The Raging Tech

Add iGoogle Widgets to Active Desktop

Tags: Active Desktop, Apps, Remember the Milk, Windows

Build SEO with .EDU Backlinks

If you looked at that headline and went “Huh?” - you’re probably brand new to the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There is an entire business industry setup around helping web site owners, blog authors, and online publications optimize every page - make that every word of every page of content - highly optimized to be indexed by search engines like Google or Yahoo!.

Search engines each have their own algorithms for indexing and ranking pages - there are books, seminars and get-rich-quick schemes all surrounding the cult of Google Page Rank. Businesses seem to live and die by their Google PR. The better optimized your site, the higher your page rank will be. A page rank is what determines how high in the results your listing is when customers are searching on certain keywords.

If you want people to find you, you want to be earlier in the search results, right? If your competitors are in front of you, your potential client might go with them first, and that means lost sales or ad revenue. Google and other search engines want their search results to be the most relevant, so they check things like your site’s meta-data and description and match it to keywords.

Back-links are when a site with more credibility or popularity than you links to your site. If it has a higher page rank than yours, it helps your page rank grow. Search engines rate links from sites with .EDU addresses as more relevant, because only educational institutions are allowed to have them. Since school teachers and administrators and professors are likely to be more researched (or so they think), an edu link is worth a lot to growing your site’s relevance within search results.

Also, just a link on a .EDU site isn’t going to help. Search engines look at the content around a link, so a link on the side of a page not surrounded by content is going to be less relevant than a link surrounded by content in an article, for example.

Tags: .EDU, backlinks, Google, Page Rank, SEO

One Rank to Rule Them All

Previously mentioned Izea Ranks, is set to trump all other ranking systems. Alexa, Google Page Rank, Technorati, Blogjuice, and the other myriad of ranking systems are starting to get nervous, maybe even a little sweaty, over newcomer Izea Ranks.

These other ranking systems all have their prolific search engine-based ranking algorithms and fancy mathematical formulas that basically add up to bloggers and other web site owners having to kiss-up to the ranking provider, and live and die by their numbers.

Those systems might still be well and good, after all, they’ve been mostly good to me (I’m glaring at you, Google). But when you’re a blogger and your livelyhood is based on how popular your blog is, you want a metric that’s actually based on your blog traffic and not whether or not the ranking provider likes you or the way you run things.

Enter Izea Ranks - just install a simple piece of javascript code into your blog’s template (don’t worry, it’s not that complicated - they provide you with instructions) and then within a day or two, you’ll start getting statistics on your blog’s popularity within the blogosphere.

It’s exciting to get daily updates on where you stand, as opposed to waiting 3 or 4 months for a certain company to get off their “google” and update your page rank. That way, you can see what is and is not effective at attracting visitors to your site. This allows blog owners to be dynamic and quick-change artists who can effectively draw traffic and page views.

One of the best things about a daily update though, is that it gives a certain sense of satisfaction to my competitive side. Something about looking at my rank and knowing that there’s thousands upon thousands of blogs that aren’t doing as well as me makes me happy. I know that’s unsportsman-like, but you know you’d do the same thing.

I challenge you other blog owners out there to sign-up for Izea Ranks and install the code, and see how you stack up against The Raging Tech.

Tags: Blog, Google Rank Spank, Izea Ranks, rank, ranking, RealRank

SocialSpark: How I Survived Google Spanking Me

As you’ve probably noticed by now, I often write content that is sponsored, and I am pretty open about disclosing such things. At the bottom of most sponsored content, you’ll notice a small blue bubble that will say “Sponsored by” and then the advertiser name. However, some folks didn’t take kindly to any of my content being sponsored, and said it wasn’t cool that I write the same quality of content whether it’s sponsored or not.

Ever since I got my page rank slapped down to zero from it’s former beauty of 3, I had been totally killed on the sponsorships I could take. I’ve previously written about how I’d be taking a break until I could work out sponsorship again. Well, that time has come, as you might have noticed. I have signed up for SocialSpark, which may prove to be the revolution for which the blog monetization game has been eagerly waiting.

SocialSpark uses a system called RealRank, based on actual page views and traffic to your site. It’s also a fun social network that gives bloggers ideas, or “sparks” on what to write about when you’ve got writer’s block. It hooks up bloggers with advertisers and other bloggers, and lets you comment, vote, and leave feedback for each other. Think of it as a MySpace for blog owners, only without all the crap.

You get a friends list, as well as a “fav 9″ to highlight your favorite bloggers. You can send messages, invite people to be your friend, give “props” to those people you like or opportunities that you like. You can see the stats on a blog you’re interested in advertising on if you’re an advertiser.

My favorite part of this system is the pure distinction between blogger and blog. You can give props to a blog instead of directly to a blog owner, which is especially great for people who have more than one blog.

SocialSpark requires 100% in-post disclosure, 100% transparency (no games, man!), actual blogger opinions - they don’t tell us what we should like or dislike, and I only take the opportunities I think are appropriate for my blog and my readers. Sign-up is easy, and payment goes out to your PayPal account, so if you don’t have one of those already, be sure and sign up for one.

It’s free to sign up, even though it’s still in beta, and if you have a blog or are an advertiser looking to spread the word about your product or service, give SocialSpark a try. I’ve never regretted being a part of SocialSpark, and so far it’s been a blast!

Tags: blogging, Google spank, Page Rank, PR slap, review, SocialSpark

Download High-Quality YouTube Videos

Did you know that most YouTube videos can be downloaded now as high-quality mp4 (MPEG-4) files? There have been browser and URL hacks to download files previously, and several sites and Firefox extensions would allow you to plug-in an URL to a YouTube video and it would snag the file or give you an URL to download.

Now, you can do the same thing to get the higher-quality videos. Just save the following as a bookmarklet by dragging it up to your bookmarks bar in Firefox or Safari, or right-clicking and making it a Favorite in Internet Explorer:

Download YouTube Video

Clicking on this bookmark creates a new link below the video you are watching that should be to the downloadable video. Instead of left-clicking, you’ll want to right-click and choose “Save As” and name it something with a .mp4 extension.

I ripped-off came upon these instructions from a blog called Google Operating System via a Lifehacker post, and there you can find more information, including a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that takes care of this whole business for you every time you visit YouTube.

Tags: download, Google, greasemonkey, hacks, Lifehacker, mp4, Videos, YouTube