Oct
28
Wisdom for Women on Men, Marriage and Life
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Memorable and meaningful quote found on the Heartless Bitches web site:
“The Problem is: many terrific women have made themselves overqualified for the job of wife, because many men are looking for a woman with ‘receptionist-level wife skills’, not ‘CEO-level wife skills’.
Meaning: If a woman doesn’t hang on a man’s every word, is too independent, challenges his leadership, wants to create her own hours, demands emotional raises, then there won’t be as many openings for the kind of wife position she is seeking.
One of the big problems with marriages in the nineties: no room for two husbands.”
– Karen Salmansohn, (From “How to Succeed in Business without a Penis”)
Truly spoken - or rather, written. That goes well beyond just marriage, and can be applied to any number of interpersonal relationships across a broad spectrum of life experiences. What’s a comfort for me is that having been around the block a few times, and having lived long enough so that they were long blocks in many neighborhoods, I’ve come to the firm conclusion that the really great men out there are humble in spirit and profoundly gracious in their demeanor and dealings.
It’s the toads who get puffed up, arrogant and prideful with a falsely inflated sense of self importance when life is kind to them; and the outward manifestations of those inner attitudes reflect in sometimes obvious and sometimes obscurely subtle abusive behavior toward people whose eyes don’t reflect back upon them with the gratuitous adoration for them corresponding to their own that they crave - and sometimes even demand. The toads tend to eschew or discredit those refusing to co-sign that falsely inflated sense of self-adulation they seem to develop over time. The kicker is that there’s a truism in life that “like attracts like” and eventually they’ll be surrounded by a hall of mirrors of their own creation.
Toads are not great white whales roaming the vast seas, however. Toads are amphibious. slimy little creatures who dwell in the murky little ponds of their own soul. They just croak loudly.
Oct
26
Once in a while there are people who turn up who set a standard and lay foundations. Men of greatness - master builders. Not that I’ve ever forgotten him, but I came across Jan Rencke’s name while looking at the list of events and speakers at the October, 2004 Search Engine Strategies show in Stockholm, Sweden - there was Jan Rencke, now of Destination Stockholm.
I dug around and searched at Google, and found a few of his unforgettable forum posts. Jan was the original Moderator of the European Search Engines forum at WebmasterWorld, and raised the level of internet promotion forums to new heights of international excellence with his posts about European Search Engines.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum18/188.htm
Part 1
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum18/100.htm
Part 2
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum18/190.htm
Part 3
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum18/275.htm
It was not only admiration for the breadth of ability and knowledge Jan so generously and unselfishly shared with the world back then, but a profound respect that grew with observation of his character and dealings that made him so memorable. Sharpness of wit, and acuity in perceptions and judgment garnered respect for him, but his incredible warmth and hospitality drew profound affection.
It’s truly amazing that a gentleman who could make such a tremendous impact toward internationalizing the internet community of webmasters and search engine optimizers could also be a down to earth fun guy and as comfortable to be around as wearing an old pair of soft slippers.
There are a few of us around who reminisce back to the “olden days” - remembering the solidarity and singlemindedness of purpose among us; the honesty, the trust, the dedication and purity of heart with no selfishness, no hidden agendas, and no purpose but to build together something worthwhile.
As Mr. Mackin used to say - “Feel the luv.” And you could. That love is still there for some of us - maybe not all, but for some of us.
Oct
24
Being in the middle of site updates in preparation for the Holiday season since July/August, I started to think about how the seasonal cycle used to work with Google’s monthly update cycle, and about how things are now.
There was a once_a_month update (called the Dance - blech), and then they crawled. The crawl would be reflected in the next monthly update. So to be ready in time to be included in the crawl, you had to count backwards and start working on a site for any holiday or special occasion during the year about 3 months prior to when you wanted the new pages to be included in the index. In fact, even farther back than that, since it can take getting some good inbound links and doing a little on-page tweaking to get the rankings where they’ll be satisfactory - and again, there was a time-delay factor with being re-crawled, getting new links counted and PR updated and having the modified rankings included in the update.
Not so any more. New sites are delayed getting Google rankings, even though they can be included in the index soon enough, and for existing sites inclusion of new pages is much quicker and so are rankings reflected. It can take mere days to see the results of updating a site.
Then comes Yahoo, formerly using Google search and now using their own search technology since early this year. The old Inktomi pay-for-inclusion some of us loved was a blessing, with only a modest annual fee and fresh crawling and updating a matter of days. Not any more, now that Yahoo has acquired Inktomi and replaced Inktomi search with their own search technology. The old PFI has been replaced by PFI (pay- for-inclusion) with a PPC (pay-per-click) component added - not at all cost effective in many cases, particularly for small businesses with low margin or profit line, which would make such PPC anything but cost-effective - and also be limited by modest finanacial resources.
So the thing to do now, for as reliable a Holiday promotion model where straight, organic SEO is concerned (aka free search engine listings) is to stay with the concept of an annual schedule, watch and figure out Yahoo’s crawl and update schedule, and try to work with that as best as can be done.
Without having enough of a track record to have seen an established pattern, it just may be that it’ll have to be a six month window of preparing sites in advance for any type of seasonal promotion, sprinkling salt over the left shoulder where Google is concerned, focusing on and watching Yahoo carefully for a while, keeping fingers crossed and taking it from there until more is known.