AdesBlog.com

While “SEO Professionals” are asking hundreds of dollars for their services to get your website listed by the major search engines and improve your search engine results’ rankings, it’s important to note that one of the most important tools provided by the same search engines themselves (to get listed on them) are free.

These tools are the essentials of SEO, just like your Page and HTML optimization. However if you are using WordPress for your blog or site, page/HTML optimization is already taken care of by WordPress. Yes WP has a pretty good SEO friendly platform. Moreover, WP has a great plugin called All in One SEO Pack, installing it should be more than enough to make your blog Search Engine friendly (i.e optimized). These tools are:

Google Webmaster Tools

URL: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

.

MSN Webmaster Tools

URL: webmaster.live.com/webmaster

.

Yahoo Site Explorer

URL: siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

If you had not already signed-up with each of them, do sign up and get your blog listed. Particularly pay attention to the warnings and errors that these tools provide about your site/blog, sometimes simply fixing those warnings and errors can improve your site’s ranking in search engine results tremendously.

If you opt for SEO Specialist’s services, please make sure that you make some profile and background check of the individual or the company that provides the service. Most of the “too good to be true” promises provided from these professionals are deemed illegal (black hat) by the search engines and can get your site banned. So, just make sure that the techniques that they use are in conformity with the Terms and Conditions of the Search Engines.

Cartoon via Ritholts / Slate

Food for thought: One of the principles of free-market economy is a non-interference by Government, in other words Government shouldn’t regulate the market, it should let it sail its own course.

So, the recent US bailouts were totally against the free-market principles that the US government holds fast to. In 1997, during the Asian crisis, when Malaysia exercised the same Government intervention to save the country’s economy - bailing out some businesses - US Government was against it.

History repeats, isn’t it? Now we see, US doing bailouts after bailouts… and the principles are nowhere to be seen.

When Bush was reminded about the free-market principles, here is what he had to say:

“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.”

Bush’s comments reflect an extraordinary departure from his longtime advocacy for an unfettered free market, as his administration has orchestrated unprecedented government intervention in the face of a dire financial crisis.

“I am sorry we’re having to do it,” Bush said. source

This is the final week for the Blog Blazers book giveaway contest. And the winners are… Claudia Contreras S. & Jaseem Umer, congratulations guys, you have won the last 2 copies of the book!

For those who didn’t win, hopefully you will have a better luck next time.

If you want to buy the book you can go to product site at www.blogblazers.com and get a copy (you will get the ebook version as well, if you buy from the site) or you can buy from Amazon. It’s a great book, you can read some of the reviews about the book here.

Thanks to the sponsor

I would like to thank Stephane Grenier for sponsoring this contest. Steph is the author of the book who interviewed 40 top bloggers in the book. He blogs at www.followsteph.com. He has been very generous with information while the book was in process and with sponsoring this contest after the books were printed. For that I would like to thank him and wish him luck in his other projects.

Website: www.blogblazers.com

Brian Gardner, the person who revolutionized premium wordpress themes by his first project RevolutionTheme, has came up with a new project - StudioPress.com

Since it’s a newly launched project, currently there is only one wp theme available. However, more themes expected to be added very soon. The first theme is for real estate sites.

If it works, don’t fix it

As you all know, RevolutionTheme project had been replaced with R2 (RevolutionTwo), and became Open Source. That meant, as I predicted no more less income for both affiliates and Brian Gardner himself. Brian wanted to change his business model from selling themes to selling support.

Before revolution themes were open source, they were selling like hot cakes. Obviously after they became “free”, no one wanted to pay for the support. Because most bloggers are very familiar with wordpress and most of them wouldn’t need a paid support to customize their themes.

Revolution2 was a huge misstep for Brian (from financial point of view). In order to correct this business decision, he had two choices; to bring back the old revolution themes or to launch a new project. Brian has chosen the second option. And I think that was a wise decision. Otherwise it would have been even more confusing for his existing customers from revolution-1 project. Because they are already confused with the whole discontinuation of revolution-1 project and revolution2/open source thing and how it affects them.

Making Money for Bloggers

StudioPress.com is a great news for bloggers. Because it means “back to making money” for most bloggers. Brian Gardner is a great designer, and his themes are one of the best wp themes on the net. Therefore, I have no doubt that this project will be a success.

His affiliates are paid 25% of the sales, that means if you sell one template worth $79.95 you will get $20.00. And if you sell all-inclusive package ($299.95) then you will get $75.00 of commission.

Are you ready to make money?

URL: StudioPress.com

Thanks to top commenters for the month of December 2008. They were Cheap Mobile Calls, shawal, titan, Agolf Cartson, Legitimate Home Based Business, adsense alternative, Minnesota Attorney, Rice Blogger, SEO Services, Web Designing, and SEO Tips South Africa.

As always, it’s my pleasure to mention your names here. Thanks once again for being part of AdesBlog community!

New Year: It’s almost 2 hours into 2009 here in Malaysia. So technically speaking, we are one year ahead of Western countries at the moment (This is the only time Asian countries can be ahead of US and Europe ;) Since I don’t celebrate New Year, for me it was just another day (but with fireworks).

Gaza Crisis: While people worldwide are celebrating new year and watching fireworks in the sky, people of Gaza, Palestine are being pounded by Israeli bombs. Close to 400 people have died and around 1600 have been injured in a fifth straight day of Israeli bombardment. This is how the Gaza looks in reality (warning:graphic images) click here and here

The strange thing is that, there has been a lot of news reporting and fact statement but no one really came out and condemned this horrible massacre. President elect Obama is playing golf, the Bush administration has advised Israeli government to avoid civilian casualties, the World is silent and the Arab League couldn’t even arrange emergency meeting quickly. That basically sums up the world’s reaction to Gaza crisis.

Donate: If you want to help the people of Gaza, please donate some money to them http://www.un.org/unrwa/emergency/donation/index.html. Every contribution counts, no matter how small.

PageRank: Google seems to have updated its PageRank system for the new year. My not so long ago launched website www.adesclrpicker.com is now showing PR4 (previously PR0), my main site www.adesdesign.net has not changed (PR6) and this blog of mine still PR2 (previously PR7).

Soon, the pagerank of this blog should be back to normal as well (hopefully), because I had submitted my blog for reconsideration few weeks ago.

What 2009 holds for us: Only God knows what it holds, but it’s going to be a difficult year, that’s for sure. Effects of the current financial crisis will be felt mostly in 2009, especially in the Asian region. But nevertheless, let’s stay positive and hope that 2009 will be a better year than the past year.

Good luck to everyone with your internet projects and blogs in 2009!