racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Why didn’t I think of that before?

Anyway, what brought me to this realization is a recent issue of a lawsuit threat because a blog ranks higher than a business site for a Google search. Search Engine Journal has the skinny.

An online shoe store owner is threatening to sue a blogger Dean Hunt (DeanHunt.com) unless the blogger ‘lowers his Google ranking” for a keyword phrase that the store owner feels he deserves.
…

I have been running the site for over two years and we have been ranked very highly for the search term [edited].

On Thursday morning I checked our google positions and your site is now above us for this term. I haev checked your blog and it has nothing to do with [edited], so I think it would be best all round if you remove your blog from google for this search term.

Please understand that we make our living from this, and you are just writing a blog that has nothing to do with [edited].

If you do not remove yourself from google for this search, then I will call them myself and have you removed.

…

You have to understand Dean that an online business should be higher in Google than a blog.

Don’t forget that Google is a business as well, they obviously make more money from other businesses than they do from blogs, so it is in their interest that I am higher than you for certain searches.

I have also contacted my lawyer about this issue, so you should expect a letter in the post very soon.

Wow. That’s stupid, with a capital S! (That makes it Stupid, then.)

This is why I often advocate the use of blogs by businesses and companies. It helps with the image and helps boost search rankings, as well. “BLOG” standing for “better listings on Google” is very appropriate, don’t you think?

I dread the day the owners of racoma.com come knocking on my door demanding I de-optimize my blog for my surname. Or rather, I think I should look forward to that day. Maybe I can charge a gazillion bucks for racoma.net and racoma.com.ph.

My mother recently retired (early) from her project analyst posting at the Asian Development Bank. And guess what she wants to do for a living these days? Follow in her son’s footsteps!

She just started blogging.

Well, we have several web app ideas we’re working on. I’ll post announcements when they’re up. They’re potentially income-generating, but I believe in developing web apps in order to fulfill a need. Then the income part will come in after.

For now, here’s a link to my mom’s blog. She currently has two quite substantial entries–one on finding one’s niche in blogging, and the other on parenting.

Oh, do watch out for one of her next posts, where she comments that I was skeptic of blogging in my younger days. Tsk!

I just started writing for another new blog, and I’m pretty excited. Why? It’s about Apple!

The “Apple Gazette”:http://applegazette.com just launched as the newest member of the Bloggy Network family. What’s great is that we’re just into “our first few posts”:http://www.applegazette.com/mac/10-apps-to-increase-productivity-on-your-mac/ and we’re already getting dugg frontpage! And we hope to keep you MacHeads out there happy with our posts about Mac-related news and tips on how to maximize your Mac experience.

I know it probably won’t get as wide an audience as “BloggingPro”:http://bloggingpro.com or “Forevergeek,”:http://www.forevergeek.com since Apple users are still a minority. However, what we will lack in sheer numbers will be made up for by the quality of readership. There’s the passion that comes with being a Mac user. And remember, each purchase of a Mac comes with a free license for a holier-than-thou attitude.

Don’t underestimate the Cult of Mac.

Incidentally, do also check out the latest about BloggingPro. “We now sport a fresh, brand-new design”:http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/2006/10/06/welcome-to-the-new-bloggingpro/ (well, “David”:http://phoenixrealm.com did all the work, actually).

And guess who just earned his own link on the frontpage!

I’m trying to import my old posts from my jangelo.i.ph blog, which I’ve since relegated as my archives blog. Thing is, I want to centralize everything and use racoma.com.ph for my old content (which I consider to be very relevant), for the following reasons:

* *Search engine optimization* – My i.PH blog had lost its optimizations when i.PH upgraded to Calliope version 2.
* *Monetization* – Same as the above reason, I’m no longer able to put up AdSense ads on i.PH. And i’m trying to experiment with monetizing racoma.com.ph (Against my minimalistic design stance? Not really.).

One big problem: there’s no easy way to import from i.PH. There used to be a means to backup all content using the old Blog:CMS backup feature, but WordPress simply does *not* have a WordPress-to-WordPress. And i.PH is now running a modified version of WordPress as its content management system.

So for now, I’m doing it manually, part-by-part. I’m saving the RSS 2.0 file generated by jangelo.i.ph (at http://jangelo.i.ph/blogs/jangelo/feed) and using this with the WP import tool to import ten posts at a time. Then I delete the ten posts from jangelo.i.ph, so the RSS generated would be for the next ten posts, and as these would be considered dupes by Google (very un-SEO).

Hopefully I’ll get to do enough moving in my spare time, and I hope I get to finish the total migration within a few weeks.

Update: I found an easier way

I found an easier way. Not exactly an easy way but one that’s relatively easier than the save-import-delete method. I access the RSS feed by page, by using this URL:

http://jangelo.i.ph/blogs/jangelo/?feed=rss2&paged=(insert page number here)

So this means I can easily view and save the feeds by batches of 10 without having to delete the items first. Once I’ve finished doing this to all my posts (more than a thousand) then I can delete all the posts on the original blog.

Sweet.

I was surprised to see my site top a Philippines-only Google query on the keyword “Problogging”.

I was even more surprised to see the J Spot come up on page one (rank #4) for a generic search on “problogging”, right there with problogger.net, problogging.com, bloggingpro.com (which I write for, incidentally) and technorati.com’s list of items tagged with the problogging keyword.

I hope this is an indicator of great things to come for this problogger and tech evangelist wannabe! At the very least, I’m hoping writers and aspiring probloggers would find my writings helpful and inspirational enough for their own problogging careers or businesses.