Posts from — February 2008

Visibility on Search Engines

by elmot

How does really search engines rank your sites? The system with which search engines work is not really known, but there are some pointers that could help all of those who really want to make their site land in the upper strata of search engine results. Here are some of the pointers and in maximizing these, surely, the visibility of your site via the search engines will boosts.

1. Very important is the relevance of the content of your site. Finding a niche is a good pointer for starters.

2. The coherence of the topics and subject is also very important. Coherence of content gives focus to the site with which gives also a focus for search engines. A scattered and sporadic content will just steer away the search engine from your site. Focus is in the site is important.

3. The content are also evaluated according to its relevance. Put relevance to your site’s content and try to go away from having generic content.

4. Have the design, and inter-linking of the site well-organized.

5. Have lots of incoming and inbound links from other websites relevant to your sites. More importantly, these sites should have a well-established credibility in the field.

6. Put a focused label and tags on your site. Repetitive tag words in the content also maximizes its visibility and ranking in the search engines, but of course, do not overdo.

7. Put relevant outgoing links to your site

February 12, 2008 No Comments

My Everyday God

by elmot

I have moments of silence too. This is the time when after being so talkative and bombarded by so many noises and distractions around me, I find myself in the solace and comfort of reflective silence that strengthens me and replenishes the depth that I need each day.

There was a photographer who wandered from one place to another searching for the most beautiful of people, scenery and culture to capture on his lens. Everytime that he will see a beautiful subject, he ends up saying, â€ there is a more beautiful subject to capture than this.â€ And there, once again wandered in search of the most beautiful subject to capture on his lens.

Eventually, the photographer got tired and old, ran out of money and found himself sitting in a lowly street near a market place. As he sat in hunger, and an untidy little boy out of the blue sat beside him and opened a conversation. Both had a good time sharing their different stories. In the end, the boy just ran away. The photographer now old and hungry felt sad being alone and felt asleep. Then someone woke him up and he saw the little boy with some bread in his hand.
Teardrops ran from his worn out cheeks for there he saw and â€œfeltâ€ the most beautiful subject in life.

So many people long for a higher power, a being bigger than themselves especially the young. I can see this longing everyday in them but most of them find the food for their longing in different gloomy corners of shallow materialistic shops of today. In this searching, they find different answers and expressions of it. There are those who find it in power, others in fame, while others on wealth. However, these things only make them even more restless and craving even more and more to something that could fill the void inside. Their hunger and thirst grow even deeper and so resort to having more and more, but time and again find themselves still in the middle of the void universe.

While some people think they can fill this void through material greatness and excess, others are surely convinced that they can find this higher being in a trully spiritual encounter. However, sometimes these people tend to long for supernatural and mystical encounters getting blind of beautiful realities that bloom around them everyday. Longing for these supernaturals lead them to become superstitious and so losses their grip to the true essense of their longing that make them also long for this more and more and more, associating every event in life to be also supernatural and mystical encounters and events.

Whatever people call this higher being – which for many and me is God, thus a higher Being – truth is, this Being is ever-present at our palm, is at our reach. God is constantly working in our everyday lives and sweetly felt, not is mystical encounters, not in the parting of the sea nor in the dancing of the sun, but in sweet and gentle flowering of buds in the morning, the gentle kiss of the mist in our skin, the smiles of our neighbor and the simplicity of good works that we do and we receive from others. God is an everyday God. This is the beauty of simplicity and contentment, filling the void with the food that really fills our hunger.

Like everyone else in this world, I am also longing and craving for something/someone to fill my hunger. I traveled the different roads looking for this higher Being to fill me but along the way I forgot to even stop and look at the beautiful view along the way. I am still traveling but now I carry with me some morsels of wisdom that I learned along the way to make my journey sweeter.

In my everyday experiences of simple encounters I find strength, joy and gladness in my everyday God. How about you?

February 11, 2008 No Comments

Ilonggo/Hiligaynon Language: Learning the Sweet Vocabulary

by elmot

Ilonggos are fond of different expressions and many people are quite confused whenever they hear Ilonggos speak though they are known to be very sweet kind of people. Two years ago, my Ilocano friend in the seminary went with me and spent his summer vacation in my humble province. Little did I know that he was very excited to spend his vacation in Bacolod because my bestfriend is already his girlfriend and its their first time to see each other! And only then that I discovered, what an idiot I am!

Anyway, when he was there, he was amazed by the way Ilonggos speak. People are always smilling but he always got confused whenever people are having a sour face yet speaking still in a sweet and gentle tone to his fellow. He cannot really differentiate an angry Ilonggo from a cordial Ilonggo. He would then brush me aside and ask me if ever people are angry or not. Even in our house, when my mother scold my younger sisters, she would yell at them with tiger eyes yet her tone is as meek as lamb. Because of the gentle tone of our language, even being angry sounds sweet for non-Ilonggo who hears us speak. For sure husbands who are already fed up with their nagging wives would love to have Ilonggo wives nagging at them sweetly this time around. Wives will nag you sweetly why you arrived late, or why are you drunk again, or have kissmarks. Maybe this is also why my father liked my mother because despite my mother nagging him whenever he arrives late at night, she nags him in a sweet loving tone.

