The Power of Keywords

Keywords form the gist of Chapter 5 of Michael Miller's The Complete Idiot's Guide to SEO, immediately following Content.

If Content is viewed as a wheel in motion, ferrying you to places, then keywords would be the spokes that radiate out from the center hub. They are essential for motion, but one can readily observe that the number of spokes is just adequate for the purpose at hand: too few and the wheel will become rickety; too many it makes a solid wheel, lacking the spatial mix that renders it attractive.

Of course coming up with a list of relevant, and hopefully highly searchable, words is just the beginning. But it's a huge beginning. You would think that coming up with the list is intuitive. After all we do this everyday, looking up stuff online.

Long before these web search keywords come into vogue, the academic community is already using the system in printed journals for the ease of indexing and sourcing relevant journal articles. Drive along an urban road, you can see giant billboards of an advertisement, feasting your eyes with countless keywords that could practically last a life time. However, this mental imprints do not stay long in the mind, or they are quickly shoved off to the deep recesses of the memory bank, being pushed into oblivion by new arrivals.

Hence, the keyword trackers or research tools that will do the memorizing, and also prompting, for you. They are supposedly based on what users actually type in the query box. They can also do the reverse by back-tracing to the original search terms if you want to know how successful articles were searched.

Once the proper list of keywords is up, the next step, which requires more planning, is their insertion into the webpage at just the right dosage: having too many leads to keyword stuffing, a definite No-No that can even disbar you from the search engine fraternity; having too few diminishes the impact and severely limiting the prospect of being taken seriously.

Hence, keyword density, a concept borrowed from the measure of the amount of material within a specified volume, in this case, applied in the two-dimensional sense represented by a surface area. Recommended densities in this respect can vary from 5% to 20%, depending on the length of the page. Obviously a longer page with a higher percentage of keywords sprinkled throughout may still be readable compared to a shorter page but strewn with the same percentage of keywords.

Then there are placement locations to consider. Michael Miller recommends at least once in the preamble/introduction and another time in the concluding paragraph. Another way is to partition the page into sections with headings, which are then legitimately colonized by the keywords.

Whatever the techniques, ultimately, it's still the human reader who will be the arbiter of whether the page is a forced concoction arranged to suit the keywords or it is a enjoyable read, regardless of whether it is ranked high or not.

That said, one can also argue that if the page is not ranked high in the first place, chances are it would not be read. Therefore, in addition to appealing to the human eye, the page also needs to be searchbot-friendly, in a way pandering to their set ways of sniffing. And this is most efficiently, and effectively as well, done through optimizing the HTML tags, the subject of Chapter 6 of Michael Miller's book.

That prospect led me down the memory lane, going back to the mid-1990s when I took some introductory courses in HTML codes, and even experimented with my own off-line personal journal, complete with photos interspersed between the HTML tags. It will be a long overdue refresher course of sort.

My Attempts at Demystifying The PageRank Algorithm

One habit of mine is reading multiple books at any one time. Not holding the books at exactly the same time, but rotating the books after finishing one chapter or a section of each book. The habit is borne out of another habit at cross-referencing, comparing different perspectives offered by different authors and oftentimes supplementing each other. The two books I am reading the same time as Michael Miller's The Complete Idiot's Guide to SEO are Donna L. Baker's How to Do Everything with Google Tools (McGraw Hill 2008) and Google Hacks by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest (O' Reilly, 2nd Ed., 2005).

In Chapter 8 (Webmastering) of the latter book, I bumped into the PageRank algorithm of Google reproduced below in its equation form (Hack #87 by Mark Horrell):

PR(A) = (1 – d) + d[PR(T1)/C(T1) + ….. + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)]

where PR(A) is the PageRank (hereinafter shortened to PR) of a page A, PR(T1) is the PR of a page T1 (that links to page A and is considered an incoming link of page A), n is the total number of incoming links, C(T1) is the number of outgoing (outbound) links from the page T1 and so on for C(Tn), and d is a damping factor in the range 0 Wikipedia has given the mathematical background to the this now famous equation, purported named after Larry Page, one of the two co-founders of Google together with Sergey Brin, including a variant of the above equation where each PR is divided by the total number of pages, N, and is touted to be the one actually meant by Larry and Prin based on the statement in their paper that "the sum of all PageRanks is one”.

Wikipedia explains further:

“PageRank is a probability distribution used to represent the likelihood that a person randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page. … The PageRank computations require several passes, called "iterations", through the collection to adjust approximate PageRank values to more closely reflect the theoretical true value.”

It is easy to infer from the structure of the equation that the higher the number of incoming link (n), the higher will be the value PR(A), i.e., its PR, since each incoming PR, PR(T1) to PR(Tn) always has a positive value. its. This is the quantity aspect, the more the merrier, which perhaps helped spawn the proliferation of link farms.

Similarly, the higher the PR of individual incoming links, PR(T1) to PR(Tn), the higher will also be the numeric value of PR(A). This then constitutes the quality aspect. This has another subtle twist to it based on the fact the new webpages invariably start with a low PR simply because it takes time for them to be crawled and indexed and be linked. Thus, there is a preference for webpage A to be linked by older webpages than the new ones.

