I should have posted about the Academy Awards

Sorry, once again, I have not posted in a while.

Yeah, I stayed up and watched the Academy Awards as did many of you. If you have a celebrity website, it only pays to make sure that you at least mentioned the awards - especially if you have any of the actors/actresses that were nominated (or won).

I was not thrilled with the winners. I saw "The Departed" and was not completely thrilled with it. It was not even Scorcese's best film - but he finally recieved his overdue award for Best Director. There was some very good acting by some great actors, but not Academy Award winning performances. Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren were excellent and well deserving choices. I did not see Little Miss Sunshine, so I cannot really comment on the supporting actor award, but I heard Alan Arkin was very good. However, Jennifer Hudson was not the best choice in her category. Not that the past American Idol contestant is a bad actress, but still not up-to-par with others in the category (but I guess the Association had to give "Dreamgirls" at least one of the major awards).

The award ceremony was not very exciting this year and could have been half as long.

Anyway, the reason why I have not been posting is because I have been spending so much time trying to work on issues with Google and the "950 Penalty." It comes, it goes, it comes, it goes. Now, besides the penalty, at least one of my pages - Jordan Pruitt at http://www.popstarsplus.com/music_jordanpruitt.htm has been pushed into the supplementals.

This blog had begun as a site to help other celebrity webowners with their own sites based on my sucesses. Next, it began to be my own personal complaint forum regarding how to get a site indexed. Then over the past two months, it has become a site about me complaining about Google changing their algo and killing me in the Serps (Search Engine Result Page). With a sided flavor of supplementals. Is there any rest for the weary? I just want to go back to creating a website that visitors will like. Instead, I have been spending half of my time worrying about SEO. Which, by the way, is exactly what the "officials" at Google say you should not do. If you create a good user freindly website with good content, you should be fine (they say). I did, now I am getting killed for it. Thank goodness I have a large number of returning visitors or else I would be sunk right now. My toal visitor ship is down by half of what it was in December. My numbers are almost going back to what they were a year ago.

What to do now?

Until next time . . . .
Ian Ripley

Did I Watch The Same Grammy's As Everyone Else?

The last few months this blog has been full of stuff about how I am (or am not) ranking in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). I was going to write something about how, you as a webmaster for a celebrity site, need to pay attention to the Grammy Awards as well as the rest of the shows during this awards season. However, after reading a few reviews of the Grammys, I was wondering if I saw the same show as the rest of them.

First off, one writer puts that the night sometimes "it seemed more like the Grannies than the Grammies." That was what prompted me to write my own review. It may be my age showing, but it was those "old" artists that made the night for me. In one set of "R&B" songs by three different artists, it began with Smokey Robinson singng "Tracks of My Tears" followed by Lionel Richie. Both singing their classics with little accompanyment. This was immediately followed by Chris Brown, who brought out all the bells and whistles with some big production number that included many backup dancers, masks, slides, lights and kids - and from my TV set, could not even hold a candle to his two predecesors -- I do not even remember what song he sang. I will admit, he has some pretty good songs on his debut album, but his "performance" was about the glitz and not the music. The Grammys are supposed to be about the music.

To repeat that sentiment, "The Grammys are supposed to be about the music" why were there so many actors/actresses presenting and in the audience? What was up with that? They did not belong their. They mentioned that Scarlett Johansson was going to record something, but has not as of yet -- I can only imagine what favors were being called in to get her to present a top award. And what was the lame banter between her and Don Henley? She asks him for advice and he say's "no." If it was a joke, I completely missed it.

The one thing that I do agree with most of the other reviews out there is that the show was not extremely entertaining. The Justin Timberlake performance with the unkown girl was kind of stupid and after a few seconds I stopped listening (although she was kind of cute). I was happy to see Mary J. Blige get an award, although I am not sure she deserved three - at least in that category. To me she has become more "pop" than R&B. In my opinion, her live performance was lacking. If I was only able to purchase one ticket to a performance by any of the performers last night, it would have to be Christina Aguilera. I said "wow" to myself after hearing her sing her powerful rendition of "It's A Man's World" (by the late great James Brown). She put all of the other performers to shame. It was good to see the Police together, and they sounded good (I hope I can get tickets to their upcoming concert), John Mayer was not bad either. Although I am not a big fan of country, the Dixie Chicks put up a strong performance as well.

The most talked about performance of last night was about the music, but about the performance. You could have watched Shakira without the sound on and got the same effect. She looked good -- really good. She does have a good voice, but it is her body and sexy videos/performances that will sell the albums. If Britney Spears was 30 pound overweight when she began recording, do you think she would have made it to the superstar diva level she had attained a few years ago?

The one thing I wanted to see the most last night was Stevie Wonder and Tony Bennet do a duet. Unfortunately, no such luck.

