It is worth cataloging the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

     This is for a bit of motivation on a monday. I know this has been posted a million times and was actually written as a part of Thomas Paine’s book ‘Common Sense’ in 1776

 The Entrepreneur’s Credo

I do not choose to be a common man,
It is my right to be uncommon…if I can,
I seek opportunity….not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen,
Humbled and dulled by having the state looking after me.
I want to take the calculated risk;
To dream and to build,
To fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole;
I prefer the challenges of life
To the guaranteed existence;
The thrill of fulfillment
To the state of calm Utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence
Nor my dignity for a handout.
I will never cower before any master
Nor bend to any threat.
It is my heritage to stand erect,
Proud and unafraid;
To think and act for myself,
To enjoy the benefit of my creations
And to face the world boldly and say:
This, with God’s help, I have done.
All this is what it meant
To be an Entrepreneur.

 Still as appropriate today as 231 years ago.

     Bruce Willis is the man. There is no truer statement in the world, and the Diehard series proves this statement as fact. John Mcclane once again saves the entire country single handly, while dropping atleast 3 quarts of blood from various injuries recieved within the last 2 hours of Live Free or Die hard. To me, the great movie series’ follow a certain flow. Take Rocky for instance. You know that in pretty much every Rocky the story will go something like: Rocky get done wrong, Rocky fights, Rocky gets beat down, Rocky trains (with music) and Rocky comes back to kick the crap out of the bad guy. The same holds true for the  Die Hard saga. John Mcclane’s stories always starts with him doing something rather mundane. Flying out to see his ex, at an aiport during Christmas, and in this case, after a major cyber attack on key government installations is sent to pick up a known hacker (and Mac guy) Justin Long. It takes all of about 5 minutes for Mcclane to begin his mundane task in this movie before bad guys show up, bullets start flying, stuff starts breaking, and computers start detonating. Yes, computers start detonting..this is Die Hard..remember?

     The movie was pretty much a ride from start to finish. Hardly any ‘down time’ to catch your breath before the bad guys with big guns and really bad aim come around the corner, guns a’blazin. Willis still carries the torch of John Mcclane pretty well, and overall, the movie is just what a Die Hard fan wants: explosions, bullets, massive blood loss and lots of Bruce Willis kicking ass as only John Mcclane can. Definately worth the watch on the big screen, mandatory to buy when it comes on DVD.
If you haven’t seen it, go, go now, go now and don’t return until you watch it.

8/10

     Before I get started, let me preface this by saying that I have absolutely no problem with people who legally immigrate to this country. The hard working folks who come here legally and just want to have a better life should be encouraged and welcomed in this country. This is about illegal immigrants.

      My family is part Native American, and immigrant. My mother’s father was pure Blackfoot Indian, her mother was a mix of French and English. Dad’s side was/is Welsh and Cherokee mix. So needless to say, without immigrants, I wouldn’t be here. However, in the days of my great grandfathers’ fathers, there was a drive to assimilate. People came to this country with the intent to become American, not to recreate where they were from inside the U.S. borders. They didnt like where they were from, thats why they came, so why recreate it? Today, immigrants are a little different. They dont feel the need to learn the language, or assimilate into the culture, instead opting to move to this country, partake in the benefits of living here, but demand that the country and its people change to meet THEIR needs. It doesnt work like that.
    So here is my proposal:
    All Illegals should be given 1 of 2 options.
Option 1: If you are able bodied and within the correct age range, you can do military service. 4 years will get you citizenzhip. After 2 years, you can put in to have your family start the process to be brought to the U.S.
Option 2: If you are not able bodied, you can do civil service, and after 6 years, you will recieve U.S. citizenship.|

     If you opt for neither and continue to live illegally in the states, you will be deported the first time around, after the proper documentation (i.e. fingerprints, photos, etc). If caught again, then you will be treated like any other person in this country who breaks federal law, and be put in prison, for 4 years. When your 4 years is up, you will be let out and deported. If you are caught again, 6 years, again 8 years, again life (as you will be a habitual federal offender).

    Also, dont you dare have the cahones to demand rights. You are here illegally, you are a criminal, criminals dont demand anything from the victims of their crimes. Also, if you sneak across the border, dont expect to be welcomed with open arms everywhere you go. Believe it or not, most people don’t care for federal criminals.

Ok, I’m done, everyone can put their heads back in the sand now.

     Everyone have a good 4th, be careful.

 A quick lesson as to Why the 4th was chosen

Though the Fourth of July is iconic to Americans, some claim the date itself is somewhat arbitrary. New Englanders had been fighting Britain since April 1775. The first motion in the Continental Congress for independence was made on June 4, 1776. After hard debate, the Congress voted unanimously, but secretly, for independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain on July 2 (see Lee Resolution). The Congress reworked the text of the Declaration until a little after eleven o’clock, July 4, when the twelve colonies voted for adoption and released a copy signed only by John Hancock, President of the Congress, to the printers. (The New York delegation abstained from both votes.) Philadelphia celebrated the Declaration with public readings and bonfires on July 8. Not until August 2 would a fair printing be signed by the members of the Congress, but even that was kept secret to protect the members from British reprisals.

