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!

“Well no shit, Shirlock,” some may say, but I’m serious.  SEO has been established as an extremely feasible and relatively cheap way of getting more and/or new business.  As a result, EVERYONE wants in.

So in the last couple years I have seen businesses of all sizes jump on the bandwagon.  I’ll share a little insight, too: they ALL want to be #1.

Obviously that’s just not possible, so in these past few years I have spent a lot of time getting clients’ sites to rank as high as they possibly can for as many of their key terms as possible.  And in doing so, I have worked with some sites that just have too many barriers to even have a chance in their current state.  I’m sure any  SEO that’s been around for a while has come across those.  But that isn’t what this post is about.

This post is really geared to speak towards those sites that may not have a ton of barriers, and may in fact have a vast majority of SEO best practices implemented, but just aren’t seeing the results they’ve been expecting.   This may actually be more common a case than most people think.  I have had many site owners come to me saying, “why, why, WHY aren’t we ranking well for [X] term??”

The truth is that the answer to their question may not be something they really want to hear.  The truth is that it comes down to a matter of perceived value.  Let me explain.

I’m sure most people reading this have come across at least a few videos of Matt Cutts answering questions from people in the web community.  I think some could/would also say that MOST videos of Matt Cutts answering the “how do I optimize my site for search?” question ends with the same tune.  Well I believe there is a reason for that.

That familiar tune to which I am referring is the age old “just focus on generating good content that people will want to link to” line.  I think you know what I’m talking about.  I, myself, found that to be a bit of a cop out at first.  But then I got to thinking…. Why does he just keep saying that?  Could it be a company line? Sure.  But I like to think that it has more meaning than that.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here are a couple of links:

• http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5179191836301432169 (The whole thing is great, but skip to about 1:35 to just hear what I’m referring to)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRzMhlFZz9I (another great video, but again, what I’m referring to is about 1:00 into it.

In both videos, Matt states that generating good content (that people will want to link to, wink, wink) is one of the single most important parts of doing well in SEO.

So what? That doesn’t really answer the website owner’s question about why they’re not ranking well for a certain term.  Well, actually, it does.  So here is the candid secret to good search engine rankings:

HAVE A GOOD WEBSITE!

Sounds a little silly and even TOO remedial, doesn’t it?  I would agree.  But seriously, think about it.   Why would Matt Cutts keep saying to just focus on your users and having good content?  It comes back to what I said about perceived value and a scope even larger than just SEO.

Truly good websites will tend to do well in the search engines because some portion of the web community deems them as being valuable.

So regardless of your website’s purpose (ecommerce, lead-gen, publication, etc), you need to ask yourself one question: “How can I make my website content more valuable to my users?”  Answer that, and you will already be well on your way to great search engine rankings.

Cheers!

I would also assume that anyone who has done keyword research has also come across the age old question: “How much traffic will this term get us?”  That is almost the whole reason for doing keyword research to begin with, right?

Well as I’m sure you know, that question isn’t very hard to answer.  Just use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool!

But wait,  so we’re using the tool and seeing search volume data, but it appears that the volume is limited to last month? What’s up with that?  I don’t just want last month’s data…. My products are popular in 6 months!

Well its a good thing that the folks over at Covario (formerly Netconcepts) thought about that and came up with a helpful tool called the Google Keyword Tool Annualizer.

Basically, its an excel spreadsheet that will take an export from the Google Adwords Keyword Tool with search volume trends (make sure that is selected to show when you export) and spit out a number of total search volume over the course of 12 months.

Sounds pretty simple, right?  Well if its so damn simple, why doesn’t Google just tell us annual search volume data?!  No need to dwell, though.  This will take care of it for you.

So if you ever find yourself in a position where you need to find out how many potential visits you can get from a given search term (or set of search terms) over the course of an entire year, look no more!  The tool has arrived!

Enjoy.  

Kim, my lovely girlfriend, had to work pretty much the whole weekend.  That’s a pretty common occurrence, but this weekend was just a little bit different.

Normally I would spend pretty much the whole time geeking out on the laptop working, trying new things, installing new software, playing around with different web frameworks, etc….  On occasion I would get out and see a flick with a friend or maybe even go around town taking photos, but that’s about the extent of the exciting life that I live (sounds fun, eh?).

