How to Count Backlinks

For the past couple of years I’ve been farming out link-building work for my clients, to several companies that have specialized in article marketing.

Is Article Marketing for Link-Building Dead?

However, the recent Panda updates seem to have resulted in the de-indexing of the majority of all the article marketing links, as far as Google is concerned. I’m about 95% certain that that’s true.

There seems to be little point in continuing with article marketing, if the links within those articles are not being counted.
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On Maybe Losing our Broadbent Post Office

The US Post Office in Broadbent, Oregon, where we get our mail here on the ranch, is on a short list of 46 post offices that are likely to be closed in Oregon within the next few months. Apparently there are 3200 post offices locations that are being considered for closure nationwide; only 46 are in Oregon.

Broadbent Post Office notice
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Old Friends, Not Being on Facebook, and the History of the Telephone

Over the last few days I connected with an old friend on Facebook; a woman I hadn’t heard from in 35 years. I knew her when she was a vibrant young woman. She was married during the 70′s to a very nice guy who helped me out of a jam once upon a time. She informed me that she’d gotten divorced in 1980, and that her ex-husband had died in 2000. My belated condolences were offered and accepted. But I felt like a schlep when she told me he was dead, for not already knowing something that life-changing had happened to her.

I wonder if my grandchildren, who are being raised in the time of Facebook, will ever experience losing track of someone, Continue reading


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Solar Power Plus Radio Equals Rural Internet Connection

Rural Oregon - solar powered internet connection

Our Solar-Powered Radio Internet Connection

On June 28, 2011, my internet service provider (ISP) went out of business. One minute I was surfing the web at about 1.5 Mbps (megabits per second – a fairly fast internet speed — at least it was fast enough to get work done online) and the next minute they were gone. The owner and the only technical brains of that local ISP (Rural Access Internet Company = RAIC) Guy Ralph, died in January of this year. He was a great guy, Continue reading


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Google +1 (Google Plus 1) is available

Installing Google +1 on your site

Google recently released its “+1″ service, which is a button you put on your blog or on your website, which lets people who visit the page tell Google that they like the page they are on. Google will then use that in determining which sites to display, and will show you which of your friends have “plus oned” a page, when it comes up in the search results.
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Good Link Building Tips

Good search engine rankings (especially at Google) depend mainly on two things:

  1. Having plenty of good text content that Google can index. Google doesn’t really index pictures well, or flash, or javascript, or videos. Google can’t pick the text out of an image or a Flash presentation or a video. They do a great job of indexing straight text, whether in the form of a .txt file (just text, no formatting!), html files, and PDFs.
  2. Having lots of relevant links to your website from other relevant websites. Note the use of “relevant” in there. If a site or web page has nothing to do with what your site is about, it’s usually a waste of time to get a link from it to your site. But any relevant link is golden!

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Intelligence. What is it?

I’m reading the book Scientology, a New Slant on Life, for the first time in 30 years. This book, by L. Ron Hubbard, was recently re-released, with typographical and other errors cleaned up; all the basic books of Scientology were gone through carefully, compared closely against the original author’s manuscripts so as to make them exactly correct as they were originally written, and reissued. It was big news for Scientologists. Over the years many typographical errors had crept into the published books. I had found some differences myself between versions of the books published in England and those published in the US, so it was good to see these resolved. I’ve read through most of the newly released books and I’m just finishing up the last ones.
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What You Say Can Leave a Lasting Impression

Today is the 61st anniversary of the publication of Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron Hubbard.

When I first picked up a copy of Dianetics on display at the Greyhound Bus terminal in Medford, Oregon, in the summer of 1968, I read the back panel of the book and rejected outright its claims of that it could bring sanity to those using its techniques. My exact thought at the time was: “If what this book claims is true, then the world would be different than what I have seen. There would be lots of sane, able people somewhere, and I am pretty sure there aren’t any.” I put the book back on the rack and bought Dune, by Frank Herbert, instead. I devoured that book on the three-day bus trip to El Paso, Texas.
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CCHR Florida – Music Video Contest

My friends over at Citizen’s Commission for Human Rights (CCHR) Florida are having a music video contest. If you can sing or play an instrument, or are otherwise creative when it comes to making music videos, free to enter the competition. Sounds like a lot of fun.
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South Fork Coquille River

The South Fork of the Coquille River, about 5 miles south of Powers along County Road 219 (which turns into National Forest Development Road 33), cuts a beautiful channel through the hills. There are lots of waterfalls including this one, Elk Creek Falls, which is about 50 yards from the road.

Elk Creek Falls - Southern Oregon

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