So I have a handful of email addresses that I use and support. It gets a bit annoying handling all the different addresses. I love gmail! The interface is great as well as the spam protection. Lately a few of my accounts have been getting hit with so much spam and a lot of my emails are being sent back as undeliverable.

The thing is I have a few servers the I run my websites off of and I have a few mailing lists that go out. No matter how hard you try you are going to get your emails flagged. For the most part you can handle it, but nowadays even people who have opted in to revcieve email will send you to a blacklist. Then you have the fun job of getting off that blacklist. Yey good times!

So I have decided to just take all my email addresses and funnel them into my new google apps premier account. At $50 for the year 25gigs of space and a bit more privacy you can’t go wrong.

OK so what is this post really about? Well I had about 5 email accounts that I use very heavily via windows live mail.  How the heck can I get them into my new google email account? After researching a few different options, I found the best way to really do it!

You can use your google email in many email programs, but I truly love the gmail interface so I wanted to switch everything to that.

Now this is for Windows Live mail, but the idea should work for any other email program you are using.

What you need to do is create a new IMAP account in your Windows Live mail with your new Google email information. CLICK HERE FOR INSTRUCTIONS

Once your account is set up it is as simple as copying the emails you want into the newly create google email account.  Voila you can now see your old emails on  your google email interface.

I am so glad I found this. I now have all my emails into my google email and all the old addresses forwarded to it. In my signature I have a little message asking people to update their information with my new email address.

I am very happy with the service so far. I will keep you posted.

If you have tried google apps or went for Google apps premeir, please leave a comment about how it has been working for you.

Another way to let the search engines know is by pinging. Some people say let the search engines find the info on their own, but pinging is still a good way to get new content noticed.

There are 100’s of pinging services out there and it can be overwhelming sometimes.  Pingomatic is a great service, but you need to manually enter all your site information, title, url, feed, etc. Not anymore. This little trick rocks!

Steps to automate your pinging process -

Step 1: Add a new bookmark to your browser. Here are the Firefox instructions, if you do not know how to do this.

Step 2: Enter “Pingomatic” in the Name field

Step 3: Insert this java code in the Location field:

javascript:(function(){var%20url=encodeURIComponent(window.location);var%20%20name=encodeURIComponent(document.title);%20var%20rss%20='';var%20%20links=document.getElementsByTagName('link');for%20(i=0;i%3Clinks.length;i++)%20{if(links[i].getAttribute('type')%20==%20'application/rss+xml')%20%20rss=encodeURIComponent(links[i].getAttribute('href'));}%20%20window.location='http://pingomatic.com/ping/?%20title='+name+'&blogurl='+url+'&rssurl='+rss+'&chk_weblogscom=on&chk_blogs=on&chk_technorati=on&ch%20k_feedburner=on&chk_syndic8=on&chk_newsgator=on&chk_myyahoo=on&chk_pubsubcom=on&chk_blog%20digger=on&chk_blogrolling=on&chk_blogstreet=on&chk_moreover=on&chk_weblogalot=on&chk_icerocket%20=on&chk_newsisfree=on&chk_topicexchange=on&chk_google=on&chk_tailrank=on&chk_bloglines=on';})()

Step 4: Click “Save”

Step 5: Visit any page, or posting of your blog, and simply Click your new Pingomatic Bookmark Button..and It’s Done!

Gotta love that!

Thanks to Mark Dulisse for the tip! It rocks!

One thing your website probably needs is authority. What is website authority? To make it simple it just means that your website is legit and has some pull. It means that people come to your website and actually learn something and might even leave a useful comment and maybe even link to you. It means that the search engines like your site for specific reasons and when you create a useful post that content will usually get indexed fast and rank just as fast.

That sounds great! How can I get some authority to my website?

I am glad you asked! Here are 5 simple ways to start building authority to your website.

1.  Submit A Press Release

• Press releases go out to many outlets which in turn will get you some nice back links. Press releases show that you are willing to put out money for your website. This shows your site is not some spam junk site. Most releases get indexed in Google news which is great to have a mention in. Listed below are a few sites to use for press releases.
• Prweb.com This site is one of the biggest. A must if you are serious about your site.
• Transworldnews.com – Great service. You can get a press release live in about an hour with anchor text. Usually in google news within an hour of release.
• 1888PressRelease.com – Another great service. Will normally have  you in google news as well. Nice distribution also.

2.   Directory Listings

• I can hear it now! Directory listings? C’mon! Directories listings can be a great part of gaining authority. Don’t believe me? Go pay and get listed in the Yahoo directory. There are so many directories out there. The ones I am talking about are the paid ones. Anyone can submit to 1,000’s of the free ones, but a very small % will actually pay money to be listed. Again this shows the search engines that you are willing to put out money to promote your website. You are serious about your site and you are willing to pay for that. Below are a list of sites that I feel you should be listed in if you are truly serious about your website. (Is this site listed? ummm.. no…)That’s cause I am a wizard lol.
• Yahoo Directory – Sure its $$$, but I have seen sites jump pages in rank after a week of being excepted into this directory.
• Business.com – Another great directory, but will cost you a few dollars.
• Botw.org – I would say out of all of these get a listing here. They also have some awesome trial ads you can get as well. Give it a shot.
• JoeAnt Directory – Another good one. Least out of the bunch. Human edited and all that fun stuff.
• There are more, but these are a great start to gaining authority.
• If you are starting a new SEO campaign I would start this first.