Why did the Dixie Chicks win so many awards? It is either because they are so head and tails above everyone else that they deserve the awards, or, it is because their is really no competition out there. I would argue for the later point. The talent pool out their is thin. More groups want to grab the spotlight with a lot of splash and bling-bling and forgot about the music. If you went to any of the early rap and hip-hop concerts in the 1980s (now I am really dating myself), you had guys like Run DMC, LL Cool J, and even the Beasty Boys that sang their hearts out and cared about what they sang, not how much it would make. Even groups like Public Enemy had a message in their songs. There seems to be no feeling in the work of today's artists singing bubble-gum type of music, but because it is given a dance beat or rapped, the masses eat it up. Well I guess you cannot really blame the musicians if the buying public can't distinguish between music and garbage.

Well, I guess when I very rarely watch music videos, and only listen to music on CDs, music only IPod or Radio, I miss all of that glam that goes into the whole image thing. Well, maybe it is just my taste, but when an artist of any genre is good, they are good, but there are too many out there that are surviving on everything but talent.

Out Of The Google -950 Penalty

How To Get Out Of The Google 950 Penalty

Once upon a time, a young boy created a Sitseeing attraction (site) for fun. The website grew and grew. The young boy was not an siteseeing optimization expert, and the little he knew, he used on his businesses. He ignored the optimization stuff for this fun site because it was working - it was making him happy and making his visitors happy as well. Then a G[oogle]iant tries to mess with his site and all his visitors were scared away. After never making any kind of changes to help enhance the site, he was faced with a dilema. After a few days of worrying about losing MORE than half his visitors (and revenues), he got out his slingshot and began to make changes to his site and get rid of the menace. A few days later the G[oogle]iant left as suddenly as he came. Although only a small percentage of the site was fixed, the problems had seemed to go away. The little boy wishes that the G[oogle]iant never comes back. However, the G[oogle] is still looming out there and has not finished terrorizing everyone.

The little boy found out later that the G[oogle]iant was set upon the land by the King himself to rid the kingdom of Internetia of Spamogres. Unfortunately for the little boy, the G[oogle]iant was unable to determine between the spamogres and the good guys. The little boy really appreciates the King's efforts of getting rid of the vermin, but would have like the King to take less drastic steps to do so, unless he knows it is going to work.

Future scenario #1: The little boy's site continues to get more popular, the land is rid of spamogres, dupers and all of the other evils in the land. The boy makes enough gold to retire and live in a castle of his own.

Future scenario #2: A new Giant comes back to menace the land. This time, the loss of visitors and continous fighting with the Giant made his tasks a lot less fun. He left his siteseeing attaction and never returned again.

----------------

When I began www.popstarsplus.com two years ago, I never envisioned it getting this big. It will reach over 900,000 Unique Users (over 2 million hits) this month. The site began when I was bored working on my eCommerce sites such as www.GiftIdeasPlus.com. That old site is still around, but does not have nearly as many visitors. Pop Stars Plus began as a personal hobby site and I did what I thought was right on the site, not really ever worrying about search engine optimization (SEO). In fact, I remember when another site owner asked me for contacts to trade reciprocal links with other like sites. I told him that besides his, I only traded sites with three or four other places. I have a lot of links going out that I never asked for a reciprocal, but I have received many links coming in from other places that like my content. The fact that I have so many links on my pages is against standard SEO, but I never cared, because having and rating those outgoing links is part of my original content (the rankings and order, not the site). This is why people come, link, and come back.

Anyway . . . when I began PSP, I created the initial templates with the HTML knowledge I had, and with the very, very little SEO knowledge I happened to come across. The pages remained like this until now. There was never any reason to change them, until now. What is interesting, is that I knew very little about SEO, but managed to create a well ranking site. Google supposedly likes that. However, I was being penalized for my SEO ignorance and for the first time, needed to make changes to better optimize my site (through deoptmizing keywords).

Anyway, I am very glad the site is mostly back. My traffic is increasing to normal rates each day. There is only one very peculiar thing. One of the key phrases for a page is not working. My Ashley Tisdale page is still stuck in the 950s. It was one of the pages that has been de-optimized and has since been reindexed by Google, but the page was put into Google detention and has not been released. Some people at Webmaster world have suggested changing the title/description tags to fix the 950 problem - however, I do not see that as a problem. All my other pages are okay (at least the ones I tried).

Until next time . . .

Ian Ripley

-950 Penalty

I've Been Hit With the -950 Penalty by Google.