John Adams, credited by Thomas Jefferson as the unofficial, tireless whip of the independence-minded, wrote to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

Adams was off by two days, however. Certainly, the vote on July 2 was the decisive act. But July 4, 1776 is the date on the Declaration itself. Jefferson’s stirring prose, as edited by the Congress, was first adopted by the July 4 vote. It was also the first day Philadelphians heard the official news of independence from the Continental Congress, as opposed to rumors in the street about secret votes.

     I’m not one to really post much about government happenings. I personally am not a fan at all of the Bush administration and think it will be a better day when the current administration is gone. And the pardon of Scooter Libby by nothing less than the office of the President is just one of the many reasons why.
     If you dont know the story, Scooter Libby basically revealed the identity of a CIA Operative (and undercover hotty) Valerie Plame

 
Her identity was revealed to Robert Novak, who then published the comments in CNN. Not only is this obviously a breach of security, but it also put Mrs. Plame’s life, and the life of her family in danger. Why did the Vice President’s chief of staff commit such a serious error? Because Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, had directly rebukked claimes of WMD’s in Iraq and publicly stated that President Bush had falsified information in his state of the union address about the presence of WMD’s and effectively took the U.S. to war over a lie.

      That is the administration that is guiding this country. And people still wonder why half the world is pissed off at us and this administration when WE dont even like them.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access.

The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue.

This means that the organisation will not stand in the way of companies using differential pricing to make sure that some websites can be viewed more quickly than others. The report also counsels against net neutrality legislation.

“This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving dynamic industry of broadband internet access, which is generally moving towards more, not less, competition,” FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras wrote.

“In the absence of significant market failure, or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area.”

The report has caused outrage in the online community. Many are worried that any abandonment of net neutrality will harm competition, since it will allow big companies to outspend start-ups.

“Mostly the FTC suggests ways that the telephone and cable companies could have new ways to make money from content and applications providers,” said Art Brodsky, of internet advocacy group Public Knowledge.

“Or lower-income subscribers could be charged lower prices, subsidised by ‘prioritization revenues’ much as supported email services now provide free email accounts. Nowhere is there discussion of what the consumer gets out of the deal.”

      Now, if you havent been paying attention, Net Neutrality was/is an issue about access. With Net Neutrality in place, everyone has equal access to the Internet and the information on the Internet. With the FTC dropping its support of Net Neutrality, now the ‘big wheels’ on the internet, such as Google, Yahoo, AOL, will have the opportunity to basically pay so that their content gets to you faster than the average mom and pop website. The heavy hitters will have the ability to pay to make sure that their content is given priority through your ISP to get to you. So your gaming, your bit-torrents, your file downloads will have their bandwith somewhat throttled back so that you can get those fresh new ads from AOL, or so your Yahoo Toolbar will be able to make its oh so important conections back to their content servers to bring you all those bright and shiny buttons on your toolbar that you probably dont use anyway, if you even have it installed at all.

     In short, this is not a good thing for the consumer. Be prepared for a ruckus on the Internet, when people realize that their Internet enjoyment is now being choked down so that the admakers of the world can have better access to shove their shit down your throat, people will not be happy. I hope that people DO wake up and not just stick their head back in WoW and hope it all goes away or that someone else does the work for them.

If you need to do a little reading to catch up, here ya go:
Wikipedia on Net Neturality
Hands Off

Well I can honestly say I’ve had better weeks. Saturday was my birthday (6/23), so that was good. I got to see Fantastic 4, and was somewhat disappointed, had a few drinks with friends, and generally had a good time. On the downside there was a standard issue Florida summer storm, complete with lightning that hit on the night of my b-day and fried my computer by sending a electrical hit through my cable modem, killing it as well. So I have to basically build another PC. Such is life.

I started this blog as sort of an experiment. I’ve been interested in Internet marketing for quite a while, so I really do have an interest in the subject matter and I’m not just updating a C&P blog. I started the blog because in the years that I have played with various facets of marketing on the ‘net, I have picked up a few tricks along the way. I have also seen that there is a constant stream of first timers who either just got their very first PC or have suddenly gotten it in their head that they want to start a business on the ‘net and run headlong into the mire that is ‘marketing information’ on the Internet. There are sources for great information for the beginner on the Internet, this blog being one of them. I don’t try to shove some half-baked ‘program’ down the throats of my visitors, or try to sell some fantastic line of crap about how the information in this site will make you a multi-millionaire in 24 hours. I try to get out good information for those who are smart enough to actually try to gather information before throwing money at their marketing efforts, or people who want to be aware of the options available to them to get their site or business’s message to their current and future customers.
     I’m still tweaking and tuning on the site as you can see, and probably will be for quite some time. Most of the tweaking I am and will be doing is the same techniques that I put out in this blog. So I’ll give an update on what the site is doing.

     This is the first month that the domain of digitalbattlegrounds.com has been changed to its current blog format. Before that it was a gaming oriented site that was a mix of an html front page with a php forums package. I dont know if I’m going to keep this blog on this domain or move it. The domain name is working for the moment for my tweaking and tuning purposes, so we shall see. When the DB website/forums were in their ‘heyday’ the traffic MIGHT have reached 120-150 visitors a month. Nothing spectacular by any means.

