I guess I’m a little behind on my Toastmasters updates eh? Well, last week I did the Invocation, which is what starts off the mood for the meeting. Usually people talk about things that are really meaningful or generally serious and inspiring. So I decided to do something a bit different and, again, steer in the direction of happiness, which I’ve posted in the comments for this entry.

This week I did the word of the day and the language evaluation. I have to admit when I was trying to think of an uncommonly used word the first one that came to mind was  “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Yes, its in the dictionary! However, that word is a bit silly, and as Justin mentioned, I didn’t want to make people hate me. So instead I chose the word “flabbergasted” cause its a fun word and its not often used. I have to say though, compared to previous meetings, everyone was good at attempting to use the word. Woot. 1 point Bekah.

Also, Jess did a last minute speech which she threw together in something like 20 minutes (or less!) for tonight’s meeting. She talked about interviews and what you can do to have a better shot at getting a job offer after leaving an interview and feeling good about any interviews you have – without feeling like you could have done better after you leave. And, of course, it was nothing short of amazing. I don’t think there will ever be a day when she doesn’t amaze me with her abilities and skills…

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As for Netgenetix these days…

The boss is having me learn flash… that’s gonna be awesome. I know the basics and a decent amount of AS3 from school but I never got into it much at that time. So I got a book and have been doing some self-teaching but its a bit slow right now with how busy I’ve been… however I’ll hopefully be starting a class for it in the fall probably. I’m actually pretty excited… I’ve always had super good ideas for things that could happen in flash but obviously don’t have the patience for the design part of it (as usual)… but once I get good at it and I’ve got Justin to design stuff before hand, then that will be pretty sweet.

Also, I’ve been wanting to write a few more new blog entries for Citrus however haven’t had much of a chance lately. If anyone has any good ideas or things for me to write on regarding SEO please share! (Anything you’d like to know?)

Oh! And the NHL Playoffs started today! How exciting! Yay for the Canucks first win against the Blues! This means an overload of support emails on our free hockey pool website, PickupHockey.com. I’ve been helping out with these support emails a lot over the last couple days and I’m not sure what it is about them… but I’m ADDICTED! I dunno what it is, but I’m addicted to replying support emails and doing so as soon as humanly possible! It’s actually pretty exciting, Pickup Hockey is growing so much and it’s freaking awesome… I’m not sure what it is but I love watching the number of registrations and daily visits continue to climb. I’m proud to say I contribute to keeping one of the biggest hockey pool websites on the internet alive and well!!!

Anywho, that’s enough rambling for one night. Later!

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I’m sure the majority of web users only use the web, image, or map search functions of Google. However there are many tools that Google offers which aren’t necessarily advertised on the main site, or even in their ‘more Google products’. They’re usually found in the Google Labs and one of these tools in particular can help one in the beginning phases of an SEO upgrade – and it’s called Google Trends.

Google Trends allows you to view search trends by multiple terms and compare them. This allows you to see where the trends lie for your specific industry in terms of keywords and what your target market is looking for. This tool can be very powerful depending on what you use it for. It can allow you to see seasonal trends and steady traffic patterns that you otherwise may have missed. For example, you can search for yearly events like “xmas gifts” that you think may have seasonal trends:

It’s also possible to browse trends based on calendar dates rather than searching for them by viewing the Hot Trends. For example, by browsing the top 100 hot trends of November 4th, 2008 it’s obvious you’ll see the majority of results circle around the 44th presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain.

It is important to remember that just because a certain search term is a ‘hot trend’ does not mean that you should put into your keywords or website content if it doesn’t fit with your topic. If it isn’t already apparent to why it’s a bad idea to incorporate content that doesn’t fit your topic or audience I strongly suggest you revert back to either my post on copywriting for SEO or Jess’ post on building the right audience.

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In the past, several search engine optimizers have heavily discouraged fancy navigation menu systems; rather recommending using search engine friendly menus based on HTML and styled with CSS. Up until now the primary language understood by search engines has been HTML; however Google has unleashed the ability for its spiders to crawl and read JavaScript.

This means that the navigation on your website can now have dropdowns and flashy effects without sacrificing SEO. A good example of this is the Monitronics website. About a month ago they launched a new site built with DotNetNuke and the Solpart version 1.7.2 menu system. DotNetNuke’s Solpart menu system relies on JavaScript to run. In the past, this would have been strongly discouraged as with scripting disabled no menu items are visible, which equals bad for SEO. However, now that Google has spidered the new JavaScript menus they will appear in the Google cache and count toward SEO value for the site.

Yahoo’s cache is a little different in this case though. The main menu text is visible however without the drop downs. Yahoo has successfully cached the text rendered by the JavaScript but failed to read the JavaScript code itself therefore failing to spider the drop down menus and the menu links.

Even though Google spiders can now index JavaScript, this level of accomplishment is yet to be seen for Yahoo. Considering Google is Yahoo’s closest competitor I don’t see this being the case for long. In July 2006 a study showed that 43.7% of web users search with Google versus Yahoo at 28.8% of web users. This means we aren’t home free with JavaScript and SEO quite yet but it does mean a very large step in the right direction and good start to 2009.

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The following is a post I wrote for Citrus SEO on blogging for businesses.

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A featured post from the Citrus SEO blog by Netgenetix Media:

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Writing content that is keyword rich is sure to get you some headway when it comes to search engine optimization. However the Google engine weighs link-based popularity much heavier than just keywords repeated within your content. Many website owners who write their own content try to add in words that don’t necessarily need to be there – hoping they’ll help themselves in the optimization department.

Really, if you think logically about this, even if you fill your content with keywords for your website, once your users get there they won’t want to return because they don’t feel like they’re getting the information they need, at the rate they want. They’d have to dig through mountains of misplaced keywords and unnecessary content – which I can guarantee you very few readers will actually do.

Generating content for your users will keep them coming back and will generate more traffic (and more popularity!) since your users will spread the word about your useful and to-the-point information. This talk of spreading the word is usually done through links, whether through emails, blogs, or websites.

In some ways back links can be categorized as a black hat SEO technique and they come in the form of link baiting (through social content websites) and buying links from other websites. The key is genuine, sweat-of-the-brow, organic, back links which are given by choice.

If you don’t believe me, I’ll let Google tell you.

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Citrus has made an impression! It’s being featured on more and more CSS Gallery sites for its inspiring design and amazing CSS work. Here are a few sites it’s featured on:

CSS Mania

Most Inspired

Screenalicio.us

CSS Count

CSS Based

CSS Impress

CSS Leak

CSS Star

CSS Creme

CSS Brigit

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