Well unless you visited at just the right moment, you probably missed the patriotic theme…LOL. But then Kim at What’s That Smell? told me about this great site called Scrapblog and everything changed. I found so many nifty things and just kept playing and playing until low and behold….I created this header! I don’t know, but I think I might just like it more than I’ve liked most of the others.
Thanks Kim and Scrapblog!!
With Christmas being over, I’m working on a new header….Excuse the mismatch and chaos as I go through the editing process….Right now I’m thinking a patriotic theme, but I’m not sure if I’ll like it when it actually comes together….
If you pop in during the transition, tell me what it looks like and what you think. 
Over the last year I’ve really grown to LOVE blogging, but as I’ve blogged more and more, I’ve also tried to start learning what makes blogs “better.” SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the things that I’ve researched. How do we get our blogs to show higher in people’s searches? How do we get a higher Google Page Rank, a lower Izea Real Rank, a lower Alexa ranking, and authority on Technorati just to name a few of the ways our blogs are “judged.”
Many of us home bloggers are working to do this on our own, but there are places that offer the service of business website design and SEO Optimazation. While I think it’s fun to work on my rankings on my blog, but to businesses this is really important. If the item you are selling doesn’t show up in an online search within the first page, most people won’t bother to even open your website to see if you have good prices or good products. This is when the service of a company like Effective Web Media come into play. They have learned the “tricks” to the trade and will help you launch your website in a manner that will get you lots of hits right from the beginning. For my blog, these services aren’t really necessary. It’s ok to make small improvements here and there, but if you were starting a business, it would be a big deal to make immediate large improvements.
Not really….I’m not selling my baby – All About Kimberly, but I did find this really neat tool for anyone that thinks they’d like to sale their domain. It’s absolutely one of the coolest things I’ve seen in website/blogging tools. It’s from SmartPageRank.com. They actually give you the estimated value of your website based on things such as PageRank, traffic, backlinks, age of the domain, and directory listings. Isn’t that cool….They also give you this super cool button to put on your site telling it’s value……so drum roll please……..All About Kimberly’s value is………
I just wish the button was a little smaller and maybe the value was a larger font…then I’d post it on my sidebar….it’s just not pretty enough for me…LOL, but I wanted to take long enough to share it with you guys. Go see what your site is valued and come back and share that knowledge!
I am always trying to learn something new and love passing on this knowledge to my students. One of my hobbies is building web pages so finding ways to make them look better and be more “snappy” is important. Today I’ve learned how to put one of those “find the nearest store” features on a website. You know like when you are going to a new town and want to find out where you favorite clothing store is located by simply putting in the zip code? Or the closest grocery store? Or a specific gas station? Today I learned how to put this feature on a website. Isn’t that awesome? And even better the Store Locator feature is a free service provided by Zip Code World to businesses with less than 100 stores.
Now while I’ve never heard of Zip Code World, they are a very experienced company. They currently support a total of 1089 companies and total of 30692 unique stores across 33 countries. They aren’t a real basic service either since webmasters who are more advanced can install it in PHP or .Net on their own servers. Now if you aren’t big on buidling web pages, this may seem foreign (and that’s ok since there’s also an easily run version), but to those with advanced web design skills, PHP and .Net features are a plus. I don’t need these features now beyond just having the skills to place them on a website, but Zip Code World also provides simple Zip Code and postal code assistance programs.
I know to many of you mom bloggers this may not be a real big deal, but I wanted to take a chance to share it just in case. After all, I know this service has been around for a long time and I only discovered it today.