First they kill me with bad stats at AdSense, now after the smoke clears, it seems that I have been hit with the -950 penalty. That is the reason my traffic is so far down - no one can find my site - www.popstarsplus.com

What really sucks about this is that I have not intentionally done anything to this or my other sites to warrant a penalty. I created a good site that was good for my visitors. Yes, I had begun to make money on my site - however, as I keep on saying, it has been to enhance the visitor's experience. Why not show a copy of the DVD/movie in a filmography. If they want to purchase it, it is their option. I have painstakenly spent hundreds and hundreds of hours going through thousands of web pages to rank and find the best ones for each celebrity. I have spend many hours enhancing the site and adding content such as news stories. Yet, Google, penalizes me.

It would have been nice to get at least a warning since I have not been penalized before. It would be nice for Google to say something about it to myself and all the other webmasters out there that have been affected -- at least tell us why we may have recieved penalties. We know that they are not going to go into specifics, but at least say something like, "we have provided penalties based on over optimization of words/terms" or anything else. Their guidelines are not what you can really call detailed. A general "penalties were given to websites not following our guidelines." Still not great, but at least we will know if it is something that we can do to correct the problem, or if it was an error on their part that they will be fixing.

I have already made a change to navigation bar on my site. It used to show all pages on the same level, now it is just showing all pages under home. No, this is not a benefit to my visitors, but if my pages remain in the 900s, I will not have any visitors. So, after not doing any of the SEO stuff - I have resorted to making changes to boost up page ranking becasue of a penalty from Google that I do not deserve.

I guess making a website that is both good for my customers and good for Google is impossible. That is what is so frustrating about all of this, I think I am doing good, then out of nowhere, without providing any reason, the rug has been taken out from under me.

Reading many of the posts on WebmasterWorld.com, you have to wonder what is going on. Most of these people, like me, are trying to create good websites for our visitors. We have not done anything wrong, yet we have been punished.

If any webmasters who are techs out there are listening. Let's get together and create a search engine that will not only rival, but surpass Google. Google is good, but is not great. In fact, with this recent update, many of the results are not as relevant as they used to be. So, lets make a better search engine that finds relevant information and remembers the little guys, filters out the spammers and gets around the beurocratic red tape of multimillion dollar businesses such as Google.

Not really very harsh words, but now that I have said them, Google can take me for a ride and basically kill all of my other sites as well.

Google: All I am saying is that you are not being very fair. Please communicate and tell us what is going on. If we knew, we would fix it - we just need a little direction.

Until next time?

Ian Ripley

What Is Google Doing To Me?

What the heck is Google doing to me? It seems that every time I take two steps forward with my www.popstarsplus.com site, I am always pushed back a step.

First, my Google Adsense impressions go way down last week, although my traffic & unique users are going up. A few days ago my traffic took a huge hit. By surfing around the web, you can read a number of discussions by webmasters complaining or trying to theorize what is happening. What I have gathered is that Google made an update to its algorithm. This tweaking by Google has made vast changes to websites throughout the Internet. There are many theories out there as to what types of changes were actually being made, but no one is sure and it may not be over yet. Some ideas floating around are the penalizing of sites that: have affiliate links, have too dense keyword populations, have too many internal links, have a navigation with too great of a heirarcy, and/or have duplicated content.

Personally, I think the people at Google have a lot of nerve doing this. My PopStarsPlus.com is mostly original content. Even the pages where I do copy or "license" the biographies from Wikipedia.org, I enhance it so that it provides the user with a better experience than they would have recieved by just going to Wikipedia alone. I "lost" a few high result pages from the SERP (which means Search Engine Results Page). Which is very interesting, since, not to be modest, were some of the best information out there on the web. The content was original (not from Wikipedia) and recently updated. For instance, my Jordan Pruitt page had more information about her than almost anything else you could find and was the #1 result for her name. Now there are a bunch of lyrics sites for her that rank in the top 10. The page fell to #161 in the SERP. For the most part, on the 16th page is almost like not having it listed at all. There are other articles that just mention her name, or just the word "Pruitt" that have nothing to do with her that appear before my page. If I was looking for information on her, my page should be the first in results because it deserves to be there. However, I must say that if you do use her name with either "biography" or "information" after it in a Google search, my site does come up first (which it should).

Let's hope that this chance is temporary. I spend a lot of time on my sites to make sure that they are the best they can be. I try to provide usefull information to my users. Why must I be penalized? Yes, I have a lot of outgoing links. Thpse links are necessary because I rank other websites based on the information about that particular celebrity. It takes at least an hour to go through websites and sometimes more. Yes, I might have a discography of a musician, and list their albums. So what if I add an Amazon link to that album. Google may say that it ads to value. I say BS, this does add value. First of all, it provides the user with a picture of that album (which was actually my original intention of putting these links on my site) and if a visitor wants to purchase the particular album, I have it listed in a chronological order with the artist's other albums, and I also list the tracks. This, from my own purchasing experience, is very helpful. Even when you try to purchase an album on Amazon itself and seach by date, it is not usually consistent - for example, if a CD of a 1977 album was published in 2002, it would be listed as 2002 in the chronology search results. So Google, if you are listening, there is value added by having affiliate links.

