Cat Chit Chat

This is a very short post about a Somali cat called “Chase”. He is an extremely handsome cat.

I use the PageRank™ toolbar all the time. I think that it is worth knowing what Google thinks of a website and the PageRank™ is in effect just that. I use PageRank™ and Alexa ranking combined to assess the success of a site. These are not conclusive, though, far from it. A site can be excellent and have poor PageRank™ and Alexa rankings if, for example, it is new. It can take months and years in fact to get a decent PageRank™. Indeed it seems that some websites have acquired a good PageRank™ (above 3) through simply being around a long time. Just keeping a website going for a long time counts provided the content has some value. The PageRank™ toolbar comes with the latest Google Toolbar, which, as far as I can tell, is Toolbar 5, at the date of this post. It requires Firefox 2 (the most recent version is, I believe, version 3). I would always recommend the Firefox browser over Internet Explorer. It is known to be better (however some people prefer other browsers – can’t see why tho

Please remember things change fast in the world of Blogger. These posts were written some time ago and some are therefore less useful now as Blogger constantly upgrades its software. They are still of use though. Look for the label " building a website " in the right hand column for more recent posts. Some are timeless however: How to publicize your blog is one example. Google Blogger Guide for Dummies Gothic Background Image Submit Blogger Site Map to Windows Live Add Background Image to Your Table Add TwitThis Button to Blogger Post Embedding Google Adsense in Blogger Post Twitter Helps Blogger Traffic Embedding a Spreadsheet into a Blog Do Subdomain Hits Improve Alexa Ranking? Creating Blogger Blog Subdomain Flip Camera Problem Flickr Photostream for Your Blog Write Blogs with Windows Live Writer How to Get Traffic to Your Blog Fitting the Header Picture into Border Speed up Blogger Blog Load Times Most Companies use Interne

Html Table Background Image. This short post (as it is fairly straightforward) explains the html needed to place a background image in a table. The results of the first block of code below can be seen on this page (note that both the page and the table have backgrounds. The code below just relates to the table and as the image is small it is automatically repeated). <table style="text-align: left; width: 75% ;" background="http://lh4.ggpht.com/mjbmeister/SCFDguzwSJI/AAAAAAAAGoI/Elo-6KT8-vw/s288/greenhorn.gif" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> The code for the table background image is highlighted in red. You can see that the code to be inserted is: background=”URL of the image” (where URL = the location on a server of the saved image) Here is another page where you can see the image in the header (the cat’s ears!): Maine Coon Cat ZAK The code for the Maine Coon Cat header with the ears

I can’t resist having my say on the subject of Susan Gunelius and Google Blogger Guide for Dummies. I have not read the book. This is a review of the Amanda Fazani review of the Susan Gunelius Google Blogger Guide for Dummies or more accurately a review of the issues surrounding the hiring of the author. I make what may be considered slightly provocative remarks. This is deliberate but not intended to be personal or hurtful. People have a right to express their views provided they are presented politely and these are simply my views. I have read Amanda’s review and the comments to the review. I have read what Enviroman (Blogger Tips and Tricks) has said about writing this book and I have read about Susan Gunelius from her website (which has moved). In short I have read everything surrounding the book except the book! I have not read the book because I know it will not be money well spent. This is because it will not be technical enough. And I am not a computer geek; far from it. This

There are many websites that provide free html blog templates and I am talking about Google Blogger templates on this occasion; although there are free templates for any type of website, blog or not. This shortish post is intended to take the slog out of finding them. A small word of warning about free blog templates. They are written by talented and skilled people, yes. But the people at Google are the most talented and proficient of the lot. Google hires the best people, they can afford to. What I am saying is that the templates that Google produce function beautifully and although they can be customized (and the Blogger team accept this) sometimes the customization looks good but doesn’t function as well as the original template. It is a bit like buying a Ferrari and asking the local garage to do a bit of work under the bonnet (hood in the USA). When you customize you have to be careful. Also, I don’t know about you, but when I see a slick blog I have a feeling that it is going to c

I’ll talk you through how to produce what I call a “Wikipedia style” table, the only table (really) worth producing; an elegant table with a fine border. I would not get involved with tables that have thick borders. When I see these I think novice etc. You don’t need to know html table codes. It is useful to know what to look for but to write a table in html is pretty well pointless, in my opinion, as the html editors create great code for tables and the editors are free downloads. The following is an example of the code for a simple elegant table. The end result is shown below the code. Note: I am using simple html not CSS to produce sophisticated tables. <table style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); width: 300px;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1"> <tbody> <tr> <td

