What is a back link? A back-link is a link on another website that leads to your own blog or website. Why is it important to get backlinks? Finding back links is important for search engine optimization, also known as, SEO.

 The more links that lead to your site will equal more traffic and readers. The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your site will rank in the search engines. Also, if you want to increase traffic to your site then you will need to build backlinks. It is also important to get good, quality backlinks. Google does not raise your page rank if most of your backlinks come from spammy-type sites. The higher the rank of the site that links to you, the better “link juice” you will get. Ultimately, Google will rank your blog or website based upon how many good, quality backlinks you have that relate to your topic.

When you have a higher page rank you will rank higher in the search engines.
It is estimated that 70% of the criteria used by Google to determine what web sites rise to the top of their listings is the quantity and quality of the back links. And that makes sense. If hundreds or thousands of websites think you rate a mention, you must be doing something right.

Google relies on the voting public and rewards you by pushing your site to the top of the search results.

Back links allow your site to stay connected with other existing sites. They provide the needed traffic for your site’s popularity and ranking. Take a look at how you can create strong back links to your website that will boost your chances in the dynamic world of search engine optimization.
With link building we can get good back links to your website.  How? Through book marks, directories, forums we can get good back links.

 So just do link building for your website

This article  about article directories and blog directories seemed pretty easy to read and very informative to assist a newbie like me with the importance  of how to acquire and  “how to”  acquire back links to my website using blog directories. I still haven’t had time to  keep up with articles in my own profession of interior design and preventative maintenance and carpentry and cabinetry, much less  what I need to learn regarding this subject.

 I find it all so mind boggling or should I say mind blogging!

http://www.dragonblogger.com/gain-exposure-backlinks-article-directories/

Readers that agree with me that SEO should mean Seeking Every Opportunityand are new to this foreign language of  Internet marketing, traffic, links, blogs, and time consuming research for accurate blog posts, please write me a note  on my blog.  

I would love to start a conversation.  Maybe  exchange links, who knows what may come of asking for help on this electrical universe! 

Evening Curb Appeal: Night-time Lighting to Sell Your HomeThis article was printed by one of our local realtors, Aaron Hoffman of Keller Williams Realty here in Smyrna, Ga.I have been a subscriber of his news letter for a very long time and found this article to be a great idea whether you are a buyer or a seller. Photo: © M. Eric Honeycutt – iStockphoto
You’ve trimmed and tidied, clipped and pruned, swept and raked. Your front yard looks like a feature from Better Homes and Gardens and eager buyers are sure to be lining up first thing in the morning. It’s dusk; time to head indoors, put up your feet and look forward to that imminent house sale.Not quite. Buyers are savvy and will want to view the house in which they are thinking of investing thousands of dollars, from every possible angle. And that includes in the dark.It is common for potential buyers to drive by the property in the evening, perhaps on a whim or maybe just to check there are no undesirable elements that they missed during the day. While your house is for sale, you should maximize your evening curb appeal for those unscheduled drive-by viewings.Lighting is the key to evening curb appeal -
At dusk, strategically placed outdoor lights add a new dimension to your property. Investing in some simple lighting for your front yard could increase your chance of a sale. So, go back outside and look at your house in the dark. What can you see? Or more importantly, what can’t you see?Can a homebuyer see your home’s entrance?
If a prospective homebuyer drives by your house at night, is the sidewalk well-lit enough for them to clearly see the entrance to the property? Consider a gatepost or lantern-style light to define the start of your driveway.

Is the route to your front door well-lit?
Are your buyers going to trip over an unlit step, or brush past a prickly shrub in the dark? Add ground lighting or bollards to light the pathway. Low voltage string lighting along path edges is an effective and inexpensive solution.

Show off your front porch with accent lights.
This is the entrance to your house and is where the buyer’s eye will be drawn. If your porch flooring is made from an attractive material such as quality hardwood, cut stone or mosaic tiles, use lighting to make your doorstep a desirable night-time feature.

Bring your front yard to life with lights.
Strings of garden lights are a low cost and appealing way to bring your front yard to life at night. They can be used all year long and add a magical touch. Solar garden lights are easy to install and can be taken with you when you move house. Up-lighters can turn an interesting tree or rock into an enchanting night-time feature. Consider underwater lights to give a pond an ethereal quality.