However, do not forget about the denominator term, C(T), the presence of which will alter the fractional value in the opposite sense to that of PR(T), i.e., the larger the number of the outgoing links of each incoming link, PR(T), the smaller is its contribution to the overall value of PR(A). In other words, you would like each of your incoming links to have less outgoing links of their own.

Now, is that not a paradox of sort that tends to foster selfish thinking? Certainly it would not appear to be a win-win situation for all. But, wait. There is another facet to it, as amply expounded by Wikipedia:

“Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 (but 0 is used just for penalized or non analyzed-pages) for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale.”

The practical implication of using a log (short for logarithmic) scale is that the difference between successive ranking numerals is not in algebraic, but geometric progression, or more specifically in the case, it is an order-of-magnitude difference, i.e., 10 times. Imagine thus:

A PR of 1 may have the actual values from 0.1 to 9.9;
A PR of 2 may have the actual values from 10 to 99.9;
A PR of 3 may have the actual values from 100 to 999.9; and so on.

Thus an increase of a PR by 1 can only come from tremendous efforts, certainly not in the linear trend of climbing from 1 to 2, the higher the PR, the much higher effort to elevate to the next higher ranking. Thus, in the grand scheme of things, having links to webpages with a higher or lower number of outgoing links would matter less than linking to a larger number of link, plus it is out of one's control anyway. Now I can really appreciate the chasm that separates this blog site of mine and Wikipedia's as I may have seen to remark rather casually when pitting a PageRank of 1-2 against a 9.

If PR were the only criterion used by Google, then getting a high rank is no difference than winning a popularity context. In the words of Wikipedia, “a PageRank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it ("incoming links"). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.”

Reality is of course a different story. There is another part to the rank determination conducted by Google, a much greater part I hope, as reflected in the following:

“Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.”

Now I do not have retract my previous blog on content being king and all and all the content writers can sleep better.

Upon further Google (what else?) search, I came upon an excellent explanation of the PageRank algorithm by Phil Craven that alerted me to two more features:

- That a website's internal links are included. Therefore, the more pages a website holds, the higher the PR as they contribute the same as would an incoming link. The only caveat is that the pages have to be indexed by Google, that means on their own merit, and no cookie cutter stuff.

- “That when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn't give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn't a transfer of PageRank.” That is, do not be afraid to link and plunge into the world of inter-connectedness, even though these links may be virtual, and the spirit of reciprocity (an outbound link begets a inbound one) lives on.

The last piece of the PageRank puzzle is the little d. What role does it play? Wikipedia puts it thus:

“The PageRank theory holds that even an imaginary surfer who is randomly clicking on links will eventually stop clicking. The probability, at any step, that the person will continue is a damping factor d.”

And in Page and Brin's own words:

“The d damping factor is the probability at each page the "random surfer" will get bored and request another random page.”

This fits in with our perception of human nature for we are not machines and are not capable of executing infinite number of clicks. Other than physical exhaustion, boredom will set in much quicker, and the rate of quickening seems to be a function of age as we can all attest to. Mathematically, we know that its inclusion depreciates the overall value of PR. If it were zero, all webpages will have the same PR of 1, a non-starter in the first place. Another thing to note is that the PR can never be zero. If a complete introvert writes a single webpage with no links whatsoever, it would still garner a PR of (1 – d), or 0.15, practically.

Is all the above that I spent a better half of the morning transiting into the afternoon understanding and collating worth the trouble? Intellectually, a resounding YES. It has been a long while that I have killed so much of my brain cells within such a short span of time. It's invigorating to say the least. My analytical mind still works.

Practically though, I am sobered by the recent clarification from Google as appearing almost as a epilogue in Wikipedia:

“On October 15, 2009, Google employee Susan Moskwa confirmed that the company had removed PageRank from its Webmaster Tools section. Her post said in part, "We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true."”

The actual post by Susan Moskwa was actually more explicit through further elaboration punctuated by a smiley at the end (tongue in cheek?):

"We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. :-)"

Then why retained it in the Google ToolBar? Perhaps the whole situation is better explained in a separate post that Susan Moskwa pointed to, which I will get to it later.

Ah well, life moves on. And so will we.

Writing content well first, then go for SEO worthiness

Optimizing Your Website for Search Engines. That is the Title of Part 2 of Michael Miller's The Idiot's Guide to Search Engine Optimization, and is also what I have been talking about being inline with the normal usage of English when used to describe the SEO business. It is another variation of Website Optimization for Search Engines (WOSE).

Anyway, Miller has described Part 2 as the meat of the SEO business. It is action-oriented, applying SEO principles to a live website, in a step-wise fashion. The first rung, the most important foundation of all, is Content. Aptly entitled Optimizing Your Site's Content, it is a drill section on CONTENT, CONTENT, and nothing but CONTENT.