Anyone that works an office job knows what it feels like to go back Monday morning; and it just isn’t fun.  The brain almost never feels fresh for any amount of reasons and its just really hard to get to work on Monday and feel good about it.

I used to figure that spending time on the computer just hacking the weekend away would keep my brain active enough.  But it wasn’t until Kim and I got a simple 750 piece Jigsaw puzzle of Times Square, NYC that I realized my thoughts may have been flawed.

We spent much of Saturday evening (after going out to dinner) doing the puzzle, listening to music and had a great time.  It was a nice change of pace and had been an extremely long time since I had done a puzzle.  So Sunday evening I was bored and decided to just sit down with the puzzle myself.

I got in the office Monday morning and said to myself, “Hey, this Monday morning isn’t nearly as bad as they usually are…. I wonder what’s…” and then it just clicked. “The Jigsaw Puzzle!”

So I think I may be taking up another new hobby… They’re fun and they keep the brain active.  Let’s give this a shot and see what happens.  But right now, it feels like a great compliment to what I already do on my “spare” time.

And if you ever feel like you’re just constantly struggling with the Monday morning blues, try doing a puzzle over the weekend! It may make all the difference in the world….

• Upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 (Wonderful update, btw)
• Got RubyOnRails installed on my Ubuntu machine and… well…  almost running (have some server issues)
• Other side web projects
• Changed WordPress theme on DanReno.com and modified it to meet my needs
  • Gotta give my a shoutout to the Woothemes folks and their new theme Digitalfarm… It’s great!
  • Some tweaking was DEFINITELY needed, however (homepage features, etc.)
• All of this while simultaneously watching Ninja Warrior on G4 in the background :)

All of this was, of course, both very enjoyable and a headache at times.  I had the new theme/customizations working just fine on my Ubuntu machine at home yesterday, but had to make some adjustments just a few minutes ago when I checked it at work.  There were some weird IE issues I was seeing, but luckily was able to get them fixed.

I still feel like there is some work to do (naturally), but overall I’m pretty happy.  The header graphic definitely needs some re-touching.  But I was pretty limited trying to work with Gimp Editor; the default image editor on Ubuntu.  Definitely has a learning curve and I wasn’t quite getting past it as I was stumbling through.  So hopefully I’ll be able to get on my archaic windows machine with Adobe CS1 on it to do some actual/good image editing with it soon.  Not a top priority by any means, however.

Next up for DanReno.com is most likely going to be some reviews of my 2 recent favorite albums.  The first which has long been overdue is The Octahedron by The Mars Volta.  The second is The Great Misdirect by Between The Buried and Me.  Both are exceedingly awesome albums, but I will leave those details to their respective future posts.

And I’m not quite keeping up with my 1 new post/week goal just yet.  I imagine that will continue to slide throughout the holidays.  But I’ll do my best to keep active with it during the hectic times.

Cheers!

I think part of that stems from me not being terribly active on the web; despite the fact that I am literally on the web at least 50 hours/week.  Doesn’t make much sense for me to not be more active.

So as a result of me deciding to not take the blog down and turn it into a development project, I had to come up with something that will actually allow me to actively post and update the site on a regular basis.  That “something” is what I’m sure MANY if not all other serious bloggers do: make a list.

I now have a list of about 15 or so topics that I know I can write about.  I intend to use that list as my plan for posts.  Ideally, I’d like to keep the list at about 10-15 new topics at any given time so that when I actually sit down to blog, I can have a good selection of ideas to choose from rather than just drawing a blank.

Simply creating the list has taken quite the load off my shoulders.   So I’m excited to announce that I have made blogging more frequently a personal goal; and I just took my first step in the right direction.

As I stated in my last post, my concerns with doing that were basically around my recent inactivity and how I wasn’t sure taking down the site would be my best move since I couldn’t find the time to blog in the first place.  Well all of that has changed now.

I am attempting to turn over a new leaf and become more active in general.  I have spent the last year trying to get  acclimated with my new surroundings and not really doing much of anything.  Being a hermet. With my girlfriend. Staying in and doing the same thing over and over.

