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Baby Boy Kizzog

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What actually makes the Kizzog super cool is the Kizzog Image installer that allows you to easily change the pictures in the website design with just a click of the mouse. Why is this super cool? Well, kids grow up so fast and if you do spend a few hundred dollars on a custom web design more than likely the kids pictures will be out grown rather quickly. Plus the Kizzogs come installed with 12 themes.

The themes range from newborn babies to sport themes like snowboarding, basketball, soccer and football. There is even a “Dog-House” theme one can use for a child or a dog. Yep, some people like to blog about there pets too.

More information can be answered in the frequently asked Kizzog questions section. I think the cool thing is the price at only $49.95 per year and that includes everything!

We try and buy from local companies as much as possible. Often when I search for stores I try and find companies in my area. (good for the local economy) Anyway, I found Raytech Catalog in Tustin which isn’t too far away from where I live. Their business is really focused on first aid and emergency products. I writing this in the hopes that people that read my blog are also being proactive when it comes to emergencies.

On a side note I found an item that my old swim coach would use during practices. He would yell out our swim sets with a bull horn. I haven’t thought of this in years but when I saw the bull horns on the Raytech website it brought back old memories of Coach Ross. His bull horn even had a few buttons that made some crazy sounds and he would push them and run around the pool deck. Someday when I have time I will blog about the drum he used to beat.

What you need to consider before creating a website, are things such the cost, maintenance, content, web host, and purpose. You’ll need to ask questions like, what I do want the visitor to do when they’re on your website? Do you want to just provide the information about your business or do you want to them make a purchase, or maybe you’re looking for their contact details.

Firstly, you’ll need to register a domain name which is roughly around $8 for one year. Ideally you should purchase at least two years or more because that will benefit on search engines. Next would be a “cheap” hosting solution, getting this step right can save you from hours, even days of stress. The key here is RESEARCH, read people’s posts in forums and blogs and see what’s good and bad out there. I would spend half of day if not more doing this. Companies that have been around for 5+ years are usually pretty safe, but never pay for one full year the first time, and if they don’t the monthly option then I would look elsewhere, unless it’s recommendation from your friend.

So now you have all the technical things sorted out and you wonder what’s next. Your website! Depending on your level of interest and knowledge in web design, you could buy a software package like Dreamweaver and try to do it yourself. That can be fairly time-consuming and could end up costing you more in the long run. The alternative option is to find a professional web designer to do this for you. A professionally designed website should last you about 2+ years without any major changes. Have a look around on net, there’s a lot good web designers out there, so finding someone that fits your budget shouldn’t be difficult. Since most web designers have a portfolio site, you can see what they have done and whether or not his design style fits in with your business. An easy way to find out whether he/she is the right person for the job is to compare his work with your competitors’ website. A good web designer should be able to do well in both design and coding, and some will also have knowledge of Search Engine Optimization. If possible try to hire someone who has some SEO knowledge, and let them know your preferred search keywords before he/she start building the website. A website that built with SEO in mind can greatly benefit from free search engine traffic. One thing to remember is always find out exactly what you will get in the end before starting the project.

Not all industries can see huge benefits in having a website, some can benefit more than the others but having one will certainly give you an edge over your competitors who doesn’t, even if it just has your logo and contact details on there!

Freelance web designers have the knowledge of all aspects of building a website and are capable of building a website that matches your expectations and requirements. Building a professional website without using a template is not easy job as it requires coding to be done in languages such as HTML. XML, PHP, and JAVA. Freelance web designer made website that has its own identity and is different from other websites on Internet and attracts visitors. The most important thing in web designing is that the website should be such that it bring backs the same visitor again and this is only possible if your website has something different from other websites and if not generic.

A professional freelance web designer builds a website from scratch so they know everything in the website. Therefore in future if you need any changes to be made in the website, those can be made very easily by the freelance web designer. In contrast, if you want to make any changes in the template then it’s not possible for you because mo one knows its structure and flow.