3.  Links From Established Niche Sites

• If there is any one key factor that will gain you authority it is getting recognition from an Established site! C’mon you have to know someone who has an established site with some authority? Use  your connections and get some links. Most importantly you should have something to offer for that link or maybe you can just get a hook up. I would rather have 5 links from established sites in my niche then 1000 junk links any day of the week.  Sometimes you only need that link for a few months to get in the search engines good graces, but your site better be pumping out quality content to stay in those good graces. Below are a few things you might offer to get those links if you don’t have any friends
• Create some tool for people to use. Make it niche related i.e. if your site is about tanning lotion create a tool that will let you figure out what lotion is good for your skin type.
• Create and e-book and offer it for free! Yes free, it will be worth it in then end.
• Solve a problem. If your site is about web hosting, create a video tutorial showing people how to create email accounts via CPanel.
• Start thinking about the above ideas and how you can make life easier for others. If you can truly do that, people will link to you.

4.  Great Content & Interaction

• Yeah yeah I’ve heard it all before content is king!! Well… good content is King, crap content is just that… crap. The content you want is the content people are going to comment on and ask questions about. I can tell you 9 times out of 10 the sites that I run that invite dialogue from my visitors rank the best! Prime example is here “Iphone 3g Exchange Set Up” I have an iphone “which is awesome btw ” and I run an exchange server. I was having a tricky time getting it running and finally figured it out. I posted about it and at one point was getting about 50 visitors a day from that one post. There aren’t hundreds of comments on the site, but there are comments and people are contributing and thanking me. If you can create a post that gets people involved then  you are on the way to gaining authority. Think about it this way. With new comments and interaction that page is always being updated so it’s not stale. People sometimes will start there own back and forths because they are helping each other out. Create engaging content and people will talk about it!

5.  Using Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit etc…

• Again I know you have heard it before, but if you can truly create something that will get on the front page of digg or reddit you my friend are on your way to having authority. But….. I have tried and no matter what I do I can’t get too the front page…. whineeeee. I know its hard. Is your content really that good? Prob not. Did the content you created just take you 10 minutes to create? Ummm.. Yeah? Below are some ideas for you to get your content on the front page or at least a good amount of respect and people re-posting it.
• Ok say your niche is Tanning Lotion – Nobody is going to digg or reddit your post about some Tingle Tanning Lotion. A way you could spin it is to  create a slide show of really bad sunburns. You know the ones with the big blisters or funny pics where someone wrote something on somebodies back with lotion lol. This sort of stuff will capture peoples attention and in turn will get them digging it, forwarding it off to friends, even linking to it.
• Say your a pool company. Pay some college kids to do belly flops off a 20ft diving board and video tape it. Submit that and people will come!
• Those are just a few ways to put a spin on your niche. You need to be creative and come up with the unique angle. Your creative, you can do it!!

Conclusion

I know a lot of the stuff has been said before. The main goal here is to look at it from different angles. When you take a deep look at almost any site that really has something to offer you can find that angle! Find the angle, create the content, and run with it. After awhile you will start to have that mind set and will be thinking and reeling in these angles left and right! Once your site does get the authority it is a beautiful thing. There is nothing better then creating new content and having it indexed in less then 10 minuts.

Feel free to leave some comments.

One of our sites kept getting this error every once in awhile. After thinking it was some sort of plugin issue it turns out it had to do with the /tmp folder on our server.
It was getting filled up by eaccelerator to be precise. What is Eaccelerator?

Normally we get a warning when it is close to full and I will delete all the files when I get this notice. I guess this time I just did not heed the warning and mysql was not playing nice.

Here is how to clean out your /tmp drive via ssh.

1. Login via putty.
2. type the following.
3. cd /tmp
4. rm -rfv eaccelerator

After I did this all was back to normal.

I have also heard about people getting the same error and having to repair their database via phpmyadmin.

For us it was eaccelerator eating up space.

Next step is to set our /tmp to delete itself automatically. I will update this post on how to implement this soon.

Hope this helps a few people out there.

Have you had a validation, http://validator.w3.org/, run on your website ? If not, you definitely should!

There may a be a lot of people and organizations out there who look past a sloppily programmed website, but by not having a validated website you are making more work for the search engines. Why not create a seamless website that will allow the search engines to crawl happily?

After speaking with Edward Lewis, the validation process became much more clear to me. Although it is often over looked, website validation can play a vital role in your SEO.

I was amazed at some of the validation errors I was seeing on big name sites and shhh… even a few of my own.

If you haven’t run your website through http://www.urivalet.com/ then you should take this opportunity to do so. The main reason you should do this is that it’s free and it gives you a wealth of knowledge as to how the bots see your site! Give it a whirl, you will be amazed at what you may find.

It is definitely worth it to take the time to clean up your site to get that green passing result! C’mon you know you want it!

O.K., so now after all of this you may be wondering, is this sight passing? You betcha!! Don’t believe me? Check for yourself! Click Here

You can even check the internal pages, although you will find an ARIA validation error. It is not much too worry about and you can read more about that here ARIA and CSS validation errors