Archive for the ‘Society’ Category
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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for dummies; Techie blog reviews
May 5th, 2007 | 
Author: As ‘yall know, I’ve been one of the participants of the Technorati Favourites Exchange (TFX) over the last few weeks which had the aim of getting a whole bunch of people into the top 100 favourited blogs list on Technorati. It’s been very successful too with the composition of that top 100 changing entirely.
So far, I’ve not yet made it as the barrier seems to move up every time I think I’m about to get in at number 100 but I’m not really that bothered as I’ve learnt far more over the last couple of weeks about promoting FP than I would otherwise have done in months if not years. Anyway, I thought I’d share some of that with you here.
First off, it’s very clear that the way to go with the adsense ads is the big square block that you see on FP these days. That’s the one that all the big money making blogs use and when we talk big money, one clocked up $8500 in March.
Getting the traffic up is key to that $8500 of course and with that in mind I’m pleased to see that the link exchanges that are part and parcel of the TFX have moved me into the top 40k of blogs with well over 100 incoming links to date. If you get the chance, it’s definitely worthwhile participating in one of the many link trains around.
What’s also quite useful in increasing the income from the blog/website is to improve the ranking of Alexa and Google. Now, google is staffed with some smart cookies so it’s not too easy to outsmart them and, by and large, what you need to do is to bump up the number of incoming links over a period of time. Naturally that means that your Google ranking isn’t going to go from zero to seven in a couple of months and indeed it’s taken me about eight months to get to PR4 with FP and, all being well, it’ll be at PR5 or perhaps PR6 at the next review (due around July).
However, Alexa is a completely different story. What’s clear is that being in the top 100k sites in Alexa brings in significant cash benefits in that people are prepared to pay more for links from such a site, for you to write articles about them, etc. if you’re in that top 100k. The Alexa people seem to be a completely dumber bunch than those at Google (sorry guys, but it looks like that from here) though and it seems to sufficient merely to download the Alexa toolbar and just look at your own site. Doing that has knocked off 100k from my ranking in a matter of days and I’m not even milking it by just sitting and hitting refresh either. Will it be possible to get into the top 100k doing that though? I think it will as friends of ours with a broadly similar “real” readership are bouncing along at around 100k yet with the location of the readership obviously completely squewed by them accessing their own pages.
What’s also clear is that there’s a whole lot of people out there who think that throwing together a blog is a doddle as everything is totally automated. Well, not quite everything is automated and I’ve picked up loads of great ideas from looking at the various blogs participating in the TFX which I’m gradually incorporating into FP.
If anyone’s interested, I can do a little technical review of their site and point out the various things that they could usefully do to get the traffic up. All I’m asking for the moment is that you do a little article mentioning Foreign Perspectives on your own blog. I’ll consider reviewing non-blog sites too but that would be a chargeable thing.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.The RSS Link Train
Thanks to Nia for putting me on to Bob’s new Feed My Feed game, this will help increase the estimated RSS feed on ReviewMe.com.
So here is how the game is played:
The Feed Link Chain is a blog Link game that is gaining in popularity within the blogosphere. Unlike other blog games which focused on getting backlinks, this one is going to help you increase your Feed Readers.
All you have to do is
(1) Add your name and the feed link to the chain along with the names and feeds of three blogs that you would like to include.
(2) Simply publish the new list to your blog and allow your readers to participate in the game by continuing the chain!
(3) Link back to me in your post and make a comment HERE with the three sites you’ve added; I’ll add them to the list on my site so that others, when copying the list from my site will be propagating your three as well!
All the blogs mentioned in the chain are worth reading so do add them to your feeds and spread the word around.
Visit Feedburner for a URL feed for each site if you don’t already have that.
The List:
Buying a house in France: part 19: Post Office and Co-Operative bank accounts in France
For historic reasons, the various post offices and co-operative banking organisations in Europe maintain loose connections with their opposite numbers in other countries and it’s therefore often useful to open accounts with these organisations before you move.For instance, the co-operative bank offer a service called Tipanet which offers quite cheap international money transfers: around £8 as compared to the £25 that a normal bank would charge you. In the UK, it’s the Co-Operative Bank that does this, in France it’s Banque Populaire. The co-operative movement is quite frequently used by various unions and in France Banque Populaire offers special deals to public servants.The post office links are even more widespread and various special arrangements exist between considerable numbers of national post offices for their account holders. However, information on these isn’t widely distributed and it can take a little searching to find out about them. One advantage that almost all give you is that a post office account effectively gives you government issued proof of address once your first statement arrives.
DIY in France
DIY is one of the most popular activities in France if the constant flow of traffic into the DIY (bricolage) shops is anything to go by.
