MyCurrentGig.com

Article Submissions and Their Importance to SEO

wardymore.nospam@nospam.mycurrentgig.com (Admin) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:55:00 -1200

I'm not a big fan of considering article submission in the SEO category, but nonetheless article submissions do generate backlinks. As you may or may not know, backlinks are an important aspect to raising your overall pagerank with various search engines.

While article submissions are not nearly as important as they use to be, they do still provide a valuable resource to help customers find you. Many search engines in today's web enviornment no longer consider most article submissions as valid backlinks. It doesn't appear yet that you're penalized for having them, but don't expect every submissions to create those desired backlinks.

However, regardless of backlinks, it's important to still remember why articles exist in the first place. They provide an opportunity for you to create credibility with future customers and/or users in the form of legitimate and sought after knowledge. The people who are reading your articles are interested in you, your product or service and potentially your website.

To ensure you get the maximum exposure across the Internet, it's always a good idea to submit you article to as many submission services as you can. I can't even begin to provide you with this list, but check out some submission software like Article Submitter.

Using a product like Article Submitter will allow you to quickly submit your article to hundreds of submission services across the Internet.

Is it worth it though? Well you could do the same manually, but it's unlikely you want to spend that much time after you've just spent a great deal of time writing the article in the first place. Secondly, you probably are not going to get the same kind of exposure doing it yourself.

Software like Article Submitter isn't going to give you paid accounts at submission services, but it will help you get your article out there using your existing accounts in a heck of a lot less time than doing it yourself. For the price, you'll save enough time to pay it off with your first article submission. Give it a shot.

How to make money through Apple iPhone Application Development

wardymore.nospam@nospam.mycurrentgig.com (Admin) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:00:00 -1200

It wasn't that long ago that Apple introduced us to the world of iPhone Apps. Apple has gone ahead and made it ridiculously easy for users to browse through applications they may be interested in and instantly download them to their iPhone or iPod Touch, with a small charge of course.

To make things even more interesting, Apple opened up the API and gave developers an SDK to use to create their own applications. Then they took it a step further and allow you to try and sell your self-made applications online through their iPhone App Store.

There are few catches of course. You need to register with Apples development centre and then you can download a free copy of the SDK. As far as I can tell from the documentation on their site, they really want you to develop on a Mac too....ick.

Then there is the Development Program Fee. They charge a $99 fee (at the time of this writing) to become a member in the development program. This will let you actually test and distribute your code as well as get access to a whole library of resources.

If you can get through the hurdles and learn the SDK, their are alot of success stories like this one: iPhone Developer: I Just Made $250K From App Store In Two Months.

Unfortunately, with anything that is successful, the scammers will come. While funny, stories like this one are just plain sad: 'I Am Rich' Dude: I Made $6000 From My Dumb iPhone App

Top 5 Basic SEO Tips For Blogs

wardymore.nospam@nospam.mycurrentgig.com (Admin) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:25:00 -1200

One of the most frustrating things about starting a new blog or website is trying to adhere to all the various rules required to get you ranked high on a search engine. Search engines are the Holy Grail and gateway to bringing new visitors to your site and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely important aspect.

Doing your own research on the web, you're going to find a whole whack of sites talking about this tip and that tip...some of these tips don't even have anything to do with SEO. For example, getting back links to your site is very important to increase your PageRank with search sites...but has nothing to do with actual SEO.

There is a lot of great reading material out there too like Seo Mindset By Brad Callen. It'll cost you more than trying to google through the thousands of websites out there talking about SEO, but you get what you pay for.

Let’s cover some quick tips that actually DO have something to do with SEO

Headings and Meta Tags

One of the most important aspects of SEO is ensuring your make full and proper use of heading and meta tags.

Heading tags are HTML markup that looks like this: <H1>, <H2>, <H3>.

Using these to properly outline the heading of your page is very important to how search engines figure out what your site is about.

Meta tags are still used to some extent, but still very important. Inserting the follow on every single page on your site is a must:

These paired up with proper heading use will help search engines automatically figure out what your content is about and index your appropriately.

Page Titles

Not only is it very important to make sure every single webpage on your site has a page title, it is also very important to make sure they have a unique page title.

Page titles are widely used by search engines to figure out what contents the site has, but also used as a visible listing in their results.

Make sure you have a unique name for every single page.

Sitemap

Having a sitemap is absolutely critical, but don’t forget to actually submit it to search engines manually.

A sitemap is basically an XML feed that outlines the content on your site. You can either have a static sitemap like sitemap.xml or generate them dynamically similar to how this site does it like http://www.mycurrentgig.com/sitemap.axd

This way, search engines will be able to get updates to your site very quickly and adds another factor in determine how important your site is over other sites.

Content

An easy one, having fresh content is critical. You may find yourself posted high early on, but over time, your content will become stale and move down the search result list.

Adding new content or simply updating old content is a great way to show search engines that you’re keeping on top of things and the site has a life of its own.

Use SEO Software

I had thought about adding a more relevant fifth tip for developers out there, but then it occurred to me, most bloggers may not have the time or care about all the techy junk mentioned above.

If you’re one of these people, seriously consider using SEO Software which will help automate a lot of the tips mentioned and remove the need to learn anything.

A software package like SEO Elite will remove a lot of the thinking for you. The price is a little steep at $150+, but if you’re serious about optimizing your site, it is one of the best packages out there.

