Who’s Google’s Daddy?

Published May 17, 2012 | By Vanita

If you’ve been wondering why Google has been cracking down on affiliate marketers AND bloggers (who are just using all the tools available to them) then check out my take on it and why I agree with Google.

Google Doesn’t Have A Sugar Daddy

Since the free Google services – from search to mail to apps – is something we all use online, many of us tend to forget that Google is a physical entity. It’s an actual business, with employees and bills to pay, servers to buy and maintain…so it has expenses.

In it’s most basic form and at it’s most highest priority is Google being a search engine.

Search engines are free to use but are maintained financially by ad placement. If you’re serving up sucky results, less people will search with you and less clients will buy ad space from you.

So Google is in the business of assisting you in searching the web in return for learning what you like and using that info to help their clients who buy ad space.

They’re a business just like any other.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that they offer free services, they’re still a business and must be productive and cost effective while satisfying users and clients.

See, I get that.

Though I offer free info in the form of tutorials and free WordPress themes, I also have a business to run and though my services are virtual, it does require me to pay internet, hosting and energy bills, to maintain external drives holding backup and archives of work done, to purchase new equipment and software, to pay memberships…the list goes on.

This is a preview of Who’s Google’s Daddy?. Read the full post (842 words, 2 images, estimated 3:22 mins reading time)

Posted in SEO | 6 Comments

3 Most Important Rules I’ve Learned About Parenting Teens

Published May 16, 2012 | By Vanita

This Mother’s Day was an eye-opener for me.

Both my older girls made me Mother’s Day cards and though the artwork was impressive, the thing that made me cry were the words written within. Words of appreciation and love.

It made me realized that my teens and I have come a long way since I wrote the post on why my children hate me.

Yes, my girls who are now 14 and almost 16 years old have done a lot of growing up this past 18 months. Not all the growing up that needs doing but enough to where we’re at a point that they know they can talk to me and I can easily trust them.

Getting to this point was no easy feat. We had four months of family therapy. Not only to shrink their heads, but mine too.

Today, we are open and honest with one another. There are no walls, though there are some boundaries and there is lots of trust.

Now I don’t know EVEYRTHING there is to know about parenting teens, since I’m still doing it for the first time, but here’s what I’ve learned.

1. Trust first. Once I showed them I had trust in them, they trusted me. Though I always knew my girls were good girls, I didn’t trust their choice in friends at the time and the way those friends influenced them. Now I trust them to be their own persons and make their decisions based on what they’ve learned from me and they trust me enough to tell me about a situation first instead of automatically assuming I’d say no and sneaking off to do what they want.

This is a preview of 3 Most Important Rules I’ve Learned About Parenting Teens. Read the full post (533 words, 1 image, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

Posted in Motherhood | 11 Comments

How To Embrace the Google Penguin

Published May 15, 2012 | By Vanita

The past few months I’ve been watching the Google updates create 3 types of reactions around the Web.

Happiness that the spammers and internet marketers are getting their asses handed to them.

Anger due to all the changes and the need to make changes to keep up.

Confusion of how to please the Panda/Penguin.

For those bloggers who have concerns about their blog’s search engine ranking, this post is for you.

Google’s #1 priority is being a search engine

Though some beg to differ. Some will say Google’s priority is selling Ad space, but that’s a story for another day.

Keeping in mind that Google is a search engine, their number one priority is serving up relevant, quality content based on your search query.

I know I shared this video a few weeks ago, but it’s worth sharing again. Forget the fact that this video is for “how to use adsense properly”. Instead, pay attention to what Google is really saying about usability for your visitors.

1. Important to consider ad size and ad placement relative to the amount of content on your site. Meaning you need to have more content than ads.

2. The focus of your site should always be to deliver the best possible user experience. Meaning I should have to scroll past a bunch of stuff to find your actual post.

3. Important to balance the ratio of content to ads. Meaning see 1 + 2 above. If you don’t have any ads or affiliate links, you can write a 300 word post and it’s all good – if it’s easy to find and good content.

This is a preview of How To Embrace the Google Penguin. Read the full post (1406 words, 1 image, estimated 5:37 mins reading time)

Posted in SEO | 12 Comments

Weight Loss Scholarship Winner

Published May 14, 2012 | By Vanita

monday—Sean MacEntee (Flickr.com)

Happy Monday!

I’m truly sorry for the lateness of this post.

This weekend, I needed to unplug.

It wasn’t planned, there was no notice.

Two reasons why this was a bad weekend to unplug.

1. I was suppose to write this post yesterday.

2. I missed out on telling my fellow moms happy mothers day.

Two reasons why I had to unplug immediately.

1. It was Mother’s Day and I owed it to my kids to give them my full attention.

2. Every time I focused my eyes to read ANYTHING, I literally became dizzy or nauseous.

A quick call to my doc with my symptoms and she suggested I “unplug” and just relax my brain. She was honestly shocked when I told her how many hours I’ve been spending at my desk lately.

Since I’m writing this post while drinking coffee and not feeling like puking, I guess unplugging was the best medicine a girl could ask for.

So now that I’m back, Happy Belated Mothers Day to All!

If you sent me a Mothers Days greeting via social media platforms, I promise to eventually say thank you once I’m all caught up.

Now on to today’s post!

As I mentioned in earlier posts, Retrofit has been an excellent tool in my weight loss battle. I’m honored to be able to host a giveaway.

I used Random Line Picker to choose the winner. I just plugged in the list of names of the people who took the survey and tweeted and clicked the button that said “Pick Random Line”.

Super easy.

This is a preview of Weight Loss Scholarship Winner. Read the full post (541 words, 1 image, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Posted in Healthy Lifestyle | 10 Comments

Friday Blogger Follow: International Style

Published May 11, 2012 | By Vanita

Friday Blogger Follow

As my tweeps know, on #FollowFriday I like recommending bloggers. Those bloggers who I find are just awesome. But 140 characters is not enough to sing the praise those bloggers deserve. I’m changing up the format a bit though. I’m sharing the blog’s url and not the twitter url, cause frankly, i’ve got way too many outbound links in these posts. I’m also focusing on one blogger per post. Why? Because this post has been written and waiting two weeks for me to finish it.

International Style

For the longest I had one friend who blogs from the other side of the planet. That’s the extraordinary Maureen in Jakarta of Tatter Scoops. I think my second friend is Jan from the Netherlands, who I only met a few months ago and have mentioned both in this post.

Now I’ve got a several really cool fellow bloggers around the world and I want to share one with you that I haven’t before.

You need to meet Vidya. I love Vidya’s blog, but most of all I love her writing style because she is naturally too bloody funny and I’m going to share a taste of it from a comment she left on a recent post about commenting.

I usually don’t care a rat’s backside whether the blog is big or not. Let’s face it, if it weren’t for commenters/readers/visitors/lurkers and now sharers – size wouldn’t come into the picture – I mean, nobody’d even know they existed. If the post appeals, I always comment when I have something worthwhile to say. (And I am under the delusion that I always have something worthwhile to say (wow, those emoties were beckoning to me and I just had to click one!).