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In the beginning Google used "trust" to judge and rank a page. This trust was emphasized by the age of a link or site. Older, more trusted links and sites were ranked higher. This helped combat against new sites spamming links to improve site rankings. The major problem was that this system did not address new content. New pages that were legit were at a severe disadvantage in that they did not have trust built up with the Google algorithm. So users who sought new data about a subject might be bombarded with old irrelevant data. This issue came to its zenith when Google finance was launched and it did not rank for its own name. Enter QDF...

QDF stands for Query Deserves Freshness and is a new model Google added to reward activity with a certain topic. Freshness is used to describe how many recently created or changed pages are included in a search. This is the center of a huge search debate. Is it better to rank fresh information or a time tested page? In the past Google gave precedence to older pages.

QDF revolves around determining if a topic is "hot". If blogs and news sites are publishing lots of new content about a specific topic QDF will determine if this topic is what users want to view. QDF is basically a measure of global enthusiasm for a topic. The QDF model takes a number of factors into account:

• search volume
• news coverage
• blog coverage
• toolbar data (maybe)

Google has a patent on the QDF methods. It gathers data including a sampling technique that allows them to gather statistically accurate data without having to trawl through all the logs for a particular query.

I learned how to make neat half-tone patterns in Photoshop this week. Here is a step by step guide on how to create neat halftone textures. I will assume you already know how to open Photoshop and make simple operations within Photoshop.

Step 1: Open Photoshop and make a new document about 600x600 pixels. Create a new blank layer.

Step 2: Select the Brush Tool and make one dot in the center size 100 with 50% hardness.

You might have found that some of the images that have been inserted have the issue of running up the edges of content or words.

To give the image and content the proper amount of spacing we’ll have to inform the editor that there will need to be spacing placed between these two items.

To do this, just follow these steps:

1. Inside a Joomla! article select an image from the files or upload a new image.
2. Once selected you can choose the “edit CSS style” button, and a window with different options will appear.
3. Inside the window click the tab that reads ”Box” and under this tab is a section labeled “Margin”
4. Inside the section labeled “Margin” uncheck the “same for all" box. Now the other options below this box will become available.
5. Inside these now available sections is where you can put in the spacing that you desire to have between images and content (I find that pixels work best).
6. Once you believe that you have found the correct amount of spacing click the “update" button inside the window. Make sure to apply and save all changes.

The image will now have a space where the content used to run up against its edges. If you feel the need to take away or add space, you can by repeating the previous steps. Let me know if it works for you.

A big part of SEO is balancing your site to meet the needs of both machines and humans. Using web standards compliant code will make your site truly optimized for both users.

For the most part sites has two main visitors. First, there are machines or robots that scan your site and index your code. These "bots" are used to rank your site on search engine result pages. If code is not written to follow web standards it can confuse robots and hurt your search ranking. Second, there are human visitors that expect to see meaningful well organized content. Websites must be designed for both of these unique users.

It is best to avoid creating a "hostile" environment for human visitors. Create useful and nice looking pages so human visitors return. Avoid spamming links or having content that looks "spammy". Write sentences that make sense and organize your information in a meaningful and logical structure. This means making the main idea of a page in H1 and the sub ideas in H2s and H3s. Place all regular text inside P tags. To improve on this it is important to include B tags around keywords, but remember to not bold too many words. If too many words are bold then your page is not human friendly.

Including meaningful lists also improves ranking using ULs and LIs in your HTML. The bots prioritize the information on these list higher than normal text inside P tags. Here too, you will have to balance for the human visitors. If a site has spam lists with 25 bullet items, human visitors to the site will be quick to hit the back button. Make lists short, keyword rich, and meaningful to your content and visitors.

Proper H tags are essential to proper and efficient SEO. With SEO, I like to think that there is a little Zen involved. In Zen it is said enlightenment can be attained through meditation, self-contemplation, and intuition. So to, can you apply these to SEO to create "finder friendly" sites.

The "old school" mentality about H1 tags was that they were bad for searchability. The problem was that they had multiple H1s on a page so in fact changing them to H2s helped, but that is because they broke the cardinal H1 rule, only place one H1 tag per page. Designers would say to replace all H1s with H2s to improve your Google searchability. If you took all those pages where people used nothing but H2s and placed in one carefully thought out H1 with those H2s then your page would be even more search friendly. With even a little thought or mediation on the subject many would have seen the variables that they left out in their H1 and H2 equations.

Like a book, SEO is about self-contemplation. If you understand what looks good to humans then you will have a good SEO base. SEO is like a book - the title tags are the cover, the H1 tags are the title page inside the cover, H2 and H3 tags are like the chapter headings and the P tags are the content of the book. Books are structured logically for humans to understand. If you understand what is structurally good for yourself and humans then you will know a good sound base for SEO. Imagine opening a book and finding the inside title page is on every page and that there are no chapters and no story or content in the book except the title page. That is a very ugly book (web page).

