Freelance Writing – ArcticLlama

I downloaded Google Chrome when it first came out just like all the other technology centric types did.  I was impressed with its speed and I really liked that it seemed to import my passwords from Firefox (and slightly disturbed).  But, without the plug-ins that I rely on, on a daily basis, I just couldn’t use it as my regular browser, so it sat mostly unused on my desktop.

Then, when the Google Updater constantly ran in the background on startup no matter how many ways I tried to disable it, I got annoyed and condemned it to the graveyard of Start –> Programs –> Online –> Browsers –> Chrome.

Recently, I took another look.  I can’t even remember what prompted me to check it out again.

First, I had to re-allow Google Update in Comodo Defense+ where it had been set to Blocked Application as the only way I could actually get those processes to stop running all of the time.  Then, I had to re-download it and figure out a couple of its nuances.

Morning Coffee for Chrome

Morning Coffee plug-in for Firefox allows the user to define a set of websites that can be opened all at once depending upon which day it is. For example, I check the freelance writing job boards on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. Instead of manually choosing a bunch of bookmarks, or even doing an Open All In Tabs Morning Coffee does it for me, before I’ve had my cup of morning coffee. I have started accomplishing a similar thing by using the Speed Dial plug-in for Firefox.

I’ve discovered a Google Chrome extension called Daily Links that basically does what Morning Coffee does, but I would still prefer the original. Actually, what I would REALLY prefer is synchronizing between Morning Coffee for Chrome and Firefox Morning Coffee settings so that I didn’t have to redo all of my websites when I move to Chrome.

Incognito Feature Kicks Butt and Wins a Friend

Like many others did initially, I dismissed Chrome’s Incognito mode as something of a gimmick.  While I have enough intelligence to come up with reasons to use such a mode that don’t involve pornography, I just didn’t see why I would want a whole MODE when I could just use my Distrust plug-in, or run a separate profile.

Then, one day while working at Peaberry Coffee on my now aging badly laptop I finished up my work and my Large Americano and closed down my programs when I remembered that I needed to login and renew my library books.  (The Denver Public Library lets you renew your books online.  One of the greatest things the Internet has ever wrought, thank you.)

The thought of restarting up Firefox and waiting for it to load was too painful. I have more than a dozen plug-ins installed, but it still seems way to long to have to wait 30 to 45 seconds just to find out if I have to install any new updates, let alone actually get to use my browser.

I have IE, but I virtually never use it, so the odds of it having my library card number remembered were slim.

So, I fired up Chrome with its snazzy list of imported passwords.  It started up almost instantly and I was logged in and renewing my books before Firefox would have given my keyboard back control.

While it still has no plug-ins, I have started to use Chrome as my “read and play only” browser.  That is, I use Chrome to play Mafia Wars, and to update Facebook for that matter, or Twitter, or FriendFeed, or LinkedIn.  I use Chrome to read my Google RSS feed reader.  I use Chrome to read Wired, and Business Week, and Denver Post, and ABCNews.  And, I use Chrome to check out my Google Webmaster reports and monitor traffic statistics at the Bright Hub Investing Channel.

In other words, if I won’t need to get a screenshot, check out page rank, need to clip, bookmark, or otherwise save a page, nor need to Download Them All, or FlashGot selection, then I’ll use Chrome.

I still consider Firefox my real browser and much to Chrome’s chagrin, it is still my default browser.

That being said, there are some things that I really like about Chrome that I think I’ll start looking for plug-ins to implement in Firefox until the next version comes out.

1. Incognito Mode – Nothing helps an online writer and web designer more than being able to see what their site looks like to someone who is not the administrator.  Incognito mode makes me into any other first time visitor to all my sites without having to change to a new profile.  Double bonus: Google searches show un-customized results in Incognito mode.  Now, I can see if I really am #2 in a search for auto tweets or if I’m only there because Google knows that I go to ArcticLlama.com a lot for some reason.
2. Paste and Go – 99% of the time if I’m pasting a web address into the browser’s URL field, I want to go to that site.  How great is it to just right-click for paste and go.  The website loads and you never have to take your hand off the mouse or go click the “Go” icon.  But, and this is important, there are times that it is VERY important to not just “go”, so I LOVE that it is a choice and not a behavior.
3. Searching from the Address Field – At first I hated this, but there is something so simple about not having to select the Google Search field at the top of my browser window to do a search.  Now, if only I could get it to default to d8search.com
4. Dragging Tab to New Windows / Own Browser – When I first read about this feature, I thought, “Who cares?”  But, every time I realize that a tab I have open in Firefox would be better off as its own window instead, I think, “Why can’t I just drag this out like in Chrome?”
5. Speed – I don’t care about speed tests or JavaScript performance, or Acid Tests.  I care about the amount of time it takes between when I click the icon and I can start typing into the URL field.

