To Buy or Rent For Your College Student – Mortgage
To Buy or Rent For Your College Student
Dan The Roommate Man
September always means Back To School, and for thousands of families it also signals Off To College. In addition, more and more young people are opting to continue their education with post-graduate studies.
Once a student is past the Mandatory - Freshman - Year - In - The - Dorm Policy that many colleges have, parents face an interesting dilemma: should they continue to shell out rent, or considering buying a property for their children to occupy while attending school
Here is a TRUE Story.
In 1994, A young man decided to attend North Carolina State University. He enrolled in a combination Master/Ph.D. program. This meant he would be in Raleigh, NC for the next four -six years. After investigating the rental options in the area, his parents decided to help him purchase a townhouse.
This was the deal. A 3 bedroom, 2
A Way for Search Engines to Improve – Casino
A Way for Search Engines to Improve
Richard Zwicky
Wouldnt it be nice if the search engines could comprehend our impressions of search results and adjust their databases accordingly Properly optimized web pages would show up well in contextual searches and be rewarded with favorable reviews and listings. Pages which were spam or which had content that did not properly match the query would get negative responses and be pushed down in the search results.
Well, this reality is much closer than you might think.
To date, most webmasters and search engine marketers have ignored or overlooked the importance of traffic as part of a search engine algorithm, and thus, not taken it into consideration as part of their search engine optimization strategy. However, that might soon change as search engines explore new methods to improve their search result offerings. Teoma and Alexa already employ traffic as a factor in the presentation of their search results. Teoma incorporated the technology used by Direct Hit, the first engine to use click through tracking and stickiness measurement as part of their ranking algorithm. More about Alexa below.
How can Traffic be a Factor
Click popularity sorting algorithms track how many users click on a link and stickiness measurement calculates how long they stay at a website. Properly used and combined, this data can make it possible for users, via passive feedback, to help search engines organize and present relevant search results.
Click popularity is calculated by measuring the number of clicks each web site receives from a search engines results page. The theory is that the more often the search result is clicked, the more popular the web site must be. For many engines the click through calculation ends there. But for the search engines that have enabled toolbars, the possibilities are enormous.
Stickiness measurement is a really great idea in theory, the premise being that a user will click the first result, and either spend time reading a relevant web page, or will click on the back button, and look at the next result. The longer a user spends on each page, the more relevant it must be. This measurement does go a long way to fixing the problem with "spoofing" click popularity results. A great example of a search engine that uses this type of data in their algorithms is Alexa.
Alexas algorithm is different from the other search engines. Their click popularity algorithm collects traffic pattern data from their own site, partner sites, and also from their own toolbar. Alexa combines three distinct concepts: link popularity, click popularity and click depth. Its directory ranks related links based on popularity, so if your web site is popular, your site will be well placed in Alexa.
The Alexa toolbar doesnt just allow searches, it also reports on peoples Internet navigation patterns. It records where people who use the Alexa toolbar go. For example, their technology is able to build a profile of which web sites are popular in the context of which search topic, and display the results sorted according to overall popularity on the Internet.
For example a user clicks a link to a "financial planner", but the web site content is an "online casino". They curse for a moment, sigh, and click back to get back to the search results, and look at the next result; the web site gets a low score. The next result is on topic, and they read 4 or 5 pages of content. This pattern is clearly identifiable and used by Alexa to help them sort results by popularity. The theory is that the more page views a web page has, the more useful a resource it must be. For example, follow this link today -
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_detailsq=&url=http://www.metamend.com/
- look at the traffic details chart, and then click the "Go to site now" button. Repeat the procedure again tomorrow and you should see a spike in user traffic. This shows how Alexa ranks a web site for a single day.
What Can I Do To Score Higher With Click Popularity Algorithms
Since the scores that generate search engine rankings are based on numerous factors, theres no magic formula to improve your sites placement. Its a combination of things. Optimizing your content, structure and meta tags, and increasing keyword density wont directly change how your site performs in click-tracking systems, but optimizing them will help your web sites stickiness measurement by ensuring that the content is relevant to the search query. This relevance will help it move up the rankings and thus improve its click popularity score.
Search Engines Can Use the Click Through Strategy to Improve Results
Search engines need to keep an eye to new technologies and innovative techniques to improve the quality of their search results. Their business model is based on providing highly relevant results to a query quickly and efficiently. If they deliver inaccurate results too often, searchers will go elsewhere to find a more reliable information resource. The proper and carefully balanced application of usage data, such as that collected by Alexa, combined with a comprehensive ranking algorithm could be employed to improve the quality of search results for web searchers.
Such a ranking formula would certainly cause some waves within the search engine community and with good reason. It would turn existing search engine results on their head by demonstrating that search results need not be passive. Public feedback to previous search results could be factored into improving future search results.
Is any search engine employing such a ranking formula The answer is yes. Exactseek recently announced it had implemented such a system, making it the first search engine to integrate direct customer feedback into its results. Exactseek still places an emphasis on content and quality of optimization, so a well optimized web site, which meets their guidelines will perform well. What this customer feedback system will do is validate the entire process, automatically letting the search engine know how well received a search result is. Popular results will get extended views, whereas unpopular results will be pushed down in ranking.
