Translator's Ravings

holy moley, fantastic-arooni!!

> http://lumberdatabasedirectory.kenax.net/

not really sure what this is, doesn’t seem to have anything with me? (stupid question?)

* trying to figure out how to best respond to your Hotmail formatting so have copied into Word then back again, and using a star.
That was just the first index.html page I found and for the purpose of waiting until the subdomain percolated through the web’s DNS, or something like that. Took a couple of hours and needed some index file there to see once it became alive. Eventually I’ll convert the html file to php, as I like to, and then add some script to change the entry page on a regular basis (fresh and sexy again). Perhaps you could rummage this through your mind occasionally until you figure out a good thing to automatically update it. Such as the “French quote of the day” as I have on my F2E page. It rotates through the list every day and I have about 30, so google would never be able to compare it against its cash to see that it’s rotating through some list and always the same – it will always seem like new content. Alternatively, perhaps I could hook into some external database so that it will always show the day’s latest lumber prices or something. Or it could hook up to the actual database and display the number of registered users, as I see you update that from time to time. I do the same for my translationpayments.com page, showing how many users there are and the number of comments etc. Since I get about three new people registering every day, this automatically updates the page and keeps it changing.

> http://lumberdatabasedirectory.kenax.net/WP/

super awesome! this is a crazy blast-from-the-past . . . I can see in the future it becoming a really valuable tool, people will see their own names in there as sources and stuff, their own companies and what happened, . . .. etc.

* I found that my most successful pages would also connect OUT. So what you could consider is special outlinks from certain text. As usual, it is always best to link out from important keywords, so perhaps occasionally from the word lumber to some important lumber page which is high on google. In WP I would have to do this manually, so perhaps you could put the link in <brackets> to the right of the word(s) you want to link out from and instruct me this when you send me the file. Otherwise, if you do not link out occasionally to important, third party pages, google sort of perceives the site as a selfish dead end and does not value it as much.

> – tell me what wording you want, such as what to replace “old reports” with

I like “Old Reports”. i don’t really want Madison’s name on there, for sure for now until I see what kind of interest/traffic it gets. You can change it to “Lumber Market Archives” or something like that if you think the description should be more official-sounding.

* Okay, just give me a complete list of suggestions and I’ll implement them.

> – I can remove the Polls on the left hand side, or you can replace them with your
> own poll(s). Let me know the details/questions.

are the polls automatically generated? are polls better to drive traffic? I don’t need them, I don’t really pay attention to them when I see them on other peoples’ stuff. I don’t really want to worry about that: If they are automatically generated (change reasonably often) then just let it run with whatever comes up, but if I have to come up with ideas all the time then let’s just take it off.

* no, you just come up with the ideas once and then they are automatically added to the pages, and change if someone decides to vote on something. All you need is to prepare me a list of questions like I have there now. Can be a yes/no answer, or a list of possible answers. If there are actual real people who will eventually be digging through these archives, I think an interesting poll could make it more interesting a active for the reader. Get them involved, instead of just passively absorbing a site.

> – essentially anything can be put on the left and right sides, such as your
> logo/pic/link/flash etc. This will appear on all the pages that are created.

shouldn’t there be a link to my database, or I guess not my database because that’s just a log-in page, but a link maybe to my Directory information page on the Madison’s website

* of course, that is the entire purpose. Also from within the introductory section at the top of the entry page. The links that are there are simply from my previous WP setup, as I just copied. For me I think two links will be sufficient: one to my SEO page and one to my database programming page, possibly to my webdesign page. Or perhaps I could link out to that from within the text. How frequently do you mention the word web or design?

. . .
oh shit I made a page but haven’t put it up yet. crap crap crap, will have to do that this weekend when I update the website. For the time being the address will be
. . . oh crap I didn’t make one yet thats why its not up. This weekend then!