Some Ilonggo/Hiligynon words and expressions worth learning:

ambot - I don’t know

ga/pangga – dear/love

basi – maybe

tuod? – really?

nami – beautiful

namit – delicious

law-ay – ugly

namit – delicious

indi- no

didto – there

diri – here

tuo – right

wala – left

tig-a – hard

humok – soft

tam-is – sweet

February 8, 2008 1 Comment

Blog/Site Directories

by elmot

Since I cannot really post everything in just one post and for the convenience of those who want to utulize these sites, you can be more easily guided by the labels. You can go to toptankblog.com also for more articles regarding marketing your sites.
Here is the other part of the list:

Plazoo
http://www.plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp

Portal.eatonweb
http://portal.eatonweb.com/add.php

Postami
http://www.postami.com/rss.finder/submit_feed.php

Pressradar
http://www.pressradar.com/suggest

Rateitall
http://www.rateitall.com/suggest.aspx?WL=0&TopicID=20004

ReadAblog
http://www.readablog.com/AddFeed.aspx

Redtram
http://www.redtram.com/pages/addsource/

Search4Rss
http://www.search4rss.com

Small Business Blog Directory
http://blogsforsmallbusiness.com/directory/add.html

SmallBusiness.com
http://smallbusiness.com/wiki/Weblog_directory_company_blogs

Strategic Board
http://strategicboard.com/?s=h:addblog

Syndic8
http://www.syndic8.com/suggest_start.php

Tailrank
http://www.tailrank.com/import

Technorati
http://www.technorati.com/ping.html

Topix
http://www.topix.net/member/register

TruthLaidBear
http://www.truthlaidbear.com/addtoscan.php

Wilsdomain
http://www.wilsdomain.com/blogs/wilsdomain9b.php?op=newsubmit

Yahoo.com
http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/my/cgi_rss_submission

February 8, 2008 No Comments

Importance of Submitting Your Blog/s to Site Directories

by elmot

Another way of maximizing your visibility over the net is the great opportunity that web directories an blog submission sites offer. Most web directories come for free while others are for a couple of dollars with specified length of time like say your paid registration is for 2 months. Generally, these to kinds of directories are giving the same benefits like traffic but the latter gives a more sure way of traffic boost to your site/s. There different of directories too, others exclusively for blogs while other for technology and health site directories. (you can browse over my previous posts for the lists of different directories)

Though we have search engines that also give rank to your site, directories also gives an equally important contribution in marketing your site over the web.

Why submitting your site to directories important?

The importance of submitting your website to web directories is first and foremost that directories are already web-established in the realm of search engines over the net. Sites submitted and accepted on these directories had already validated the sites and had already reviewed its contentâ€™s significance and uniqueness. Thus, the search engines would at least crawl first to your site than other sites with the same topic.

Secondly, submitting your sites to web directories gives your site more visibility over the net and thus, increases traffic to your site. Web directories are usual place for people to visit when searching for specific sites rather than the search engines. Being linked on these directories also boosts the credibility of your site as a source and authority on different topics. Being so, the system of web directories itself boosts lots of direct traffic to your site.

February 7, 2008 1 Comment

Aboy’s Restaurant; A Story of Dedication of a Bacolod City Restaurant

by elmot

Bacolod City is not only known for its sweet delicacies but also delicious food accompanied by success stories. Here is one of the so many rags-to-riches episodes in the life of Bacolod.Â And this is one Bacolod Restaurant you should not miss.

“A popular eating place for tourists in Bacolod City for the past 11 years is Aboy’s Restaurant, which is famous for its grilled blue marlin and such other specialties as squid fat, tuna sisig, pork sisig, and grilled mushrooms. The 1,464 sq m restaurant, which has been designed to look like a mansion, has four function rooms that can accommodate as many as 120 to 150 customers at any one time. On a typical day, it serves an average of 500 diners and gets one or two bookings for its function rooms. It is a successful business in every wayâ€”a labor of love by a former pharmaceutical salesman who started it in 1992 as a small carinderia (eatery) with bare soil as flooring.

Nestor Evaristo, now 49, had put up Aboy’s Restaurant the hard way. After being assigned in Bacolod for 10 years as a salesman for United Laboratories, he found life in the city to his liking and decided to stay there for good. Thus, when the company reassigned him to Manila in 1992, he decided to quit and go into business on his own in Bacolod and put up a Bacolod restaurant. He thought that it would be easier to run a business in Bacolod considering that he and his family had already lived there for 10 years during his assignment.

