HumbleWeaver.com

I’m an SEO for hire. You pay me for…

• Making analysis, suggestions and recommendations on how to build your website so that it is search-engine-friendly.
• Research on keywords to use on your meta tags, links and content.
• Preventing you from building your website entirely on Flash animation, unless it’s your line of business and you have a lot of money for online advertising.
• Helping you structure your content so that it’s easy to find by both people and search engines.
• Helping you understand that search engines are always changing their ways of ranking websites and so there’s no one fix approach to optimize, there are only best practices. 
• Preventing you from publishing your Resume with your 2×2 ID picture on your board of directors’ page.
• Helping you market your business, increase your site’s traffic and eventually make a sale.
• Training you or your staff on how to continue what we started.

No, I don’t…

• Guarantee no. 1 placement. I only guarantee improved ranking and traffic. To reach the top will depend on your company’s commitment to what matters most online.
• Hide or stuff your website with keywords and other trickery. This is a waste of my time and your money. This method is so 1990’s.
• Sell or offer links. I believe in quality of organic links, not quantity.
• Pretend I know your business or your competitors better than you.
• When I said I will help you build your content, I didn’t mean I will encode your mission/vision. I will not be your encoder.

Whenever you’re ready, drop me a line.    

Tags: search engine optimizer, SEO

After several weeks of working myself to death, I decided to come back here and write a couple of posts about what’s been going on lately. I’m currently deploying  a CMS and two e-commerce site (I can’t imagine how it would’ve been if there was no such thing as open source). And so, there’s a certain stage where I had to do testing on different browsers; viewing, uploading and downloading. I recently found out that the Safari browser has an uncommon way of downloading files. By default, it will open any file you download. Being used to Firefox, I really got annoyed everytime it opens compressed files, especially those plugins and components we use for web applications. But anyways, here’s how to put a stop to it,  simply uncheck this option… 

And because I’m using a Mac, you’ll see this under the Preference menu of the browser. I find Safari fast and light on resources that’s why I’m beginning to like it. But I think it is yet to replace Firefox when it comes to power and flexibility. 

Tags: browser, download, files, safari

It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these…

Hello, I have throughly reviewed what you want for your project and am more than confident that we can exceed your expectations on this project. Let me tell you, we are all about quality and that is our number one concern. Now quality dosen’t matter if you are charging your clients too much for your service. Thus we also pride ourselves on being very affordable and being flexible enough to negotiate the prices with our clients. So take a look at our basic pricing and portfolio on our site {omitted}. Also, Be very careful with some of these freelancers designers on the web because some may have very cheap prices but don’t deliver the quality. Lets be honest whats the point in paying cheap for trash when you can invest in quality that will pay for itself more than exponentially. Other seems to have the quality but dont always deliver and scam you off your money. Two reasons why I believe we stand out above the others besides high quality and a reasonable price, is that we offer lifetime site maintenance for all web design projects. Some charge a monthly fee, others a yearly fee, others dont even offer it, but we charge nothing. What does this mean? This means after we have completed your paid project and you want “minor site maintenance” items done we do that for free, and that service is offered for the life of the site. Well what does “minor site maintenance” mean? This refers to maintaining items already created in the initial project not creating new items. The second reason testifies to our reliability and integrity. We have been doing business since 2004 and use paypal as our primary means of payment. The wonderful thing about paypal is their customer grievance compliant department where clients can file complaints on sellers who did not deliever or scammed them. We have never had a compliant filed against us to paypal in all of our years of service, never!!. You can check by clicking on our paypal logo on our site as we are a verified paypal business member. I apologize for the long message, Its just a habit of taking my time and being deliberate in all that I do. This also shows in our design work. Thanks again for your time and patience. {author omitted}

Tags: marketing, selling, web, web projects, website

In one of the projects I’m doing, time was already wasted because of too many things I couldn’t control. Anyways, I needed to install Joomla on my mac, and it’s amazing how easy it was.

1. Download MAMP

2. Download Joomla

3. Copy the Joomla files on the default site folder of MAMP (Applications/MAMP/htdocs)

4. On your browser, type http://localhost

5. Follow the installation instruction of Joomla

6. There is a page that will ask for your MySql settings, just go back to MAMP’s start page, click on phpMyadmin and create a new database, username and password.

7. Type in the same data on the Joomla installation page.

8. Click on until you finish.

JoeJoomla has a more detailed explanation.

Tags: joomla, mac os x, mamp

I decided to sponsor a child today. I got this leaflet from the mall yesterday, thought about it and told myself, I haven’t done much for society as far as I can remember, maybe I should start now. And so I went back to the mall where I got the leaflet and signed up as a sponsor.

They showed me the picture of the child I’ll be sponsoring and a little backgrounder about her life. The joy I felt, knowing that I will be able to help this little girl buy her a school uniform, keep her in school, give her decent food, and more, it’s just unexplainable.

I think people like me, who spends a lot of time thinking about work, beating deadlines, stressed out all week trying to figure out how to earn more just to sustain a level of lifestyle should sometimes stop and look around. There are a lot of less fortunate people who needs us. Kids most especially. And it doesn’t take much to help. I mean, if you can sacrifice the cost of buying soda every meal, maybe give up your chocolates and sweets, or the cost of a t-shirt every month, that’s about it.

