Thats Ranking for anyone shocked at the title
So what do I mean? Well as long term readers will know, some of my income comes from posts that have been requested by companies, looking for honest opinions from bloggers. Some companies want to draw in more visitors to their own sites, others are looking to improve their standings with the search engines for key phrases.
These companies want to make sure that only bloggers who have a decent amount of traffic take their opportunities - there is little point in paying a blogger to talk about them if said blogger only gets visits from their Aunty Dora once a week. In the past, the Alexa ranking system was used, however this is not an ideal situation, as the statistics are not infallible, and niche blogs can find their ranks disproportionately worse compared to those blogs that are more mainstream. The solution? Well, IZEARanks.com has come up with RealRank; all a blogger needs to do is insert a little snippet of script in their blog’s code, and the Izea servers will take care of all the back-room statistical number crunching. You end up with a rank that allows you (and any other interested parties, should you wish to allow them) to see how well your blog is doing (in terms of unique visitors) in comparison to others.
From this rank, you can see how you are faring against your competition, and perhaps use it to try out different approaches and subjects for your posts. If you find that talking about Welsh wool (on a knitting blog for example) suddenly creates a surge in readers, and that talking about darning needles seems to dis-interest, and therefore lose, your readers, you know what to concentrate on. I know that this blog is currently in the top 20% of those blogs that are within the PPP (PayPerPost) scheme, and so opportunities that are not available to less popular blogs are open for me.
To get an idea of the sort of information you can research, click the picture below to see a higher resolution version of the thumbnail. You will find a screenshot taken when I compared the RealRank fluctuations of three blogs over a period of three months.

PS The reference to going blind - the more I post (I’ve been a little slack so far this year), the more tired my eyes become - anyone whose mind was wandering elsewhere with the post’s title needs to take their mind out of the gutter

So, the transfer process from my old host to this new one (Bluehost) is complete, and I took the opportunity to basically build this blog up from the ground again. With the amount of plugins I tested over the last 18 months, there was an awful lot of clutter left in the SQL tables, and I had experienced problems with the old host and their security updates. During the process of exporting the posts from the old home of the blog to this one (more on that later), I ended up losing the post numbers; where this post might have previously been something like http://www.chrismerriman.com/index.php/archives/2023 , it would now be ……/1926 .
As this meant that any deep links to specific posts from external sites were lost (and the number shift was not purely sequential, so no fancy redirect equations would work), I decided to change the fancy permalink strategy, hence this post can now be found at http://chrismerriman.com/blog-vamp-completed . This makes addresses a little more memorable, and possibly could improve this site’s standings with the search engines (once the bots have completed crawling around, finding the old content under it’s new addresses.)
Back to the export/import process. Ideally, I would have done this properly, but part of the reason for me moving hosts was that I was again unable to access the backend of this site - the admin section of wordpress. Without access to my plugins, I was unable to take a proper backup of the existing posts, comments, pages etc. Luckily, I had an 8 day old XML file that I’d exported as a temporary backup. However, I hit an unforseen snag when I attempted to import that file into this site - it was over 2Mb, and therefore exceeded the PHP restrictions in place. Rather than wait around for tech. support to confirm if they’d be willing to, at least temporarily, relax the limits, I decided to delve into the XML file and see what could be done. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find 2.7Mb of data to drop, so I decided to try an experiment. Checking through the structure of the file, I kept the beginning and end of the file, then removed around 2/3 of the posts and comments. Saving the resulting file, this imported fine; I then kept the same empty structure, and inserted the middle 1/3 of posts & comments, to my surprise this then imported fine without wiping anything out from the previous import, and then the last 1/3 went in fine. Basically, I kept all the content bar a week or two, and I luckily still had the old site open in a different tab, so just needed to copy’n'paste that into new posts.
I decided to try a new theme for the blog, and also drastically cut down on the plugins installed, hoping it would speed up page load times, especially for first time visitors to this site. This seems to have worked reasonably well, and I repeated the process for this site’s brother blog (test.chrismerriman.com).
I’ve also completed some work on John’s new site, and started the process of converting my old niche article sites into blogs as well, but more on that later.