I am just so frustrated right now. All of the work done, and no one will see it. I will admit, the higher traffic meant higher revenues and it was nice to bring in some extra money. If none of my pages will be seen, maybe it is not even worth it for me to continue to update the site so frequently. I'll still do it for fun, but if I put down that celebrity X flashed went into rehab for a third time six months after the fact - what's the difference, since no one will read it anyway.

Until next time . . .

Ian Ripley

Why Are My Google Adsense Page Impressions Getting Lower

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Over 1000 pages Indexed

In the never ending saga of getting my pages for www.biographyplus.com indexed on Google, I can happily say that over 1000 links have been added. 1014 to be exact (Although, a few more pages still need to be added).

As to reciprocal linking, I have added links to one of two sites on BiographyPlus, but then had computer issues and vacation and have not added the links to the second site. In the mean time, I still have not emailed them back to say that the links have been added. So what I have learned so far is that you do not need all of these link backs to added to the index.

My next task is to increase the amount of traffic to the site so I can begin to make some money. Yes, this is a web site I want to make money with. If you want to go to one of my sites that I maintain for public information then you can visit my www.IHaveDiabetes.net site. If you have diabetes or know someone who has it, it might be of some benefit to you.

Right now the pages have not been rated by Google, so I will track to see how the reciprocal links improve (or not improve) the page rank. Hopefully Google will give out new page ranks soon so that the test would be of more value. However, I could still monitor those few pages that had already been given PR values.

We shall see.

Until next time . . . .

Ian Ripley

Finally, Something Changed To My Favor With Google Index

Finally, something has changed in my favor with the Google Index. All of a sudden, a few days ago I shot up to 542 pages being indexed in Google (up from 240). However, today it is down to 512. [Just my luck.] Tomorrow I am going to be submitting a bunch of pages to for reciprocal linking with two other websites. I'll see if this boosts it up a bit.

It seems that this site is finally back on the Google Index. Now it can be found by all of you that use the Google Search. You may ask, why am I so concerned with Google and not the other search engines? Well, it is because in my experience, Google has provided me with 4 or more times the amount of traffic than any the other search engines combined. I would be a fool to ingnore those and do what I can to be listed (and as high as possible), however, I have found it easier to get up on those indexes and to stay there. It is Google that always seems to give me the problems. Do you have the same experiences with the search engines? Leave me a comment below.

I Hate The Google Index

In my ongoing quest to get all of the pages on the www.biographyplus.com website indexed, I have tried submitting a new sitemap. It seemed to have begun to work and I went up from the 120 or so pages indexed to a high of 287. Now I am back down to 240 pages. To top it off, this blog seems to be taken off the index as well. What is going on here? I am going to be doing a reciprocal link with two sites, which I will hopefully have up by next week. I now know that the site map just doesn't work the way it should. I have given it enough time, so now onto reciprocal linking. I'll let you know when it begins and how the indexing reacts (or does not react) to having links to the individual celebrity pages.

I am also trying to add links on my Celebrity Voice pages at http://www.freewebs.com/celebrityvoice/ (which, by the way, is indexed). The site, so far, includes the following celebrities:

Elisha Cuthbert
Paris Hilton
Katie Homes
Angelina Jolie
Lindsay Lohan
Anna Nicole Smith
Britney Spears


And just to get some links to the BiographyPlus.com site up, here are a few misc. celebrities with last names beginning with an "M":

James Madison
Madonna
Tobey Maguire
Marilyn Manson
Josie Maran
Mario
Bob Marley
Garry Marshall
James W. Marshall
George RR Martin
Karl Marx
George Mason
John Mason
Chris Masters
John Mayer
Jenny McCarthy
Jesse McCartney
Paul McCartney
Helen McCrory
Stephanie McIntosh
William McKinley
Stephanie McMahon
Kristy McNichol
Ewan McGregor
Harry Melling
Herman Melville
Eva Mendes
Maria Menounos
Arthur Miller
Marisa Miller
Romeo Miller
Sienna Miller
Andy Milonakis
Kylie Minogue
Hugh Mitchell
Kelly Monaco
Marilyn Monroe
Pat Morita
Eddie Murphy
Chad Michael Murray
My Chemical Romance

Until next time,
Ian Ripley . . .

How Many Google Astores Do You Have?