Dec 2006	19014	6963
Jan 2007	18299	6022
Feb 2007	10589	5562
Mar 2007	55053	5496
Apr 2007	57318	3922
May 2007	10674	6575
Jun 2007	16160	5391

     In this first month in blog format, according to the site stats, there were 5391 requests for pages. The best the DB domain has every done was in December 2006 with 6963 requests. So for a first month, only 1500 or so short of the high for the site, thats not so bad.

     Google adsense reports that the adsense ads have generated a whopping .39 cents of revenue. I should be retiring to fiji sometime next week, check back for pictures of my grass hut being built. I have Kontera scripts installed, but apparently they dont work with the google adsense ads on the front page, however they do seem to be coming through on the pages, but not the posts. There is a plugin that will make this work, but because my PC is currently in critical condition all over my desk, I cant update the site with that particular script, so I’ve not really seen anything positive out of Kontera, though these issues will be resolved shortly…hopefully.

I do notice that requests for RSS feeds are dramatically increasing since I put the RSS button out there (go figure). There are 206 RSS feeds for DB..woohoo!.

So for the first month of db in blog format, the ’stats’ are

5391 page requests
206 RSS feeds    
.39 cents revenue generated. (adsense only)

So that’s the baseline, obviously a lot of room for improvement. Every month I will update the stats to track progress.

There are a few movies that are coming up that absolutely require some press. I would definately consider these ‘must see’ movies. These moves look awesome and I’m eagerly awaiting their release. These are in no particular order because they are all pretty cool.

 No. 1 Transformers.  (due out 7.3.07) - If you have never heard of the Transformers you must be from another planet. Alien robots that can change themselves into various vehicles. Of course you have the classic fight for good and evil involved here. For those that just arrived on this planet and dont know, the Transformers started out as a toy, then exploded into animated shows, movies, comic books, and I believe a couple full novels if I remember correctly. This movie is following the latest trend in Hollywood of putting superstar Comic book/animation titles on film. So far it’s looking pretty awesome. Check out the official movie site here
Here’s a short clip

No 2. Fantastic 4, Rise of the Silver Surfer (due 6/17/2007)
This is another in the series of the Fantastic 4, following the comic book.The Silver Surfer is a comic book legend in his own right, so pairing him with the equally legendary Fantastic Four is an awesome thing for the cartoon/movie crowd. So far the trailers look phenominal. Check it out.

No 3.  Live Free or Die Hard (due out 6.27.07)
Do you need any explination about the goodness that comes from a Die Hard movie? Of course not. All you need to know is it has BruceWillis in arguably his best role ever. You dont even have to see the trailer to know that there will be loads of explosions, action, and bullets. Say it with me…Yippe ki…well you know how the rest goes.

 No. 4 Evan Almighty (due out 6.22.07)
This is the sequel to Bruce Almighty, a Jim Carey fueled comedy of an every day joe who gets granted the powers of God. Steve Carrell (40 Year old Virgin) will be the star of this one, and no doubt it will be as funny as the first.

No. 5. The Bourne Ultimatum Following in the footsteps of the Bourne storylines, this promises to be another action packed offering from writer Tony Ludlum, starring (as with the previous) Matt Damon. The Bourne series has proven to be a whole different career boost for Damon and shows him off to be a quite credible action screen star. This should be an excellent movie

 A reporter advancing 9/11 conspiracy theories in a heated exchange with advisers to Rudy Giuliani was arrested following Tuesday night’s Republican debate.

Police in Goffstown, N.H., confirmed to RAW STORY that freelance reporter Matt Lepacek was arrested for trespassing following the debate at St. Anselm College in Goffstown. Lepacek was asking a Giuliani adviser about comments the former mayor made on ABC News on Sept. 11 that some say show he had foreknowledge that the World Trade Center would collapse.

Police refused to release more information about Lepacek’s case prior to his first scheduled court appearance July 3.

Lepacek was reporting for Infowars.com, which advances theories about the government knowing in advance about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Lepacek claimed to have press credentials issued by CNN, which sponsored Tuesday’s debate. A CNN representative in charge of issuing credentials did not immediately return a phone call or e-mail from RAW STORY seeking comment.

Reports on Lepacek’s arrest first appeared on Infowars.com and the Jones Report.

Witnesses said Lepacek and another reporter were physically assaulted by police and their camera equipment was damaged, according to those reports, which also included video of Lepacek’s confrontation with Giuliani staffers.

“If this were 10 years ago, they’d be throwing pies in our face,” the Giuliani staffer says to other assembled reporters after Lepacek is dragged away.

     I think there are a lot of questions that our government  has never answered or when someone does ask these questions you hear the cries of ‘insane’ or ‘unpatriotic’ or ‘tinfoil hat’ and the questions are swept under the rug. The questions still remain and need to be answered. But regardless of whether you accept or even acknowledge the questions, it is still the duty of a u.s. citizen to ask them.  -Mike