James Cave

“At the age of 19 Daniel Rigby was converted to Christianity. After being stood up by Jesus every Sunday for two years he dumped him. This is the post-natal confession of a lapsed Born-Again.”

Listed as one of the best shows to see in Edinburgh’s festival, I was really looking forward to seeing Daniel Rigby in action. Afterbirth, it seemed, had the makings of a great standup show.

Unfortunately the show didn’t live up to expectations. It did get a few laughs, but given the subject matter – especially coming from someone who actually had proper experience, I had expected an indepth bashing of modern Christianity from someone who had stood behind the seasons.

Rigby did touch on a few elements of his experience within the charismatic Christian movement, but even then these jokes were lacking in vigour and depth.

Religion is just one of those topics that has been overdone. Like masturbation, drugs, legalizing weed and so forth. There was perhaps a time when slating religion – particularly Christianity – was new, taboo and exciting. Today it’s essentially preaching to the converted with jokes that have been done way too many times.

One man who really knows how to bash the bible and Christianity for all its worth is George Carlin. R.I.P. to a comic legend.

Although surprising, it isn’t often that you see a SEO case study. Most people are content to read SEOmoz, maybe Matt Cutt’s blog and then call themselves experts. Sad but true.

Every now and then however, you do run across people who actually test – and share – what works and base their information off of that.

One person I’ve been following a lot of for the past few months is ipopbb on Blackhatworld. For the past few months – and even before that I believe – he’s been tracking how much attention Google is paying to each of the following title tags.

Now, there’s no point in running out and copying everything you see in this post. The data changes quite dramatically month on month, however if you were to take six months of data and graph it, you would be able to see which things are sticking and could then focus on them.

Ranking Results

RANK	CHANGE		TEST
1	u + 5		title
2	u + 11		samp
3	u + 7		cite
4	u + 4		pre
5	      		textarea
6	d - 2		table > caption
7	u + 21		bdo
8	u + 1		sub
9	u + 28		abbr
10	d - 3		h3
11	d - 9		dl > dt > dd
12	d - 11		linking to relevant pages
13	new   		code
14	u + 3		table > tr > td
15	u + 24		dl > dt
16	d - 4		s
17	d - 14		body
18	      		del
19	u + 14		strike
20	u + 24		ins
21	d - 1		sup
22	u + 20		big
23	u + 2		kbd
24	u + 16		font
25	d - 1		dfn
26	u + 15		tt
27	d - 4		h1
28	u + 7		i
29	u + 1		u
30	d - 16		(meta-description).value
31	      		html comment
32	d - 5		(input-input).value
--	was 32		strong
--	was 34		(meta-author).value
--	was 43		b
--	was 15		(meta-keywords).value
--	was 22		h5
--	was 21		h4
--	was 38		a.href
--	was 29		img.alt
--	was 16		table > tfoot > tr > td
--	was 11		acronym
--	was 36		small
--	was 19		q
--	was 26		select > option

Running Your Own Tests

So how would one go about setting up a test like this for themselves? Take a phrase that has absolutely no competition and use that phrase on 30+ different pages each one wrapped in a different tag. Then do a search for that phrase a few weeks later and begin tracking the results.

Of course having one website isn’t enough, it’s worth testing this on several different sites to compare the results.

This is just a very simply way of doing things, but a good starting block.

In a previous post, I briefly mentioned that DGM had gone into administration.

Following a letter from the administrators, it looks like they are going to continue trading, which is quite a positive turn. Of course – as far as I know – the administration only affects the UK, other countries are continuing to trade, although things are probably feeling a bit shaky over there, all things considered.

Affiliates are now being asked for records of money owed and agreements between the two companies, so things are looking positive, or at least more positive than they were earlier on in the week.

It’s something that has been happening for a while. First bouncing cheques, then failed BACS transfers. While many people thought this was just a simple mistake (DGM had apologised saying the accounts had been frozen for tax reasons), looking back it was obvious what was happening.

So what went wrong? At this point it’s hard to say and DGM have yet to contact affiliates to explain the situation. There had been some rumours in a few of the forums that this was going to happen, but it wasn’t until yesterday that any official announcement was made.

Most importantly what will happen to affiliates chasing money? Again, it’s impossible to know at this point and all that can be done is to hold onto paperwork relating to owed sales and watch out for any communication from the administrators.

So I’m gradually putting together the ultimate running playlist. A lot of the songs listed have no lyrical merit but are great to have on your iPod when running. In fact having songs that are only used for running isn’t a bad thing. It means you only associate them with running/working out, unlike the songs you would also listen to for pleasure.