Since the holiday buying season is upon us, I figured I would begin to create as many AStores as possible to help generate additional revenue. The stores are fairly easy to set up and populate. they also provide a second benefit of allowing a link-back to your related pages. Some of my stores are as follows:

Our AStores
Adriana Lima Books, Gifts & Products
American Presidents Books & Products
Angelina Jolie Books, DVDs, Gifts & Products
Anna Kournikova Books, Gifts & Products
Anna Nicole Smith Books, DVDs, Gifts & Products
Books & Gifts About and For Anniversaries
Ashton Kutcher Books, DVDs, Gifts & Products
Beyonce Books, CDs, Gifts & Products
Biographical Books and DVDs
Birthday Books and Gifts
Brad Pitt Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Britney Spears CDs, Books, Gifts & Products
Brooke Burke Books, DVDs, Gifts & Products
Candice Michelle Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Carmen Electra Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Books and Products relating to Chanukah
The Cheetah Girls CDs, Books, Gifts and Products
Chris Brown CDs, Gifts, Books & Products
Christina Aguilera CDs, Books, Gifts and Products
Christmas Books and Gifts
Christmas Books and Gifts (2)
Clay Aiken CDs, Books, Gifts & Products
Books and Gifts relating to Dating
Books and Products for Dieting and Diets
Dragonball Z Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Drake Josh Books, DVDs, CDs, Gifts and Products
Books and Products for Enhancing Your Education
Books and Gifts For and About Father's Day
Geography Books and Products
Books & Gifts
Gina Wild Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Halloween Books, Movies, Gifts, Costumes and Products
Hannah Montana CDs, Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Harry Potter Books, DVDs, Movies, Gifts and Products
Books, Gifts and Products for a Healthier Body and Mind
High School Musical DVDs, CDs, Books, Gifts, Books and Movies
Hilary Duff CDs, Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
History Books, Gift and Products
Books, Videos and Products on How To Make Money
Jamie Lynn Spears Books, DVDs, Gifts & Products
Jennifer Hawking Books, DVDs, Gifts & Products
Jennife Lopez CDs, Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Jeremy Sumpter Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Jessica Alba Books, DVDs, Movies, Gifts and Products
Jessica Simpson CDs, DVDs, Books, Gifts and Products
Jesse McCartney CDs, DVDs, Books, Gifts and Products
Katie Holmes Books, DVDs, Gifts & Products
Books and Products on Being Kosher
Lindsay Lohan CDs, DVDs, Books, Movies, Gifts and Products
Books, Products and Gifts about Love
LoveThyNeighbor Books, Gifts and Products
Mandy Moore Books, DVDs, Movies, Gifts and Products
Miley Cyrus CDs, Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Mother's Day Gifts, Books & Products
A Selection of Music CDs Highlighted on PopStarsPlus.com
Baseball Books, DVDs, Movies, Gifts and Products
Pamela Anderson Books, DVDs, Movies, Gifts and Products
Pokemon Books, Gifts, DVDs and Products
How To Play and Win at Poker: Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Diabetes Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Playstation 3 Games and Products
Pussycat Dolls CDs, Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Rachael Ray Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Religion: Books, Gifts, DVDs and Products
Rock Music CDs, Books, Gifts and Products
Sailor Moon Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Scarlett Johansson Books, DVDs, Movies, Gifts and Products
Shakira CDs, Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Stacey Keibler Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Thanksgiving Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
The Beatles CDs, DVDs, Movies, Books, Gifts and Products
The Simpsons DVDs, Books, Gifts and Products
Tom Cruise DVDs, Books, Movies, Gifts and Products
Trish Stratus Books, DVDs, Posters, Gifts and Products
Valentine's Day Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Weddings and Marriage Books, Gifts and Products
Wii Games and Gifts
Wrestling Divas Books, DVDs, Posters, Gifts and Products
X-Box Games and Gifts
The Yankees Books, DVDs, Gifts and Products
Zoey 101 DVDs, Books, Gifts and Products

Ian Ripley . . . until next time.

BiographyPlus.com Update

BiographyPlus.com Deep Index Experiment

About two weeks ago I said that I was going to begin experiementing on how to raise the number of indexed pages on the www.biographyplus.com website. I did create a new index and submitted it to Google. I am now up to 277 indexed pages (up from about 110-120). It seems to be rising about 3-7 links every day. In the mean time I have also been working on expanding the site so that I now have about 1300 pages on the site (about 6 pages per person for A thru B so far). None of those new deeper pages have been indexed so far. I have not submitted the URLs for any reciprocal links yet. No, I do not know what I am waiting for. Actually, I will wait until the number of indexed pages begin to slow down or do not rais at all, this way I can try to measure if getting reciprocal links does have any affect on the site.

Top Five with Popular Terms for Christmas Music CDs

I was able to make the top five on Google for a search for "music recommendations for Christmas" and "CD recommendations for Christmas" - I know the term is a little long, but it is a very common term that hopefully people will use in their searches. Hopefully it will lead to additional revenues. How did I do it? I must have just hit on the perfect combination of keywords in the content and in the meta tags (yes, I believe that all the search engines do look at the meta tags.)

What Happened to Kate Middleton?

