Experiment Update

Previous information about the experiment:

Seven days after launching my experimental site, it appeared in Google on its first page at the 7th spot. It stayed there for a couple of days and then dropped to 635th.

Update:

After 12 agonizing days, it resurfaced, and this time at the third spot for my chosen keyphrase. Hurray!

But in Yahoo, it slid down from first spot to third spot. And who are on 1st and 2nd? shopping.yahoo.com! Well, can't argue with them. It's their search engine.

Latest posts:

• Claiming Back Home Space


• The Power of the Keyword-in-domain-name

Google Dance?

7th day: My experimental site was number 8.
9th day: My experimental site was number 7.
10th day: My experimental site plunge to 253. Four minutes later I checked again, number 625.

I've heard of the google dance. But does it dance and hop this hugely? Is my site banned? For what crime was it banned for? All I did yesterday was did some backlink work...about 20 backlinks from different high PR sites. You see I bought this monthly service from Angela. She sends monthly packets of 30 high PR sites to build back links with.

Well, I guess, there's only one way to find out. I'll just have to wait it out and see what comes out of this.

Keyword in URL works!

Like I've been saying, I've been reading a lot from the gurus. Most of them seem too glib to be true, thus I deemed them as nothing more than leeches who are out to get your money. As I read more and more material about blogging, the theme about keyword research seem really centering on some fundamental 'facts'. I call them facts now because they are really common among all the preachers. They tell you about the importance of keyword research prior to writing your articles or prior to launching your blog or website.

Intrigued, I embarked on an experiment to prove this myself and settle once and for all my doubts about these facts.

I did some research on a lot of keyphrases. A keyphrase differs from a keyword in that a keyword consist of only one word. I directly aimed for keyphrases, or they sometimes call these long-tail keywords, because I know that most if not all profitable keywords (even the non-profitable ones in fact) have all been taken over by the early greedy hoarders.

I hit upon something with more than a thousand estimated searches per month. I checked the domain name for this particular phrase and found it vacant or not taken yet. I just went ahead and purchased this domain name and created some initial one-page content. Then I uploaded this to my server.

It took 5 days before google had the main page indexed. By then I had added 2 more pages to the site, and had done some backlinking work, commenting on about 6 blogs. When I checked google using a software that tells me if my site is within the first 1000 in google for a particular keyphrase, it was not found.

The next day, I did a 'site:mydomainname.tld' search again on google. What the...? It was gone. It says it cannot find the site. I thus searched for some idea why this would happen. Several sources say that it happens sometimes with google, and that you need not worry, it'll come back. Others warn of the site being banned.

My worries were wiped out when I checked it out again the next day. It was back. And the biggest surprise was when I found out that it is now number 8 in google's first page for the targeted keyphrase!

Long story short, I am now convinced of the power of "a keyphrase in the url principle". Henceforth, I'll definitely be researching for profitable keyphrases and repeat the process I have just done. Maybe I'll also change my mind about the glib gurus. Maybe they indeed are telling the truth.

In Moralde.com, I had just added another item in my wishlist:Western Digital external usb harddrive.

Just joined StumbleUpon

After commenting on one of those blogs I frequent, I was convinced by the blogger to join stumbleupon. I opened an account and went about the business of familiarizing myself with the layout and the functions. But before I even began to understand the concept, my mind wandered off in some other direction and got diverted away. Anyway, I'll get back to stumbleupon later, or tomorrow maybe. I have only began to follow and be followed in twitter, now here comes stumbleupon. I don't know what it can do to my traffic but some bloggers vouch that it helps bring in traffic to their blogs. Well, let's see.

If you are also a stumbler (is that what you call one who uses stumbleupon?), you can be my friend at stumbleupon. My account is http://dartagnanh.stumbleupon.com/. See you there!

Most recent post at my blog: Boost Mobile Phones.

moralde.com

Automatic Photo Scanner

Lately, a friend of the boss came to pay our office a friendly visit. I don't exactly know the reason for the visit, but I can certainly say that it was not personal. This friend is a businessman first, friend second.

automaticphotoscanner.com

He brought his secretary with her. She being the lively one initiated the conversation which brought us to the subject of their search for an automatic photo scanner. They have boxes and boxes of documents ranging from receipts to pictures to memos to monthly summaries which they have accumulated through the years. Now, they're planning on cleaning up this particular room as they want to utilize it for some more productive use than storage for dust and old documents.

Scanning these would take forever using their trusty old flatbed scanner. So the secretary said her boss is looking for some automatic photo scanner to rent. Maybe this visit is one of those sorties for an automatic photo scanner. Well, we don't have one. We googled for it and found this site which looked like the answer they were looking for. It's this automaticphotoscanner.com site. This site offers suggestions and recommends a few select automatic photo scanners available today, listing out the pros as well as the cons for each product. Looks like her boss may have to buy one soon.

