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My Freelance Experience in the Big City

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 06/04/2010 2 comments

My big city is New York City. I’ve lived and worked here for the past 17 years. One thing I must throw out about city life is it’s very gritty.

There is on the other hand a method to the city life madness. Outsiders might find it overwhelming. But once you’ve established a footing, it seems we’re able to soar to new heights never before realized when living in a small town.

The pace is fast for sure. But the City also provides inspiration simply from observing it’s people. Some are the uber successful, while others are top of their field talents.

It makes me want to

Solutions to Improve Flash SEO

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 06/03/2010 Comments Off

What’s wrong with Flash SEO, is there remains indexing issues for search engines which damages visibility of a website. Flash is not Standards Compliant. Meaning the content is very hard for SE’s to follow in a structured order like HTML pages. Flash also uses mostly images where the content cannot be read by the search robots.

There’s more details about this issue. I will just list some resources because it has been covered thoroughly by others. I don’t want to just repeat what they said…so here goes:

Simple techniques for improving Flash SEO

What I want to cover is the simplest way to do SEO for Flash; Provide

How to Create a Draggable Sort List

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/31/2010 Comments Off

One of my favorite features of a content management system is a drag to sort list. Something similar can be seen in systems like the widgets module in WordPress.

Before I realized it was there, a few clients have asked me to integrate these lists so they can better manage items for their website.

This is a relatively new dynamic web application feature that some sites may be using. I will show you how to implement one of these using simple techniques and tools.

First you will need

How to Pre Plan a Website Before Development

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/30/2010 Comments Off

Too many people rush into the development of their website without any initial planning. It’s like expecting a business loan without a business plan.

But where do you begin? And especially when you have no previous experience setting up a website.

Well it’s very straight forward and not that complicated. It just like any other business. Planning is important. So I will offer some advice and insight on how to pre plan a website before development.

Demand

The first thing you need to consider is demand. What kind of demand is there for the product or service your website will be offering? This is called the market.

Rarely does a new company create a market for their product or service. Most enter an already established market where others have proven success. You will need to

When Syndication Becomes Article Piracy

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/29/2010 Comments Off

Recently I was googling on link graph related keywords and noticed a pirated article with the same title as an SEOBook.com entry. To make matters worst, the entire article was republished with no attribution to the original creator.

Now I’m not going to call anyone out, because that’s not my job. But it got me thinking about syndication and how this contributes to article piracy on the internet.

A content reuse study recently released by the Fair Syndication Consortium, highlights the amount of abuse leveled at newspapers. In it they claim

5 Tested XML Sitemap Creation Tools

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/27/2010 Comments Off

One of the most important things you can do for your websites is to add an XML Sitemap. The sitemap tools listed below are all free, online based, software independent and tested by me to make sure they all work.

Best of all there is no sign up required to use any of these tools. Their features do vary. Some provide details of the scan, others allow over 500 urls to be included.

Sitemap Tools

Why are You Not Using the Best WordPress Plugins?

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/25/2010 Comments Off

You might be writing constantly, but are you using some of the best WordPress plugins? These plugins have been tried, approved and used by many bloggers.

These applications add very useful features that enhance your blog. They can help provide a far better experience for your websites community.

Implementing any of these will offer great benefits to your sites visibility, functionality and credibility.

All in One SEO Pack. Incredibly useful for SEO. It allows you to had a custom title, description and keywords to your posts and pages. I use this and it helps me fine tune my content for the search engines. It also gives

The Closed Loop Dropship Income Machine

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/24/2010 Comments Off

A few years ago, I tried my hand at Drop Shipping. Drop Shipping means you have a supplier deliver a purchased product as if it came from you. This of course eliminates any need to stock inventory. And you as the merchant must make the purchase first before delivery .

So I tried this with eBay and the results were very good. I made a few thousand dollars before losing my eBay account. I must admit, I didn’t manage the account very well. There is more details to this, but I will spare you my failure because it is 100% my fault. This system used correctly can potentially make you a lot of money, and without spending any thing more than $25 to start.

The parts of the income machine

To start drop shipping, you need a few tools and services. One being a

Simple Technique to Find Genius Ideas

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/23/2010 Comments Off

For creative individuals, finding great solutions or ideas is often a challenge. Even if you solve math equations, write articles or design graphics, often we draw a blank. This is where we just don’t seem to process ideas to resolve a particular issue. This is called the mental block problem.

We are told that simple research and brain storming can give great ideas. And this is true to a certain degree. But to find those genius ideas, the ones that throw all other solutions out the door, is hard and frustrating.

But there is an old technique, used even by people like Einstein to come up with creative breakthroughs. I like to call it the light bulb method. This simple technique was researched by Dr Darren Lipnick of the Australian National University. In his research he found

Top 10 Free Web Application Development Tools

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/21/2010 Comments Off

I use all but one of the tools in this list for web application development. They help streamline most of my work as a web developer. This is PC based…so I’m not sure which will work on the Mac.

jEdit
Web Developer Tool Bar for FireFox
FileZilla
MySQL
Gimp – read our article on Gimp Logo Design
CodeIgniter
Project Pier
Subversion
Open Office
IE Tester

I’ve never really used subversion. I will try to explore it in the future.

I’ve built applications with Codignitor and it’s really easy to work with. The Web Developers tools bar is practically an extension of me, and the same for jEdit and FileZilla.

Use any of these tools? Please tell us about it.

How to Choose a Good IDE

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/20/2010 Comments Off

Understanding IDE

When looking for a good IDE, some standard features demanded by other programmers must be considered.

But here’s the thing. You really don’t need an IDE. A regular notepad program can work fine for editing your codes.