For about 3 days, my Kate Middleton page on www.PopStarsplus.com was in the top 5 in Google for searches on her name. Now it is not even indexed. What a crazy search engine world we live in. I also noticed that all of the other "Celebrities" I had added over the last month have also dissapeared from the index. Google taketh with one spider and taketh away with another.

Ian Ripley . . . until next time.

Google Deep Index Experiment

As you have been reading, Google hates me. Well, really, it hates my site, www.BiographyPlus.com. It does not want to spider and index my entire site. It gets the top pages, but unsystematically does not index others. I have looked at the page's html between an indexed page and a non-indexed page and I cannot find anything, I re-submitted a new site-map to Google two weeks ago and no change since it was last indexed on 11/8. I have two things I am going to do. First, I will spend an hour or so tonight submitting the page to other sites. I should have done this a long time ago. I am not interested in page ranking with this sight yet, so I did not worry about it. However, if I can get links to some of the deeper pages, then maybe it can index me via those links. Secondly, I am going to be adding some deep links onto this blog to see what happens.

Experiment Links:

Biographies Beginning with "C" -- http://www.biographyplus.com/c.htm

Fidel Castro News -- http://www.biographyplus.com/fidel_castro_news.htm

Crazy Horse -- http://www.biographyplus.com/crazy_horse.htm

Peter Abelard Biography -- http://www.biographyplus.com/peter_abelard_biography.htm

Thomas Aquinas Auction Items -- http://www.biographyplus.com/thomas_aquinas_auction_items.htm

Queen -- http://www.biographyplus.com/queen.htm

50 Cent Biography -- http://www.biographyplus.com/50_cent.htm

Actors in Harry Potter -- http://www.biographyplus.com/index_movies_h_harrypotter.htm

Biographies of Rock Musicians -- http://www.biographyplus.com/index_music_rock.htm

Okay, now we will see if this works.

Until next time . . . Ian Ripley

A Grittier Celebrity Website Added

I have begun to create another free-web based side for celebrities called Celebrity Voice. I created it on FreeWebs. Its purpose is to be able to speak freely and candidly about the celebrities and how trashy or hot they are. If you are interested, you can check it out at: Celebrity Voice <http://www.freewebs.com/celebrityvoice/>.

What's Up With Google Site Maps?

Google just doesn't like me. It does not matter what I do with www.BiographyPlus.com, Google just does not seem to want to Index further than the second level of the site and only a few select third level pages. There is no rhyme or reason for what pages it indexes. The reasoning is all computer generated through their algorythm, but it is a machine and not a human. My pages on BiographyPlus.com and www.PopStarsplus.com are set up the same way, but the Pop Stars site is fully indexed, although I do not know why it takes anywhere from 1 to 6 days sometimes to cache.

How to Make a Google Sitemap

Anyway, I went back to my Google Sitemap and re-created a new map. I used NeuroticWeb (http://www.neuroticweb.com/recursos/sitemap/) to create the new map. For those of you that have not done this before, you need to Go to Google and Set up an account. Once you do that, verify your website (the instructions are on Google). Use the Sitemap generator on Google or use a free service such as NeuroticWeb above. Once you ahve the text, copy it to your notepad and save the file in UTF-8. Add it to your website as a file named sitemap.xml and then go back to Google and tell it that you are ready to be mapped. Google will then look at your site and sitemap file and tell you if it is good or not. This could be a pain and require you to continously "parse" (find and correct errors) the file. Once it accepts the file you wait. Unfortunately for me, I wait and wait and wait to no avail. Google still only indexes about 150 page out of over 800 (it leaves out most of the pages with the content). I am also working on changing the site, but if it is not indexed, what's the use?

Till next time, Ian Ripley

How Important Are Backlinks?

How Important Are Backlinks?

With the last two Google re-indexing in June and September, backlinks seem to play an important role in Google Page Rank and search results. For those who say that page rank means nothing - phooey. I see a definite correlation in my sites between page ranking and traffic. When one of my sites goes up in page rank, I see more traffic. If the page rank goes down, so does traffic. One think to keep in mind, however, is that this is only true for comparing a web site to itself. For instance, you may have a web site with a Google Page Rank (GPR) of 6 and I have a site with a GPR of 4, however, I appear higher in the search results. So saying "my page rank is higher than yours" means little, but saying "my page rank went up, so I will probably get more traffic" has been true with my own sites so far.

Backlinks In Celebrity Web Sites

When Google looks at backlinks, I think they look at links to each individual page. For instance in www.PopStarsPlus.com or www.BiographyPlus.com I try to get links to the individual artist or celebrity. So Lindsay Lohan pages link to other Lindsay Lohan pages, Zac Efron Pages link to other Zac Efron Pages, Michael Jordan pages link to Michael Jordan pages, etc. So when the Google spideers take a look at the home pages, they do not see most of the back links to the site, only the ones that go directly to the home page itself. Yes, the back links do help the internal celebrity pages which supposedly will help the home page it links to, but there are hundreds or thousands of backlinks that are not accounted for in the home page. Maybe Google needs to re-work its own algorithm to take this into consideration.

