Ok ok, so I’m really not sure how much boredom this will really save me from (as I am incredibly busy these days), but this is definitely one more thing to add to my list of projects; and make a priority!

A colleague of mine at Covario (formerly Netconcepts) once presented the greater group with a magical Google Spreadsheet that did all sorts of neat things like suggest websites to get links from and show top 10 competitors for a given search term.  This really opened my eyes to a new world of possibilities.

Being as busy as I’ve been, however, I haven’t really had a chance to look into these possibilities until just last week.  And I’m here to say that Google Spreadsheets can help SEOs a LOT.  Sounds kind of funny, I know, but its true.

Using them can help you with things like tracking indexation across the major engines along with keeping tabs on inbound links or even exploring new opportunities for inbound links… in a more automated fashion.

Pairing up the power of Google Spreadsheets with a good scripting language like Python or PHP, and leveraging both via the Google Spreadsheets API, could end up being a very valuable tool for SEOs.

So I am going to spend a lot of time this week digging my head into figuring out what resources I can leverage to make this happen.  Python is exciting and I would like to play with it some more, but right now I’m thinking PHP may be the best way to get it done.  There’s definitely a Spreadhseets API library for PHP, and it is my main focus as a language right now, so it will probably make most sense to just use PHP.

Stay tuned and follow along to find out what I can do to help SEOs by leveraging Google Spreadsheets and PHP.

Cheers!

These would be things like using the targeted keyword in the video name, Title tags, etc along with some other factors like reviews, ratings and comments. Typical on page factors, really.

Well conveniently enough, Search Engine Land just put out an interesting post on this subject yesterday: The Key To Top Video Rankings On YouTube & Google.

In that post, there is mention of a recurring and oh-so crucial theme when it comes to SEO; applied to video.  Can you guess what that might be?  That’s right, LINKS!

There is a video included as well.  One where Matt Cutts is asked why one video may rank so well vs. a different video.  And surprise, surprise, he comes back with something like: “Off the top of my head I would think that the video ranking well may just have a very powerful link pointing to it and maybe has more PageRank or link authority.”

Well thanks a lot, Matt.  That really helps.  No, really… I’m not just being facetious.

Bottom line once again: Links are probably the single most crucial factor when it comes to achieving and maintaining good search engine rankings (once any technical/content barriers have been hurdled).   Have valuable content, people will link to it.  Have a video that people like, and they will link to it.  Get many high quality inbound links and Google “rewards”.  Its almost that simple.   And it doesn’t necessarily just apply to web pages now, either.

Since the launch of blended search and roll out of the Caffeine update, it seems that Google is switching their focus from “pages” to “Documents”.  And clearly Videos are included.

Happy Friday!

When changing themes, make SURE your web analytics tracking code is carried over.

To give a wee-bit of insight, I learned this the hard way just recently.  As you may have noticed, I started blogging pretty much every day of the work week.  Missed Friday of last week since Thursday was my birthday (the big 24 – officially mid-twenties now. Scary.), but I felt I did pretty well.

Well I have been through almost 6 different themes in the 2-3 years I’ve had this site, and usually I am anal retentive when it comes to making sure that tracking code is carried over.  Well, I got a bit lazy in the past 6 months, I guess.

Changed my theme using WooThemes, which has an admin Theme option for inputting footer scripts like tracking code.  Well needless to say, I took that for granted and did not check the source of my pages to be sure.  And frankly, at the time, tracking code wasn’t important.  I just wanted to play with a new theme :)

Moral of the story: Check, check and check again to be sure that you have the correct tracking code placed wherever it needs to be on your pages.

I think I lost about 2 months worth of site data.  Really nothing to get upset about, since I think I’m averaging a piddly 3-4 visits/day, but that’s still valuable data that I cannot get back.

Good thing I got it back on in time for my bday tho!  I think I got a whopping 15 visits on the 4th and 5th! WooHoo! :-P

Stay classy.

And as a haphazard installation implies, I had issues.  Sadface.

But as with any fresh OS installation, things are running really well.  So naturally, I wanted to make sure I do it the right way when I go to install Rails this time.

I, being the noob that I am, turned to Google in search for a great how-to guide/tutorial.  Well it didn’t take long to find at all.  The very first result did the trick:

Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, Hackido!   I just followed the steps and voila… things are looking good.  Granted, I stopped after completing Step 6 since I was really just looking to setup a local development environment.  So I can’t necessarily speak to Steps 7+, but if I get good enough with Rails, this is where I will be turning to when I go to setup a live Rails app on a web server like Rackspace’s Cloud Sites or Slicehost.

Enjoy!