Firefox Can’t Find the Server? Make Firefox Fly!

Remember the days when you first installed Firefox?  You could finally experience the web as it was meant to be.  Pages seemingly loaded instantaneously.  The browser opened and closed in milliseconds.  Yeah, those were the days, ahhh….  But now, after numerous updates, all of your installed extensions, your 45,000 pages in your history, and just general accumulation of garbage from use – Firefox is a slug.  Hell, 20% of the time you see “Firefox Error:  Can’t Find Server” when clicking from the Google search results.  Then you need to hit reload 2-3 times before the page finally loads.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Firefox – you probably do too.  The thought of living without all those powerful and highly supported plugins/extensions actually scares me.  All I’m asking is:  where did my fast and furious Firefox go?

The Firefox we all knew and loved did not go out with a bang or with one patch.  Instead, we all slowly and deliberately killed it with one new bit of information at a time.  Firefox can handle those bits, but the way you and I surf and work has created an entangled mess of data that takes Firefox seconds to sort out.  Those seconds can cause communication delays, followed by packet loss which leads to “Cannot Find Server” errors.

So what can you do to bring the speedy Firefox back to life?  The solution is fairly quick:

(Guide is for Windows XP or newer)

1. Download IniFox_en.zip (contains a .bat file and sqlite3).
2. Extract the file somewhere you can find it.
3. Make sure Firefox is closed.  Then place both files, inifox.bat and sqlite3.exe in your Firefox profile folder.  To find your Firefox profile:   Start –> Run –> “%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\”  (exclude the quotes)
4. You should see a folder called something like “6tiqwopx.default”  (yours will be different).  Open that file, it’s your profile.  Place both inifox.bat and sqlite3.exe in your profile folder.
5. Again, be sure Firefox is closed.  Now double click the inifox.bat file.

Done!  Restart Firefox and enjoy a return to the good ‘ole days of near instantaneous surfing.  Anytime you feel Firefox is bogging down, just open your Firefox profile folder and repeat step 5.

What did you just do?  For those that care:  you have used sqlite3 to run the instructions in inifox.bat which optimize your various Firefox databases.  Now Firefox can sort through your tangled mess of data in milliseconds.  This should dramatically speed up your surfing experience, in addition – the “can’t find server” message should be a relic from your past…unless of course the site is actually down.

Link Building Strategies For 2010

With the new year upon us, I hope we all had a very profitable financial 2009. In 2010, I am sure many of you business-minded individuals had the resolution to build up your business and make more money from the internet. Well, the best kind of visitors are those that come from the search engines because they are the most opted to buy something, so that is still the focus for this year. Search engines have been changing a lot with Google starting to index videos, and then Twitter results. With all of these search engine optimization changes in our industry, it can be hard to keep up with.

The matter of fact is that link building is one thing that has not dramatically changed. The more websites that you can get to link to you, the higher your website will rank in the search engines and the more visitors and customers your website will get. So how should we go about link building in 2010?

Well, my predictions are that this is the year that the Google toolbar pagerank will be dubbed worthless as it has been getting less and less effective and finding out which sites are of higher authority. Google is moving a lot more towards conversions and links that send traffic, however they are not ‘quite’ there yet, and until they are we can continue to build lots of little links quickly and reap the search engine benefits.

One link building method that will continue to be beneficial for many months and possibly years to come will be blog posts, because they accomplish so many things with one post. You reach a large bloggers audience and possibly his twitter/email syndication, you get a powerful backlink in the post, and you can get related links in your industry. The best part of this is guest posts are completely free and only require you to be up to date in your industry and you to be actually passionate about it. There are large blogs in nearly every niche in the world, so go start searching for flagship blogs that you can start writing for in your industry, and start leveraging off their success to build up your blog to their size, and then in good faith, offer your readers the ability to guest post off your success.

On-Site SEO that Works

There is a ton of misinformation on the web about which SEO techniques work and which don’t.  As always, you should read with caution and test for yourself.

The #1 rule for on-site is SEO is relevance.  Make sure that the site or page you are trying to rank is relevant and useful for the visitors that click on your primary keyword.  A clean, straight to the point site will be appreciated by your visitors.  Use custom web design techniques which enhance the subject matter, don’t go over-the-top with flash, moving graphics, or anything distracting.

Start at the top.  The title of your page should feature your primary keywords and tell visitors and search engines what the focus of your page/site is.  Once you have attracted traffic to your site, they should instantly be able to see content which directly addresses the keywords you’ve placed in your title.  Article, video, or post headers should feature the keywords.

You can’t cram a ton of info onto your homepage, so include excepts with links to back pages that expand on the subject matter of the keywords.  According to Web Design Richmond you should keep the focus of the page simple and concise.  Function over form.

You want to make your site as clean and crisp as possible.  Even though most people have fast connections such as cable or satellite internet you don’t want to miss out on vital new consumers that are still kick’n it old school with dial-up.