This blog has been running since July 2006, and has seen a few changes since then. Originally it was intended to be used for keeping in touch with my friends and family back in Britain, and also to link to some articles on my niche sites. Since then it has grown in different directions, and I now find a lot of traffic arrives from the search engines, rather than just people I know checking in. Since August, the site has received more than 3000 visitors a month, though despite the general upward trend of visitor numbers, the Alexa rank is still getting worse. I suppose other sites are improving their visitor stats by a larger margin…

During the last month or so, I have been contacted by a number of people, all related to Kazakhstan strangely enough. First we had someone who has built a plane and called it Berkut (which is also the name of a vodka over here), an English guy moving to Astana who wanted some more information about satellite TV and supermarkets, an Australian guy who is moving here in December, with his Russian wife, and finally an Indian (apologies if incorrect, his surname sounds Hindu to me) architect, living in New York who designed the local Cinema City complex (he wanted some photos of it, as his current ones weren’t too good).
I’m hopefully passing the vodka on to an American friend, so the plane builder can celebrate the flight with a suitably named drink, we’re looking forward to meeting some new faces here in Astana at some point, and the architect has been put in touch with Tom, who has better camera skills than me, so should have some better shots than those captured last night at Tiflis.
Anyway, they all made contact through finding this blog, so a big thanks to the search engines out there who are spidering away

I hope this post may be of use to people thinking of visiting Amsterdam, whether you be a regular reader, or have arrived here via one of the search engines…

Forums
Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory Forum - An offshoot of www.CoffeeShopDirect.com . Friendly most of the time, with all sorts of questions answered, not just weed based.

Channels.nl Forum - Not just weed based, you will find threads get a little more heated here. If you have never joined a forum before, perhaps start off at the ACD one listed above, and progress here once you have found your feet.

Virtual ‘Dam - Relatively new addition, seems to have no massive egos currently residing

Maps
Amersterdam CoffeeShop Direct - Maps and SO much more. The amount of info collated here is mind boggling. If you intend to boggle your mind whilst in Amsterdam, do check this site. From this site the ACD Forum listed above was born. So much info of use, I have downloaded the site to my PDA, so I can browse it offline, if there are no free WiFi hotspots in range.

WiFi Hotspots - A pretty comprehensive of official WiFi hotspots. I am also taking a program WiFiFoFum with me, to easily detect where kind citizens have left their WiFi network open for others to piggy back and use their internet access.

Wiki Map of Amsterdam - With places of interest marked. Most have descriptions attached if you click on them. Very easy to navigate around.

GVB Transport Map - The English version with trams, buses, trains and metro services marked out. Simply click on the area you are interested in to zoom.

Nemisis’ Map - Assuming you have Flash installed on your internet browsing device, an incredibly helpful layered map. Difficult to succinctly describe, check it out and click on top right buttons to see how much info is packed in. Each point has further information if you hover your cursor over the area.

Google Earth - Well worth installing. Free, and you can place pins in your favoured destinations. When you are done with that, you can then do all the obvious things like checking if you left anything out in your back garden the last time a satellite took a photo of your area! Once I have returned to Kazakhstan, I will be publishing some data files that should pinpoint locations of worthy places of interest. I have a draft copy, but many places are not yet confirmed in terms of their exact location.

Other/Misc
Who Is In Town? - Particularly useful if you belong to a forum. You can easily check who else will be around at the same time as you. Assuming you don’t dislike their online persona, you can arrange to have a ‘real world’ meeting and see if you have anything (apart from the obvious ) in common.

Muffin Man - A MySpace page dedicated to a brand of special muffins. Blatant advertising, but has a little information at least.

St Nick’s Canal Boats - If you would like to take a trip around Amsterdam’s canals, I’d recommend using this non-profit organization over the big operators.

Escher Museum - No idea how good this is yet, but I (like many ex-students) appreciate his works of art, so I’ve provided the link for now. Will try and provide a proper review after our trip, assuming we make it there.

erowid.org - a collection nearing academic standards of information pertaining to drugs. Although mixed in with personal views, you will find a lot of cited research results and scientific facts here. Useful for reassuring yourself if this will be your first experience in Amsterdam, or if your know-it-all friend is spouting rubbish.

I am also collating all these sites in one place so I can find them easily whilst in Amsterdam. Hence the following unique phrase to allow me to find this specific post easily - purple horse.

It is worth checking the other pages of sites I have listed - many have different sections, each useful, but if I link to each section on each site, I’ll be typing forever.
If anyone else has any sites they would like to see listed, leave a comment or contact me, and I’ll add it on.

No sites have currently requested these links, nor is any compensation involved.