As a strategy, I could just have all reciprocal links go to the home page, but that would be a disservice to the individuals that want a specific celebrity. I guess I will probably keep on doing what I am doing and eventually Google will benefit websites that actually try to provide information and links to its users as opposed to sites that provide information and links that will obtain the best rankings. Hopefully I will win out in the end, but being right does not always mean success. Ultimately, when there is time, I will try to get some more "quality" backlinks, but for now, adding content and making my sites the best they can be is a priority.

Blog Spams

Spam is an annoyance.

Even on emails that I know I have not given anyone permission to place on a subsciption list of any kind recieves spam emails. People have left spam replies to this blog, I even got a spam text message to my cell-phone the other day.

To those of you that are doing it: Stop it already. Almost everyone knows what a spam email is and are hopefully not buying into your spams or phishing techniques. In a three minute period, I recieved the same exact email from three different email addresses from three different people claiming to be a daughter of a rich businessperson that was killed and they need me (although they do not know my name) to help them get money out a the bank in my country (nor do they know what country I live in). Once I decided to play along in a scam involving a dying man in a hospital who needed my help, I first gave him false information and when it came to giving him some money to help get out a larger sum which I would share, I told him that I lived in the very town that the hospital was located. I said I would be happy to visit him and give him the money then. Could you believe that he did not reply to that last email?

Unfortunately, most of the "victims" are the poor, eldery or illiterate. I seem to get a lot of phishing from crooks claiming to be ebay and paypal - I immediately send them to spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com -- I wonder if ebay or paypal really does anything with my forwarded emails?

I think that free-email sites should be monitoring their users a little better. If joe smith signs up for all of the screen names on Hotmail, AOL, etc., then does a bulk mailing from all of them, then changes all of the screen names every two weeks, then maybe something not right. I am not sure if they can track that type of usage by their users, but if not, they should.

Don't spam!

Ian Ripley

Watch Out When Dealing Working With Celebrity Marketing & PR Firms

Working With Marketing and PR Firms Could be Good for your Site

We all want to make money from our site and drive additional traffic to it. One such was is to get "hooked-up" with marketing or PR (public relations) deparments or solo firms that are trying to promote celebrities. Most of the ones I have done have been for artists and bands, with a few television shows and movies mixed in. Most of the time, you are offered assets (e.g., graphics and MP3s) and/or contests. Sometimes you are offered the product if peform a review for them (e.g., review a new CD). If the campaign is big enough you may be offered other merchandise or money.

Beware

I have learned a lot of things over the first year or so when dealing with these companies which I would like to share. Sometimes, when you do not play it right, you may do a lot of work and get nothing out of it - which has recently happened to me. First of all, most of the people and companies I have created these types of relationships have been fantastic. I'll try to give you a list of links to their websites in another blog entry. Then there are those few that just do not work out the way you had planned. Because some of these companies deal with "artists" within the industry, things happen very fast and an album launch may be cancelled or pushed back over night.

Giveaway Contests

If you are running a giveaway contest and the companie's client (the artist) pulls out, you may not receive the items for that contest. This is something that is expected and your contact should let you know as soon as possible. Don't get too upset, this stuff happens, just make sure you take down the contest on your site and post an apology to those that have already entered. (I had to do this once, and it was no big deal.) You could also automatically add their names into another contest you are already holding. It is when your contact does not tell you that they have lost their client is when you should be mad. Yes, this did happen to me after almost a full month of running the contest. I just happened to find out because I emailed my contact a question. I was kind of mad - and have not worked with her company since.

Another quick note about giveaways -- when possible, have the PR firm send out the gifts, it is less work and less expense that way. However, if you are the one sending it out, do not begin your contest until you have the prizes in hand. This way regardless of what happens to the client, you already have the prizes to send out.