The best thing about freelance web designer is that they work individually and are not a part of a big business firm. Therefore, it’s easy to contact them and get the website customized according to your requirements. Further, they give you individual attention and agree with your terms and conditions of sending payment. Freelance web designers also add more features than templates because they exactly know your requirements. Freelance web designer can also provide your annual maintenance contracts for very low fees and enables you to maintain your website properly.

Freelance web designer are innovative and keep suggesting new features during maintenance contract and thus help you to upgrade constantly your website as well. They also make sure that the website has a good navigation and the links are properly presented and adds additional features such as related content etc.

The cost at which the freelance web designer work is also very less. Freelance web designer also want that your website should work well and you give him further contracts because they are not a part of big business.

Therefore, the conclusion is that freelances are better than buying a template for your website. They offer cheap and quality services and help maintain your websites and make sure that they work and function properly 24-7.

A few months ago I did some consulting work for a Southern California company looking to increase there web presence. More specifically they wanted to increase their Google rankings through search engine optimization. Over the past five years so much has changed in the techniques and methods used to get a website quality search engine traffic and companies haven’t stayed up with the trends or were caught in the trends.

This specific company has been paying Google Adwords $45,000 per month in advertising. (ouch) You can see why they wanted to rank very badly in the natural search results. A handful of good rankings with some decent keywords could bringing them more traffic and they could in return substantially reduce their advertising budget. This is the single reason why SEO is so powerful. Most people don’t click the advertising results on the Google search pages, at least not compared to the natural search results.

Some of the old techniques used that don’t work as well anymore:

Reciprocal Links
Sure, a few of these here and there are no big deal but this should be a small part of your link building campaign. About 3-6 years ago everyone traded links with anyone and the person that traded more than the others was the one that ranked higher. This lead to poor quality search engine results but worked great for SEO while it lasted.

Off Topic / Paid Links
Trust me it’s easy for the major search engines to detect 90% or more of the paid links. Things like sitewide links, footer links and links under a “sponsors” area are all signs. Companies buying these links are wasting their money and time. These links won’t count and can even harm your trust in the search engines.

The best links for increasing your rankings are natural looking links. These are the type of links that Google and other search engines count as votes towards your website. It helps to have great content that people *might* link to but the best SEO’s in the world will go out of their way to find the links that look natural. These are the type of links that will stand the test of time and will always help your website in some way via it direct traffic or increasing your site’s trust in the search engines.

My single biggest SEO tip is to not get caught up in the “current trends” and go out and find links that are natural looking. What is a natural link? You can visit a few web pages yourself and analyze the different links on the pages to see which ones look natural and which ones don’t.

We even told her a few months ago she could take the day off and go to Disneyland, she looked at my wife and I and said “but I cannot miss practice”. What kid doesn’t want to go to Disneyland for the day? Well, I’m going to tell you what type of kid.

My daughter is super competitive, the kind of kid you see racing every set in practice just so she can beat everyone in her group. The kind of kid that when she gets out of practice she asks her mother which kids cheated during practice. (pulling on lane lines) She has been moved up in the past few months several times into different swim groups, each time quickly moving towards the top of the group she moves too. I’m wouldn’t say my daughter is the fastest swimmer, because she is not. There are kids that have been swimming for 3-4 times as long but that’s not the point of this blog post.

At 8 years old she is so dedicated to her sport, such dedication that you rarely find in adults nowadays let alone an 8 year old. She has goals already set, she tells my wife and I she wants to go to JO’s (Junior Olympics) just like my wife did when she was young. I have no doubt within the next year or so she can reach that goal.

Some markets have stayed strong, the high end buyers looking for Beverly Hills or Palm Springs real estate are effected by the US mortgage mess. Most of these higher end buyers have significant amount of cash as a down payment and usually have outstanding credit scores. The area hot the hardest are the middle class and lower income areas. Most of these areas people got into the cheapest loan and are now paying high payments, if they can even make the payments.

Even though I see more real estate professionals out and about I still think we are in for another 6-8 months at least of dealing with declining sales and the mortgage mess. I wish I was wrong as numerous websites we own are in the real estate mortgage industry.

Sub domains are not separate websites they are just pages or different categories to a website. There is no reason for any search engine to show more than two per results page. You would think with all the money Microsoft has they would hire smart people to run their search division.