Engaging, flowing, flawless, and pertinent. The content must be able to captivate and sustain the attention of the users/visitors, the style must be flowing like water with continuity in a natural progression, the grammar must be the envy of the language enthusiasts (meeting the expectations of the purists will be too tall an order) with judiciously placed punctuation marks to indicate change in thought, in emphasis, and in re-direction, and the coverage must be clearly delineated, shorn of extraneous materials and excessive self-peddling. So much for content quality, which is the organic part.

One can be trained to write well, but the skills need to be acquired prior to launching the website. A website that is on the public gallery is hardly a place to learn the ropes of writing engagingly as parading language weakness in a published website degrades the perception of content worthiness. Fortunately, for those who are predisposed to be better doers than writers, help is at hand: copy writers. They are a niche unto themselves for a reason.

The rest of the optimization would appear to be more mechanistic: prudent sprinkling of keywords, sprucing up the HTML tags, and creating links that serve to elevate (inspire trust) rather than downgrade (engender distrust). Remember not all links are created equal, and they do vary widely in link reputation or worthiness. Official domains such as the edu's and the gov's command much higher respect than the lowly com's, some of them anyway.

As for the requisite length, most agree that being longer is better than shorter premised on the well-regarded observation that amplification trumps precis. And a thousand words or thereabout seems to be the consensus. For comparison, the length of this blog up to this point is about 380 words. Thus, I still have some grounds to cover until that magical threshold is reached.

Whether it is a webpage, or an article in hardcopy form like in a printed magazine or newspaper, the techniques and rules for good writing differ little. There are essentially two parts: the what (the content) and the how (the writing style).

As the progenitor of the webpage prompted by an idea, an urge to fill a need, or an opportunity to start, run and own an e-business by providing services, you are the best judge of the what part, and hence, the best person to articulate these core propositions. To this end:

1) Focus on the core theme, be it to verbalize a message, to convey a piece of information, to deliver a sales pitch for a specific product or to solicit feedback. Say it out-front, say it in the middle, and say it again at the end.

2) Focus on the needs of the readers: speak to them, with respect, and humility, and be truthful about the benefits that will accrue so that they could walk away with their needs met, or a way to meet their needs identified. Always remember to cultivate a lasting impression to encourage repeat business. If you're not in for the long haul, you have no business to be in it in the first place. In and out is certain to spell doom from day one. As in an oral presentation, audience analysis is vital so as to be able to write in a tone that the targeted audience is most comfortable with. Not condescending, nor overly didactic.

3) Then support the core theme with well-thought out procedure/applications/examples/cases in a clear sequence that culminates in the realization of the core theme through a series of success stories. After all, it is no difference than telling a story at the end of which the audience, or a portion thereof, must be sold on the story. In that regard, nothing sells better than one that is rooted in authenticity.

Once we know what to write and for whom, the success of the how part hinges on our ability to achieve readability and to exude elegance of the written word. While a written work may lack the reinforcement via body language, one can still aim to blend in the non-verbal cues through the use of evocative prose and sentiment-laden words to evince passion, sincerity, eagerness, and empathy. Here's where creativity can know no bounds, transcending platitudes and rising above sloganeering.

Regardless, good writing traits revolve around simplicity, economy, writing in the active voice/first person, coherence, and avoidance of slang/jargons and repetitions of the same words. Reading widely, having a wide command of vocabulary, and knowing the nuances will go a long way in presenting the what in a highly readable and elegant manner. If this seems daunting or the learning process is too time consuming, engage professional help.

There is one more step to insure SEO worthiness though. That's where SEO skills are called for, and that is also where Michael Miller lays bare the meat of his book for everyone's picking, starting from hereon right up to the last chapter, which is 24, of his book.

One chapter at a time now. And the threshold met.

The Battle for Supremacy in the Rarefied Realm of Search Engines

I always google. That the noun has now become a verb speaks volumes about the popularity of Google as the search engine of choice. However, lately I have also tried out Bing, which was launched in June last year, simply because my new desktop came with Bing as the default search engine.

Google's search page is minimalist, as Michael Miller states in Chapter 3 of his book (A Complete Idiot's Guide to SEO), fringed by a wide band of white thickened at the two sides. However, one can import any image as the backdrop if the space seems disconcerting, including Google's own selections. A pleasant feature here is that on some days of historical significance, the word Google will be encased in a banner of image drawn to depict the historical event with the word skillfully blended into the image. Each time it appears, rather randomly for those who do not keep tab of past events, is a moment of pleasant surprise. Clicking the image produces a textual account of that day in history. Below are some of these dainty Google banners that I have collected over time from dating back to 2008.

A collection of Google banners, courtesy of the Google People.

Bing's search page similarly spots a white buffer zone at all the sides, but the search box overlies an image that changes every day. Clicking the flashing boxes when the cursor is moved over the image invokes accompanying texts that tell more about the image. On exploring further, readers are admonished to “kiss that sea of blue links goodbye” and to enjoy the Bing's version that has been “visually organized to help you make more informed decisions.” Sometimes a change of scenery does help to relieve some of the tedium of having to conduct a serious search; otherwise I think the sea of blue links should get me to where I want more expeditiously, especially when I am doing a scholar(ly) search.

