Web, Travel, Stories.
Header

Yoda’s Thoughts on PageRanks

October 31st, 2007 | Posted by J in SEO / SEM - (16 Comments)

I’m trying to strike while the iron is hot (although I’m not gonna benefit anything from this) so with the ongoing, soon dying, PageRank brouhaha, I’m posting this funny image I got from Essential Keystrokes:

Judge me by my pagerank, do you?

Jedi master Yoda: “Judge me by my PageRank, do you?”

LOL. So no, don’t judge a website by its PageRank. A website’s PR score is just one of the many indications that the it is doing good. It’s not the only basis. Unless, you’re only focused on selling links and doing more sponsored reviews — which I’m not.. Not anymore.. Not yet? Haha.

Btw, to those Text Link Ads, ReviewMe, PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews (etc.) users whose websites’ PageRanks have increased, don’t forget to edit your website details (ranking and pricing) in each of your dashboards. In TLA, for example, you can update your Alexa ranking by clicking on the link “Edit your listings” in your Account Home. Choose the website you want to update, click on “Edit Details”, find your “Alexa Rank” info, then click on the “Update” button beside it. That’s it! You might want to update your other accounts with the other munny-making sites, too, if you want to earn more munny.

For another good read in regards to the recent PR phenomenon, Aaron Wall has listed items about Google’s obfuscations of PageRank scores.

Still on the topic of PageRank, CashQuests.com suggests a way for a webmaster/blogger to know more about his own site’s PageRank details. If you want to check not only your homepage’s PR scores, but your internal pages as well, LivePR is the perfect tool to use. Once you’ve entered your main site URL and the page has stopped loading, click on the “Sort by PR” button on top. Here’s an example for my site:

LivePR

I’m sure there are other similar tools out there, LivePR is just one of the reliable ones. The LivePR tool, just like the other analytics tools (SeoDigger, Alexa ranking, Technorati, Google Trends, Compete.com, etc.) helps us get to know our website or blog better. But like I said, PageRanks are not the only thing we should think about, so, moving on… :)

I’ll be away for a few days (and by “away” I mean a place where there’s no computer or Internet access) to have what I think is a much needed break. Lol. Have a nice long weekend again! Don’t you just love long weekends?

Oh and Happy Halloween! :)

Surprise, Surprise.

October 27th, 2007 | Posted by J in News/Events/Occasions | SEO / SEM - (8 Comments)

I’ve been indifferent to politics for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why exactly, but there’s something about it that don’t interest me much. Add to that the fact that I find it hard to understand how all those political stuff go about (and that I myself refuse to understand them thoroughly), although I found my Political Science subject in college fascinating. But that was it! Maybe it’s because I was brought up by apathetic parents or because I’ve been hanging out with apathetic friends. Maybe there’s something about how a government is run that makes me want to shy away from it or the fact that my impression of a typical government lackey — from what I’ve been hearing from other people since I was a kid — is that he’s corrupt, manipulative, and just plain evil. Lol. My classmates in high school even had a hard time persuading me to run for student body officer when I was in my senior year. I caved eventually — only because I was bored and in dire need of something to do to improve my standing in the honor roll race and to prove myself to this teacher of mine who hated me for that one time I interrupted her in class (She caught me working on a tat-like doodle on my seatmate’s arm, half-listening to her while she was helping us review for NSAT, haha). I was elected, btw, but I can’t say that it made much of a difference. Anyway..

When I read about our former president’s pardon a few days ago, I also felt what other Filipinos felt about it — I felt betrayed and ashamed. To echo what everybody else has been saying, allow me to ask these same questions: Where’s justice in that? What significance does Edsa Dos bring now? What was all the hullabaloo about our former president’s impeachment six years ago and the recent hearing and verdict (where he was sentenced to a penalty of reclusion perpetua) if we’re just gonna throw all of those away just because our current president woke up one morning and decided she wants to pretend to be a nice and forgiving person? I can almost imagine our two favorite presidents meeting over a cup of coffee somewhere, discussing matters, laughing, and exchanging remarks like, “I can’t believe they fell for that!” or “It took you long enough, but thanks mate!” Grrr.

Like I said, I don’t know much about our government (and maybe I’ve just been rambling on about stuff that are actually out of context here, hehe) but the news about the pardon irks me a little. And for someone who knows squat about politics, it doesn’t really take much for me to understand that we have one very twisted government system. Surprise, surprise.

