Okay, this is a very odd post, but one I’m going to write anyway. As a kid I grew up during the “Magic 8 Ball” era and, not surprisingly, it’s still around.

The other day at my “advanced age” I was given one as a gift. I’d like to believe that the ball is filled with mostly negative or vague answers. No matter how you shake it or how you phrase it, more often than not the answer you are hoping not to get surfaces.

So today came as no great surprise to receive a phone call that (more…)

So at 2 minutes til midnight last night (11:58 pacific time), my son turned 18. Never has something so simple seemed so complex. He’s always been a serious child, now I watched as he felt as if the weight of the world had descended on his shoulders.

It wasn’t that long ago, when turning 18 means more joy and freedom. I can understand actually where he’s coming from… turning 18 in this economic conditions has got to be if not fear-filled at least an anxious time for many growing up “kids.”

He didn’t mind, so I’m helping celebrate this big event with/for him. Until Sunday night, May 9th, you’ll find a special surprise if you click here. If you come late to read, and the page is gone…. sorry!

Happy Birthday Sean – may you truly and uniquely enjoy being an adult!

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Google’s page rank is finally meeting its (long overdue) end.

I don’t know how many pages I’ve visited of late that get decent (or boatloads of) traffic yet have no or very low PRs. In reverse, you’ve got the huge PR website, yet you can easily tell (via add ons, etc.) that no one knows they even exist.

For further proof, head to the Google search itself. Type in anything you want (I typed in “latest news google pr“) then start scanning and researching the leading results. For my particular phrase, front page results reflected posts and web pages posted last month to several years ago. I did check the “pr” and “alexa” for many of them. No surprise to find that front page results included sites without any PR at all – along with some with traffic so minuscule anyone would be shaking their head over “why the front page?” (Maybe our accompanying illustration helps reinforce the head scratching, mind boggling way this is all “determined.”)

It’s fact – while there are popular sites (depending on what you type) like WebMD or Amazon in your search results, you always find within those same front page results websites with no PR and a variety of traffic (low to high).

So I’m going to go further out on that limb to say that I think when it comes to choosing “traffic versus Google PR” that anyone in their right mind would opt for the traffic, right?

Boatloads of traffic!

The Google PR used to be a badge of honor, and many a webmaster or seo expert sweated bullets over this one. Maybe some still do.

However, even the folks at Google cannot or will not tell (or do not know) whether PR really means a hill of beans in the end.

What prompted this post was an inspection this morning of my ezine advertising website.

At one point in its so far 7 year history, it achieved a traffic rank of under 21K and held onto a PR 4 (for this type of niche this was outstanding). Then along came one of those infamous algorithm changes and now… well this morning on my end of the world there is no PR on the site. Zip, zilch, nada.

Now it could be the folks at Google are in some cycle doing updates again. Could be the poor thing just lost out in this latest round of bids for ranking. Be that as it may, thankfully it does sit on the front page for many of the distinct keywords necessary for folks to find it. And that’s what counts.

Google plays with their algorithm so much and so often, you could easily drive yourself insane figuring out your next move. Running around in circles trying to please or appease, you’ll not only get dizzy, but allow much of your competition to race right past you.

What should you be working on? Words. Content. And more importantly, in SEO terms, keyword content. You do have to know the difference between appropriately working those keywords into your content (and which ones are really going to be any use to you in the first place) and cramming them into metas and content like there’s no tomorrow. Do not be short sighted nor mislead by shady tactics.

The time is ripe for the rest of the world to just “do their own thing.” Work your website or blog the way you wish to work it (and start having fun for a change). Go for the gold, go for traffic. Let’s also hope that Google drops this antiquated ranking platform very, very soon.

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Before I get into sharing a tremendous potential money making resource I found yesterday, I’d like to ask one thing of you. If you have just a moment, please take a second and visit our newest online internet marketing strategies hubpage (this will open in a new window), and give us a (hopefully!) thumbs up (its down after the article itself in the “Share It” section), we’d really appreciate it. Thank you!

Now on to that great potential income/job resource! (more…)

The world is full of ingenious people, and those that bring these geniuses to our attention. Tonight is no exception when I came across first Rockfuse, and then followed that post on to The Sleepy Geek. Both blogs are talking about a new Wordpress post updater called (no surprise here), the Plurk updater.

So what in the world is Plurk?

To start you off, here’s a screenshot, (more…)