According to the book, Google is said to capture about 55-65% of the internet searches, with Yahoo! As a distant second, laying claim to about 20%. Next comes Live Search of Microsoft, knocking on 10%. After the Fab Three, AOL Search and Ask.com ante up the rear with about 4% and 2%, respectively, with the balance of less than 2% comprising all the minority stake-holders.

Out of curiosity, I binged “Bing's market share in search engines” and was rewarded with the #1 result page dated Sep 14, 2009 at the Search Engine Land website that lists the latest search engine stats from Nielsen wherein MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search's share has surged to 10.7%, primarily at the expense of Yahoo Search, which dropped to 16%. Google continued to solidly lead the number game, steadied at 64.6%.

To be fair, I entered the same query in Google. Of the top ten results, all but one (it came in at #9) are dated this year. I clicked on the one results with the most recent date, July 14, 2010, a BBC news article that displayed a new set of numbers. These did not change the order, but reflected a gain for Bing (12.7%) while Goggle registered a drop to 62.6%. Yahoo also regained some lost ground by chipping in at 18.9%.

Obviously I will be remiss if I did not accord the same courtesy to Yahoo!. It listed the same BBC article as the #1 result. However, by continuing to the 2nd ranked page I was rewarded with the market share battle at the global level. And guess where Google (- Global) stands? A whooping 85% based on the July 2010 stats. Yahoo (- Global) trailed far far behind with 6%, and Baidu, which I sometimes use for searching items in Chinese, was neck-to-neck with Bing, at 3.3% a piece.

Since US is not a small market, I have to venture that the rest of the world is much more in tune with Google than US users. So if you are on the global stage, you will be kissing off 85% of the potential site traffic, certainly making ignoring Google as your SEO target a much more shakier proposition than Michael Miller would allow in his book.

Content rules, but only the textual kind

The second chapter (How SEO works) of Michael Miller's Complete idiot's Guide to SEO is now history. That history was made while we were waiting for WT to sit for his driving test at a local DMV office this morning. Before that, we made him drive us round the carpark where the office is located and the adjacent road several times just to get him acclimatized to the route and traffic setting. And it paid off. A huge thumb-up sign from him at the end of his driving test announced another new legal driver on the road.

OK, back to the second chapter. In two words, Content Rules. Not just any content, but the textual kind, relegating the non-textual genre to irrelevance, at least for now until such time as and when some kind of image recognition capability is achieved.

The chapter is about what search engines look for and armed with that knowledge, how one can optimize the website to provide strategically, repeatedly, and refreshingly what these search engines look for, which are tuned to users' needs. That means also understanding what people in general look for.

In this respect, search engines can be viewed as a match maker, trying to consummate a marriage of sort that is only made in heaven, both parties' wishes fulfilled: the user's query is answered, and the website gets its top ranking.

Crawlers and searchbots, the unseen sniffers that prowl the cyberspace dispatched by the Search Engine Enterprise, are busy and impatient beings and do not linger long on any abodes of the internet denizens (think home page). They have got a zillion places to cover and therefore only look for what that are trained to do at selecetd places to send the content back to the Mothership. And there are three staples in this mix: keywords, HTML tags, and links.

Keywords are descriptors of items that are of interest to the users. HTML tags are codes that structure the website both for viewing and underlying it all, for providing a detailed schematic of where things are kept in a neat hierarchical arrangement. Not all HTML tags are created the same and the trick is know which are the favorite hangouts of these crawlers or spiders during their brief sojourn. Fortunately for people for do not bother with HTML coding like yours truly, structure means there is a well-defined path to follow and even the uninitiated is unlikely to go wrong in identifying these alcoves.

Links are connections or conduits that point to another webpage. Apparently, the more the merrier is the motto here suggestive of a popularity contest. To a point, since quality and relevance matter as well. Links have become a commodity that one can actually buy them, abiding by the economic model that where there is a demand, there will be a supply.

It would appear that SEO is nothing more than manipulating the keywords, the HTML tags, and the links to work in concert to improve a website's search ranking. And to that end, Michael Miller offers ten key factors to doing just that. And the associated optimization techniques are further amplified in others chapters of the book, plus a whole slew of other things that one can try.

And in the final analysis, it's all about trying. No venture no gain. Let the adventure begin. Mine started with the tinkling of this blog' visual look by experimenting with several HTML codes in the blog template, albeit at a rudimentary level. Yes, taking baby steps is good.

Whether SEO or WOSE, Text is KING

My take-away message from the introductory chapter of Michael Miller's book is that Text is King as far as searches go. It's a very text-centric world out there and the crawlers and searchbots are trained to sniff out web pages based on text only. Hence, text analysis is featured as one of the primary considerations that determine page rank. At least this is as things stand now. It does not mean that images become immaterial, but that one has to anchor it with some kind of text in order to score any point.

While quantity, or length in this case, might not be all that important, a shorter text can be deemed as less relevant, and is often accorded a lower page rank, all things being equal. Then again the page ranking algorithm reputed to be the top secret of the highest degree can sense any word padding, no matter how subtle it is, from a mile away, easily. Thus pruning a page for readability and more important, substance, is much more rewarding than playing the word game.