Before he could put up a business, however, the Evaristos had already used up his P80,000 separation pay from Unilab. To make ends meet while still thinking up a suitable business, Evaristo peddled polvoron, fishball, and whatever sellable product he could lay his hands on, while his wife, Rodelia, sold insurance plans. Then one day, Evaristo chanced upon a vacant lot along Burgos St. near the public market. Since he was used to doing home cooking, he instinctively thought of putting up a carinderia on that spot. The problem was that he did not have the capital for it. “I therefore pawned my Volkswagen for P28,000 to raise the money,” he recalls. As it turned out, the amount he got was just enough for the construction of a kubo (nipa hut) made of coco lumber and for the other start-up expenses. Through sheer determination, however, the Evaristos somehow managed to put up their carinderia. Success comes from good marketing, good pricing, and personalized service to customers

To get started in the business, the Evaristos served only typical carinderia fare like menudo and mechado. They thought that these dishes would be suitable for the drivers and sales agents who were their target customers. They were wrong; hardly any of their target customers liked or bought their food offerings. It was then that the Evaristos decided to serve sinugba (grilled food), the native Ilonggo dish. It was to become their carinderia’s specialty, but at that time, even with its introduction, all that the couple could attract was an average of 20 customers a dayâ€”hardly enough to make the business a going concern. Worse, they could not serve dinner because the place was so dark and the carinderia could remain open for business only from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

The Evaristos thus found themselves in a serious quandary. Their carinderia was not making any profit at all; out of its daily capital outlay of P1,000, it was grossing only P500 because half of the dishes were just going to waste. Thus, for three months, just to keep the business afloat and be able to pay their helpers, the Evaristos had to pawn their belongings one after another. Evaristo tried to get a loan from the banks but to no avail. “That’s the sad reality of starting a business,” he says. “No bank would want to help you because you don’t have a credit history and a track record.”

As a last resort, Evaristo decided to reinvent his menu and to come up with a market buzz for his restaurant. He did tests to determine what dishes would sell, then improved the taste of those dishes. He also did several sales gimmicks: one was to give out discount coupons through taxi drivers, and the other to ask for the business cards of his customers. “The taxi drivers didn’t get anything from our 15 percent discount coupons but some of the passengers who received them would give the drivers a tip in appreciation,” he says.

After a week of the coupon distribution effort, more customers came to eat at Aboy’s. In fact, the word of mouth became so effective that even prominent people in Iloilo started coming to the place to eat. It was at this point that the Evaristos decided that Rodelia should take charge of the financials of the business, and that Nestor should devote his time to cooking and serving.

Evaristo says that his idea of collecting business cards from customers also proved very effective in creating customer awareness for Aboy’s. It got started when on a whim, he asked his customers for their business cards, which he then posted on the wall of the restaurant as keepsakes. This routine became so well-established that the clients themselves started freely posting their business cards on the wall. After collecting hundreds of the business cards, Evaristo decided to classify them according to industry as a reference for his customersâ€”an extra service that Aboy’s soon became very well known for.

Six months after, buoyed up by the success of its marketing initiatives, Aboy’s started enjoying brisk business and the Evaristos recovered their initial investment in the restaurant. Then, sometime in 1995, a representative of Allied Bank knocked at their door offering them a loan. The couple decided to borrow P4.8 million from the bank to expand their restaurant business. They used the loan to buy a P3-million lot at Liroville Subdivision, at the back of the Golden Field Commercial Complex in Bacolod, then built a 120-seater restaurant worth P1.8 million on it.

With a daily average of 300 to 350 customers dining at their new restaurant during peak seasons, the Evaristos did very well and were able to fully repay their bank loan in 2000. At this point, Evaristo began to further improve and standardize his recipes as well as focus more intensely on the quality of Aboy’s food preparation and customer service. “Our trade secret does not lie on my recipes alone but on a combination of many factors, particularly the kind of service my crew gives to our customers and our being hands-on in running the business,” he says. In 2005, the Evaristos took a P9 million loan from the BPI Family Bank, then another P5 million in 2006, to further expand the capacity of Aboy’s restaurant to 500 seats. They also added more restaurant facilities and hired a bigger crew to further improve their customer service.

Today, Aboy’s has a total of 75 employees, 12 of whom work in the kitchen, six in the grilling area, and the rest in the restaurant floor to serve the diners. However, Evaristo has made it standard practice to require all of the restaurant employees to be at the dining area during lunchtime so they can all serve the customers. “Cook ka man or accountant, basta lunch time, you have to serve,” he says.