> – the title of the first page I uploaded (the Word files I sent you, cleaned version)
> is drawn from common keywords found in the text. I use software to show me the
> most frequently used keywords, then I pick out some and use them for the Title,
> Description and Keywords. If you click on the title it will take you to the
> permanent page, and you can see that the address of the page uses the date and
> keywords of the title. This maximises the keyword effect. Otherwise, the main
> entry page (http://lumberdatabasedirectory.kenax.net/WP/) works like a blog roll,
> always displaying the last added articles.

wonderful! no problemo.

> – the links on the left obviously need to be changed. Let me know what you want
> me to link to.

oh oh oh! OK, I thought you had that there because you were using this to also promote your SEO work. Um, yeah, it should be lumber and lumber info. I’ll get you six or seven links, obviously Madison’s will be the first one (It’s Thursday morning so I have all my writing and weekly ka-blammo work to do)

* okeydoke. Perhaps there could be some “register for full version” or something and link to a page where you explain your prices to access the full database, and what other services that might include. Like a Services page or something. I’d say that and a link to the main page, perhaps a News section or something would be the most important, and if you have any concept specific pages, then link to those from within the article text, as I explained (SEO Smart Links is the name of that great WP plugin).

> So you can see that you can also use phrases. Therefore, if you have an important
> page about shingles, then you would want to point to it every time “shingle” or
> “shingles” is mentioned (or other related words or phrases, always separated by a
> comma).

so I need to make a list of words and corresponding pages on my site to link to. OK! more work for the weekend or Monday morning.

* yup, as I just wrote. Keep in mind too that you can add or tweak this over time and it will affect ALL the pages, whether they be uploaded in the future or already uploaded in the past. Occasionally changing this will not be very damaging and google might like it because it actually changes all the pages a bit, but this should not be done very often.

> – the calendar doesn’t have to be there and I just added it for pretty effect. You can
> put pictures or whatever you want in these strips, possibly colour the background
> as you have on your pages, or perhaps you could find your own plugins you want
> to try

Those calendars are everywhere. I remember when they first started cropping up and everyone was adding them to their blogs, I was like, “whatever man! I know what day it is.” but they are used so often we may as well keep them up, for pretty effect as you say. i might decide to play with that sometime in the future, we’ll see how much traffic this stuff draws.

* yah, I mostly put it there for the heck of it, prettyfickation, and to make the site appear more useful and dynamic. Simply bells and whistles. Hmm, or perhaps we could put a little “Latest lumber prices” table with a list of about five important figures. That could appear quite useful, and would help make every page changing on a daily basis. Or add that below or above the calendar or something. Anything is possible, as you see there is a lot on the left and right hand sides, depending on the length of the article. And ofcourse, eventually, room for advertisers…

> – the pictures at the top header are automatically rotating, but if you prefer we
> could probably remove all of them and replace them with only one – the header
> you have on your main pages. But personally I think the variety makes things
> more interesting.

agreed.

* Maybe replace the pencil thing with your M logo?

> – what do you want for the Category names? For now I created Report 01 and I
> think there should be a maximum of lets say 20 pages added per category. This all
> depends on how much text you have to add. Do you have more than 350,000
> words you can think of adding? For example, if only this 350,000 and you don’t
> want to add your old emails, for example, since each post/article is about 2,000
> words, that makes a total of 175 articles. If we have a total of 10 categories it
> would make it less than 20 (17.5) articles per category. This means there would
> eventually be 10 category links on each page, plus whatever number of links we
> decide on in the left hand side, plus the links out from within the text. You don’t
> want too many linkouts from each page, which is why I like to shoot for a total of
> ten categories. But if you find more text in the future, we could add the number of
> articles per category (I’m shooting for 40 for mine, because I’ve got a shitload of
> text).

Um, do I have to write out ten categories then? Does it know how to archive things? or does it generate its own category names automatically?

* Check out http://001yourtranslationservice.com/wordpress/ as an example. I use this site (the first of these templates) for others to submit their own articles. As a way of adding text to my site without doing any work. It’s all experimentations. I created the different categories ahead of time, where some categories were nested within others (subcategories). Whenever someone uploads text for a new page they can choose which category to add their article to. The category name helps with their seo. So whenever submitting to me an article to upload, you could always specify at the very top of it, lets say in <brackets>, which category you want to add it to. With nested subcategories etc eventually it will look like an interesting and well structured navigation menu. If its set up in an interesting way and people actually read it, google will know and it will help push it up further.

