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I finally got my new project launched and I think it’s really cool. A while back I decided that I wanted to create a site that would have posts from all of the SEO’s so I could find out what’s going on in the industry really fast. Then I decided that it might be a great way to build a site that I could eventually monetize if it gained enough traffic and popularity.

I decided to build SeoMasterList.com in ColdFusion. Those that know anything about me … will not be too terribly surprised - I love CF. The original code for the site is from Ray Camden’s ColdFusionBloggers app …

Really all the site does is collect feeds from all of the SEO sites in a list. Simple … But who knows … SeoMasterList.com, might turn out to be the goldmine that let’s me retire early … Till then - I’ll probably just keep on rolling out new ideas until something good happens …

Okay, every SEO in the world will probably love me for this, but that isn’t the point of this post. Honestly, I am sick and tired of receiving requests for “free” this and that. I am an SEO consultant. I do not give out SEO advice that is going to put you on page one, in position one, for free. That, would be stupid. Why in GOD’s green earth would I do that? (Yes, I believe in GOD, sue me …)
Search Engine Optimization is a business like any other.
Try asking your accountant or lawyer for free advice … good luck.

I hate to break this to all of those that “expect” that they “should” have the number one site in the search engines …
No … you shouldn’t. It takes an SEO to do that. Moreover, If you are looking for some excellent “FREE SEO Advice” … Be Careful. Most “Free SEO Advice” is bullshit created to scam you into a bogus campaign. Any SEO that is worth their weight, will most definitely charge you for their services. Unless of course they are just trying to con you into a worthless campaign.

Now, getting that off my chest, if you are looking for a good search engine optimization consultant, you have to take in to consideration a couple of things …

First and foremost, in some competitive markets, high search engine rankings can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. It’s also important to note that if you are looking to generate business from a web site, you most definitely want to entrust your rankings to someone that can prove their success.

Don’t take an SEO’s word, get proof of their work

Just to make that clear …

Don’t take an SEO’s word, get proof of their work

If an SEO won’t show you their successful campaigns, chances are that they haven’t any. If you decide to launch an SEO campaign on a web site that is poised to generate profits in one way or another, you had better think really hard whether you want to entrust your business investment strategy on “free advice” …

Oh, another thing too … if you are trusting the success or failure of your web site’s rankings to a web designer, you better make sure that they know what they are doing … If a web designer builds you a highly attractive site, with lot’s of images and or Flash, then you might want to find out just how long they have been designing sites.

An SEO campaign is more expensive if a site has to be redesigned. If a designer has any interest in getting your site to generate business, they will usually tell you that you need to speak with a search engine optimization consultant, before you start the design of your site. If they don’t, then you are gambling with the future success of your web site. The reason that I mention this is because most designers have no clue about search engine optimization and don’t really care about it either. Granted, some do … but, to be frank? it’s not their business, designers know how to make sites that “look good” … (sometimes). Designers do not specialize in building web sites that will bring your business … business.

That is the job of a good SEO, and that’s my “free” seo advice …

Okay, this is really just another shameless plug to support some pages that I have neglected, which could use some more IBL’s (In Bound Links) … For starters, let’s work with my favorite site in the universe, Florida Search Engine Optimization.

Now that I have that one out of the way, If you aren’t familiar with gaining PageRank, or building relationships from keywords and web pages, let me tell you a little well known secret. Links from web sites in the same vertical as others that point to pages on web sites with specific keywords, pass authority to the site through links … (Wow).

So, if you have a page like Miami Search Engine Optimization, and you point to that page from a site that is in a related vertical market (like this site) … then you effectively send a “vote” to the search engines for that page. (Really? … yeah, woo hoo … )

However, if the site that is linking to the other site, has a low page rank or is not considered to be in a “relevant” vertical … then the link is not considered to be authoritative, and the vote is not counted as being very significant. In some instances, it isn’t counted at all.

Now you might wonder, can’t a site vote for a page like Fort Lauderdale Search Engine Optimization, on the same site and be counted as a vote? The answer is no …

Web sites are given “votes” by other sites, not internal links. A link for a search term within a site, is an internal text link which, is good for search engine rankings, but doesn’t tell the search engines that other sites find this information useful… A link from another “relevant” site … (In the same vertical … ) does count as an authoritative vote though … (I smell smoke … )

Well I recently updated SEO Fort Lauderdale to WordPress 2.5.1 and I have had nothing but headaches so far … After I uploaded the new WP files to the server, the site went blank with the dreaded PHP white out. I figured out that the wp-config file was the culprit … (go see trac.wordpress for help)

As if that wasn’t bad enough, whenever I tried to activate the plug-ins or themes, I got the damned white out again … I still haven’t been able to figure that one out …

Now, It looks as if the editor is all bugged out too … it looks like I’m going to have to re-install this wonderful update all over again … so, that brings me to another rant all together which I’ll leave for some other day …

Well I decided to take my shot at hacking up a WordPress theme … I am familiar with developing in ColdFusion but I figured, what the hell … I’ll take a shot a PHP too …

A buddy of mine gave me access to this monstrous archive of PHP tutorials so I had might as well start to learn something more exciting than how to format content for SEO purposes …

I may do SEO for a living but I have to tell you the truth … doing SEO all day … is really boring. To me, it seems like there is always something challenging and exciting about code. But SEO? Not really.

So I created this theme as a complete Frankenstein Job of the Connections 1.0 Styling and the Neo Classical Engineering … It took me quite a bit of hackery to make it all work out the way I wanted … and I’ll probably still be hackin’ it some more as soon as I discover the bugs … but, I think it looks pretty cool … if you’re not too shy … let me know what you think.