An IDE offers advanced features to manage files and code. Use of an IDE is

Outsourcing Solutions To Multiplying your Productivity

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/12/2010 Comments Off

Freelancers, CEO’s and Managers can greatly increase productivity with various outsourcing solutions. But, it’s important to remember this is real world coordination of people, production and money.

Therefore it’s vital that you know how to manage outsourcing and what services can help.

You will need

Initiated Online – Building Authority

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/08/2010 1 comment

Robot Critique Vs Human Critique

In the game of life, there are humans and machines. Who the judge is, will be the focus of this article.

When judged by a robot, you’re on page SEO makes you a winner. Your code must be properly optimized for maximum interpretation by search engines.

But there is another factor:

The Top 7 Online Marketing Techniques

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 05/04/2010 1 comment

Make no mistake about it; These Online Marketing Techniques will be around for quiet a while.

I’ve been marketing online since 2002. Therefore I have a top down view of all the ways to promote a business online. I’ll cover some of the best options in this short, but sweet list.

1. Your own Affiliate Program. The reason this is number one IMO, is because almost all the other techniques bellow, your affiliates can do for you. Which will be hundreds or thousands of times more than you can do if you executed on these yourself. Even if you

My Path to Self Employment

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 04/27/2010 2 comments

How I became self employed

I’ve had a desire to be self employed since I was a kid. In 2002 I started a small business that really didn’t take off. But we made some deals and a few bucks. That really opened my eyes to the idea that I could, with hard work, be my own boss.

Although I did go back to a day job since starting my business, I never lost my burning desire to be independent or at least be at the head of my own company.

While building my business (very slowly I might add), I started

Ebay Partners Vs Amazon Affiliate

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 04/26/2010 Comments Off

Are you interested in becoming an online Affiliate Marketer? Are you disappointed with the performance of other programs?

Then eBay Partner Network or Amazon Associates Program might be more beneficial to your business. I’ll do a basic comparison of these two services to determine how they differ from each other.

What’s the difference between Ebay and Amazon’s Affiliate programs?

Amazon pioneered affiliate marketing online. They remain one of the most popular programs available today. But we have a contender; Ebay and their partner program. What sets these apart, especially the payout is an important consideration.

Determining the answer in many cases will come down to actual implementation and testing. But before you do that, lets look at how they stack up against each other on an introductory level.

5 UI Design Improvements You Need to Make on Your Website Today

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 04/08/2010 Comments Off

User Interface Design refers to the production of the system Users will interact with. This can be a website, a content management system, applications, software, wireless devices and more.

I will cover 5 common mistakes website developers make when designing the user’s system.

Although this topic is extensive with many advance principles, I will try to cover these mistakes generally when related to website design.

Principles for software and physical gadgets will not be touched on in this guide. And after identifying problem areas I will outline several

Who is the real Internet Business Promoter?

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 11/23/2009 Comments Off

What a common Internet Business Promoter has to offer.

Internet Business Promoters often offer tons of visitor traffic to your website. They guarantee placement in the top of organic search results.

They often boast of industry leading techniques that are exclusive. Claims they have/are experts with more than a decade of experience.

And even claim they can beat any of your competition. All this in less than a week. And of course with big returns on investment.

There seems to be some fluff. Where is it?

What the promoters are selling is fine, but there’s fluff somewhere. The fluff is what they would like to

Why are Search Engines so Stupid?

Posted by Anwar Baksh on 10/18/2009 1 comment

How search engines work today

Search engines today are not very smart. I say this because, face it, many searches do not return exactly what we want.

They offer a seemingly random list of related content, that’s usually not on target. We often have to refine and re-enter our search.

In a paper published in the Journal of Information Science by A. Uyar, multi word queries can affect search results accuracy by 50%. And as the number of words increase, the accuracy drops.

Search engines use a number of factors to rank websites. In many cases this method fails.

This is partly the fault of the user as well. The user often enters vague keywords that the engines cannot properly interpret. This issue is not handled gracefully.

The problem with the current search engine model

The problem is Search Engines do not know what a user mean or intend in their query.

The search engines are now experimenting with live suggestions to help the process. But this method must be refined.

Another problem is search engines don’t always rank sites based on relevance to search. They try to make a guess at what is really expected from the request, and offer the best based on their very imperfect ranking methods.

Ideas that might help improve search results

There are a number of research projects currently trying to tackle this issue.

For example XFN (XHTML Friends Network). Using hyperlinks we are able to represent human relationships. Website owners can state who they are linking to and how they know that person or site.

Also FOAF (The Friend of a Friend), with their method we are able to do similar relationship declarations as XFN, but with more control over information. And with more access to deeper attributes and connections of each relationship.

There is also Hakia. This is a Semantic Search Engine. Their method is based on the idea of more credibility than popularity. They use librarians to judge the content among other factors.

These are just three examples of the next generation of technology that will make search engines just a little more intelligent.

How these can be implemented

Implementing some of these new technologies might not be so practical. For one, there needs to be far more options available through XFN and FOAF. The Hakia search engine uses humans, and this might not be easy to scale.

There are other projects that might prove more reliable than presented here. But currently no one person or company has made significant strides to building something remotely as smart as a child.

How will the future of search engines look

The future of search might prove to be revolutionary. The right information will be instantly available in a streamlined and natural way.

For example, we speak our query and have the request taken by our in house computer system, and then give us the answer in voice, video, text or any number of other formats. This would of course be highly intelligent and would return only the most relevant and credible results.

Conclusion
The search engines are not smart enough. Their ranking methods are faulty and need serious upgrading.

There are technology being researched and developed that might help. There exists the problem of scaling because the amount of information required cannot be handled effectively at the moment.

In the future, search will be radically more intelligent. They will give almost perfect answers to our questions, instantly and in any format we desire.