Exactseek has recently entered into a variety of technology alliances, including the creation of an Exactseek Meta Tag awarded solely to web sites that meet their quality of optimization standards. Cumulatively, their alliances combine to dramatically improve their search results.
ExactSeeks innovative approach to ranking search results could be the beginning of a trend among search engines to incorporate traffic data into their ranking algorithms. The searching public will likely have the last word, but webmasters and search engine marketers should take notice that the winds of change are once again blowing on the search engine playing field.
Did you find the information in this article useful Feel free to pass it along to a friend or drop us a line at comments@metamend.com.
About The Author
Richard Zwicky is a founder and the CEO of Metamend Software, a Victoria, B.C. based firm whose cutting edge Search Engine Optimization software has been recognized around the world as a leader in its field. Employing a staff of 10, the firms business comes from around the world, with clients from every continent. Most recently the company was recognized for their geo-locational, or GIS technology, which correlates online businesses with their physical locations, as well as their cutting edge advances in contextual search algorithms.
articles@metamend.com
Publicity Through Philanthropy For Writers – Writing
Publicity Through Philanthropy For Writers
Zachary Weiner
I am twenty three years old, have sold over four thousand copies of my first book in a matter of a month after its release and recently been contacted for contracts with Random House and Harper Collins for two new titles. I think a good deal of my recent success is highly correlated with my Reading for Charity Contest and the attention it has drawn. Ill explain the entire background, but as pre-thought I think it first manifested itself through a combination of my looking for a good way to market my first book, while balancing out my karma a bit. A way to interweave my love of novel writing, increase my books visibility and provide a benefit to society in some way shape or form. All of these tasks have seemed to be accomplished- although my karma could still probably use some more balancing.
What is the Reading for Charity Contest: Over sixty organizations, a group of corporate sponsors, and a handful of volunteers are the result of the charity contest. I took my very recently published book and decided to give away a certain percentage of its profits to charity. There was a catch though, the charity I will give my book profits to is being voted on, by the readers. So once you read my book, you can go to my webpage or find me at one of my book tours and vote for your favorite cause and the highest voted cause receives the profits Which should be quite a bit. That was the reading for charity contests basic beginning. Its the focal point of everything else that now surrounds the contest and of course my book. The contest was than expanded on by a few different means which, furthered the accomplishment of my goals.
1 Rather than your basic book tours I turned my book tours into a way to highlight the organizations participating in the contest. I have a large stand representing all of the participating organizations with their information and donation cards. Next came along a couple of benefit events- a silent auction, a couple of benefit dinners etc... Things that were really quite easy to put together, but could have a great benefit for the charity groups I was working with. Now this may seem like a good deal of work, which it was, but the benefits for the organizations had been huge, and the benefits for me personally has been equally spectacular.
The benefits all of this had for me: I was able to get involved with over sixty non-profit organizations and use my book and contest as a way to highlight their efforts and eventually provide them with a financial benefit as well. There is no truer statement that giving is a two way street. In return for my help with the organizations the organizations did their best to help out me. I am featured with my book in over fifty non-profit newsletters, on a large number of webpages, as well as postings and fliers from the organizations. Some organizations have newsletters with readers in the ten of thousands. It is equivalent to being featured in fifty newspapers across the country that are targeted directly to the reader.
2 The book tours are not only philanthropic, but also bring in a good deal of people and create a lot of buzz. After some attention a number of companies offered to sponsor the events. I was able to receive all of my marketing material for my book and contest for free from corporate sponsors. T-shirts, fliers, book marks, posters, business cards, mail outs, coffee cups, even mousepads with my book cover on them. My entire marketing plan which is now pretty extensive costs only about five dollars a month to cover the price of my website, that is it and nothing more.
3 When you have a purpose and are providing aid you directly relate with the community you are assisting. Since the organizations I have involved are spread out throughout the entire United States it has proved to be an excellent source of publicity, from radio, to newspapers, to magazines, even a couple of upcoming television shows. It has given my book an unbelievable pr hook in a market where it is difficult to get a story in a paper just because you recently published a book..
4 In basic when people read my book they are doing more than just being entertained, each copy bought goes directly to a great cause. The readers of the book are allowed to interweave their love of reading with a greater purpose in an interactive fashion. Once again a win-win situation.
I would like to expand a bit on the reading for charity contest idea. I think there are a world of ways to further the efforts and provide the joint benefit for some organizations out there, and assist me in my publication and book marketing endeavors. As a model however it has been incredibly successful, I think there are a lot of incredibly creative ways to market a book on a low budget like I originally had and turn it into a success. Once again I will state that giving something always brings in something, and in my case, it brought in an incredible book career.
About The Author
Zachary Weiner is 23 and has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers. He is the author of the recent novel "City at Night" and the upcoming novels "A Simple fate of twists" Ballantine Books "The Experts Speak" Harper Collins.