Evaluating SEO services

At 2Geckos we manage 74 area websites and are always looking for better ways to promote our clients websites, shopping carts, blogs, RSS feeds, and other web-based media.

 

My latest test was with Attracta www.attracta.com

They have an attractive / easy to navigate website, they offer several free services and moderately priced paid SEO and Marketing Tools with support for multiple websites.  The next day I was contacted by Glenn Titolo, with a low pressure sales pitch and flowed up with more information and a 1yr free premium service.   I then listed 30 of my managed websites to evaluate the effectiveness of their services.

 

We use Google Analytics to track visitor statistics, this allows us to do a traffic comparisons with previous months & years and referrers (incoming links from other websites).

 

We began Oct 6th as of today there have been only 4 hits from their web crawler and no change in traffic. Attracta’s Link Building service states that there should be 3 backlinks to my website.

 

They have a submission tool that submits sitemaps to the major search engines.

·         Yahoo has not accepted sitemaps or website submissions for more than a year. Their webmaster tool tells you that they use the Bing search engine.

·         Ask.com no longer accepts sitemaps, http://submissions.ask.com is no longer available.  your website will only be scanned if you include a link on your website.

 

I’ve contacted Attracta about my concerns but they have not responded.

 

I’m disappointed but would like to believe that they are improving their services and will keep a few websites listed on their service to monitor their SEO tools for a few months.

 

I will continue to look for cost effective services that can deliver on their promises and keep learning about SEO.  Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science, businesses are always trying to game the system so Google and other search engines have to become more and more sophisticated to detect them.

 

 

Review of 1and1.com services

I admit that I’ve never personally used 1&1 but have only spoken to ex-clients and 1and1.com tech support but 1and1.com pisses me off.

My client had registered domains with them but won't release the domains for transfer. We tried for a year to get them released.  We decided to wait for them to expire and waited 3 months for them to expire when we found out that 1&1 sold them to www.biglizarddomains.com

These are the bottom feeders of the internet. They buy up domains to sell them back to you.

1&1 transferred the domains to BigLizardDomains because they thought we wanted them.

1&1 offer extremely low introductory pricing, as low $1 to register domains to draw in the bargain hunters so they can rape them later. 

Using Dropbox to control a FileMaker Kiosk

I was recently asked to develop a Kiosk for the lobby of Casa Grande Chamber of Commerce.We developed a standalone FileMaker 11 Pro Adv Kiosk application that is relatively simple.

It displays a rotating menu of items in the FM webviewer including webpages,  photos or and videos. In addition all activity is logged.

The Chamber Kiosk is a standalone device with a wireless connection and may not always be on-line. Our Chamber Kiosk application was designed as a  Kiosk with local administration and for Remote management using Dropbox to exchange menu content and visitor log files. 

By installing a Dropbox folder on the Kiosk and another Dropbox folder on the workstation that will be managing the Kiosk they can transfer menu and visitor log files, in FileMaker format.

When you run the Chamber Kiosk application for the first time. it asks is this is a Kiosk or Management console. 

Kiosk Mode In Kiosk mode it will load, export visitor activity logs and begin cycling through its menu content.

At intervals of about 10min it checks to see if a new menu content file has been deposited in its Dropbox. If update are detected then they are imported, error checked, then replace existing menu content. At the same time the current Activity logs are exported to the Kiosk Dropbox.

The 360Works ScriptMaster function, CallScriptAtScheduledTime, is used to schedule the Windows Shutdown.exe command to power off Kiosk in 120 sec, it allows the Kiosk application time to close down cleanly. The Kiosk’s computer is programmed to automatically boot up at 8am M-F and auto start the FileMaker Kiosk. 

Management console In Management console mode you can edit menu content, view visitor statistics, and other Kiosk controls. Supports internet connected PC, laptop, MAC, and any iOS device.

• Control the End of Day shutdown time
• Speed that content is displayed
• Time to wait when Visitor is using Kiosk

Credits and resources

• Dropbox.com
• 360works.com/ScriptMaster/ free, general-purpose plug-in for file utilities.
• FileMaker.com, developers of FileMaker Pro Advanced
• Casa Grande Chamber of Commerce

If anyone is interested in a locked or unlocked copy, please let me know.

2Geckos Consulting www.2Geckos.com
(520) 709-2079 or (602) 325-4862
2Geckos has been serving the technology needs of Arizona businesses since 1987
We offer a wide range of services for all of your business needs.

Poachers

Maybe I’m old fashioned but businesses should strive for win-win relationships with their clients.

I’m a small business person, enjoy working with other small businesses and have been fairly successful. My business has grown about 15% per year since 2004 and many of my clients have been with me for over 5 years.

 

My beef is with Poachers, business that prey upon their competitor’s clients.  This has been happening more often to me and is annoying. 

I expected this when I was in business in Phoenix but in Casa Grande I’ve tried to get to know my clients and provide them the services they need and a reasonable cost.

 

I believe in Win-Win business relationships, if one of the parties believes it’s not a Win-Win for them, then with them well and try to learn from it.   It’s just business.

 

I believe in the Casa Grande Chamber of Commerce tag line.

“Dollars spent locally re-circulate locally and help to support and sustain our community.”

My Backups & Music are now in the Cloud

I’ve uploaded 12,000 songs so far to my Amazon Cloud Drive

20GB of storage for $20yr and unlimited music storage.

http://www.amazon.com/clouddrive

I can listen or download to the music though up to 8 devices using the Amazon MP3 player for Android or almost any other device.

 

One bug in the Amazon Cloud Drive, or maybe I’ll call it a feature request, is the ability to use the cloud drive in my Windows 7 backup for key files. If I had an FTP location I can create a scheduled upload to my files.   Additional storage is $1 per GB per year, 50GB is $50yr

 

Another bug/feature request is the ability to share my Cloud Drive music without requiring you to logon as me.

But this is a new service and they have been adding features but terms of use seem to prevent it.

 

2Geckos Consulting www.2Geckos.com
(520) 709-2079 or (602) 325-4862
         

2Geckos has been serving the technology needs of Arizona businesses since 1987

Dollars spent locally re-circulate locally and help to support and sustain our community.

 

 

From the Terms of Use from Cloud Player:

 

"...Subject to your compliance with the terms of this Agreement, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to use the Application solely for the purpose of management and playback of content that you have the right to store and retrieve and that is your own personal content (all such content, "Your Content"). You agree not to use the Application in any other way, including to store, transfer or distribute content of or on behalf of third parties, for any form of file sharing, to operate your own content application or service or to resell any part of the Application."

I disconnected my landline phone

I just installed these to gadgets after I disconnected my landline phone.

My 2-Line phones now rings my cell phone on Line 1 and Skype rings on line 2.

They can also be configured to use distinctive ring to use same line.

If you want to keep you landline it will also have a distinctive ring.

This lets you send & receive cell phone calls on any phone.

Supports 3 Cell phones & landline at the same time

$54 Gigaset One 72-0435 Landline Telephone to Bluetooth.

 

This adapter acts as a bridge between your phone and Skype.

$40 FREETALK® Connect Me Phone - Skype Adapter

They both were extremely easy to install & configure.

Yelp.com does not support

I began using yelp an reviewed several businesses then decided to create a Business Account.

When I did this Yelp deleted my original account and all of my reviews.

Have contacted Yelp for support but have had no response in 2 weeks.