Another thing that struck me is pages are stored verbatim in the so-called document servers operated by these search engines for lightning-fast retrieval. Once stored, a page only gets updated, but is never totally removed from cyber storage. That would mean that a simple click of the delete key to annihilate even those files in the trash folder or Recycle Bin to oblivion is as good as out of sight but still floating in limbo somewhere in cyberspace, ready to be resurrected to inflict nightmares via another click by those who have the means and the incentive to do so. Wonder whether there is any kind of virtual shredder that makes stitching back so difficult that it becomes a futile venture for those who are so inclined.

Then it struck me, again, that SEO as Search Engine Optimization is actually a misnomer. What we try to achieve in raising the profile of our web pages as denoted by page rank through SEO is more like Website Optimization for Search Engines, rather than Optimization of the Search Engines themselves as the common usage of English would dictate. So, perhaps they should have been WOSE consultants.

I learned today too that the Google ToolBar actually includes a PageRank icon that displays the page rank of a particular webpage/site, but visually in the form of a filling horizontal bar. Readers can judge the page rank by mentally dividing the bar into ten slots (corresponding to the range of 0 to 10) and see how many slots are filled. This website of mine was adjudged by yours truly to have a page rank of 1 to 2. On the other hand, the Wikipedia website is like a 9.

This would appear to be a quick way to find out whether my SEO (or WOSE) efforts actually make any headway, or not.

My Initiation Rites to SEO

I recently came across a similarly crowded term, Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I think for the sake of brevity, this three-noun version appears crispier than Optimization of Search Engines, or, God forbid, Optimization of Engines that Search. So SEO it is.

Thanks to Wei Joo, my elder son, as the intermediary, and to Daniel Tan, my nephew, who is an SEO guy (in his own words), I was initiated into the amazing realm of e-marketing, and in particular, the rat race for website ranking. Rat race is definitely apt here, not unlike the Wild Wild West known for the mad scramble for the pot of gold, as attested to by the proliferation of SEO websites.

From my limited online browsing thus far covering a span of a few days and that also outside my working hours and is thus meager at best by any measure, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) websites operate under the notion that nobody is going to be bothered with what is under the virtual pile, especially in cyberspace, as time is of the essence, no matter how useful the information can be. And Search Engine is the virtual equivalent of the Yellow Pages of the brick and mortar world, except that it's more nimble, expansive, and best of all, prioritized based on some objective criteria that presumably hold the interests of the consumers supreme. The latter aspect is where optimization matters, exclusively for those offering their services in the e-marketplace.

I think a disclaimer is apt here. There is no bashing of any kind whatsoever intended; it just so happened that I was recently awakened to what SEO can do, though what I'm about to blog may not be exclusive to SEO websites only.

My cursory search in cyberspace churned up so many SEO websites that it would last many life times of reading. Many of them will guarantee top billings for one's website, some even going as far as assuring the Uno. However, logic dictates that some in the latter category may be an exercise in futility based on simple arithmatic that goes something like this:

Number of SEO websites: countless (in relative terms as it most likely ranges in the thousands at most);

Number of niches: finite since regardless of the possible permutations of qualifying words and variants of the terms (here rarely used terms of practically no utility value as judged by the failure to elicit any recognizable response from an average Joe are excluded), the lexicons grow only at an excruciatingly slow pace and one can only drill down that far;

Number of top ranks: countable, with both hands at most for those interested in the Top 10 list.

Simple conclusion: there is just too many monks to share the few bowls of congee (to borrow from a opt-used Chinese idiom, loosely translated) given the fact that the pinnacle is always pointy at the top by definition. In other words, some unwary customers will not get their wishes granted. However, the ability to level the playing field such that big players don't simply win by sheer might in the e-business milieu is not in doubt. And therein perhaps lies its appeal where both the Davids and the Goliaths can match their creativity for supremacy.

Thus, a SEO consultant worth his/her salt will settle at “top billings”, implying that perhaps the pedestal is not as narrow a ledge as some would prefer it to be, leaving the numerals out to make room for creative maneuvers. So, caveat emptor, which, come to think of it, would apply to the procurement of any service, online or otherwise.

And a good way not to fall for any sales pitch is to learn some basics of what SEO can do and cannot do. In this regard, the Complete Idiot's Guide to Search Engine Optimization by Michael Miller (Alpha Books, 2009), courtesy of the local public library from which I collected the book just yesterday, will show me the way, hopefully. From its first few pages, I think I already like the even-keeled approach of the author, no promising the sky but "improving your search engine rankings" and "making your site rank higher". To me, these are realistic and achievable goals, if one knows what to do as the author assures in the Introductory chapter of his book, but with a reality check, it's not a quick and easy job. And my journey toward an improved website ranking just got started!

Writing Simply

When I was taking a technical writing course during my grad school days back in the mid-1980s, one of the cardinal sins of writing hammered into my head was stringing several nouns to form a new term. This “abuse” was especially rampant among engineering students whom I suspect have been responsible for what is euphemistically referred to as jargon. I vaguely remember the admonition that three is a crowd.

