November 29, 2011

Strong Ties vs. Weak Ties

I shared a link over at Twitter yesterday. It's about social networking. If you missed that Tweet, here's the link to that awesome post by a former FBI undercover agent.

http://www.laraequy.com/blog/default/weak-ties-can-build-strong-bridges/

By the way, you can follow her on Twitter, LaRaeQuy.

Ties = Links; The strong links will always keep the chain together; As for the weak links, you have to think of something to keep them together.


ChainsOkay, now for the main event. She was talking about the advantages of having weak ties in building strong bridges. Sounds a bit vague, but let me get to the point. The thing here is that you have build a good reputation among people other than those you have a strong relationship with, e.g. your family and friends, the chances that your good stuff is going to spread is high. That's how powerful those "weak ties" are.

Those weak ties could also be the key to the improvement of your current products and services. Even if your family and your friends know a bit about your business, there's this chance that you'll get a biased opinion. Some of those weak ties could share some information that neither your family nor your friends know.

Here's where social media kicks in - relationship management. Using social media to keep in touch with those weak ties is the key to maintaining a stable relationship with them. Even if you won't spend a ton of time on social media, as long as you keep in touch, they will feel that you're giving them importance. The same thing works for strong ties as well.

[img c/o http://www.lights-alive.com/]

November 24, 2011

Thanksgiving

Ahh, Thanksgiving. The day when everyone expects eating that big turkey on the dining table with the rest of your family members, or friends, or whoever he or she’s with. There’s something about this holiday that I would like to give emphasis on.

GRATITUDE

Mmm~ Mouthwatering, isn't it?
[img c/o igourmet.com]


If you’re going to look for the word thanksgiving in a dictionary, other than it’s a holiday which originated from a celebration of the Pilgrims for a harvest back in 1621, it means an expression of gratitude; giving thanks to put it simply. When you take a look at things, this is actually one of the simplest ways of building a good relationship with other people. If one does something good to you, be thankful. (Let’s not go to the people who do bad stuff to you today, ‘kay?)

In the workplace, if you express your gratitude to your employees by saying that they’ve done a great job in finishing stuff, they’ll work even better in the long run. As a salesperson, if you express gratitude to those who have bought your products and asked for your services, they’ll be happy to contact you for more in the future (provided that you give quality service, that is). The same thing goes for blogging. If you express gratitude for those who have given you information, they’ll be visiting your site a lot, and they’ll be willing to give you more input as long as you credit them for their work.

Well, that’s about it. I said I was going to post about social networks, but I can’t let this holiday pass by without posting about it. … That turkey I placed at the top of the post looks extremely delish! I hope I can eat just a part of it.

November 21, 2011

Twitter Hashtags

When you're looking for people in Twitter, the first ones that you're going to add are the ones you know personally. When you're looking for people who are interested in the same topics as you, the Twitter hashtags are there to help you out. These so-called "hashtags" are the ones that are preceded by a pound/number (#) sign. I got to follow some SEO people like Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, and Matt Cutts because of those hashtags. I added #SEO in some of my Tweets last week.

As I was checking my Twitter account for updates last week, I saw this interesting conversation going on between lots of SEO people. I noticed everyone adding the hashtag #seochat in their Tweets. The conversation made me wish that I could have participated there early. Well, since I didn't get to see a lot of 'em Tweets, I went ahead and Tweeted about it, saying that there's a great deal of SEO stuff going on in this chat.

A few days later, Ash Buckles of SEO.com (you can follow him on Twitter: @ashbuckles) mentioned me in his Tweet and said that I should join the conversations on the next SEOChat session. He gave me the schedule; It's every Thursday, 7PM Mountain. Go ahead an participate! You'll get a lot of good info about SEO and the SEO Reseller industry in the conversation, so don't miss out on this great opportunity.

November 17, 2011

Gaming: Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 - Day 1

I missed a day of blogging just because I had too much gaming. Well, I've been waiting for this game to go out since Maximilian has been showing some tutorials on the new characters. People in the SEO reseller industry have to have their well-deserved rest, too. Haha! Anyway, I was thinking of using Strider Hiryu, but I only got to try out the new Marvel characters in the roster.

I tried some of the stuff in Mission mode, and I just liked how Iron Fist plays. I'm thinking of making this character as my battery character. For those who don't know what a battery character is, it's the character that gains all of the meter. Iron Fist just has a convenient move for that. DP+H (forward, down, down+forward ~ H) activates a power up that increases the amount of super meter Iron Fist gains over a period of time. Another good thing about Iron Fist is--

Iron Fist
WHAT IS AN AIR COMBO?

Anyway, that's about it for now. I can't really say much about the other Marvel characters yet. I'll try to write something about 'em once I get into training mode. For now, I'll be using Iron Fist. Dominate the ground!

November 15, 2011

Anchors

The post is a little bit about "anchors", but not exactly the type of anchor that Guilty Gear's May is carrying.

Good day, everyone! Today, we're going to talk about anchor texts. The stuff that they call anchor texts are those words that are colored and usually underlined. When you hover over those anchor texts, your cursor changes to the hand with the index finger pointing at it, or whatever cursor the site owner has set. Here, try it out:

This is an example of an anchor text.

If you're familiar with HTML, the example above can be done like so:

This is an example of an <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/anchor-text">anchor text</a>.

Now, to the SEO part. Usually, SEO people would put the keywords as anchor text. When you leave comments or blogs, or maybe write articles about your website/service/whatever, it's going to look great if it can be a fragment of a sentence. Let's say for example... cars in Texas. If you're going to use the keyword as your anchor text without altering it in any way, it's called an exact match anchor text. Now, the problem with that is this: What if your keyword is performance car parts Dallas Texas? Sure, you can use a little bit of "keyword play", but it's going to be hard on you if your keywords become a little more complicated.

If you're going to modify the keyword you're going to use in your anchor text, that's called a partial match anchor text. Now that you have the freedom to modify your keywords, it's time that you can play around with 'em so that they wouldn't sound awkward, and that the sentences you construct will sound a lot more human.

By the way, I'd like to say thank you to SEOMoz for that informative article about anchor text. Check it out, guys!

November 14, 2011

Pandas


Pandas are considered as one of the cutest in the bear family. The black and white pandas that we all know and love live somewhere in the central and Southern regions of China.

Panda

How can you not call this cute?!

Yes, they're cute! But site owners have been whooshed by the word "panda". Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal gave birth to an update to Google's algorithm. They were all like, what the--?!

After the update, the site contents have been really the focus of the improvement of a site's ranking in Google's eyes. Now that they're focusing on the quality, you really have to make sure that you're showing that quality in your content. You also have to show that you're active. Just posting content on your site doesn't really equate to being active. In this age of social networks, where almost everyone has his or her own social media account, you should participate in conversations in your respective community.

Back to quality... If Google sees that your site didn't pass their standards in content quality, you're going to have to take the hit. It's going to take a toll on your site if you say no to Panda.

Never say NO to Panda
[video from http://www.youtube.com]

Just Another Blogger

printf("Hello World");

Sorry, I couldn't think of a witty welcoming statement so I had to go with C. Anyway, good day, everyone! I'm Gerry "Nitram" Martin, a guy's who's interested in stuff about SEO and the like. The nickname Nitram is actually my last name spelled backwards. The blog's title is "SEO Reselling Blog", but that doesn't mean that I can't talk about other stuff anymore. Maybe you'll get to read some stuff about the latest games out on the consoles, or something like that. I hope that we all have a good time here!