Author: Nancy McCord

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Our Kids – Generation Text and How To Deal With Them

I am reading an excellent book right now called Generation Text Raising Well-Adjusted Kids in an Age of Instant Everything by Dr. Michael Osit. I have to say that I clearly see my 19 year old college student and triplet 11 year olds as being Generation Text kids. This book “speaks” to me on many different levels as I try to be the very best Mom that I can be.

The book is excellent and if you as a parent and have ever had issues with your kids not getting off the computer when you tell them, kids performing under their real capability in school, and issues with kids being too connected to games and cell phones at the expense of real world activities, this is a book that you really must read.

My kids hate that I am reading it as I am using many of the no-nonsense practical tips for parents that so far for me are really working. I don’t review many books in my blog, although I am an avid reader, but this book really stands out as a winner.

Dr. Michael Osit give such insight into Generation Text kids and the issues that we as parents have raising them that you would think that the book was written just for you and your family in mind. One concrete thing that I have done to help my own kids breakout of the Generation Text entitlement mentality is to institute a schedule of daily activities for my younger kids, and to help my older kid with real lessons in time management and a procedure on how to push yourself to performance not mediocrity.

So far the entire family has bought in to these new concepts as a team embracing the change. As a result of the new schedule and better time management, my house has never looked so clean and my kids so happy. In fact, homework and music practice was even done before dinner without a struggle!

If you are like my family and you struggle with kids pushing the limits to game constantly either on Fiesta, video games, or DS Games, the chores never seem to get done – as playtime has taken over work time, or your kids seem to just be surfing through school without understanding that a C is not okay in the grand scheme of things, then this is the book that you have been waiting for.

I have linked the title of the book in this post to Amazon so you can check it out. I am not being paid to review the book nor have an affiliate link tied to the Amazon link – I get nothing for recommending the book to you. I just think that you would strongly benefit from reading it if you have kids from age 10 to 20 years of age.

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New Blog Highlighted

My blog team has just started posting on this new blog and I wanted to share it with you today.

Cremation Options Blog

This brand new blog is being written for search engine placement purposes in an effort to try to boost organic placement on cremation keywords. Although the focus is about organic placement on the client’s end, our writing is information and interesting. Even if you don’t have a special pre-planning need for a cremation, you may still want to click in to check out the posts and quality of writing.

There is just about no topic that our writers cannot blog on. Well, we have found a few to be honest, but most topics we can put an appropriate positive spin on with excellent creative writing that will create great content for readers and search engines.

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Finding Your Website in the Google SERPs

Google is king when it comes to web searches. Nearly 84% of web surfers start on Google for their first search. So, it shouldn’t surprise you to know that your website’s position in Google or the Google SERPs (search engine results page) is crucial to your online success.

Just how do you find out some of the key information that impacts your website’s organic placement in Google search results? First, it is important to know that Google has over 150 different factors that it uses to determine the SERP or your organic placement. Some of these factors are the age of your domain name, the number of pages from your website in their index is another, and another is the number of websites linking to yours.

Tips to See Where You Stand

To find out which and how many sites are linking to your website use this in the search query box in Google link:yourURL (ex. link:McCordWeb.com).

To find out who and how many sites are linking to you in Yahoo enter this search query: linkdomain:yourURL (ex. linkdomain:McCordWeb.com).

Microsoft has disabled both of these queries in their search engine recently and so you will not be able to identify results in Live.com or MSN’s searh engine using either of these queries unfortunately.

To find out which pages and how many pages Google has in their index for your website enter site:yourURL in the search query box (ex. site:McCordWeb.com).

Checking your website out this way will at least get you started in evaluating where your website is. I also recommend that you select search phrases as well and every 30 days or so monitor your site placement in the organic results. It is not unusual to see a small fluctuation in position but if you fall completely out of the results a careful review of your website, terms you are using, and tactics that you have tried for placement is definitely in order.

Your PageRank on Google

PageRank is a trademarked term that Google uses to identify organic position factors of a website. It used to be that websites rose and fell on their PageRank, but not so now. Nearly a year ago, Google revealed that the PageRank indicator that it used to show (as a green bar in a graph from 1 to 10 from the Google Toolbar) and that some webmasters used as a measure of Web visibility and authority, was not refreshed on a regular basis. Google is now concealing true PageRank results mainly to cut out manipulation from webmasters. As a result of these developments the webmaster field is widely divided on the importance of PageRank. I for one consider PageRank just one more measure, like a ranking in Alexa – just not something to get spun up on or to hang your hat on as a measure of real importance. In fact, I don’t even monitor PageRank for my own site or for clients at this time as I used to when it really meant something.

Although there are some factors that you can review, there are some that you cannot review, one of those being TrustRank. Google determines the TrustRank for a website based on many different factors. This appears to be a measure that is becoming more meaningful in organic placement and is affected by the age of the domain and the informational content on the website.

If Google leaked out what impacted their SERPs, businesses, in an effort to achieve top placemenet, would work to “scam” the system; which Google hates. What determines real organic page placement on Google is one of their most highly guarded secrets and truly a secret to their success and popularity on the Web in regards to providing the best quality results for a search.

So How Can You Know What Impacts Placement on Google Exactly?

Well, you really can’t unfortunately. I however, have found that by reading Google’s patent disclosures you can get a snap shot of the technology they are actively introducing that will impact their algorithm for search placement. I also follow the blog of Matt Cutts, the voice to my industry from Google. Matt is a search engine algorithm engineer who speaks for Google to professional webmasters and search engine optimization professionals. Although his blog has many mundane posts, periodically Google will use him as a mouthpiece on an important topic or thrust in the search field. Review Matt Cutts blog and see what you think.

Another key way to understand what impacts placement on Google is to be constantly testing new tactics and approaches and to watch to see what others are doing in the industry. I’ve tested a number of tactics and have found some highly workable and others to be highly touted yet ineffective in regards to impacting organic placement. By watching industry forums I also glean trends and tactics that others are trying or find interesting new approaches to test on my own website for further evaluation.

Regardless what anyone tells you, there is simply no silver bullet or special recipe to get placement on Google. Placement is achieved by many factors working together with quality content, search engine friendly web design, and savvy persistance.

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How to Show an Excerpt in WordPress Versus the Full Blog Post

Some blogs like to just show an excerpt of the post and then a link at the bottom of the blog post to view or read more. So how are they doing that? It’s easy!

First write your full blog post in the WordPress control panel or migrate from Word if that is what you do. At the place where you want you post to break, just put your cursor there. Then click the HTML tab at the top right of your blog post panel, just above the font control and hyperlink insertion menu.

Then where your cursor is located just paste in this code:

<!–more–>

When you go back to the Visual tab, to view your post, you will now see a dotted line where your post is to break. When you publish your blog WordPress will automatically add a link to read more and then take the reader to the exact section of the post on the new page.

Cool huh? A neat trick to use the excerpt function.

Okay now why don’t I use this on my own blog? Well I have found that typically the reader will not click in to read more on most blogs, they will simply read the next post and not click in unless they are REALLY interested in what you have written. So I do not use this feature on my own blog as I want to encourage readers to review my full content with minimal action on their part.

Why would a blog want to use this feature? Some blogs have so much content on the home page that to “look” less intimidating they will use the excerpt format. Sometimes to have a less cluttered look, and sometimes so they can get more content on the home page.