In Case.

I recommend you surf over to the SkyDrive website and give it a try.  Let me know what you think about this online storage product.  Any tips and tricks you can give are appreciated by myself and the other readers.

-Loren

Update - There are persistent rumors that Google is going to do something similar to SkyDrive, but nothing yet.  I have looked at some clever work arounds to store files on your Gmail account, but they are just that "workarounds" and not really online file storage.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Video Series – #1

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is widely know is a key concept that all webmasters and bloggers need to understand.  TheTeachingBox is proud to present a 5 Part Tutorial series on SEO. 

I came across these videos a while back, and thought that they would be a good fit for Technology and Education.  Granted SEO Optimization is a bit more on the advanced side, but everyone could learn from these videos.

As with my other video series, I will present the 5 videos one at a time so that you are able to focus on the content and think about how you will implement the information on your own website.  As we cover each of the videos, I will make sure to include the links to all previous videos so that you can easily go back and review.

The presentation of these video tutorials is well done, and I was able to learn a quite a few tips on how to make my Blog Posts pop to the top of the online Search Engines.  They are all in Flash (.swf) format and will open in a new browser window.  You should have the latest flash viewer to watch them, but if not, your browser should prompt you for the appropriate plugin download.

Search Engine Optimization – Video 1

In this first video you will get an introduction to the Top 10 On Site SEO Fundamentals and how to implement them on your site.  They include the types of HTML formatting, and content you need to make your pages and posts search engine friendly.  The running time for this video is around 24 Minutes. 

In this tutorial I learned about the Traffic Travis tool for Keyword Research and SEO.  He spends almost half of the tutorial talking about it.  It is free and could prove to be a very valuable tool in your webmaster arsenal.

The author of this video knows his stuff, and gives evidence.  Let me know what you think about this series in the comments, or send me an e-mail.  What are your favorite SEO tips and tricks?

If you are interested I can make the set available to you.  They are in .swf format and the .zip files are still quite large.  Drop me an e-mail and we can work something out.

-Loren

Update -
SEO is a top searched term, in one day I have gotten more pingbacks than any other post I have made.  It is ironic that a post on Search Engine Optimization give you a lot of exposure in the Search Engines!

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A View into Education in the Future – 2025

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

 

This is an interesting video I found the other day on YouTube.  It is titled "Education in 2025".  As an education professional I am always interested in how people think education will happen in the future. 

2025 is a long way into the future, what do you think about this video? 

  

Leave some comments and links to how you think the future of education will unfold.

- Loren

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