Is it possible to make easy money on the internet? I don’t believe it is. Why should it be easier to make money on the internet than on the ground? We are dealing with the same business principles, the same clients and business associates, ultimately. In short we are still dealing with people. Sure there are differences. These are both good and bad. But the differences are not the kind of differences that make it easier to make money on the internet. They simply relate to the methods of making money because of the nature of the internet. In fact, the very ease of starting an internet business can be its undoing. The start up costs, in terms of hard cash, can be almost zero. This is very attractive to millions of people, particularly cautious people. A lot of people hanker after running their own business but are frightened. The internet lets them put their toe in the water of the business world with no downside, no risk. However, most successful business people are not averse to t

If we are to “succeed” (and this is a personal and subjective concept) on the internet with blogs we need to consider not only search engine optimization and all its facets but also how to put it all to use efficiently. Speed blogging and efficient blogging is more a necessity that a luxury and this is why. First, lets get the concept of “success” out of the way. In this post success is deemed to mean getting the maximum number of visitors and page views and therefore revenue. For some people, though (and rightly so) it will not mean that. As you gradually progress up the Alexa hill to the lofty ranks of the bigger established wiz kid sites you find yourself in the first division and you have to raise your game if you are to keep on going up that slippery slope. Sometimes these sites have more than one person creating the content and there will be a geek of a computer person who gets a head start on the likes of me and thee. We have to compete against this. Provided you turn out

In terms of getting traffic to your blog, Page Rank Improvement is equally as important as ensuring that your web page is search engine optimized (at least to a minimum level: see: How To Get Traffic To Your Blog ), perhaps more so. Judging by an interview with Matt Cutts, a Senior Engineer at Google, (or he was in 2005 and as far as I am aware he still is – who would leave Google probably the best employer on the planet?) this is the case. Lets think of the basics : Google is a highly profitable business based on internet use. Internet use is founded on the fact that it is a useful service. The more useful it is the more it grows and so does Google and Google’s profit. It is that premise that underpins Google’s concept of Page Rank, which in turn is based on quality inbound links (backlinks). Sites that are the recipient of quality inbound links are good quality sites providing a useful service. Thus is what Google wants more of. And so do we and all internet users.

There are a number of ways to write Blogger posts, one of which is by email. The set up is easy. You can also write and upload posts by phone (SMS) text message but this is only available in the USA as at 24th May 2009. So how to do set up writing and sending posts to your Google Blogger blog by email and why would you do it this way? Set up Go to Dashboard, then Settings, then select Email & Mobile. In the Posting Options, Email Posting address, add a suitable word in the text entry box and save settings. This provides the email address, which can be accessed from the Dashboard (look just to the left of the blog title and you'll see an email icon, click that). That should be it. This post is being written on an email. When might it be used? My initial thought is for trusted friends to use if you gave them the email address. They could then post articles. Or, if you don't have broadband. This would avoid wasting online time (i.e. if you are still paying by the minute

The tiger human conflict is for ever on the increase. In this post, Human and Wild Cat are Forced Together , I referred to a leopard, in India, being forced to approach people and which was eventually killed. It would be as the human is the top predator. The tiger is in equal danger and I have just read a report ( http://www.thaindian.com ) that confirms what I have been banging away at for a long time, that its habitat is being so radically eroded that it is almost bound to become extinct in the wild. The area of concern is the famous India’s Sundarbans. It is here where the tiger is making a last stand being forced to live a life different to that which is natural to it amongst the swamps and sea water (but nonetheless surviving). Once again the increased human population in the area and the shrinking size of the area (due to raising sea levels) is causing that classic tiger/human face off that can only lead to one outcome, more killed tigers. The tiger is being squeezed on all

Why do I love Twitter? Well for several reasons. Firstly, what happens on Twitter reflects, it could be argued, what happens in real life. People exchange small bits of information all the time through casual and sometimes fleeting pieces of communication. You bump into someone on the way to the corner shop (in the UK, there are no corner shops in the USA!); you might exchange a bit of information. It might be something that you had seen on TV. The other person makes a comment, which gets you thinking. Or it could be something that you have just done, are doing or about to do. The underlying concept is updating people on what you are doing and in doing so you are connecting with other people. That is how it might happen “on the ground”. The beauty of Twitter and why i love twitter is that you can do this very same thing on a worldwide scale, across borders and cultures. The potential benefits are magnified enormously. I just think that we need to use Twitter wisely. Perhaps more wise