But, I’m not going to switch until I get these things:

1. Speed Dial – Plug-in, not plug-in, there is no feature I care more about than my Speed Dial, not ad blocking, not NoScript, not password managers, or download managers, NOTHING!  The difference between Speed Dial and the Chrome home page is USER CONFIGURABILITY and multiple tabs.  In other words, I decide what is on my Speed Dial front page, not whatever I happened to use most this weekend and now has no use for me on Monday.
2. Morning Coffee – Very similar to Speed Dial except it groups by function.  Is it 8:00 AM on Monday?  Then I’ll be wanting to check my stats on about 16 sites and Morning Coffee has them lined up.  Is it Tuesday?  Time to hunt for new writing gigs, and Morning Coffee has my favorite places to check lined up.
3. Ad Block – Speed Dial may be more important, but if I only get two, this is number 2.  I’m happy to have ads displayed on the sidebar, and I don’t even block Google AdSense, but I’ll be darned if I’m going to put up with Contera or those other “Ha, ha, you put your mouse here, so we’re putting up an ad,” advertisements.  Also, I do end up on hacker sites and forums rather regularly and most of their ads are not the kind of thing the kid eating his muffin next to me at Starbucks wants to see.
4. NO CONSTANTLY RUNNING UPDATE PROCESS!!! – Seriously! What the heck is this crap?  How often does Chrome update?  I know it does other apps too, but how often do they update?  Do I really need to have an updater running 24/7?  This is what Google is saying to me by running this process constantly on my computer: “What you are doing is not as important as updating our software.”  And that is bunk!  Before anyone says that it is a small process, I dare you to add up all the small processes that software companies try and run in the background on your computer by default and see how much computing power they chew up.  (I’m looking at you Adobe Reader and Crapple QuickTime Player.)

If you haven’t checked out Chrome yet, you might want to try it out.

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Recently, I’ve noticed that the more time I spend trying to “SEO” my various sites and pages, the less I actually write.  That is a HUGE problem, because it turns out that nothing, and I mean nothing, counts as much for search engine results rankings than writing, or as the SEO pros call it, content.

While you are busy editing tags and trying to get the right headers to be H2 or H3 tags and you are out trying to get people to link to your articles using exactly the right keywords, your pages are slipping down the Google rankings.

Why?

They are getting older, less useful, and less read by your audience.

Let a week go by without updating your blog and you can watch your ranking fall from 11 to 13 even if you have been getting more and more links or tweaking your CSS or whatever.

On the other hand, post at least every 3 days or so and you’ll see your blog moving up in the rankings, certainly not for every keyphrase, but for plenty of key words and key phrases that are important to you and your readers.

I have email conversations with people all the time trying to nail down whether posting at 6:05 am is better than posting at 6:25 am who haven’t posted AT ALL in days!  I tell them, go post something NOW, then worry about it.  After all, you never know when the Google spider is going to drop by.  How much would it suck if you carefully scheduled your post for 6:11 AM only to have Google index your site at 5:59 AM with nothing but 11 day old articles on your home page?

Let Search Come To You

Don’t get me wrong, some things are important, but they are the no brainers.

1. Use Keywords in Your Title Tag – If you want to be funny or clever, install a plug-in that lets you create a different title meta tag than the title visible on your article.
2. Link Internally Often – You would be shocked and appalled to realize how much your own links help your search ranking.  Link your related posts as much as possible.  This is one thing Live Writer can really help you with.  Just highlight a keyword, click link and then select link to previous post.  It will fill in the rest for you.
3. Alt Tag Your Images – It never ceases to amaze me how many people find one of my sites via image searches.  It happens because no one really bothers to alt tag their images.
4. Link Out – For all the talk about “link juice” and nofollow tags, you would think that Google bodyslams sites that link to other sites.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Your (non-nofollow) links to quality sites shows that you are providing quality content, and Google loves that.  So link out and don’t worry about your juice.

Lately, my traffic comes almost 90% from search engines.  That is down from about 98% at the beginning of the year.  Is it because I’m getting less visitors from search engines?  Actually, it is the opposite.

What IS happening is that more and more visitors are getting here other ways.  There are some that are “direct” (they came here by typing the name or using a bookmark), and some more that are “referrals” (they came here by clicking a link to the site).  If they get here and it looks the same as it did the last time they dropped by, chance of them coming back start to drop as well.

In the meantime, my sites don’t rank worth a darn on many of their “target” keywords or keyphrases, but guess what?  They rank 1, 2, 10, or 20 on plenty of keywords and phrases that I never thought of (and that never showed up on WordTracker) and those bring in plenty of traffic.

You never know when you will write something about automatic tweets just as a way to relate with your audience about what you are trying to accomplish and end up ranking 1 or 2 for the term.

Go ahead.  Try it.  Search for automatic tweets or auto tweets and see who is up near the top of the list.  — Hi, it’s me!

Not that I need, nor know anything about what to do with traffic looking for information on automatic tweets, but if I’m lucky one or two of them will be writers too.  And, maybe, they’ll decide that this is a good destination for a writer and, maybe they’ll link to me on their own without any begging from me.

Then, I get to do what I love, which is to write, not to kiss ass to try and get links or Diggs, or whatever.

Unless the purpose of your site is to sell stuff (some sort of shopping thing) then bag the SEO and just keep writing.  You’ll probably come out way ahead.

I’m a writer.  I write all day long, a lot of it in Microsoft Word.  So, when my computer started insisting on popping up this dialog box that says, “Initializing Places Bar” every time I tried to save a Word document, I was not happy.

That Initializing Places box takes a few seconds to go away some times and when you are used to the Save As box popping up right away, that can be really annoying, especially if you save documents 100+ times every single day!

Thankfully, I finally figured out what the My Places bar is.  Turns out its been in MS Office since Office 2000 came out.  I’ve just never paid any attention to it because all it is, is that bar on the side of the Save As box that lets you pick “My Documents” or “My Computer” or whatever.

The reason the initializing Places Bar has never come up before is because by default the only things on that bar are things on your local hard drive, so its fast.

But, apparently, Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom (Hah!) decided to add a link to Office Live Workspace on that bar which means that the Save As box is delayed while the computer goes out and checks to see if it can find the Live Workspace or while it waits to time out.

Either way, not cool!

I wrote up a full post about it, and how to make My Places bar stop and go away permanently.

My Places Bar, Live Workspace, Slow Save As, Initializing My Places bar