Adding Promotional Ads for Money

Most of the dealings you have with these firms are very informal. However, make sure you read whatever you write in the email and thourouhly read the emails from the company - especially when dealing with payment for placement of a banner onto your site for money. Most of the time I have had no problem. They send me the graphic (or code) and I place it on my site for the time period requested and get paid for it. There are two situations that have happened to me that I would like to mention: (1) After a number of emails back and forth between myself and a company, we began to discuss two different things. Because of that confusion, they wanted the two ads for one price, and I was quoting them twice that figure. In the end, they only took the one ad for the lower price. Just remember, if you have built up a sight with lots of visitors, you should charge the going rate for the space on the site. You can cut a deal for a little less, but do not take less than what the page real estate is really worth. (2) From what I thought was a clear concise explaination of what I was offering for a certain sum, the PR contact sent me back a message that said it was okay. I saw the okay, I saw the dollar figure, but I did not double check the estimated impressions or the run dates of the ad. It also seems that their impression counter was only getting about 10% of the impressions I was recording on two separate tracking systems. Then they informed me that while I gave them figures over a 5-6 week period, they wanted the same number of impressions in one week. Their last email was that I could try if I wanted, but if not, the promotion was over in a few days. I immediately placed the graphic on every single page of my website so that I was able to get the desired number of impressions in five days. However, when I emailed, I got no response. I emailed again to no response. A week later, another email with no response (and no payment in the mail either). If I still do not recieve anything by Friday, I will try to contact someone else within the company. I usually make the request that payment is due within 5 business days of the ad appearing live - but for some strange reason, I did not do that. I should have also re-read their response more clearly and asked a lot more questions. I now know better for next time. It is not really a mistake, just a learning experience. If I do it again, then it is a mistake.

I hope you make some use of my experiences and put them to your own use.

Until next time,

I.R.

Amazon aStore Is A Quick Way To Increase Revenues

Amazon likes to make money, and one way to make money is to get people to make them money from linking. We all know about their affiliate program where you put their banners and links on our websites. However, now they have gone a step further. They have created the aStore, which is a customizable e-commerce store that affilliates can create and modify containing virtually everything on their site. It is very simple and quick to set up a site and should have the potential of generating additional income streams. This is especially true for smaller blogs websites that do not have the resources to do so.

You can see the site I set up here for my sister site for products relating to Diabetes:

http://astore.amazon.com/popstarsplus-20

I know that this is only the first generation of aStores to come, but some of the things I would like to see in the future is the ability of placing links back to your website and the ability to further customize and choose the catagories, sub-catagories and even products for the store. In addition, I would like the ability to create more than one store. I chose to do one for Diabetes, since there is not much in the way of revenue opportunites yet, but if I had a second store, it would be tied-in with www.PopStarsPlus.com

On another note, yes, it has been a while since writing, and hopefully I will not wait as long until the next time . . . .

I.R.

I've Been Busy

First of all, sorry I have not been posting, but I have been busy with so many other things. I hope to post a little more often now (but don't h0ld me to it).

Status reports:

www.PopStarsPlus.com has been doing well, although not much of an increase in traffic last month. We think that it is because we (especially me) have not put much time into the site. We also always seem to get on the short end of the stick every time Google re-indexes, as they did last month. The previous reindex we lost a ton of traffic during the first month. This time we did not lose traffic, but we did not gain any either.

www.BiographyPlus.com seems to be fully indexed again, however, it does not recieve the same traffic as it had done when it was fist published - I guess removing all of the links on the home page worked. We still have a lot to do on PopStars, but hopefully will have time to look into this site and make it a more popular site at the end of the summer.

Celebrity News on PSP is not working very well, even though I get hundreds of thousands of visitors, no one has submitted any really good news articles - but my associates like it for press releases. [see http://www.popstarsplus.com/celebritynews.htm]

I'll try to have something os substance for you later this week.

Pages disappearing in Google Index - A Continuing Story

Okay, a few posts ago, I made mention of how Google nixed a bunch of pages from one of my sites - www.BiographyPlus.com. Well, in order to overcome this, I decided to make a few changes. The first (and only) change I have made so far is to the home page. Previously, the page was full of links to each and every of the almost 600 celebrities and historical figures I had on the site. I thought that the robots were being confused by so many links on one page [remember: Google's webmaster guidelines say that you should not have any links on your page.] At first it works, within a few days, I went fro 82 indexed pages to 112. Within a few weeks I made it up to 170 indexed pages (a little more than 25% of the pages, but almost double of what I had). It remained like this for about a week, then it began to drop again. I am once again down to 114 pages indexed. So, here's a lesson for all of you - the number of links may affect the indexing of your page for only a little while. The next fewthings I am going to do are as follows: (1) on this very blog I am going to link to some of the pages that are not linking so that maybe a stray robot may visit, (2) recreate a new site map and suhbmit it to Google (someone said that this might work, and (3) begin doing some reciprocal linking for some of the pages.

I'll start with these five individuals and see if it does any good

George Washington http://www.biographyplus.com/george_washington.htm
Michael Jordan http://www.biographyplus.com/michael_jordan.htm
Evans Blue http://www.biographyplus.com/evans_blue.htm
James Madison http://www.biographyplus.com/james_madison.htm
Mark Twain http://www.biographyplus.com/mark_twain.htm
Heidi Klum http://www.biographyplus.com/heidi_klum.htm

Until next time . . . .

I.R.