There is a whole industry related to search engine optimization and whether you’re a web developer, web designer, or just a blogger, search engine optimization is something you and/or your clients will have at least some interest in, and spend some time on. Search engine optimization is all about making your web sites show up close to the top of the lists for relevant keywords to your site.

Many companies out there charge big bucks for the basics and common sense I’m spelling out in this article. Despite how their marketing and sales pitch may argue otherwise, there is no quick fix, nor a magic bullet to make your web site appear at the top of Google’s list (or any search engine for that matter. The article below I’ve composed based on my own personal experiences building web sites over the years both personally and professionally.

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Man, I’ve been looking for this exact program forever. It’s great – as a Firefox extension, I can use it with Firefox and Flock, syncing bookmarks across all my copies of Firefox at home and work, and have home and work profiles to specify certain links/folders that I don’t want one or the other to have/sync.

I’m so glad Lifehacker featured this the other day. I’m very excited about having my bookmarks all synced between work and home (for free, which is even better). Plus, through Foxmarks’ web site, I can access those bookmarks away from my machines and via my iPhone. This is a great, streamlined way to be able to access your bookmarks wherever, and keep them all in sync.

If you use Firefox in multiple locations or on multiple computers, this is a must have. Even if you only use Firefox on one machine, this is a great way to backup and have your bookmarks accessible on the road. Then again, if you don’t use Firefox, this extension it completely meaningless to you, but why aren’t you using Firefox. Please tell me it’s at least Safari or Chrome you’re using.

Foxmarks

This looks like an update to a really cool little Flash animation cartoon of animator versus animated that uses the Flash’s program timeline, toolbars, etc. as the battlefield/arena for cursor versus cursed.

I love these animated stick figured-type battles on the Web and hope we see more of these, with more elaboration.

Animator VS. Animated

All you fellow bloggers and also anyone out there running forums – I found a useful resource for weeding out spam users.

When we first created a forum for one of our clients, we soon were subjected to a ton of spammy users and posters. Supplementing the built-in captchas and user-created plugins, I came across this site – Stop Forum Spam, a great international effort/database of known spammer’s emails, IP addresses and other information.

I’ve also recently found the site useful in weeding out subscribers to Keefer Madness, being run on Word Press’s blogging software platform. Word Press’ built in spam detection for comments is great, but the site above really helps supplement that and recognize new subscribers that are just a waste of a data row on your web site.

File this one under funny and sad… cause it’s so so true.

Hug a Developer Today

This isn’t rocket science, and this will be a big ‘duh’ for most of you reading this out there, but successful blogging is all about quality original content composition.

So much blogging is posting and rehashing news and information found elsewhere on the web. I’m as guilty as any other blog of mailing in posts simply with a couple of sentences and an external link.

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So I finally got my race team’s new site up and running – Tricyclists. You may notice some real similarities between Keefer Madness and the Trikes’ new site. That’s because they’re both utilizing WordPress and the same base template – Mandigo. I’m sure there are other great templates that would serve the purpose, but I really love the template, its options and flexibility it’s allowed me on both sites.

The two will continue to organically develop apart from each other as I customize both style sheets, images, etc. in both. But regardless, I’m a huge fan of both WordPress and the Mandigo template, and the combination of the two have made both those sites better.

Regardless, I was slack getting the new Trikes site up, but now that it’s up, it seems everyone likes it. Hopefully we can keep it updated withe regular content and keep traffic flowing to it. Check it out if you get the chance.

It was only a matter of time. When the iPhone app store launched just a few short weeks ago, another one of the big blog publishing software had an iPhone app.

You knew it was only a matter of time till the others followed. Now, WordPress, the software Keefer Madness runs on has an iPhone app – which I’m typing this entry on currently.

It’s pretty basic, but is definitely nice for making an occasional post on the road.

The app will also work with wordpress.com hosted blogs.

WordPress iPhone App