To prove my point, I walked over to my bookshelf and randomly picked up a magazine that happened to be Civil Engineering, a publication of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a premier engineering society. Flipping the pages, the following terms rolled:

Downhole Data Management.

Borehole Log Software.

Construction Management Services.

Client Relation Management (OK, I did not see this term in there. It just kind of popped up in my head but it is a standard management buzzword these days).

Here I'm excluding the proper noun genre (Oops, guilty as charged) that abounds in the stringing of many nouns with impunity such as (any locality) River Basin Restoration Project.

Today, engaging in triple noun terms has become a norm as people get used to mouthing them effortlessly.

In my mind, these strung terms are a different kettle from verbiage, or verbosity, or circumlocution, a term my English teacher threw at me when I was at the tender age commensurate with being a middle school student. More commonly characterized as wordiness, this at best irritable habit can result without us resorting to using a slew of multiple-noun terms, though it can be exacerbated by their inclusion.

As in all things in life, good writing is simply as simple as is needed to convey the message with clarity. All other embellishments including over-zealous padding are superfluous and often can engender the opposite effect: tune off.

Whirlwind Tour on a shoe string and in contracted space

[This post also appears in Wify's As I Draw Them ... to present the same blog but appearing on two different-colored backgrounds]

Residents of the Sunshine State enjoy certain privileges that come with the territory. One is the bestowal of the Bright Futures Scholarships that pay for college tuition, academic record permitting. Yet another one is the discount fares of theme park tickets, such as the “Buy for less than a day, Come back for a year” deal offered by Busch Gardens Tampa, which we took up earlier in the year. And we never looked back. But we are always game if other good things come along, doing our small part to stimulate the economy because we can.

The more recent offer that we snatched up is the Disneyworld tickets that charged $99 for a 4-day pass (presumably one day for each park since there are four associated theme parks), which expired on May 25. That made for several consecutive weekends of day trips to Orlando where we left our footprints behind on each of the theme parks. Brisk, and sun-soaked but otherwise fun-filled sojourns, with a tinge of nostalgia at three of them (the Animal Kingdom having come into being only after our prior flurry of visits during our Gainesville days in the first half of the 1990s).

We debated on which was to be the first on our list, and settled on the Epcot Center because Wify had been wanting to visit the Flower and Garden Festival since last year. And we were not disappointed, which could be an understatement. Here's why, pictorially told. That WT and CE are enjoying their summer breaks right now (WT actually graduated in early May but his commencement that we attended on May 2 will be the subject of another blog) meant that we were destined to be featured prominently in the pictorial tale.

The iconic silver globe, the Spaceship Earth, has come to be synonymous with the Epcot Center, its rough surface texture and its enormous size becoming evident in close proximity. It houses a ride that is both easy on my heart and titillates the mind at the same time, offering glimpses of space travel as the Mother Ship courses through the vast universe that is as expansive as the mind could imagine.

That's why we were there as the draping sign beckons, surrounded by a luxuriant display of greenery dotted with multi-hued flowers.

Topiaries at their best featuring clockwise from top left: Timon and Pumba of the Lion King fame; Mickey and Minnie; Peter Pan and Captain Hook; and the tea pot gang of the Beauty and the Beast fame.

Seven of the eleven World Showcase pavilions that skirt the bank of the central lake arranged in three at the top row and four at the bottom row. These are facades and edifices that are distinctive and unique to each country, supposedly anyway. How about a Geography pop quiz? Answers are provided at the end to gage how insular you are.

Yes, the American Adventure where visitors are treated to a melodious display of American folk songs rendered a cappella harmonized by the seamless voice meshing of the members and enhanced by the sound acoustics offered by the high dome directly above them.

This should be obvious: the torii (top row) and the Pagoda (bottom row) are a dead giveaway. A torii, literally meaning bird perch, is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine. The Goju-No-To, or "Five Storey Pagoda," traditionally represents the five elements from which Buddhists believe all things in the universe are produced. In ascending order, the elements are earth, water, fire, wind and sky. So says a plaque erected in front of the pagoda.

Equally ubiquitous in China are the arch portal (here it says the Sun-Facing Gate), the cuddly pandas, especially the flurry kind here that Wify is enamored to, and the Lotus flower.

Scenes of China, as revealed in the 360 degree panoramic theatrical display where the patrons stand for ease of the 360 degree viewing pleasure. I think the contents may have stayed essentially the same since we saw the same show more than fifteen years ago, narrated by the famous Tang Dynasty poet, Li Bai, his role obviously played by an actor. From the scenic (Su Chow), the desert (Gobi), the rural (Yunan) to the Urban (Shanghai), going clockwise from the top left.

From top left going clockwise: Here's Li Bai in a traditional Chinese garb gesticulating from the top of the Great Wall of China, purportedly shown up as a twisting dragon in satellite images; next the mythical dragon where Chinese are descendants from, at least according to the name of a popular Chinese song; the Beijing opera show involving actors with painted faces in various stances; and the ever-popular Tai Chi practitioners, soaking up the morning essence perched on a hillside (deduced from the misty environ).