One reason for this is that it’s next to impossible to get anyone to do odd-jobs here so many more people are forced down the DIY route than would otherwise be the case. The range of items for sale is much larger than that in the equivalent places in the UK. Electical equipment runs right up to professional gear in the larger stores and you can buy everything required to build a house from scratch which is also a fairly popular activity. I well remember one old couple wheeling out everything that they needed to floor a room in their house from the floorboards to the tools required.
The popularity of the activity is most noticeable just prior to public holidays when it’s best to avoid these places unless you’ve a considerable amount of time to spare as the queues are just unbelieveable.
Naturally, whilst it might be a popular activity, that doesn’t mean that the work is necessarily done terribly well. Not that the workmanship of the professionals is always better of course as you can see from the not quite perfect sign from this DIY store.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Where should I go on holiday? Where should I take my vacation?
I was reminded by Jimmy over at Your Credit Advisor the other day that Americans and Europeans treat holidays in very different ways and as my readership is split more or less equally between the two, I thought I’d share some thoughts and ideas that us Europeans have which could be even more useful to the American readership in a little series on holiday/vacation planning.
Where you should go is really determined by how much time you have available. That in turn creates five basic types of holidays:
1. Daytrips.
2. The short break consisting of anything from a few days up to about a week.
3. Normal holidays, usually 10 to 14 days.
4. Extended holidays of three to six or seven weeks.
5. The “big trip” of several months to a year or more.
In practical terms, the big trip type holiday is almost always best considered as a series of extended holidays with 4 to 6 weeks in each location. Usually this is limited to students on their gap year although retired people also take similar scale holidays. The world is your oyster with this scale of holiday but in practice most people seem to give a theme to their big trip so you could have someone staying in various countries in the far east, or perhaps a series of essentially citybreaks around the world, exploring Africa, etc.
Whilst our American readership probably counts 3 weeks as an extended vacation, in Europe almost everyone gets four weeks vacation time per year (not counting public holidays) so it’s quite common for Europeans to take quite substantial holidays as a matter of course each year.
Typical extended holiday destinations are vacations like New England, round the world trips (usually with a week or two in each of two or three countries), the west coast of America, Australia, Europe, etc. For this type of trip you need a fairly substantial number of places to go and things to do which, in general, means covering a fairly large area of one or more countries. I separate them out from “normal holidays” because this scale of trip needs a bit of planning to make the most of your time. If you take our New England trip as an example, you’ll see that we needed to work out a rough route and that in turn meant taking the decision that there were various places we’d not be able to see because of the backtracking it would entail to reach them.
Short breaks are just that: a mini holiday. The key thing to note on a short break is that you lose both the first and the last day of your vacation because you’ll be getting to/from the airport. Therefore, a typical long-weekend holiday might count as four days (ie Friday through to Monday) but in reality you only get two of those days at your destination. This means that you’re best to concentrate on a single location for this type of holiday and that in turn usually means a citybreak. Two days in most cities is enough to see the majority of the highlights. However, the short time available means that you will benefit most by researching the location thoroughly in advance. For this, I find that EyeWitness is by far the best series of guidebooks to use as they’re aimed at exactly this market so you’ll find top 10 lists, maps, best restaurants, etc. With the growth in discount airlines in Europe, this type of holiday has really taken off in recent years.
Whilst I’m sure that daytrips in America are always local, it’s possible to take daytrips to various European cities. Normally, these leave the airport very early (6am is common) and return quite late thus giving you a fairly full day in the city that they fly to. Coach trips taking you round most of the highlights of the city are usually included in the price. To make the most of these, it’s best to buy the EyeWitness guidebook for the city a month or more in advance. Bear in mind that you’re not required to take the coach trip. It will almost certainly be the easiest way to reach the city centre but once there be prepared to get off and go around the sights that YOU want to see, which may not be the sights that the trip covers.
Normal holidays are where European and American practice differs greatly. I do appreciate that when Americans come to Europe on vacation that they want to see the “big sights” and make the most of their vacation time, but rather than trying to do Europe in a single two week trip, it’s much better to choose one European country and cover that well. After all, you can always come back. The other problem is that in “doing Europe” in one go, you will constantly be bumping into other American tourists doing exactly the same thing. You’ll see little crowds of them around the Eiffel Tower, the Tower of London, etc. Not only that, but the costs of those “do Europe” trips are VERY high and you don’t really experience Europe culture properly either.
A normal holiday for a European is something like two weeks in a Spanish resort, two weeks in a French villa, perhaps two weeks in Florida. The one thing that they have in common is that on a two week trip, there’s usually only one country involved.
This article is part of our series on holiday planning which covers things like how to book your holiday, how to take your holiday money, what to pack, etc.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.