I think the best is to make the categories using the names of the lumber products that are covered every week, so:
WSPF
Studs
MSR ( = Machine Stress Rated if you feel it should be spelled out but everyone calls it MSR)
Cedar
OSB & Plywood
Cargo & Reload

These names appear in the article headings every single week. If you need more, common topics include:
Transport (or Lumber Transport)
Logs
Timber Harvest
Softwood Lumber

* okay, lets keep talking about all this until you know what you want to do, then tell me exactly what you propose all at once, so I do not have to keep changing things. Good to have a good plan for a good overall structure, and then move forward from there. It’s still not live yet so no great rush. Let’s start on a good footing.

> – below is Views, which shows the number of views per each page. Probably
> bullshit but the good thing is that this is dynamic and always changing, so it will
> make every page change over time and appear fresh and sexy in the eyes of
> google.

yeah yeah, let’s keep that there. “come back to my fantastic page of lumber industry information archives! come back often”

> – work on the main index page (http://lumberdatabasedirectory.kenax.net/). What
> do you want to do with the text and pictures you sent me before all the pdfs? You
> want to use that for the main entry page? Perhaps at the bottom or something, but
> the top should introduce the database and what its all about (demo version, if they
> want to see the full version they need to write to you etc.). You want to write that
> or should I? This first page should be real juicy with all the important keywords,
> so once the top introduction part of the page is written, you can flood the rest of
> the page with keyword blabbery. Up to around 2,500 words would be good. Once
> that is set up I’ll move the demodbase there or at least link to it and then we can
> publish the page and see how long it takes to start getting hits etc.
OH Ok, this is the page I didn’t know why you were showing it to me.
I thought the text+pictures would be my keyword blabbery. I added pics because I thought I saw before on one of your super-long “translation” pages a bunch of photos (of maps and stuff, and photos your friend sent you from Thailand).

* yup, I like adding pics to long text. Especially the first page, because you want to make it interesting for the reader. The longer one stays reading a page it also pushes it higher on google. No harm in making things visually appealing. Obviously the keyword rich alt tags for the pics will always add a slight bonus. What I always do is I choose some keyword string and then add a number, such as “lumber directory database 01”. *

I would write the intro thing, one paragraph, to drive them to my lumber demo. I’ll do that at the same time as I add the “Lumber Directory” page to my website.

* Yes, think attention span of the average moron. You want the very first sentence or whatever to completely hypothesise what it’s all about and quickly send the reader the direction they want to go. if they want to read the archives, by all means. Whatever they want, but make things concise and to the point and clear to understand as quickly as possible. The first page should be visually appealing and set up so a person can quickly decide where they want to go. *

So I guess I need to add almost 2,000 words to my text file + pics I sent you? I’m going to go out to the internet and grab a bunch of related stuff. I think if I copy & paste it with discipline it will come out as reasonably original.
Yes??

* The more original it is the better. Like when I wrote about the history of France while reading it elsewhere on the net. All in my own words. If you use copyscape.com you will see that my f2e pages is 100% original, and that will always score better with the search engines. They have the same technology as copyscape and it is easy to see these snippet copy things. But if you’re running out of ideas, sure, I guess it won’t harm it, but better if fully original. You could put the blabbery later down the page once you’ve linked out to the most important things. For example, there could be an H2 (heading2) titled “Other Information About Lumber Database Directory”, after you’ve explained the basic core. By this point the reader gets the message that it’s probably just some blabbery and has already decided where to go further, if anywhere. But such titles and continued blabber will certainly affect the search engines. *

Exciting times indeed, thanks again for all this! Its a good time to raise the profile because the lumber industry is coming back and people are starting to call (freaking finally).

Hopefully!