Wify likes Chinese calligraphy. So here are the shots taken within the Gift Shop after exiting the 360 degree theater. These are the three auspicious Chinese characters meaning Blessings, Wealth, and Longevity from right to left.

More Chinese calligraphy, Love (right) and Forbearance (left) flanking the bamboo/panda painting depicting summer joy.

Wify's favorite pastime: shots of Chinese brush painting of birds/flowers (top left), Chinese crane (bottom left); Girl in traditional Chinese dress, and the awe-inspiring roar of the tiger, all found in the same gift shop.

The mountain and water painting, contrasted with real mountain (Yellow mountain?) and water (Gui-Ling).

From left: the famous historical find of the Terra Cotta Warriors of the Qing Dynasty (circa 210 B.C.) discovered in 1974 near Xian, China (top) and the craftsmen restoring the artifacts (middle). A sitting Buddha evincing compassion and wisdom; concluding (bottom left) with the popular Chinese saying that has "seeing is believing" as its closest English equivalent.

That was truly a whirlwind tour, covering some of the major continents within a span of a few hours, so much so that we ran out of time to visit the other offerings at the Future World. However, there will be other time ...

[Answers to the country pavilions, from top left going clockwise: France, UK, Canada, Germany, Norway, Italy and Mexico.]

Up in the Air, or Not

I was drawn by the storyline of this movie with a somewhat opportunistic theme of letting go people by minimizing the pain of the aggrieved. In the present climate of rampant unemployment, it hits a rather raw nerve; but at the same time, it also invites a sense of empathy from those who are in the same boat, yours truly included. While the passage of time, and thankfully, being accepted back into the fold of the gainfully employed, did ease off some of the agony spawned by the traumatic experience, the looming sense of anxiety does not seem to go away anytime soon.

So Wify and I found ourselves in one of the smaller movie theaters at Muvico along Highway Preserve, with a pleasant surprise of sort: we qualified for the Senior discount, as we have always thought you have to hit 60. Not surprisingly, most of the patrons (I assessed the turnout to be less than half full as the movie has been running for some time now) are silver-haired, and by that I meant they are decidedly older than us. Let's take a sneak peek at some scenes from the movie. Don't worry, it's not enough to make you want to give it a miss; instead, it might just get you intrigued enough to give it a try actually.

Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, is a consultant who makes his career out of firing people. He amasses frequent flyer miles, carries a neatly packed suitcase for carry-on, and methodologically moves toward his frequent mile target that he was evasive for most part of the movie.

He goes on the speaking circuit too, with a backbag placed on a table next to him, and delivers his usual opening line about what is in your backbag. He challenges the audience to start with the small stuff, small momentos, things on the shelf, and start putting them into the backbag one by one. Then move on to the bigger stuff, tables, bed, etc. And even bigger stuff, your car, your house. And now strap on the filled backbag. Do you fill the weight overwhelming, the strap cutting into your body? And he declares famously, that's what we do.

At the next speaking engagement, he changes tack a bit. Now imagine putting all your relationships, starting with the casual acquaintance, postman, cable guy, delivery guy, into the backbag. Next, your friends, and finally, the loved ones. And feel the weight again.

The next speaking engagement has him cajoling folks to put their memories into the proverbial back bag. And relive the overbearing burden.

Is there a message, sublime or otherwise, somewhere in there? Mr. Bingham is not forthright. But the recurring theme resonates in me: it's about letting go. After one has lived in the moment. Being weighed down is not the best way, obviously not the fun way for sure, to go through life. That does not mean we merely go through the motion without a purpose in life. Purpose is what drives us, what makes us stumble is our groping around to find the purpose.

As one of the characters in the movie puts it, after he was let go: The next morning when I wake up, and I see my wife sleeping next to me, I find my sense of purpose.

Bidding farewell to the Old and Welcoming the New

The year that is. 2009 is now history while 2010 is barely one-day old. With memory still fresh, I was trying to recollect the few last things I did in the past decade. There was this Time Square countdown, seen through my sleepy eyes as I had succumbed to fatigue while watching the bowl game between Virginia Tech and Tennessee last night. Then there was my having finished reading “The Lost Symbol” (a scanned image book cover shown on the right below and hereon referred to as the Book) by Dan Brown, a Christmas gift from CY, alternating between watching the football game and flipping through the last few chapters of the book. That in itself would tell you how the ending part of the book appealed to me. I started with great expectations, having read several of Brown's previous works (and two movies based on his books), about a week back, until the latter part dealing with the near-drowning death experience of Robert Langdon, the story's main character, which was not to be. Along the way, I kind of lost some steam and started to read chunks of text at one go. However, I like the last word of the Book, “HOPE”.

The start of a new year is always synonymous with hope, starting afresh, and myriad possibilities. Of course starting afresh does not imply from a clean slate, but building on past efforts so as to be on a firmer footing to chart new territory, or a variation of a trodden path, tuning if you will, or looking at things from a new perspective (a change of mindset encouraged in the Book).

