Zwinkyness

Hello, y’all. I know I have been neglecting you, or at least you may feel that way, but let me assure you this neglect was only temporarily. A lot of things, some bad, some good, have been going on in my life and have been taking up most of my time.

This post is really short: I’m trying to add some extra stuff on the website, updating several other websites of mine, downloading music to burn a CD and finishing Destiny (a book by Elizabeth Haydon, definately a must-read!) as well as studying for my driving test. Talk to you soon, hunnies!

Ah, my fellow kinsmen, I have important news to you all. Recently, I have come to realise I am, most probably, definately, and without any doubts: a duck. Why? you may ask. Well, my lovey-doveys, my hunny-bees and my little hearties: I love swimming. Love is even quite a dull term for what I experience when positioned in the water.

I have been spending my time around swimming pools this week, as you might have noticed. My niece has quite a large pool, which is awesome to hang out in when the sun is shining and temperatures are about 30 degrees (or more). Next week, I’m probably going to the sea with a couple of my friends and having a picknick on the beach. That should be awesome too, and another opportunity to let my duck-like lifestyle take control. Oh yeh, I’m a duck. Oh yes, I’m a duck, a duck, duck, duck, duck. Aight, I’ll shut up now.

I want to go see the Simpsons the Movie tonight, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to pull that one. Lets hope so, fellow comrades, because I totally love the Simpsons and I haven’t gone to the cinema in quite a while. Cross your fingers for me.

Today, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the new hype; everyone is talking about it, everyone is interested in it, etc. It is very important for advertisers or webmasters to have high-ranking websites, optaining the best results is all Search Engines, whether it be the infamously popular Google or the less-used SlashmySearch.com. Those of us who do not care about wasting money on SEO or would rather prefer to do it themselves, implement search-engine-friendly URLS, tons of keywords, META tags, and the whole lot. What I was not aware of was that, whilst I was literally reading every article about SEO on the world wide web, there were other, perhaps easier ways to maintain  the same. How? you might ask. The answer is: currently certain websites, online businesses to be precisely, make it their main  goal to provide you with SEO Services.

One of said business, is DiscountClick. It’s an online marketing service that offers its clients affordable SEO services and promotions. Whilst it looks mostly expensive and totally out of the boat for a poor webmistress such as myself, a certain page drew my attention. Free SEO tools. Obviously, not as good as the ones I would have to pay my monthly allowance for, but free always had a nice ring to it for me.

Their Link Popularity Tool seemed quite interesting to me. Checking out how popular Zwinkyness is on any of the major search engines was something I would have liked doing for a long time now.  I found out Altavista has no less than 166 links referring to my website! All the web has about 155. I never had any clue that many websites were linking to mine, in one way or another. It’s probably not a lot, but I’m still quite proud of it and I’m glad I had to review DiscountClick, else I would not have stumbled upon this nice tool. Now my goal is to obtain at least 500 links on each search engine, linking to my website, although that will be hard. But one has to keep trying, not?

Next, I went to check out the Pages Indexed by major search engines tool. Surely, one can do this manually, but it is way faster using the tool provided on DiscountClick. Per Search Engine, about 5 pages of my website are indexed, which is quite good if you ask me. The engines this tool checks are: Google, MSN Search, Yahoo!, Alltheweb, Hotbot, Altavista and Lycos. I’m ashamed to admit I did not even know of the existence of Alltheweb and Hotbot, so these people certainly have a lot of more knowledge about SEO than I do!

The SERP Lookup is about the most interesting free tool DiscountClick has to offer. One enters a keyword fit with a website, along with the url, and the tool checks if the keyword links to the website on any of the major search engines. For example, when I typed in “Zwinkyness” I found on my website is placed on the first position in all four engines checked: Google, MSN Search, Yahoo! and Altavista. That means this is certainly a good name for a website, since it’s nearly unique.

All in all, it seems as though DiscountClick really knows what their doing, and anyone working for a larger company or who has just received a heritage from an extremely-well-fed aunt who used to live in a mansion that makes The White House look like a cabin, should try out their paid services. Anyone who is less fortunate than those mentioned above, probably should just check out their free tools: it’s always interesting to know how your website is doing in the search engine ranking.