Check it out at http://www.seoelite.com.

How to make money off your parked or unused domains

wardymore.nospam@nospam.mycurrentgig.com (Admin) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 04:24:00 -1200

We've all done it. Bought a domain name with a great idea in mind and then just didn't have the time to actually do anything with it. But why let it just sit there doing nothing but making money for your hosting companies "parked domain" page when you could be something with it quickly and cost effectively.

With that thought in mind, I started looking for ways to monetize my parked domains and came across a really cool site called WhyPark.Com

This site is great. It lets you setup and manage keywords that your site will eventually hold and then using those keywords supplies relevant content to any users that stumble on your domain.

That content is provided in a strict SEO compliant format which then lets search engines easily pick up on the content and potentially get your domain up around the web before you even do anything.

After that quick setup process, if you're interested in monetizing the site, you can then use their built in tools, provide your advertising code and it will automatically start serving your ads. You'll instally start making PPC cash off a domain you haven't even done anything with yet.

Really cool idea and really simple to use, I highly recommend checking out WhyPark.Com

Buying Zune Music, Movies, Games and Other Stuff

wardymore.nospam@nospam.mycurrentgig.com (Admin) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:07:00 -1200

A friend of mine just picked up a Zune and despite also having an IPhone, he still absolutely loves his Zune.

While chatting with him about where he finds his content for his Zune, he mentioned that he uses a site simply called Unlimited Media Access.

After checking it out, it looks like they have some pretty decent things to choose from if you're looking too get away from the Zune marketplace, which personally kills my PC.

Sorting a List using System.Comparison Delegate in C#

wardymore.nospam@nospam.mycurrentgig.com (Admin) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:55:00 -1200

Lists and generics are now used much more commonly than the ArrayLists of old and one important reason why is how easily they can be sorted. One of the easiest ways to sort a list is to use a technique that involves the System.Comparison Delegate.

Don't worry, you don't really need to know very much about delegates or even the System.Comparison delegate.

First thing you need to do is setup a function that returns an integer and accepts two parameters of the type in your list.

private static int SortPostsByTitle(Post post1, Post post2) 

{ 

    return post1.Title.CompareTo(post2.Title); 

}

In the example above, we intend to take a Post object and then sort it by titles. Using the string.CompareTo function is a quick way to return either a 1, 0 or -1 depending on how post1.Title and post2.Title are related.

Secondly, in your code that contains the list, simply make use of this function as shown below.

private void CreatePostList() 

{ 

    List<Post> listOfPosts = Post.GetPostsByCategory(cat.Id); 

    listOfPosts.Sort(SortPostsByTitle); 

    //bind the list to whatever control you need 

}

Sending an Email in C# .NET 2.0

wardymore.nospam@nospam.mycurrentgig.com (Admin) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:21:00 -1200

Sending an email in C# 2.0 is easier than ever before.

The example below takes advantage of the new "using" statement, which handles all the "tear down" work involved in closing connections and disposing of objects no longer required. In addition, the exception handling could be expanded to catch specific exceptions that are generated by the SmtpClient class.

 
using (System.Net.Mail.MailMessage mailMessage = new System.Net.Mail.MailMessage())

{

    mailMessage.From = "youremail@yourdomain.com";

    mailMessage.To = "receiversEmail@receiversDomain.com";

    mailMessage.Subject = "Your subject";

    mailMessage.Body = "Your body";

    try

    {

        System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient smtpClient = new System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient("your server address");

        smtpClient.Send(mailMessage);

    }

    catch (Exception ex)

    {

        //handle exception

    }

}

Implement Multiple Interfaces Containing Functions With Identical Signatures

wardymore.nospam@nospam.mycurrentgig.com (Admin) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:35:00 -1200

C# provides the ability to implement a class from mulitiple interfaces which greatly increases a classes ability to be consumed by potential callers. Unfortunately, every now and then we run into a situation where an interface has the exact same function signature as another interface. Rather than changing the function name on one of the interfaces and potentially causing issues with other pieces of code, we can consume both function requirements using the strategy outlined in this article.

Lets say you have two interfaces that contain a function with an identical signature. Meaning they have the same name, same return type and the same parameter list as seen below:

     public interface Interface1 

     { 

         void Function(string param1); 

     } 

     public interface Interface2 

     { 

         void Function(string param1); 

     }

If you intend on being able to access each interface's function independently, you need to use code similiar to below:

     public class MyClass : Interface1, Interface2 

     { 

         void Interface1.Function1(string param1) 

         { 

             //perform function operations for interface 1 

         } 

         void Interface2.Function1(string param1) 

         { 

            //perform function operations for interface 2 

         } 

     }

This strategy is called Explicit Interface Implementation. By declaring functions like this, you now have access to each interface's functions but these functions can NOT be declared as public and therefore can NOT be called by a class instance. In order to call the proper function you need to use code like this:

     public static void Main() 

     { 

         //Declare a class instance MyClass 

         MyClass myClass = new MyClass(); 

         //Declare an interface instance "Interface1" using myClass 

         Interface1 myInterface = (Interface1)myClass; 

         //This line will crash the compiler because you can't access Function1 through a class instance

         myClass.Function1("param1"); 

         //However this line will NOT crash the compiler and will execute the function you intended 

         myInterface.Function1("param1"); 

     }