Going further back in time, there was this “Buy for less than a day, Come back for a year” deal offered by Busch Gardens for Florida residents, which we took advantage off. In the short span of a week, we have already visited the Park twice, the second trip accompanied by WT and CE, ostensibly to watch Christmas on Ice presented by some world class ice skaters. And we were not disappointed. The one-time tickets are valid till the end of 2010. And we will monitor how many visits to the Park, a mere minutes away by car, we will manage to chalk up in 2010. But first, here are some end-of-the-year memorable images of the year gone by.

Wify, relaxed and poised, sitting on a low wall made of stacked circular blocks not far after the entrance.

Now indoor by the fire place with stockings hung from its top ledge, Frosty standing outside the window, like real.

The Man of Note, belting out Christmas Carols in the pre-show to the Christmas on Ice, harmonious melodies without the accompaniment of music, a musical performance termed "acappella" as CE pointed out.

The team of ice skaters in snow attire opening the long-waited show, Christmas on Ice. We arrived about 35 minutes before the show and we were glad we did that as the seats filled up quickly.

The Russian duo, easily the highlight of the show with their breath-taking display of well choreographed dance moves in perfect synchronicity ...

... as seen here in the face brushing while swinging around act.

The last act of the Dinner Show during which kids went on stage to sit with Santa.

The closing of the Katonga, the dancers having performed to four stories being narrated successively, all contributing to the grandeur.

Sheikra, touted as the first America's dive coaster featuring the vertical drop here. Obviously it's out of our league.

Sheikra again, next to the Blue Moon, so called because it's the second full month in a month, which occurs once in 2.5 years. However, New Year's Eve blue moons are rarer, occurring every 19 years, which means the next one won't happen until 2028 (as read in today's St Petersburg Times, front page). This significance did not dawn on me until so informed by St. Petersburg Times.

A fully stretched rabbit, its head resting on crossed arms.

Pink birds (Wify said they look more orange to her), long legs. Who can miss these gregarious waders, the Flemingos, here using the head for balance as one of the legs is retracted?

Pick-a-lock? Will that work?

A fully extended plumage of a peacock.

Cuddling for warmth, our way.

Head touching pose, as picked up by a nice passer-by.

The Tale of Airports and While Up In The Air

For the recent trip back to Malaysia, we transited at two new airports, new to us I mean. The first is the George Bush Inter-Continental Airport at Houston (IAH), and the other, the (Moscow) Domodedovo International Airport (DME). Not only are the airports new to us, so are the place. And courtesy of Singapore Airline (SIA), we can now put these two cities under our belt, even though we did not venture beyond the confines of the airport, or to be exact, the Transit Lounge. However, nobody can deny that we were physically on the ground at these places. That dubious distinction would also apply to Taipei and HongKong (for me since Wify has been to HongKong).

We are not new to the Changi Airport in Singapore, which, as a home-port of SIA, is necessarily a transit point in the route. But what amazed us is the décor, putting space to optimal use for visual pleasure and also some learning experience for the benefit of the weary travelers.

The return trip also means that we spent about 2 days high up in the air, at a height of 35,000 – 40,000 ft above sea level, which placed us at the stratosphere (6 – 31 miles above the surface). And the view out of the window was really spectacular. The wide expanse really dwarfs the human presence, invoking a sense of awe that helps put everything into perspective, or cut us down to sizes, all made possible by having a window seat, not my preferred emplacement, but one that I have grown accustomed to with age, especially when armed with a camera.

Let me then bring you on a whirlwind tour of the airports and the airspace that connects them, a chance at a bird's eye view of the atmosphere up close, and terra firma, from a distance, vertically that is.

At IAH, in the lone star state, or in the parlance of college football, the Longhorns.

At IAH. I was wondering what has chilli got to do with AT&T and mobiles, until I was alerted by Wify to look closer. How uncanny. Then it all makes sense.

One of the eateries at DME, Moscow. But they were out of bound to us as they only deal in Russian rubles. We had better luck at the Tax-free shop, buying some chocolate with US dollars.

The Transit concourse, Changi Airport, with kois swimming in an elongated pond fringed by plants and flowers and graced by Wify.

Wify guarding the entrance to the giant festive decoration, Changi Airport.

Wify trying her hand at one of the hand presses for making motifs of Symbolic Asia out of papers, Changi Airport.

One of the many symbols of Asia on display (hint: learning experience).

Our claim to the grand sending off, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), Sepang.

And now, (drum roll ...), the panorama extravaganza, views up in the air or from up in the air.

A river debauching into the Straits of Melaka, with stationary boats dotting the seascape, watched by distant clouds.

A distant sun beaming down on us at high altitude, the shot captured understandbly without the aid of me looking at the LCD screen. I simply pressed the camera lens against the plane's window in that general direction, and hope for the best.

A sunrise, illuminated by the distant glow on the horizontal.

A sea of icebergs? No, just ice-berg lookalike clouds buffering us from below.

A cotton field in the air.

I caught this plane flying by us. Talk about airspace ... Wonder whether anybody on it saw us too. What are the odds of two people clutching their cameras and fixating on things outside the window at the same time?

Then another one jetted by, leaving a linear contrails behind, though I think this happened on the return trip. Nah, can't be the same guy on his return trip too, but I wonder.