Keep the porch light on.
While your house is for sale, remember to leave on your porch lights at night. An inside hall light gives a warm glow through any glass panels in the front door. Switch on at least one small lamp in each of your front rooms. You can set timers to have your lamps turn on at dusk and off at dawn. Potential buyers driving by will see a welcoming glow at any time night.

Keep decorations and furnishings crisp and classic for universal appeal

And don’t forget, if you get interested prospects who come calling, the inside of your home needs to be in tip top condition. That means mechanically repaired, freshly painted, clean carpet and polished floors. Decorations are are okay, but don’t over do it. Here are some other pointers: based on my observations here are some ideas that may help you sell your home during the holidays:

1. Create an attractive environment that will allow buyers to view your home during warm and friendly season.

2. Spruce up your home by cleaning and decorating to give your home that “picture postcard” look.

3. Make sure that your decorations are elegant and inviting and not intimidating or “over the top”.

4. Keep decorations mostly in the living area

5. Vacuum everyday

6. Leave the radio on a station that plays Christmas music during the holidays with minimal advertising or better yet satellite radio

Clean daily, especially in high traffic areas.

• Keep all counter tops free of “clutter”

• Make sure your home “smells” like Christmas – Insert plug-ins with a mild Christmas/apple/cinnamon scent or light evergreen scent

• Make sure that Christmas decorations don’t interfere with the floor plan or spacing in the home and keep walkway areas open

• Keep Christmas decorations simple and elegant

• Keep the personal photos to a minimum so that buyers can see themselves living cozily in the home

• Keep furnishings crisp, clean and neutral again without “clutter”

• The potential buyers want to envision their own things inside the home and by now crowding the space it gives your home a better chance to show it’s potential

• Last, don’t forget good dramatic lighting inside too. Lighting a room with drama can evoke a sense of warmth and desire and assist in landing that buyer.

Use simple, elegant holiday decorations when your house is on the market

There are some great interior ideas as well by fellow blogger and home stage designer at baerhomedesign.com to help you get your home ready for sale.

Happy Holidays .

Wishing you and yours a Healthy Prosperous New Year

Patricia and Tom Scott

Anyway, I still would appreciate any advice on the best way to begin to really understand this new way of communicating.   Actually, it isn’t a new way at all is it.  For hundreds, even thousands of years humans have used the written word to communicate.  I think I just have difficulty hearing myself in my  head and making it come out correctly, with good grammer and writing technique.  I see so many poorly written, twitter slang’n words out there that I cannot figure it out.   Maybe we baby boomers need our own short cuts, emoticons and slang that only we understand. Remember those days when we had our coded vocabulary like pig latin a backwards speak to keep the adults from knowing what we were saying to each other.  Well,  itway isway ikelay atthay, eway oomersbay eednay ourway ownway
omputercay anguagelay atthay eway understand     wayithoutway allway ethay ortenedshay urlway eakspay ofway ethay idskay.

SEO, the little term that is the Power House of websites

S  earching  E  very O   pportunity

Take a look and see if you agree, let me know what you think.

I am also looking for more information on incoming links and how to get these to my blog, any one, you experts out there, please share your knowledge and tips to achieve incoming links. 

Oh, and before I forget, Happy Holidays to everyone. We are Florida bound… from dawn to dusk.

This came to me from my CPA today and I felt it important enough to not speed read through as I do most email warnings.  I trust my CPA of more than 20 years  for warning about this one. Patricia Scott

New ‘IRS’ Phishing Scam: A Criminal Gang Is In Your Mailbox

By Jane Bryant Quinn | Oct 20, 2010 |

If an IRS warning suddenly pops up in your email, do not — repeat, not — click on the link. Trust me, the government isn’t reaching out to help you. You’re being phished, and not by a garden-variety spammer. You’re hearing from Avalanche, the largest and one of the most sophisticated criminal gangs on the Web.

I got a string of those “urgent” IRS messages this week, claiming that I’d made a paperwork mistake when I paid my tax. The headings read, “LAST NOTICE: We decline your Federal tax payment,” followed by an ID number. Or, “LAST NOTICE: The Identification Number used in the company identification field is not valid.”

The first message gave me pause. Who among us doesn’t hate to hear from the Internal Revenue Service? The email appeared to come from the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (ETFPS), which is the website you use when paying your income taxes online. I thought for a couple of seconds. Could I have made a tax mistake?

