Linking

Increasingly, some people are concerned about the links that I have placed in posts, and may request that these links be removed. However, I freely place ALL of my links, and frown on removing links from my site. Why? Because the web is exactly that, that is its core function to link one site to another with relevance, authenticity and value to the reader.

Webspam

However, a lot of webmasters have gone out of their way to create hundreds or thousands of spammy links to their sites, such tactics worked until recently updates by Google penalized such backlinks. Spammy links are links that are obviously junk: regurgitated paragraphs, snipped content, garbage blogs, spammy comments, directory spam, … and so on. So, if you have lots of spammy links, by all means, remove them. This is not what InvestorBlogger is about. Blog links, like the links in this blog, are not spammy. InvestorBlogger has never, and never will be, a link farm; nor will we create any form of webspam.

If you’re determined to go ahead and remove links from this site, you MUST follow the guidelines outline on the following page. I will not reply to requests that are vague, rude, threatening, inappropriate, insufficiently documented… so don’t piss me off. Mind your language & tone when you contact me (and any webmaster) requesting removal.

InvestorBlogger no longer removes links except perhaps if the resource is no longer available or has become unsuitable. Reach me through the contact page.

No Follow

I am generally not in favor of using ‘no follow’ and regret the mess Google has caused with its link/search policies in the last few years, and have sought to diminish Google’s influence over this blog by removing the Adsense, Search, and Webmaster Tools from this site.

I would urge you not to let Google bully webmasters into submission, and to show your displeasure by cutting your own use of Google down. The web needs diversity, not monopoly. And Google is in danger of becoming the web, if we are not careful.

Site Services for Webmasters in a Hurry

Currently, I offer five services for existing site owners through Fiverr.com. Check out my profile and order with confidence.

#1 Site Archive: Just in Case

Back up and store your entire site in a zip archive so that you have a record of your site on your own computer. You can open it and use it as a reference.

Now SBI’s servers are pretty stable, and secure… but wouldn’t it be nice to know that you have an archive off site that you can reference. Just in case.

Order Your Site Archive for $5.00 only at Fiverr

#2 Keyword Density Report

Get a detailed report on the keyword density of your pages that will help you determine if your pages are over the recommended limit set by the SEs. The report will help you figure out any pages are likely to be problems, and what words you need to remove.

Order Your Keyword Density Report for $5.00 only at Fiverr

#3 Website Spelling Report

The Website Spelling Report is designed to cut through the nitty gritty details of spell checking thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of words on your site. It will cover most typos, slang words, poor spelling… and much more. The final report will help you to target your errors so you can find them quickly, conveniently & get them done.

Order Your Spelling Report for $5.00 only at Fiverr

#4 Outgoing Links Report

Google now frowns on outgoing links. So it’s a good idea to check with are still valid, which are broken. This outgoing link report will help you do that!

Order Outgoing Links Your Report only at Fiverr (soon)

Needing Blog Hosting

SBI has long offered the ability to connect your own blog as an integrated part of your site. SBI makes use of the subdomain structure… so a blog could be hosted at http://blog.yourdomain.com.

But most hosting companies like Bluehost just don’t get SBI. They don’t know the differences, they don’t know the jargon. I do.

I offer two services for SBI webmasters looking to add a blog. I can… (soon)

Set up a Blog at your hosting | Offer hosting for your blog.

Testimonials

“I’d like to tell everyone just how amazing a job Kenneth’s done in so little time. I’m particularly impressed with his header images, which he designed and if you refresh the site or change pages you’ll see that it changes every time to another image. He fully migrated the site from BB1 to BB2, sorted out all the HTML problems my site had, fixed my relationship with Google, built the mobile site, integrated my social media channels into the site, created a wonderful right sidebar, gave me a great deal of advice to take the site forward, and generally set me back on the path to motivated productivity again. I can’t thank him enough!”

Scott from Top-Ten-Glasgow-Guide.com

“I did enjoy both of these reviews. In fact it was the first time that anybody has reviewed my site and given their honest thoughts and suggestions. These reviews were more helpful than any others and I have already taken one on board with loan store and removed the loan offers from the side menu.”

Joe Kenny from Insure121 dot com

Of Business, the Web 2.0 and Taiwan: Does it all fit together at Nozkidz.com?

Recently, Adam Rahman from Singapore wrote and asked if he could interview me. Of course, I was flattered. Adam is a student at the Singapore Management University. It turns out he was interested in the growth of social media in the Taiwan and its applications to businesses. I only hope that I don’t disappoint him with my answers. Anyway, here goes.

"I hope the answers are helpful, though some are not obviously relevant. My school site is http://nozkidz.com (be sure to have Chinese enabled on your PC/Mac when you view it, otherwise you won’t see much!)

– What was the reason for deciding on blogging about your personal experiences in business and financial ventures?

Partly context, partly opportunity, partly interest. I had been blogging for a while on my main blog (investorblogger.com) when I found that it was quite an interesting and challenging task. So in 2006, I moved my blog to a new location, and refounded InvestorBlogger as a more focused blog. By then, I was noticing things that I found interesting and began to develop more of a content. The opportunity came in the form of PayPerPost which started paying bloggers for certain posts, and I found the spur to write was the need to have solid content between paid posts, and for paid posts. That was when I really started to see improvements in my blogging. Of course, in 2006, I had been a co-business owner for quite some time, and a very poor investor for a decade, so these were contributing factors. There was no overarching reason or motivation. Life is not that simple.

– What has the response to your blog been like? Is there a demographic trend in your readership?

The blog response has been lukewarm at best: why? Mostly because I failed to establish the blog in a clear and obvious niche market, I really didn’t know anything about SEO until recently, and I didn’t track my stats properly for the longest time. So in fact, I was just doing it for the writing and didn’t care that much about my readership. In that sense, it was very personal.

– You mentioned that the blog consists of three "nodes" of interest: blogging, money and technology. Do you view your blog as an important communication platform for aspiring business people?

No. Because I’m not teaching a course in how to be a business person or investor or blogger. It isn’t organized that way. Though perhaps it could be.

– What is the social media scene like in Taiwan? What role does it play for individuals who wish to invest in Taiwanese businesses?

Social Media is recently becoming very popular in Taiwan, though there are some weird ideas about its role. FaceBook just took off because of the games, though it had been gaining ground for quite a while. Twitter is a non-event here, largely (thank god). But the bigger 2.0 properties seem to be Plurk (which I never use). I would say: for average individuals, it plays almost no role at all. Why? Because technology here is largely dependent on which age group you are in contact with: with over 50’s faxes are all the rage; with over 40’s it’s email; with over 30’s it’s FaceBook; with over 20’s it’s the mobile Internet…. With under 20’s it’s all gaming… on PC, XBox, PSP, etc. But if you are wishing to invest in businesses here, unless it’s Technology, you’ll need serious face time: to understand who you can do business with, who you should avoid, and the cultural mores.

– You mentioned in one of your posts that you were utilizing a dual strategy of promotion (on and offline content) for the Dickson English House. What are some of the challenges faced with both traditional and online forms of communication? Have you considered using other social media platforms such as wretch.cc or Facebook? Why or why not?

We have a FaceBook and Wretch Page as well as a couple of others, though that was mostly for SEO reasons. The sites are largely undeveloped compared to the main blog. Simply because I lack the written fluency to write for them, and the other people in the business are already too busy or too uninformed to do it. Since improving the SEO of our main site, though, we’ve noticed a big jump in rankings on Yahoo! TW and on Google as we targeted about a dozen keywords and now rank on page 1 for most of them. We also experimented with Hubpages, Squidoo, WordPress.com, EzineArticles etc. but frankly speaking building SEO placement and traffic is relatively more difficult (fewer options) in Taiwan and much more about on page optimization than anyone admits than external linking (that goes for Google, too!). Offline, options are limited for small businesses like ours: ads on radio/tv – too expensive, too ineffective; newspaper – irrelevant; AdWords – ineffective so far; posters, flyers and word of mouth are the most successful means for reaching customers; and our website is helping increase our profile but only in our own narrow niche "English Schools in Tamsui".

– People are usually critical about corporate blogging and other affiliated online content. Do you think this is so in Taiwan? If yes, how can businesses go around this?

I’m not sure about that. But perhaps because of my own personal opinions, we do not dress up our site or our students particularly when we feature their speeches (Youtube) or writing on the website. I try to portray as accurately as possible what our students can (and can’t) do… I leave it to our competitors to lie and paint rosy pictures (like Hess Schools) that delude customers. So our videos are largely what happened (rarely cut or redone), and never retouched. If I had the resources, perhaps I would do more with the postings/content, but I think our website is attractive because it’s ‘au naturel’, as it were. If potential customers come looking for rosy visions or impossible dreams (for their kids), then they are not our customer type. They don’t get what we’re about. Luckily, we see few such customers, and we chase them away in the end.

– What should businesses know before they engage the social media in Taiwan?

Perhaps the only thing: if you want to build a static site, then you shouldn’t use any social media. Why? Social media requires that there are people and resources available to monitor and run the operation. Most Taiwanese sites (ESL types) tend to focus on static type sites, and are much more formal. We chose to set up a blog because it made thing easier to operate and manage. Then it turned out that we were able to capitalize on that in a number of way: riding the 2.0 trend, creating a more vibrant site, and that it was something we cared about, not just a way to attract more students. But it’s that commitment to making the site uptodate and relevant to what we’re doing that is needed. Too often, people start 2.0 type sites and then months go by and nothing is updated at all. It just looks stale. Static sites don’t look stale by comparison.

If I may, I’d like to share some of my answers with my readers, too. Hope that helps.

Kenneth"