Finally, make sure your link structure is easy to follow and intutive for finding information on your site.

For most legitimate web sites, the above steps will be all the on-site SEO necessary.  If you have a particularly large site, consider a site map.  For most though, they are unnecessary.  Keep it simple, stay focused, and above all – be useful!

How To Write A Blog Post Like A Pro

Everyone has a blog these days. My dad (just turned sixty last month) has three. He has his business blog, his personal blog and he’s got a twitter blog where he’s writing a novel at 140 character installments six days a week. ??So what makes your blog special, and how do you write a snappy, eye-catching, engaging blog post every time?

Journalism 101

Seriously, if you want to write a blog and you’ve not taken a basic course in journalistic writing, do so. You’ll discover ‘The Inverted Pyramid’ and a semester’s worth of other concepts that can be applied directly to your blog. A creative writing course would be nice, too, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Most important are the 5 W’s: Who, What, When, Where and Why. Here’s a crash course.

Who are you Writing For?

It’s a simple question, sure, but it can have a difficult answer. Who will be reading your blog post? Are you writing for ten year olds or twenty-something’s? Do you intend to be read by colleagues, fans, friends, employers, locals, internationals, or bi-lingual’s?

Having a targeted demographic will help you to picture your audience while you’re writing your blog. It will help you to choose a tone, vocabulary, and topic that will appeal to them, as well as be understood by them. More important than knowing what you’ll be saying is knowing who you’ll be saying it to.

What Will You Be Writing About?

This one is pretty simple, really: “What is this blog post about?” If your blog is designed to share your adventures with friends and family while you’re teaching English in South Korea, your topic is already decided. If it’s more of a soap-box upon which you champion a political stance and ideology, you might have a little more work cut out for you in coming up with a topic.

When Will This Be Posted?

It’s at this point that I have to confess that I’ve modified the journalistic “5 W’s,” in order to better meet my own needs. The original ‘When’ refers to “When did the event happen?” That doesn’t work well in an overall guide for writing blogs. So instead I’ve chosen “When Will This Be Posted.”

You need to decide whether or not you’ll be posting immediately, delaying the publishing date, or even implying that it has been posted weeks prior to the day you actually wrote it. Knowing this while you’re writing allows you to maintain continuity with other posts you may have written. If it’s an article about Halloween posted in April, you might want to explain why.

Where Will This Be Seen?

You know your audience, your topic and your time, now know your stage. Does your blog have any recurring themes, concepts or standards you have to adhere to? Is it moderated by an outside censor or is it governed by your own good judgment?

Second to deciding who will be reading it, knowing where it will be read will help you to craft an appropriate tone and vocabulary. These are key components of the ‘voice’ of your piece.

Why Are You Writing?

I’m not getting metaphysical on you. If you’re an artist, poet, or novelist, you could be writing to express yourself, or gain exposure. If you’re an activist you could be writing this blog to engender awareness and provide a voice to the voiceless. If you’re a fan you could simply be pointing out why United is better than City (over and over and over again), or if you’re a freelance writer you could simply be trying to build a good name and reputation for yourself while sharing useful and hard-earned knowledge as a guest poster on quality websites.

Having an honest answer for this final ‘W’ enables you to write your post with purpose and drive. Your readers’ time is too precious to waste with unclear thoughts and ramblings. Make sure you always know why you’re writing, and why it matters to your reader.

and “How.”

Like the five vowels ending in ‘and sometimes Y,’ our 5 W’s end with a “How.”

The concepts above aren’t a magic key to always writing good blog posts, but it’s how you start. It’s an easy to remember mnemonic device for building a foundation before you type every blog post. I take the time before I sit down to actually write out the five W’s and then build my article on top of them. That’s how I do it.

Jake Walker is a freelance writer and has been working on the web on and off for the last 10 years. An avid blogger he has had many posts featured on major social networks and other news portal websites. He currently works as a search engine optimization consultant with the other smart people at SEOP.com

3 Things To Look For When Building Links

Building links should be the corner stone of any SEO campaign.

1. One Way Links

This became important after all the link exchange programs started sprouting up in hopes of manipulating search results. For a while it worked. Now, the best kind of link is not recipricol. One way links only please.

2. Backlinks To Linking Site

You will want to check the backlinks pointing into a site when considering it for a linking partner. No pagerank isnt everything, but it might be a good indication of the quality of links a site has pointing into it.

Remember, neighborhoods are important. So associate with quality sites. And don’t be afraid to link to quality when it makes sense for your reader.

3. Number of outbound Links On Linking Page

The more links pointing out, the less juice a link has. That’s the bottom line. It’s always best to have as few outbounds as possible on a page where you’re placing your link. However, it should be said that a link is a link, so don’t be too picky about outbounds, unless you’re paying for the placement.

PRO TIP:
The best links are the ones that occur naturally, because you have a good website with quality content.

Good luck and happy link building!

This is a guest post from our friends at Top Click Media.  Please visit their site for more search engine optimisation information.