What is Twitter? I think that this is a damn good question because the more I see of it the less I see that makes me think it is a useful addition to the internet. People in their millions are scrambling to jump on the Twitter juggernaut; not to be left out of this great new…I am not sure what……What is Twitter? I have a Twitter account and I use it to network and to try and publicise my site. I have a Twit this button on this site and the main Pictures of Cats org site . The idea is that if people like the page or site they bookmark it, in effect, by automatically generating a Twitter post on their home page. If you click on the Twit this button it generates a Twitter post that says, “Reading…[followed the URL of the page you are reading]”. That, on the face of it should attract some visitors to your site if you have sufficient followers of your Twitter account (see Twitter Helps Blogger Traffic   new window ). But if you are going to generate lots of followers you are going to hav

The phrase, “Search Engine Optimization Orlando” is a pretty good keyword and keywords are the start of search engine optimization. I suspect that people in or near Orlando search online using the above phrase. They are probably looking for someone nearby who they can visit to seek advice on getting their website noticed by the search engines. Perhaps they are looking to buy internet success (generally not possible). Google is the one to be noticed by as it has a good 50+% share of the search engine market. In fact, the top five search engines showing market share are (courtesy http://searchengineland.com ): Google: 53.6% Yahoo: 19.9% Microsoft: 12.9% AOL: 5.6% Ask: 1.7% So how do we please Google? Well, personally, I wouldn’t go to a so called specialist (you know what is said about "experts") and spend your hard earned revenue. The reason I say that is because at its core, search engine optimization is relatively straightforward. And the more you u

My blog gets up to 2,700 unique visitors daily (see below). Here is a review of a top listed (by Google) SEO Blog software website. I think that people search for this in order to find some sort of software that will search engine optimize their blog automatically. The whole tortuous thing done for you. That doesn’t sound right to me. People don’t and can’t do that. So although as far as I am concerned the truth is that there is no shortcut to getting your work listed by Google in search results at a position (first page) that makes it useful, I am reviewing Jeff Johnson Underground Training Lab, Free SEO Blog Software and Traffic-Getting Training Tutorials. Traffic for Pictures-of-Cats.org Blog -- Statcounter. 20-5-09. Jeff Johnson’s website gets lots of traffic; a vast amount. A testament to the number of people who want to get their blog noticed. When you go to the site he tells you why he gives stuff away and then asks you to sign up. You confirm by email and then an email i

Update Nov 28th, 2021: Evoy kicked me out of SiteSell. He told me to go and take my site elsewhere because I dared to ask some tough questions on his forum as to why Alexa rankings were diving. The reason? SiteSell sites were over-optimised for SEO and Evoy was openly critical of Google. He made enemies of Google and Google killed him for a long time. My advice now? Don't use SiteSell. They were shits to me. Is Site Sell Site Buildit a Scam? I am writing this in response to the video arguments and text arguments of Allyn Hane: Master Of My Own Domain ( this is the page ). He says that SBI or Site Sell is bullshit. What he means is that you cannot succeed on the internet by being spoon feed “how to” information, as SBI do, and succeed in the long term. The only way to succeed in the long term is to know coding and internet marketing, the whole kibosh, the lot. After all, you wouldn’t go into any business without knowing a good deal about it and having the skills to perform, would yo

How to publicize your blog. A comprehensive list of things to do. The Google Blogger help team tells you a lot of what you need to know to publicize your blog or promote it - call it what you like. There are a number of options that need to be considered and selected and we tend not to get involved in these because at first it is all a bit confusing or boring. Here is a list of things you should do to publicize your blog. Note: this was written in 2009 ! A lot of it still holds true but things have moved on. The ultimate way of publicising your blog is to get good Google search result rankings and that means writing lots of excellent articles and at least one a day for ever!! You have to persist and be disciplined. Firstly, on a fundamental level you have to be prepared to write a lot of good posts that are well focused and which are more than a weak duplication of what someone else has done. The posts have to be of reasonable length. Any post I have made bar one (out of over a 1000