So getting more active with my site is my ultimate decision.  I can develop it as I go; contually adding new features and customizing the site to fit my needs as I get more familiar with PHP, SQL and programming in general.  Not to mention the front end side of things with HTML/CSS.  I’ll need to make an effort to learn more about the details around HTML 5 that’s supposed to be released soon enough, but let’s take one thing at a time.

I have a real issue with getting overwhelmed often because I like to think about everything as a whole.  And if there’s anything I’ve learned in recent months, its that taking things one step at a time is the only real way to get stuff done and take the neccessary actions to change things.  So that is what I’m doing.  Taking things one at a time. And this site is one of those things.

But there is much more to come in the next 6 months.  I have many plans in the works (mwah). Obviously its all a work in progress, but I assure you that the stagnant Dan is slowly going bye bye.  As things unfold, I will be keeping you all up to date.  That is, I’ll give updates in between all of my ramblings and unwanted opinions. :)

Some of the ramblings I plan to post going forward include, but are not limited to:

• Beer/wine reviews
• Photography “exhibitions”
• More music related posts
• Wonderful techie geek stuff
• And of course, good ‘ol SEO

Stay tuned, all (2 of you)!

So as I unintentionally made a false promise to be more active on my site, I have been contemplating taking down the current site you see here and redeveloping the site from concept to design.  I will still use WordPress as my platform most likely, but it just seems that I need to come up with a better idea for my site than what I currently use it for (which is almost nothing lately).

Originally I got the site so I could A) have my domain name registered to me and B) have a blog I could use to interact in the blogosphere and contribute to the web.  Well as I stated in my last post, there have been a LOT of changes in my life recently.  My interests in the oh-so-wonderfully tech/geeky world has just sky rocketed.  Especially when it comes to the web and programming.

I have recently enrolled in O’Reilly School of Technology’s PHP/SQL Programming Certification.  It has opened my eyes to a new world of possibility for me and I have been enjoying it quite a bit.  Especially when you combine that with my recent switch to the Ubuntu operating system.  Those two things combined have been the catalyst for my recent extreme interest in the tech world.  And the more I learn about it, the more I want to be a part of it.

With all of that being said, I also have other passions for which I would like to use my website.  The geeky stuff can be talked about, sure.  But I plan to use most of my knowledge gained from all of that to further enhance my website.  So apart from techie blurbs and rants, I would ultimately like to have a site where I can express all of my interests.  I just have to figure out how I’m going to do that.  I’ve thrown around the idea of having different websites for all of my respective interests, but I’m just not sure that’s realistic.  Especially considering the fact that I can’t even keep up with my own site at the moment.

At any rate, I am going to travel down one of two paths with this site:

1. Take the site down and put up a temporary splash page while making the site what I want it to be
2. Keep the site up and stay active with it while I continually enhance the site’s features

My only fear in traveling down the second path is that the same thing happens again.  I publish a post saying that I will become more active only to become stagnant once again.  But on the flipside, the first path will probably take longer to actually accomplish.

So I have to make a decision.  If I have ANY readers at ALL (and I highly doubt that I do just yet), feel free to post a comment with your opinion.  Either way, I would like to have a decision made sooner than later.  I plan to act on my choice this weekend, June 13-14 2009.

Cheers!

I took a Natural Search Marketing Analyst position at a top-tier natural search company called Netconcepts

They really have their act together in a lot of ways and I am so excited to grow and learn from this new opportunity. I have the chance to work with several industry leaders that speak at conferences and author many search related articles and blogs.

The company primarily deals with IR 500 (or better) companies and websites. So I will get the chance to work with some great/huge clients. I’m sure it will be challenging, but I feel like it will be a great fit for me. This is my first week (starting Monday, May 19 2008) and have spent most of my time training and reading various materials, but by next week I should be on my way and have some clients assigned to me.

Furthermore, I plan on being much more active with my blogs. Both danreno.com and movienik.com. They have been a little neglected for the last few months (for various reasons, but my previous job being the primary) and hope to change that ASAP. And since my new position is exclusive to natural search, I will probably be posting much much more in my SEO category. Obviously I won’t be letting any secrets go or anything like that, but anything I can share, I will.

So stay tuned for more news in Reno’s Realm. There is much more to come.