I think it’s necessary to break up the list into genres, Hip Hop, Dance and running/walking related tunes. This is a work in progress, so if you have any suggestions please let me know.

Hip Hop Running Tunes

Black Eyed Peas – Pump It
Eminem – Till I Collapse
Fat Joe – Lean Back
DJ Laz – Move Shake Drop
Fort Minor – Remember The Name
Eminem – Lose Yourself
Eminem – Toy Soldiers

Dance Running Tunes

Fatboy Slim – Right Here, Right Now
Riverside – Sydney Samson
DJ Desciple – Work it out (K Klass remix)
Move Your Love on Me – Dance Nation
No Stress – Laurent Wolf
Starstruck – 3Oh3 ft Katy Perry
Blow your Mind – Lock and Load
As I rise Again – Dj Alex K
Baby Baby – Sunblock
Fragma – Toca Miracle
It’s Like That – Run DMC
Love Shy – Kristine Blonde

(from Yahoo Answers)

Running-Related or Classic Workout Tunes

Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run
Aerosmith – Walk This Way
Proclaimers – 500 Miles
U2 – Where The Streets Have No Name
Survivor – Eye of The Tiger

I need a rock playlist, that’s coming soon.

After putting it off for a long time, I’ve just started reading Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide To Adwords. Reading and gradually learning more and more about PPC, has led me to find a number of creative uses of Adwords outside of the traditional PPC usage.

Adwords To Get A Job

Struggling to get a job? Finding one – especially in a big, reputable company – can be very difficult at the moment. Alec Browstein, a senior copywriter at Young & Rubicam, a creative ad agency in New York found himself in this position.

Whilst searching for his favourite creative directors, Browstein noticed that no adverts were being displayed next to the names. Realising these creative directors would probably be Googling their names quite frequently, he ran an advert for just a few cents that read:

“Hey, [creative director's name]: Goooogling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too” alecbrownstein.com

Over the following months Browstein received calls from all but one of the creative directors and eventually landed himself his dream job after receiving job offers from two company. Cost of the campaign $6

Adwords To Decide A Book Title

Although we hear more and more about the print industry going into decline as more and more print publishers struggle to comprehend what this new internet thing is, one author took the initiative to choose a book title using Adwords.

After being told by Wallmart that his previous title “Drug dealing for fun and profit” was by no means acceptable, Tim Ferris ran an adwords campaign to test several titles and subtitles for his new book. Split testing the campaign allowed him to see which of the titles brought the greatest clickthroughrate, something which has no doubt helped in the growth and success of his printed book.

Adwords Using Cultural Relevance

While most shoe makers and retailer will typically bid on ‘buyer keywords’ such as ‘converse shoes’, ‘buy converse shoes’ – e.g. the most relevant and sale-likely keywords – Converse decided to do things differently, bidding on keywords that were in no way relevant but allowed them to connect into the teen market.

Keywords bid on included ‘how to deal with a bully’, ‘very cheap valentines day ideas’, ‘out of your league girl’. Rather than selling them shoes, Converse used the opportunity to connect with teens on a branding level.

A full list of the converse campaign websites can be seen here.

Although I’m loath to turn this into an online diary, there are occasions when a few personal stories are called for. Last week was one such occasion, leaving me with quite a few personal memories, one of them I’m still pretty shocked by.

Monday is one of my swimming days, something I’m trying to get into at lunchtime during the week. Although it’s taken me a few weeks to learn to breathe at the appropriate places and not drink too much water, I’m getting there and am really starting to notice a difference – both in technique and fitness.

So, given my noteworthy development in this sport, I was feeling quite happy about the prospect of going for a swim, something I’d been looking forward to all weekend. That was of course until I saw this.

There’s bad parenting and then there’s the kind of parenting that’s just impossible to categorise.Walking along the street, Oliver – a guy I often go swimming with – and I saw a little boy take a dump on the pavement outside of a cafe.

Pretty disgusting right? Well, this is in Leith – not one of the nicest areas in Edinburgh – and so you often let a lot of things like this slide. Even still, we were still quite shocked to see this, especially outside of a cafe where there are toilets, toilet paper, and all of those other modern day luxuries we have become so accustomed to.

What was more surprising however, upon quickly turning around, was the mother standing there napkins in hand as if she was taking her dog out for a walk.

I’ve been left puzzled as to why the cafe toilets were not good enough (and a footpath better), but far be it from me to question other people’s parenting techniques.

If you believe there’s a separation between humans and dogs and would like to see less of this activity in Leith, you can sign up at http://www.weloveleith.com/