But I guess Karen is right — justice will be served. Not today, but someday it will be. And really, who am I to play judge? Maybe this is a good example of how it is to extend grace to those who don’t deserve it?

Good reads: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Does PageRank matter?

On the techie side of the globe, prolific bloggers and SEO folks are talking about the drastic changes of their blog’s PageRanks (blogs such as problogger.net, johnchow.com, copyblogger.com, weblogtoolscollection.com, andybeard.nu, searchengineland.com, etc) which I’m sure most of you have already heard about. What is my reaction to this? I’m not really sure yet. I could care less, I guess. But hey, at least mine stayed at PR 5, that must count for something, right? No? Whatever. Heh.

Everybody should have realized by now that the Great and Powerful Google is like one big jigsaw puzzle, which means that it’s just so hard to figure out. This SEO Chick brought up a really good point about it. But among the blog posts I’ve read about this topic, I find these two posts unique just ‘coz they have a different tone from the rest: “The Other Side of the Paid Links Coin” by Pat of SEOish.com and “Why You SHOULD Still Care About PageRank” by Kumiko of CashQuests.com.

I’ve got theories (guesses, really) about why this phenomenon happened, but like everybody else, I can’t support them with anything. The only thing I know is that this is a constantly evolving industry which is why this isn’t a surprising phenomenon at all. And, oh, that Google is search engine god so why don’t we all just quit whining. Lol.

Anyway, let’s just move past these things. I’m sure we all have better things to think about. I have a new *Multiply site, so maybe you can start there by adding me to your contact list? Hehehe.

*I seriously doubt that I’d be able to update that site regularly, though.

[EDIT] It’s Mae Paulino‘s birthday today. Happy birthday, gurl! :) [/EDIT]

Have a nice long weekend everyone! :)

Site Revamp #10

October 13th, 2007 | Posted by J in SEO / SEM | Site Updates | Web - (24 Comments)

Glad I was finally able to launch this new theme. It’s nothing fancy but having something new to look at is always a good thing, like I always say. This blog validates as XHTML, or at least the index page and the second page do. I’m just about to work my way back to fix my archives post by post, so please bear with me. This is also ran by an error-free CSS. About time? Yeah, I think so too. Tamad kse. :P

I’m not completely sure if everything is in order here. Please let me know if you encounter a bug!

***

wireless globelines broadbandGlobelines has sent the units for the Wireless Broadband plan I signed up for via Air 21. I was able to set up the LAN by myself but it just wouldn’t connect to the Internet, and the woman who prepared my application is not responding to my text messages. So am I supposed to handle this all by myself? Is nobody from their staff coming to help me with this? Way to go, Globe! Awesome job! A couple more days and your customer service rep is definitely going to get an earful. Heh. Good thing I wasn’t required to make an initial payment for this one.

***

The SEMCON 2007 was concluded three days ago. Despite the negative comments I’ve been hearing about it from the other delegates, I honestly think that the conference was great. Two days of pure SEM talk? How often does someone as geeky as me get to experience that? :P I learned a lot, and if you can believe it, my conference notes reached up to four (8 x 11) pages, front and back. lol.

I still can’t get over this comment I read made by someone somewhere: “Mag-SEO ka na lang!” Lang?? Di nga, Ate? Haha. I know some people associate SEO with just spamming, and even though I sometimes think that way too, I also think that SEM (which is different from SEO in so many ways) is more than just off-page optimization or link building. There’s on-page optimization (of course), proper web copywriting (this is obviously different from print), pay-per-click advertising, affiliate marketing, website ad partnerships, landing page optimization, and more. These are all part of what I’m doing at work and the cause of my headache for the past few months. So, really, an SEM job is not an easy one. I guess what I’m saying is, if you really don’t know much about something, it’s better if you just keep your comments to yourself. (I can see Riz and Romz rolling their eyes at me, hehe!)

Congrats to Bossing Marc for a successful first SEM conference! Sana next year si Rand Fishkin naman. :)

***

Anyway, despite this site update, I am still sad. And I just wanted you to know that. But what’s important is that you‘re happy… and everybody else is happy. That’s all that matters to me now. Goodnight. :)