Any company that wishes to be taken seriously these days needs to have a site that presents professional face to ever increasing section of their prospective clientèle that are net savvy. However, simply have a cracking web site is not enough… You need to make sure your visitors can actually find you in the first place. A good website optimization firm will assess your needs, take into account your current site, and deliver a quote on how much investment is required to start turning visitors into customers. ThinkBig is such a company; whilst they are proud that their charges are amongst the lowest in the market, they also can project their professionalism by simply directing people like you to their existing portfolio. Take a moment, click the link, and check their previous work to grasp an idea of just what this website optimization firm can do for your company. Not only do they specialize in ensuring your site is optimized well, to ensure the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo etc.) rank you well for your chosen search terms, they can also, if you so wish, assist in driving organic traffic your way. They accomplish this via social and business networking tactics, with corporate blogs being a speciality.

If Matt happens to read this post, he most probably will be interested to hear about the press release optimization that SubmitAWebsite.com offers. (He is the guru who taught me everything I know about sites, Search Engine Optimization and making money online). Writing an effective press release is not as simple back in the days before the world wide web became so prevalent. Originally, all you needed to do was write something with an attention grabbing headline, and not too wordy, and often good results would arise.
NOW, you really do need to spend a lot of time researching keywords, efficient submittal methods and SEO tips. As this sector of theory on the internet is constantly evolving, this task in itself can become a full time occupation. However, rather than either neglecting your own duties, or paying for a new member of staff, you can out source this work to the experts in this field - SubmitAWebsite.com.
They will ensure that your release garners attention, both from real world journalists, always on the look out for an interesting story, as well as the search engines - your #1 source for both new and repeat visitors to your site. There is a balance that needs to be achieved with keywords within your article - if you submit your own work, then you may find the sweet spot difficult to hit - too many keywords stuffed into a PR will look spammy, to search engines, news aggregators, and real life human beings. Having a keyword density not high enough is just as bad however, as your work will slip to the bottom of the pile (or lower in the search ranking, if we are talking about digital analysis of your press release, rather than just human eyes).
Anyway, if you would like a FREE consultation, give the site a visit, and see what they can do for you.

No, not a request for people to leave comments involving various birds & the bees, under the cabbage patch or stork stories…

I have recently been researching (doesn’t that phrase sound so much better than ‘trawling through my boring server logs ? ) which terms people have been using when they arrive at my site from various search engines.

Most of them could be easily explained, for example…
Chris Merriman , Christopher Merriman , ???? ??????? & ????????? ??????? are all variants of my name that have appeared on this blog at one time or another. (I must remember to ask Ira to check my Russian spelling on those.)

Due to the way Russian people will attempt to translate my name from the Cyillic alphabet back to the latin original however, Kristofer Meryman is also a possibility. (Unfortunately, my Kazakh ID card is testament to this, so if anyone ever directly compares it to my passport, the christian names do not actually match up!) Also, I occasionally see people arriving here from using SilentlyScreaming or AntiSceptic as search terms, as these are my most often used forum/digg/social bookmarking membership nicknames.

Anyway, Kazakhstan Blog , Kazakh Blog and Astana Blog also were used, as well as Presents For Nick and I still seem to be indexed somewhere with my old blog title ( I Never Could Get The Hang Of Thursdays ), as a few searches still trickle in from variants of that Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy phrase, from search engines I have not come across before.

However, rabbit sreviews , 17 screen blockers and acid ran pictures really have me confused. The last one even more than the rest, as I can’t find any reference to those terms in any of my previous posts!

Oh, and yes, some of the above is a blatent attempt to rank a little better on some search terms, but I hope my readers forgive me, even if they do not find this information of particular interest. If you do find it interesting, first go and take a short nap, and see if you have recovered, if not, you may want to head over to my I Got Lucky page, which lists all the search terms that this site has (at some point in the past, if not currently) been at #1 when searched for through google!

Finally, if you have never left a comment on this blog before, I would be genuinely interested to hear from you, and especially how you found this site in the first place. Thanks…

I was checking how this blog was doing in the search engines, for terms such as Kazakhstan Blog , Astana Blog , and of course Chris Merriman, when I came across a site written by an American who lives in Almaty.
She is a Peace Corps volunteer, and has recently found out she is to stay in Kazakhstan a little longer than originally planned. For anyone who has not come across the Peace Corp before, they work in almost 140 countries, trying help out local people with global issues.

Anyway, enough of the intro, check out the Kazakhstani Extravaganza blog for another look at life over here in Kazakhstan.

This post is not sponsored, nor did she ask for the link, I just thought it might be of use to some people. Which reminds me, I need to add this site to the links page - check the menu at the top to get there.