The Evaristos attribute the success of their restaurant to good marketing, good pricing, and personalized service to customers. “Paminsan-minsan nga, pinapayungan ko pa ang customers, minsan ipinagda-drive ko sila kapag walang makuhang taxi o kapag nahihirapan silang makabalik sa kanilang hotel [Sometimes, I even have to walk our customers with our umbrella, and at times I drive for them when they couldn't get a taxi or when they find it so difficult to get back to their hotel].”

Even as the competition gets stiffer with the opening of more Manila-based grill restaurants in Iloilo, the Evaristos are very confident that Aboy’s Restaurant can hold its own because of its key success secrets. Recently, in fact, Aboy’s opened its business for franchising under the guidance of RK Consultancy, having decided to make its well-loved food specialties even more widely available to the dining public.”

When in Bacolod, don’t forget to make a stop at Aboy’s Restaurant and have a taste of food from the Ilonggo kitchen.

CONTACT DETAILS

ABOY’S RESTAURANT

Liroville Subd., Bacolod City

Telephone: (034) 435-0760; (034) 435-2340

(Article from Entrepreneur.com.ph)

February 5, 2008 No Comments

List of Blog/Site Directories

by elmot

I was browsing through the web looking for blog directories and submission sites and I stumbled upon this site toprankblog.com and all the lists are there for one to utilize. The blog sites on their list they say will be of great help to make your blogs work for you through these links and submission urls or blog directories. I discovered that others are for free while some cost you a couple of dollars. Despite some amount to pay, some of these sites could greatly increase traffic in your blogsites which also make it more visible for SEOs to find…and of course, if your are monetizing your blogs, earn well. Hope these sites helps to all those looking for blog directories and try to visit toprankblog.com too for more how-to’s on marketing your blogs and websites.

Here is the list of blog submission sites of directories:

2Rss
http://www.2rss.com/index.php

About.com

http://weblogs.about.com/library/nosearch/blsubmit.htm

All-Blogs.net

http://www.all-blogs.net/submit.php

Answers

http://www.answers.com/main/new_blogger.jsp

BOTW Blog Directory
http://blogs.botw.org/helpcenter/submitblog.aspx

Blawg

http://blawg.org/modules.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=AddLink

Blogcode
http://www.blogcode.com/signup.php

Blogarama
http://www.blogarama.com/add-a-site/

Blogbib

http://www.blogbib.com/submit.php

Blogbunch

http://www.blogbunch.com/suggest/

BlogCatalog
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/submit_blog.html

Blogdigger

http://blogdigger.com/add.jsp

Blogflux

http://www.blogflux.com/add.php

Bloggernity
http://www.bloggernity.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi

Bloghop

http://www.bloghop.com/account/index.htm

Bloghub

http://www.bloghub.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi

Blogintro
http://blogintro.com/?page_id=925

Bloglisting
http://www.bloglisting.com/addablog.html

BlogMap
http://www.csthota.com/blogmap/submit.aspx

BlogPulse

http://www.blogpulse.com/submit.html

Blog-search
http://www.blog-search.com/blog-submission.html

Blogtopsites

http://www.blogtopsites.com/register.php

Bloguniverse

http://www.bloguniverse.com/radlinks/

Blogz

http://www.sarthak.net/blogz/add.php

BoingBoing
http://boingboing.net/suggest.html

Bulletize

http://www.bulletize.com/add.php?sid=0

Chordata

http://chordata.info/suggest.php

ContentsMatter
http://www.contentsmatter.com/add.php

Crayon
http://www.crayon.net/using/suggest.html

Diarist

http://www.diarist.net/

EastonWeb
http://portal.eatonweb.com/add.php

Feeds4all

http://www.feeds4all.com/AddRSS.aspx

Feedage
http://www.feedage.com/submit.php

Feedboy

http://www.feedboy.com/

FeedsFarm

http://www.feedsfarm.com/a.html

FindingBlog
http://findingblog.com/add_blog.php?cat=

FyberSearch

http://www.fybersearch.com/add-url.php

GeekPhilisopher

http://geekphilosopher.com/MainPage/gpBlogLinkAdd.php

Globeofblogs

http://www.globeofblogs.com/register.php

Gobignetwork
https://www.gobignetwork.com/blog/AddBlog.aspx

iBlog Business Directory

http://www.iblogbusiness.com/add.html

Icerocket

http://www.icerocket.com/c?p=addblog

Industry-blogs
http://www.industry-blogs.com/submit.php

Kiosken

http://www.esperanto.se/kiosk/engindex.html

LSBlogs

http://www.lsblogs.com/howtosubmit.php

NewsGator
http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/Folksonomy.aspx

February 2, 2008 No Comments

Posts from — February 2008

Visibility on Search Engines

My Everyday God

Ilonggo/Hiligaynon Language: Learning the Sweet Vocabulary

Blog/Site Directories

Importance of Submitting Your Blog/s to Site Directories

Aboy’s Restaurant; A Story of Dedication of a Bacolod City Restaurant

List of Blog/Site Directories

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