As you would already know, three major search engines today are Google, Yahoo and MSN. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is about getting your sites or blogs listed on SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Keywords are basically the search term or text entered by a user in order to display the results on SERP. Here are some tips that you can use to have your site or blog indexed by search engines.

Submitting your site’s / blog’s URL

What you can manually do if your site doesn’t appear on SERP is to request so that your site is added. For the three mentioned search engines, you can go to:

• http://www.google.com/addurl (for Google)
• http://Search.Yahoo.com/info/submit.html (for Yahoo)
• http://Search.MSN.com/docs/submit.aspx (for MSN)

Search engines typically send spiders or web crawlers in order for a site to be indexed or listed on their SERPs.

Comment thoughtfully and link back to your post

You’ve probably aware of comment spam that you get on your blogs. Comments that are directly or indirectly promoting the commentator’s site, off-topic and does not have a specific degree of interest to what you are posting are usually spam.

The above is a way for other site owner to get their site listed by placing a link to their site on the comment of your posts. This is usually done to a site that has already been indexed by search engines. This is because web crawlers will follow the link so that the commentator’s site will be indexed as well.

To me, the aforementioned method is both ethical and unethical. It all depends on how you evaluate comments. It can be ethical if the comment goes deep or mentioned specific details related to what you have posted and at the same time providing a link to point back to the commentator’s site or post. Other than that, comments are often just spam and unethical.

Keyword Density

Another thing that you can do in regards to SEO is to have a balanced keyword density. The keyword density refers to the labels, tags or most important words related to your post. I prefer to use the word “balance” to indicate that you should not overdo keyword density by placing too many occurrences of keywords. Search engines might be able to identify this and have your site penalized. Overdoing keyword density is also known as “keyword stuffing”.

An example of keyword density related to this post is to mention keywords such as SEO, SERP, search engines and keyword density. You’ve probably noticed that I have mentioned them a few times throughout this post.

If you know how to play the guitar but you have no idea of the song “Hotel California” or how to play that song on a guitar, then you need to listen to Eagles. I am not a big fan of Eagles so to speak, but I find this funny because I consider myself a moderate guitar player (not even a pro) and keep forgetting the chord progressions for this legendary Hotel California song.

It’s like the necessary repertoire for any rockers in my younger age. I don’t consider myself a rocker so you should get the idea of why I am struggling at the corner of the practicing studio hammering the wrong notes on the keyboard (that’s my main musical instrument if you wonder). Don’t get me wrong, I love the song mainly because it has a nice written melody with superb chord progressions.

The Hotel California album was released by Eagles in December 1976 and it is ranked among the top ten best-selling albums according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Everyone wanted to know the meaning or message that is tried to be conveyed so in reply, Don Henley said “I know, it’s so boring… It’s a song about the dark underbelly of the American Dream, and about excess in America, which was something we knew about.”

The original four members of the band Eagles are Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. All of them sings and are able to play more than one musical instruments. Detailed information about the Eagles for the hardcore fans can also be found here.

I personally think the haunting aspect throughout this Hotel California song is the repetition of the chords that they used in the music arrangement. It has that a bit of reggae feel fused with rock and acoustic guitar elements. The guitar solo part was more than eight bars (or any usual number of measures in a rock song) and placed somewhere towards the end of the song until it fades.

In 2008, Eagles has been nominated in these categories in the American Music Awards:

• Artist of the year
• Favorite band
• Duo or group – pop or rock music
• Favorite artist – adult contemporary music
• Favorite album pop or rock music for “Long Road Out of Eden”

I believe the voting has just recently ended and the results will be announced on the 23^rd of this month on ABC. Read more news on the band’s official website here.

Here’s the Hotel California lyric.

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
‘this could be heaven or this could be hell’
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say…

Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year, you can find it here

Her mind is tiffany-twisted, she got the mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

So I called up the captain,
‘please bring me my wine’
He said, ‘we haven’t had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine’
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say…

Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
They livin’ it up at the Hotel California
What a nice surprise, bring your alibis

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said ‘we are all just prisoners here, of our own device’
And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
The stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
‘relax,’ said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!

Three of the most common platforms for video chat that I could name instantly would be MSN Live, Yahoo Messenger and Skype. But where’s Google’s version of video chat? Well, Google’s Gmail Video Chat has arrived! Finally!

It has been quite some time before Google actually came up with its own video chat feature. This feature is accessible from within Gmail. So it can be cool, say, you were checking your emails, your friends or family are online and you just can’t wait to talk about the latest gadget that you have bought. You could talk and show your gadget live over the Internet for free. Yes, the Google Video Chat is free to use.

So how does this can be better than other video chat applications that you might already have? In my opinion, there’s nothing much to compare about but I do feel that it is somewhat more “centralized” in the sense that you don’t have to start an external video chat application while you are checking your emails. You can do so from within Gmail. The interface is simple so if you’re simple-minded, Gmail Video Chat might work well for your video chat needs.

Video chat is a fun and entertaining way to communicate, it gives you that more personal touch as you wink or smile contrary to the boring emoticons to denote a gesture. Sometimes you need to convey a message quickly and it is best to have them communicated verbally rather than typing them slowly in the chat window.

Before you can use Google Video Chat, you need to install them. Simply go to http://www.gmail.com/videochat and set it up from there. It really is a simple application, perhaps too simple that users might want fancy stuff such as unique customization for colors and so forth, later on in future releases. But being simple should load faster in my opinion, so fancy stuff can wait.

To access Google Video Chat all you have to do is log on to your Gmail account in a browser, click on the “video & more” menu in a Gmail chat window and you’re good to go. Oh yea, you need to have a webcam if you want the person whom you’re chatting with to see you. The video window is resizable and can be moved anywhere on your desktop. Some webcam comes with a built-in microphone so if yours doesn’t you need to get one too.

I remembered like ten years ago when I use dial-up to get connected to the Internet. That was way too slow for a video chat session run smoothly. Cable modem or DSL and anything faster should be good enough for a smooth video. So for this Gmail Video Chat, you need the software, a webcam and a microphone. Try it out; it might be faster than what you would usually use for video chat.