New Orleans Internet Marketing » Uncategorized

Thanks New Orleans Saints!

Chris H. — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:31:00 +0000

This is a bit late going up because I have been pretty backed up with work, but I’ve been wanting to say “thank you” to The New Orleans Saints organization and players since the end of this past season. I can’t express my gratitude enough for the transformation that’s taken place in our team over the past 5 years, and how great it is to be a Saints fan today.

My first memories of being in the Superdome for a Saints game came from the early 80′s when my grandfather started taking me to games, and then going with my dad afterwards as I grew in age. There’s something really special about being in the dome and around the excitement of the crowd there.

It was never easy being a Saints fan though, because we never knew which Saints would show up from week to week, and frequently we just dealt with all of the disappointing losses as “part of the territory” (being a Saints fan).

Thank God it’s not that way anymore. The Mickey Loomis / Sean Payton era has produced teams where we “expect” players to come out and give 110% on Sunday, and make the playoffs at the end of the season. This team’s transformation is one of the most amazing things I have seen in my lifetime, and I’m proud as hell to be a Saints fan today.

I’ll never forget the days of old, and I keep my expectations in check.

I’m grateful when they make the playoffs. Any year your NFL team makes the playoffs is a great year in my opinion, regardless of the outcome.

Last season was something really exceptional though. When I heard other fans complaining about getting beat by the 49ers, I remembered the Saints of old, and my gratitude was quickly restored.

Forget about all of the incredible records the Saints broke last year. My pride in this team goes a lot deeper than superficial numbers on the books.

When the Saints went out swinging against the 49ers in that playoff game, it was an epic battle fought to the bitter end, by two teams who stepped up to extraordinary levels.

Many teams faced with the adversity the Saints faced in the first quarter of that game would have folded under pressure, and been counted out. Not these guys. They fought to the bitter end, and give or take a few plays, could have easily won it.

Thanks guys, you did a heck of a job. You should hold your heads high and be proud.

Why I can’t post substantive content here anymore

Chris H. — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:10:51 +0000

I hate to say it, but my blog has pretty much become useless the past few years. The reasons I started this blog were to provide quality helpful content on SEO and SEM, but I’ve had to pretty much strip out all the really good useful stuff, and stop writing new stuff altogether due to the competitiveness in my niche.

The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory is my main income producing website, and TalkAboutMarriage.com is its “sister” site where people give each other free marriage advice. I started The FMC Directory about 7 years ago, and shortly thereafter a competitor started another directory targeting the exact same keywords and copying my backlinks as closely as possible. Since then, a new directory like mine springs up every year, and there are now at least 5 other sites trying to do what mine has done (drive an enormous amount of referrals to therapists) and failing miserably when it comes to SEO (the best way to do so). Amongst the ranks are Counsel-Search.com, Goodtherapy.org, Theravive.com, and MarriageFriendlyTherapists.com.

I’m sorry to say, that with all these guys nipping at my heals constantly, I just can’t write good SEO stuff like I intended on doing when I first started this site. There’s plenty of quality SEO information on the web, but the good thing for me is that there’s plenty of bad info out there as well, and my competitors don’t know who to follow. At least if they were following me, they’d know what I’m doing works. But I can’t give away that kind of information because it would cost me my business.

So if you’re ever wondering why I don’t post anything here these days, this is why…

BlogCatalog.com Gets Toolbar PageRank Penalty from Google

inlayout — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:23:07 +0000

In the past I’ve done a few posts about PageRank that may help newcomers understand the difference between “actual” PageRank and “Toolbar” PageRank, along with some of the anomalies you will see if you look at the Google Toolbar for a long time (no, not visions of Mary either, just the little green bar).

One of the things I discussed in my post “Anomalies with Google’s ‘Toolbar PageRank,’” was the fact the sometimes search results will look strange when there is a site with low “toolbar PageRank” ranking high for competitive keywords. This is sometimes due to the possibility that Google has penalized the website’s “toolbar” PR for selling links.

This appears to be what happened to Blog Catalog today. Blog Catalog used to have a PR 6 or 7 homepage, and many interior category pages that were PR5, but if you check today, you will see that they’ve been bumped down to a PR4. Is Blog Catalog really selling links? You be the judge – have a look at the top right of the “Health” section page (click here).

Will this affect BlogCatalog’s search engine rankings? Probably not.

Although it has been argued both ways, I am of the opinion that it WILL affect the “link juice” that gets passed down to all of the blogs listed in their directory.

Why Your SEO Campaign Should Include Outsourced Link Building

inlayout — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 19:25:43 +0000

There’s a lot of ways to get links for most SEO campaigns, but one thing I almost always do is hire some outsourced personnel who contact related websites asking them to link to the site we’re promoting from their “Resource” pages. This can be very time consuming work, that’s why most of the people I’ve met who do this are from India. The value you get for your dollar is very good in India. We pay these link builders anywhere from $5 – $50 for a link, and we get a one-time fee, permanent link from another website. Outsourcing companies, like OutsourcedLinkBuilding.com are getting more and more popular due to the cheap price of labor overseas. Outsourced Link Building dot com in particular, has secured tons of valuable links for me in the past. Granted, there are times when I wind up paying for a few I wish I hadn’t, but the overall service is incredible for the price you pay.

The value you get from one-time fee, permanent links is so great, because when you specify a decent part of your budget for that, the links really build up over time. So does your PageRank, and so do your rankings. I’ve found so many ways to get permanent links these days, that it’s rare that I rent links. To me, renting links (paying a monthly fee) is little different from pay-per-click advertising in that you’re renting your space at the top. Don’t rent! Own!