Author: Nancy McCord

Nancy McCord is the President and resident blogger for McCord Web Services LLC. She has been providing global web services since 2001. She is a web designer, search engine marketing professional, and search engine and blog expert. She lives in Maryland just south of the Washington DC metro area.
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Get Your PDA Synced With Vista

You can do it! You can sync your HP iPAQ with Windows 2003 on your Vista computer and a computer using Active Sync and Windows XP. I have recently upgraded my office computer to Vista, but my home computer is still Windows XP. My PDA is an older version it is an iPAQ 1935 but it has Windows 2003 installed on it which is the last version supported by Vista. On my XP computer I use Active Sync 3.7.

I tried initially to set up partnerships with my PDA and had decided that my PDA was simply not compatible with Vista. Then I did some Google research. There I found that you need to set up a partnership in the Vista Mobile Center before you use the Sync Center. So I tried again. No luck. I am very persistent and so off to do more research. I saw screen shots on one site of someone just like me syncing their PDA just like mine with Vista. Now I knew that if someone else could do it I could too. Now I am synced totally with my PDA and two computers.

This is how I did it.

  1. Connect your PDA by USB to your Vista computer. Click start, control panel, security, and then check for updates. This will send you to Microsoft Update so that your computer can download new drivers to help your PDA be compatible with your new system.
  2. When the driver installation is complete, Windows Mobile Center will automatically open. You can then set up your PDA partnership as usual.
  3. I did not initially do this next step and so I thought that this had not worked, but it is best at this point to restart your computer, unconnect your PDA, turnoff your PDA, and then reconnect both again. Initially when I did not do this, when I tried to sync I got the message that Outlook was not installed on my PDA and so I could not sync my contacts or calendar. Well today I decided to try to set up sync again and when I reconnected my PDA, new drivers were automatically installed from the Mobile Center and I was magically able to do a total sync without any fooling around on my part. So I think that the key is to restart both your computer and PDA after getting the drivers and then trying to reconnect.

So know that you can sync an old PDA with Vista, I have done it and others on the Web have too. Just make sure to be patient and let Microsoft Vista do the heavy lifting for you of getting the new drivers for you automatically.

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Does Blogging Get You Google Placement

On the record, I can say that we absolutely can not prove that at this point. Off the record, there are many things that a blog does to speak directly to improving search engine organic placement, but we have no statistical proof that blogging improves your organic search engine placement.

This is what we do know about blogging and have been able to back up with statistical proof:

  1. Blogging increases site traffic between 25 to 35% over the same exact website that does not blog. (We found this out from a case study on three identical websites.)
  2. Blogging increases website stickiness
  3. Search engines spider and index your blog posts as unique web pages
  4. Custom FTP blog set up will allow blog pages returned on search queries to be shown with your website links in the organic search results. Versus posts for BlogSpot will not show affiliated with your domain in the search results even if you are using a custom domain BlogSpot setting.
  5. Typically posts done on BlogSpot even using custom domains will show at a lower PageRank level than if you had posted the same information with a custom FTP blog publishing setting. This is in part due to the fact that a blog set up with custom FTP will be able to piggyback on your domains popularity versus a BlogSpot blog having to stand alone.
  6. Sites that blog have more frequent search engine spider traffic.
  7. Even after a blog is abandoned website visitors will still read the posts
  8. Blog posts are read from between 20 to 45% of website visitors

I am working on a detailed new case study on blogging and will have some very interesting additional findings ready for posting on the Web in September.

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Yahoo Advertising and New Demographics

It’s called Smart Ads and they are new from Yahoo. But don’t get too excited yet, they are not for the Yahoo Search Marketing pay per click program. Smart Ads are for the content network and are image ads. So sorry but if you want to show ads with demographics, you will have to move to MSN adCenter or wait and see if Yahoo will move this new technology into its pay per click program in the future.

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Looking For Blog Content? Where to Look

Have you run out of ideas for what to write on your blog? Here are a few tips where to look to get your creative juices rolling.

  1. I like to use Google News to find targeted content on my topics that I am blogging about. I even subscribe to Google News Feeds in my specific areas. When I don’t have a topic, I look in current events in my topic or in the tech section.
  2. Subscribe to other blogs and e-newsletters on your topic. Sometimes seeing an article on a specific topic gels with me and allows me to either create a review of the article or to spin off totally new content in a similar vein.
  3. Watch websites in your market. Look for authoritative websites on your topic and keep an eye on them. Sometimes you will see a trend happening over time over several of there authoritative websites that will keep your content on the mark.
  4. Watch professional forums on your topic. Keep you finger on the pulse to see what others in your selected market area are complaining about, commenting on, and in general watching as a group.
  5. Wikipedia is a great resource for information and tips on where to go, but don’t use it too heavily, many others are as well and you want your blog to have a unique point of view not simply more redux on the same topic.

These are just a few of my tips, you can click my post title and read another blog writers list of where they find content for even more ideas.