I made me a Smile!!

I couldn't have been happier to talk with a massage therapist friend of mine today, we'll call her Ann. Ann wants a thriving practice, but allot of the things she has been doing for the last 15 years of massaging don't seem to have as much juice behind them anymore. I was able to talk to her and get her excited about sharing some of her incredible knowlege of structural integration techniques with communities of clients who really need it. I encouraged her to go to health blogs and places where people talk about headaches and pain, and educate those people about what she does. This will naturally bring people back to her website and voila, more clients. Unfortunately, she really needs an update on her website, so I told her she would be a beta tester for massage website guru, as soon as I have it up.

Thunder

Thunder rang loud in my ear for most of the mornings work. Massage Website Guru is progressing nicely, though I was interrupted when the lightening literally hit my roof and coursed through my router and modem. Thanks office depot for getting me back online.

Massage website guru will be a wonderful tool to create an online presence without going to a gazillion websites. I truly hope I am able to help massage therapists market themselves online. To do this I am going to try and integrate at least the top five social networking and indexing sites into the service.

Building Links

Tips for Creating Back-Links

One of the absolute best ways to create a stable and high search engine results is to create a plethora of back links, or links on another page that target your site. This can be rather difficult though because it is generally in everyone's interest to get links to their site, not to yours. Here are a few basic tips that can get you started.

Four Tips to Create Good Back-Links:

1. Join and participate on as many relevant communities as you can. These can be blogging communities, forums, fan sites, professional organization sites, etc. The rule is when deciding if you want to join,
   I put together a list of 5 Top places Massage Therapists Need To Be Online. Check it out.
   can you see other people's profiles, and if so, is there a link in the profile page back to their website. If you answer yes to both, you are most likely good to go. The reason you want to join is because your profile will give you a link back to your website that can be optimized by you, and you will generate links back to your profile when you participate on the site, giving you increasing amounts of legitimacy and therefor more seo-juice.
2. Create a document with all of your login's and passwords, along with notes about what you can do on those sites so that after a month of craziness (life does happen) where you don't do any link building, it is easy to step right back in.
3. Find index sites, the more the better. Index sites in your arena are the best, but any index site will do. However, don't ever pay for it, as will be explained later.
4. Some of you may hate me for saying this, but in the end, you need to contribute. For most people this means you will write articles, blog posts, new pages on your site, etc, etc. However, if you don't like writing, don't let this hold you back! Other options include making videos and posting them on Youtube and Viemo. You can also create audio to share on your site, or through pod-casts.  See this site for a service that lets you create content all in one place.

Bad Back-link Strategies

There are some link building strategies to avoid. Always remember, if it feels like you are gaming the system, it probably isn't the right way to do things. The reason this is so is that Google/Bing are generally allot smarter, better funded, and better equipped to detect fraud than any of us. Do things honestly and you will get benefits in the long run.

Things to avoid include:

• Paying for links: Google really punishes both sites for bought links. If someone is telling you that they will get you 5000 links in ten minutes, run, run and don't look back.
• Link trades: Unless you have spent the 50+ hours necessary to learn how to calculate PageRank and can therefor know when you will most like end up ahead, stay away from link trades. It is in the other persons best interest to get more than they give. 
• Spamming: Pasting the same blabering nonses everywhere you can find that will let you across the internet will get you nowhere and has some serious downsides. Google will know that all the text is the same and punish your site. Also, your accounts and IP address will most likely be blocked by the sites you are spamming, cutting you off from actual participation when you reform.

Emo Girl

We all knew her in highschool,
black hair black clothers, never cool,
acted cool, pink toung ring,
pink highligts, chains ever dangling,
sporting hello-kitty shirts,
with eyes and face oozing hurt,

in the clasrooms and school halls,
she'd roll by, face of'a porclin doll,
huddled with her clique of rejects,
rejected by the word, insects
squashed by societies norms
a normal sub-urban girl
ready to call forth hell storms
from wiccan gods and pentagrams

she'd come and we'd make the sign
signifying we saw the line
on her wrist, timely marking
her for what she is, marking
the freakish melodramatic
cutter calling for attention,
daddies little imperfection,

She'd come and we'd make the sign
one had drawn accross wrist lines
imaginary lines, pointless lines,
no blades, no pain, just acting,
acting out her dark drawing
drawing out her empassioned pain,

she'd come and we'd make the sign,
just a joke, completely begin
to us, but she saw, and she cried
cried, powerless even when she tried
hurt by a lack of empathy
banished by our apathy

she'd come and we'd make the sign
but you never saw what that sign
signified, never a witness
to what I recall as the
drag drip drip drop

But I did, I lived emo-girl,
she was my first love, nicole,
nicole, to her I speak here,
of her and I, I sing clear,
clear as the december night
when we stole our first kiss,
lips blazing heat radiating bliss
stark contrast to the snow fall
crunching with each footfall, stall
stall with all our might, the door in sight
fighting the end, the first goodnight,

I loved emo-girl, hard and deep,
for Eleven months 14 days
I stayed, I saw razor blades,
I knew, I saw countless times
evidence of last nights crimes
the drag drip drip drop

I stayed because I knew
what you said wasn't true,
she had to, she fought the black hue
of her life, I knew she rued
every day she gave in,

you laughed and pointed, tension built
but you never cried from guilt
on your girlfriends bedroom floor
knowing that line was from the night before
when you made her fight your fight
giving her over to the blades delight,
so many lines, my fault, mine
the drag drip drip drop

you say she was calling for attention
damn straight she was, because attention
was what she was lacking as her father
beat her while her mother ignored it,
just as she ignored her,
ignored raped or beaten, trust denied
denied someone willing to help
all she had was the
drag drip drip drop

I quit, gave in, left for good
after eleven months 14 days
it put her in the hospital for days,
I live with the guilt of almost killing her,
her, my first love, my nicole,
so the next time you see emogirl,
and you give the sign I hope see
my face screaming "Fuck you!"

Adam Da Debate-o-holic

okay, so here is the simplified version of my debate season:

1. 90hrs in a van
2. 30 nights in a hotel (a whole month's worth, damn)
3. 8 breaks into elim's
4. top finish: 2cnd
5. national finish: double octo's (top 32)
6. Highest NPTE ranking: 25th
7. Shots of alcohol accumulated because of miniture golf... allot. ;)'

what does all of this mean, I AM A NERD. And I want to do It all again next year, just twice as much!!!! For all ya'll who chilled in the van with me, and laughed with me, I love you. And to you Mr. C, for all your love and support and traveling with me all year, I love you to.

Peace.

twenty three

Well, David and I saw the movie "23". It was truly freaky, because in all reality, it could be any of us. What we truly know about our own reality is so conceptually uncertain that it is scary. However, like everyone else, we continue on.

I guess what I distinctly remember from that movie, it the utter discontent and destabilizing emotions that questioning one's own reality creates.

If you haven't seen it, please do.

come and get it!!!!

I am finally at the last stage of development for Massage Website Guru, namely adding a ton of content and doing allot of integration and stress testing. As of right now, simply changing browsers has to big of an impact on performance. I am hopeful that Sept. 1 will be the official launch date. There will be several years worth of work left after the launch, but it will feel good just to have the ball truly and officially rolling.
The online scheduler is one of the most exciting parts because I am able to get the integration to be so seamless. Clients never leave the site because the site is really just the application. If only there was a way to express to the average massage therapist how cool the technical side of this project really is.
I am also starting to roll out my online marketing strategy. I am sure that it will take many months and years of experimenting to find the right mix, but during the process I should learn how to to share honestly and fully while still creating a living for myself.