The above also plays into intuition. You just have to look at your site and go for proper, well structured content. There is no cheating the system. When people cheat the system they end up cheating themselves because they are not building intuitive sites that are easy for the viewer to use. Real SEO is built on good content and hard work.

I have been asked to explain what makes a good blog post, or at least how to effectively blog, write well, SOMETHING to help with bloggers' issues. What style, format, length, etc. is appropriate? And for which situation? I intend to touch on a few things in order to point the lost in the right direction.

What to Blog About?

What moves you? Or what do you think will move other people? What is useful? What is relevant? What is interesting? If you don't know the answer to any of those questions, then don't try. Fitting any of those categories can be enough to qualify, but without that qualification, you have made your post a burden and an annoyance. News, tips, and personal thoughts are all perfectly acceptable as long as they fit with one of those questions.

What Format?

Aside from a few exceptions, begin with some sort of introductory paragraph or sentence. This keeps readers from wasting their time, so they know if they've found exactly what they're looking for. Whether you make it epic or to-the-point is completely up to you. Either is fine.

This all depends on the content, but just be logical. If you are sharing a short story you came up with, write in traditional format. Most posts, like news will be similar. Break sections and use headings properly. Before you begin think about what pieces of the post go together well and clump them accordingly. If you list features, use bullets. Number instructions. If you have a big quote, block it out.

There are many times when for one reason or another I need to have Internet Explorer on my Mac. For the longest time I thought the only way was to use Boot Camp or Virtualization until recently I discovered IES4OSX.

IES4OSX allows you to install a few different versions of the Internet Explorer (currently pre IE7) on your Mac and a few popular browser plug-ins. We have had varying amounts of success with it but for the most part it proves to be a viable alternative to Virtualization or Boot Camp if you just need IE6 for testing designs or for sites that require Internet Explorer.

Every one knows that a picture is worth a thousand words. But for a webpage an image can turn a bland page into an incredibly illustrated website. This tip will help with uploading and inserting an image into your webpage.

To do this, just follow these steps:

1. Start off in the back end of Joomla! Open the article manager then open the article you wish to edit.
2. Click the “image” button at the bottom left and a window will come up.
3. Click on the “browse file” button and options such as my documents and desktops will appear.
4. Find the image whether in a folder or on the desktop and choose the “select” button. The browse file box will close. Once closed, click on the “start upload” button. This will place the image into the image directory folder.
5. Scroll through the images, which are in alphabetical order and the uploaded image, will be inside the image directory.
6. Once the image has been located, click the insert button at the top right.
7. The picture will be placed inside the backend of Joomla! From here the image can be aligned, turned into a link and so-forth. Make sure to apply and save.
8. Go and refresh the live page to see the uploaded image.

Let me know if it works for you.

You might want to add a link to another page or another website inside one of your content items.

To do this, just follow these steps:

1. Inside the backend of a Joomla! article, highlight the content that you would like to become a link.
2. Click on the link button; a window with different options will come up.
3. The first empty box should read ”Link URL”. This is where you should type in the address you would like the link to take visitors to.
4. For now we will leave the other options on the window alone. Click the insert button at the bottom left corner and this will make the highlighted content from step one a blue font.
5. Click the save button at the top right of Joomla! Once saved the page should relocate to the Article Manager.
6. Now on the live webpage, refresh and scroll the mouse over where the link should appear. A fingernail should appear, which means that the content has been turned into a link.
7. Click on the link and it should open up a window with the address that was typed into Link URL in step 4.

Let me know if it works for you.

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.” - Benjamin Franklin. This famous quote states that there is no good luck, but that luck is the result of diligence and hard work. This is something we took to heart in creating PoeticEstates.com. PoeticEstates.com is a sample website for an imaginary Realtor, Sally Newcastle.

We built this site to showcase what we can deliver in a website for realtors and real estate developers. We want clients to know what services we are able to deliver, specifically for those in the real estate industry, as well as how those services can be beneficial and increase ROI.

A personal realtor web site built by Poetic Systems can feature:

• The ability to display realtor pictures and add personal touches
• An easily managed blog that will keep search engines crawling the site
• Fully customizable colors and layouts
• The essential MLS database search engine
• Fully functioning mortgage calculators as well as other financial calculators and services
• A personalized contact page that can automatically email the site owner
• Fully customizable email addresses
• Special featured home modules
• And many more options

We hope PoeticEstates.com will better enable realtors to envision what their own site could be like. We welcome visitors to check out PoeticEstates.com and enjoy the site's many features. Please remember that this is only the surface and that the sky is the limit as far as what we can create for our clients.