Then good sense took over. The IRS does not get in touch with taxpayers by email. It sends you one of those mean-looking envelopes with a lot of black type in the upper left-hand corner. I wriggled off the phish-hook and hit Delete.

To anyone caught by this scam, the news is bad. International e-crooks have stepped up their game, says Greg Aaron, director of domain security at Aflias, an internet infrastructure company. You’re at even greater risk than you thought.

A traditional phisher wants personal financial information. You might be told that a Federal Express package was misdirected or that there’s a question about your bank account. If you click, you’re sent to a second screen where you’re asked to “update” or “validate” your current data — your credit card number, Social Security number, or the number and password of your bank account. The second half of 2009 saw a record number of unique phishing attacks, reports Aaron, co-author of the Global Phishing Survey sponsored by the internet  industry’s Anti-Phishing Working Group. By now all but the most careless of consumers have caught on and refuse to play.     

Hence, the change in tactics. In place of traditional phishing, Avalanche and its copycats have seized on a dangerous piece of malware known as the Zeus banking Trojan. If you click on the link provided by the LAST NOTICE IRS email, you might be taken only to an innocuous information page. You’d read, delete, and move on to something else. During those few moments, however, the malware will zap itself into your machine.

You won’t even know that you’re harboring Zeus. But — like the Dementors in the Harry Potter stories — it’s sucking out your computer’s soul. It grabs the user names and passwords to the bank and mutual fund accounts that you manage online, and logs in to drain them dry. It sweeps up your address book, to spread itself to the computers of your contacts and friends. If you happen to be online with your bank when Zeus pops in, it will show you the real numbers while, in the background, it’s pulling money out.

If Zeus gets lucky, it finds computers with links to the accounts of small businesses, school districts, municipalities, colleges, or other institutions and drains them, too. Avalanche is also creating shortened links, to scam you through Twitter, too.

Zeus has been around for a while, Aaron says. The basic package — bought from criminal sites online — costs a few thousand dollars, plus extra for add-ons. What’s new is that Avalanche industrialized it, making it easy and fast to launch thousands of attacks, virtually all at once. The LAST NOTICE scam is the least of it.

The Anti-Phishing group has a single message for you. Don’t let your fingers fly over your email messages. Stop and think before you connect to any link. For example: Don’t open any business email that you’re not expecting. If you have a question, call or email the business yourself. Don’t call the number that the questionable email shows, it might misdirect you to the scammer’s line. If you email the business, check the address and type it into the URL line yourself, don’t copy-and-paste the address that the questionable notice shows.  

Zeus gets into Twitter, too — The group offers many more tips.

As  far as the blog, I have decided to have Tom write his Tips and Tricks for House/Home Maintenance   in a monthly format for easy searching . This way you can go to the month of year  or by category.  Seems logical and easy.   Here are some  recent photos of  Tom’s and my  current work.  He repaired an old antique clock frame in mahogany with a beaded trim piece he made to match and stained.   If you need small repairs on furniture, Tom Scott Interior Contractors can get your treasured items back in wood working order.

 His Tips and Tricks for Fall 2010 is in process and will get posted as soon as complete, please check back soon.

Tom repairing an antique clock for client 

Below:  Kenroy chandlelier, a new lighting line I carry with very reasonable priced fixtures for most  all lighting situations.

One of my favs

http://www.kenroyhome.com/

The client called for a color consultation initially, after a successful color selection she asked for window treatments for the  house. 

I had just come from the International  Window Coverings Expo in Atlanta, Ga and came up with some interesting treatments such as the Tableux faux iron screens in the clerestory windows which adds interest and covers up the unattractive vinyl white trim in the small windows.

 The job was started in June and completed in August and looks spectacular.  I will load the final installation  of the living room when I get the photos downloaded.

With a little searching, I final found an article that explains some of this techno garble to this right brained interior designer in a language I can understand. I thought it might be beneficial to share this with anyone that might stumble across my BLOG. Hopefully, other designers will find this and want to link into my page. Here is another article I found, (wow! there are so many when you start looking) of the 100 best SEO blogsthat I hope will help you to learn a little more of this mysterious world of the internet traffic flow and how to get it to your website.

By the way SEO stands for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION