BrØnw3n’s World

This past year has been full of trials, tribulations, challenges, adventures, losses and victories. Like so much of life, it has been a mixed bag, which leaves me with a choice: As this year draws to a close, do I choose to see the glass as half empty or half full?

My current state is similar to that of so many people around the country, and my holiday season is being tempered by “real world” challenges, low cash reserves, and worry about the future. My credit debt is high. My savings are nearly gone. And I have no job security, which often makes me toss and turn at night, wondering if I will join the ranks of those losing their homes.   Read more »

By now you’re probably sick to the teeth with background information. You want to “get your hands dirty” and start applying all this search engine optimization theory in your website. Fear not! If it’s dirt you want, it’s dirt you’re gonna get!  Read more »

My last three posts on search engine optimization have dealt with gathering information about your customers or clients, their wants, needs and surfing habits. To help you understand why I keep emphasizing text, text and more text, let’s take a quick tour down memory lane for a short and sweet history of the World Wide Web.  Read more »

The past two articles have talked about what you can do to figure out your customers’ needs based on your own knowledge and expertise. But there is another very important way that you can discover what your customers want: analyze your web server logs!

Web analytics is possibly the best-kept secret when it comes to e-commerce and online marketing. The term “web analytics” can be translated into English to mean the study of how people use your website. But I’m willing to bet that better than 90% of people who have a website know nothing about analyzing their web server logs, let alone why it matters.  Read more »

Identifying the best key words and phrases for your website is a huge part of search engine optimization, and another area that is grossly misunderstood. If you’ve done the homework assignment given at the end of my last post, you have a good start on identifying the most important keywords for your business. The trick now is to distill those ten to fifteen questions into the core words and phrases that relate to you, your company, product(s) and/or service(s). Read more »

One of the simplest, and yet most misunderstood aspects of online marketing is how to make sure your website comes up in the first two to three pages when someone uses a search engine to find out about your industry or product. The confusion is made worse by the search engines themselves because they want you to throw gobs of money at them, buying “sponsored links” tied to key words and phrases relating to your business. That’s great if you have a huge advertising budget, but if you’re doing things on a shoestring sponsored links just aren’t an option!  Read more »

I just got word that I have been chosen to receive the President of the United States’ Volunteer Service Award. Special Assistant to the President and Acting Director of The White House Office of USA Freedom Corps Alison T. Young will be presenting me and a number of others with a Presidential Volunteer Service Award later this week. Read more »

Last weekend’s classes on Computer Basics (aka “Make Friends with Your Computer”) and the Internet went really, really well, and I did promise to post some reference links to help everyone continue learning about all this geek stuff. And here they are!
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The Digital Photography class I was planning to teach this Saturday at GCC was canceled due to lack of enrollment, but I wanted to offer an alternative photography outing for those who may be interested. The purpose is to give friends and students (who are often friends, too!) a chance to put their cameras through their paces, trying out different settings and becoming more familiar with how to handle the camera for the best results. Read more »

Several folks asked to be kept apprised of how the fire is going. And those of you who didn’t get to benefit from their request.  From the looks of it the Marek Fire is mostly contained, and with the wind dying down at last the firefighters should be able to knock it down in short order.

For those of you who know about and use Google Earth, InciWeb has added a link to a KML file that shows the fire perimeter as of yesterday. Read more »