I wish I’d be given more, so I can give back more.

Tags: helping others, sponsor

I’ve finally setup an eBay Partner Network widget for a client. It’s pretty straightforward to do, like setting up Google Adsense. But I find customizing the colors, to blend with the design of the website, easier than Adsense. Although I don’t think there’s a way to save the settings for future reference. Or maybe I haven’t figured it out yet.

Overall, I think eBay Partner Network would be a great alternative or supplement to Adsense. 50% commission per sale is not too bad for starters(eBay US).

Tags: ebay, ebay partner network, monetize

May I beg for your honest opinion.

Let’s pretend I’m a technical support for a web hosting company and you’re a website developer for one of my clients. I emailed to you the username and password for the FTP server. You emailed back and tell me it doesn’t work. But instead of trying to figure out what’s the problem, I simply and arrogantly say “I can do it on my machine so there’s nothing wrong with it”.

Maybe you would probably think it has something to do with the programs you’re using, maybe even your internet connection. So you tried different FTP programs, tried to upload using your internet connection from your house, office and even friends’ place. Nothing.  You send me an email that it still doesn’t work. Then I realized I mis-typed the username and password. You almost want to explode in fury but you manage to find the sense to control yourself.

Then I gave you the “correct” username and password. You tried it but still, it doesn’t work. You tell me about it and in reply I just tell you “it’s working on my end, there’s no problem with it”.

How would you feel?

Now imagine that all of my reply emails are written in ALL UPPER CASE! Something like…

“IT’S WORKING ON MY END,  I’M NOT SURE WHY IT’S NOW WORKING WITH YOU!”

Honestly, what do you think?

Here’s a valuable tip when getting a web host. Anybody can offer the biggest space, fastest bandwidth, cheapest fees, etc. But please, try to find the best technical support you can afford. This will really help you help you alot, from start to finish and in the long run.

And in case you’re wondering, I’ve never had problems with the technical support of Host Gator and IX webhosting.

Tags: customer relation, technical support, web host

During the time I was away, I met three people. One is an expert, the other with high moral values, and the last is a faithful lover. There are two things they have in common, three if we include gender. First is all of them are fakes. They are not who they appear to be. The second is they get customers.

The Expert

You would say WOW if you hear her speak; that’s if you were living in a cave in the past 20 years. Everything she say is magic until she starts talking about what you know. For example, stalagmites (assuming you really lived in a cave). You know them well enough you don’t even imagine what they look like and yet she would convince you that it forms from ceiling to floor. Then you get that feeling of suddenly doubting what you know by heart. And best(or worst) is people are buying every word coming out of her. Talk about selling snake’s oil! But still people buy.

The high ‘moral-ed’

How much credibility one gets if a third-party authority, say for example the Bible, was used for cosmetics. Pop quiz: Is making illegal copies of software the same as stealing? Is watching porn not as bad as having sex outside marriage? Please, spare me the lecture. And yet, people are buying.

The faithful lover

They’re very common. People who bend rules to their satisfaction. I remember my mom telling me when I was a kid, “In every rule, there is an exemption”. It’s funny why we still keep making rules. In school, during exam, the rule has been: “No Cheating”. The exemption however is “Don’t get caught”. And I think, whoever has thought of this idea, “Don’t get caught”, has used it on one occasion or another, benign or otherwise. But still she claims she is faithful, and her lover(and friends) buys it.

So here’s some tips on selling:

• Sell with conviction and be firm with your sales pitch
• Use third-party authority/proof/testimonial to support your claim
• It’s ok to bend rules just don’t get caught
• Amaze Your Customers!: Creative Tips on Winning & Keeping Your Customers

But what I would really recommend, one that is proven and effective is BE HONEST.

Tags: selling tips

Digital Paper Technology! That’s what makes Kindle simply amazing. Many years ago when I was still a hand-held device fan, I have already given up on “reading-on-hand-held-devices” simply because of the awful reading experience. Kindle changed that. If you’re like me who doesn’t like clutter on your personal/reading space, try Kindle. Check this out, Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device

Tags: kindle amazon

I’m a very private person and just because social networking sites are changing the landscape of how Internet users interact, there’s still a large part of my life I wish to keep private…at least for now.

While doing my occasional post-midnight-web-poking, I found Shelfari. I joined because, I would like to start tracking the books I’ve read, so that I’ll remember not to read/buy them anymore. Also to get an idea of what I would want to read next. Unlike others, Shelfari is focused. Other SNS eats up a lot of my time because I feel compelled to update my friends and/or colleagues through my latest photos, movies watched, places seen, etc. I always end up deleting my account with other SNS because I’m having difficulty updating it. What’s an outdated information good for anyway?

I don’t mind sharing my interest in books though. I don’t consider myself a voracious reader, but I do have an appetite for a good read. The only thing I find peeving with Shelfari is the search result list. I think it only shows 20 per result. It would be nice if users can toggle between, say, 20-40-100 results per page. But then, maybe I just didn’t see it there. Anyways, do check it out, it might be worth it.

Tags: shelfari, Social Networking