I noticed I haven't updated this blog for some time. I felt grateful for that secretary, Liza, for giving me something to write about. I had been busy with some experiment I'm conducting in the web.

Automatic photo scanner? Far out subject for a blogger who is not even very techie. But blogs are blogs, and bloggers are licensed to blog about anything, even automatic photo scanners.

My Blogger Blog Level Today: Low

Today, I'm kinda low in terms of motivation and ideas. This is my second post on my Blogger Blog. As I don't have ideas yet for a new article for Moralde.com, I decided to write it here. Cool, isn't it. With this blog, 'Blogger Blog: Chronicles of My Blogging Experience', I could write something even when I don't have ideas at all. Having no idea, after all, is still an experience.

I'm still continuing my tweakings for my Moralde.com blog. I'm using MoWeS Portable to make all changes locally (in my Flash disk) prior to doing the real thing on the site. Yesterday, I bumped into this cool plugin, the WP Postviews plugin, which counts the views for every post in your blog and use the data to rank your posts for the most popular or the least viewed. Of course, having just a few visitors for now, I think it wouldn't be very good to show them a post view of 1 or 3, so I sort of tweaked the plugin template to not show the numbers at this time. Later on, probably after a couple of months, I'd change that and display the post views numbers.

I still haven't decided when to make the final facelift for Moralde.com. I still am on the lookout for essential plugins that will contribute for both SEO and functionality. Another important reason why I cannot yet do the facelift is my need to find free downloadables, e.g. ebooks, software, etc. You see, the facelifted version sports a 'page peel' feature which promises readers some free downloadables when they click it. I could always disable it for the time being, but looking at it now, I think it's so cool that without it my blog would look incomplete. Besides, the downloadables will require membership to my list, and should I launch the facelift, I also want to kick off my list building.

I have a subdomain blog: Binaural-Isochronic which deals with brainwave entrainment, meditation, self help, etc.

Yesterday, I also wrote an article about tweaking wordpress so that I could add something cool to my sidebar, a new widget container below the existing container in my sidebar. I was about to publish it in Moralde.com when I realized that the tweaks I did were done only in the local (flash disk) version of Moralde.com. Since I plan to effect everything on the grand facelift, I may have to hold that article's publication for the time being.

I'm also still in limbo with regard to the niche I need to focus on. I love wordpress tweaking, but I have no hope of besting the veterans in this niche in the google search pages. So, my hunt for probable google-winning key phrases continues.

Be happy and have fun changing the world!

Drawing First Blog

The First Blog

No, this is not my first blog. My first blog is...(drum roll, please,) Moralde.com! The domain moralde.com took some time to get and I almost did not get it. The first time I searched for it about 6 months ago, it was not available. Obviously another entity, presumably also a Moralde, has taken possession of it for sometime. Having known this, I have started to consider alternative domain names for the first blog that I'll be calling my very own. Of course, I could use 'noelmoralde.com' because it is available, but I somehow feel like I am exposing myself body and soul if I use that. So I listed other alternatives like moraldebris.com, moraldecree.com, moraldelirium.com, moraldemeanor.com, moraldesign.com, moraldesiderata.com...and so on.

Some of the possible domain names I listed were available, while some are priced in the thousands! I did this preliminary search while I was preparing my credit card and paypal accounts so I could make online payments for my domain name and hosting. And I had a bit of a hard time with the credit card and paypal verification thing, which I believe was a blessing in disguise because by the time it was done, I found that moralde.com is already available. Had the paypal verification process been quick and easy, I may have not gotten moralde.com.

Domain Registrar

I purchased the moralde.com domain from godaddy. And this was after I did quite an exhaustive research on which domain registrar to buy from. Looks like every domain registrar has yeah and nay sayers. I however stayed away from domain registrars without both yeah and nay sayers.

Hosting

Having purchased my domain name, I did not opt to have it hosted at godaddy but at Lunarpages. I have had some experience with lunarpages cpanel which I find easy and comfortable when I setup my friend and boss' website. Besides, Lunarpages was offering a really cheap promo hosting at the time. And they had this no limit offering on both space and bandwidth.

So, long story short, moralde.com saw the light of day on May 30, 2009.

Henceforth, I shall be chronicling my progress with moralde.com. Beginners may just find some nuggets of wisdom here and there from which to base their next moves and decisions. Moralde.dot com, btw, is a wordpress blog. I had earlier been torn between using drupal or wordpress. On testing however, wordpress flowed like a breeze, while drupal presented me with a headache the first time I tried it. From thence, I grew to love wordpress the way an american loves America (Note: I am not american).

Till the next post dudes. Feel Good Always!