A reader writes in to report that Accuweather has changed their Web page layout and the shell script from Wicked Cool Shell Scripts that returns the weather forecast (script #63, weather.sh), is broken.
How do you find cool domain names?
One question that comes up again and again with online entrepreneurs is whether it’s worthwhile to register new domain names for different projects, and if it is, how the heck do you find good domain names!?
First off, keyword-relevant domain names can be a nice boost to your relevance and page rank (as discussed in How does Google figure out what pages are more relevant? Pagerank.) because if it includes the key word or phrase you’re using, it further reinforces that your Web site is relevant to that topic. That’s why this Web site is called free-web-money.com not “daves-guide-to-adding-neat-stuff-to-your-site.com” or “spliffo.info” or similar.
Nice testimonial from a reader!
I don’t ordinarily share testimonials here, but this was a very pleasant one to receive:
I am a computer science major at Queens College of the City University
of New York and I have recently purchased you book “Creating Cool HTML 4 Web
Pages.” I must say that I am truly impressed. You see, I have my own
company, J I Diamond International, which deals in fine quality diamonds and jewelry and I have recently posted some of my merchandise on Ebay. I can’t tell you enough how much I appreciate what your book has to offer, especially
due to the fact that I am no fool when it comes to computers. Designing a
webpage has always been a dream and all of my friends have told me to use
Front Page or other Page builders. Yet starting from scratch is always difficult.
How does Google figure out what pages are more relevant? Pagerank.
A core question for anyone on the Web, and certainly a question you should be asking if you’re trying to monetize your Web site, is how the heck does Google figure out what sites are more relevant to a given search than others?
To get the answer, let’s go back in time a little bit and look at the research papers from a Stanford University project called “BackRub”. You should certainly recognize the authors…
Increasing Traffic with the help of DMOZ
There are at least a million different ways to increase traffic to your Web site, but one of the most useful to the Internet community is to volunteer to be a category editor at DMOZ, an open source, public Web directory similar to how Yahoo! was in the early days before it became a media giant.
Double your Adsense PPC click thru rate
In a previous article, I talked about the importance of tweaking your Google Adsense adverts, specifically issues of size and placement. If you haven’t read that yet, I suggest that you start by reading Improving Your Adsense Click-Thru before you proceed with this, the second part of the topic.
You’re back now? Great. Let’s keep talking about this interesting topic.
Improving your Adsense Click-Thru
The leader in the pay per click (or PPC) market is Google, with its Adsense program, but if you’re already an Adsense subscriber, with adverts on your own pages, you might not realize the importance of the design of your advert and the placement of the advert on the page.
How do I optimize my site for search engines?
A devoted reader wrote to me, asking:
“I have just picked up your new book Creating Cool Web Sites, and it’s great stuff. I specifically read the chapter on how to increase your findability and am still wondering if there are even more tips and tricks about how to get good search engine ranking?”
