BlueCapra – Page 38

Picture a day – 01-29-12

February 5, 2012 by Alan R Leave a Comment

Here are the pictures from the previous week (Saturday, 01-29-2012 through Saturday, 02-04-2012) for my Picture a day. This week I not only realized that I have too many irons in the fire, but as much as I really like photography, I really don’t want to have to take pictures. As a result, there are a few missed days.

I started this year hoping I would go through an entire year taking multiple pictures per day. This has just not happened. I did not expect to be spending as much time as I have on my business and blogs. I will continue to take pictures and will do my best to be more intentional about doing it everyday, I am no longer under the illusion that I will be 100%. I know I will only get better with practice but taking pictures just to say I had a picture a day does little or no good.

My main goal with this is to become a better photographer through practice and feedback. Let me know how I am doing. If you like these images, please share them (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pintrest…)

If you missed the previous week’s Picture a day, check them out (you can also find them on Flickr and Google+) [Read more…]

Do I need a resume?

February 2, 2012 by Alan R 2 Comments

Most people have a resume. At times of uncertainty and change, we go through the process of updating it. But what is a resume? Is it our lives? Is it the sole record of our worth? Maybe, maybe not. Personally, I have placed a high emphasis on the contents of my resume in the past. As men, much of our self worth derrives from our work and what we do to earn money. The resume is what gets us the job, gets us more money, and allows us to provide for ourselves and our families better. A resume is important, except when it’s not.

Do you need a resume to start a business? Do you need a resume to do great work? A resume is only a document that lets others know what we have done in the past. If you have ever heard advertisements of investment profits, the commercials say, “Past performance is not indicative of future gains.” Our resume’s do not guarantee our success any more than the lack of a great resume spells out our certain doom. Much like a travel journal, a resume is only a record of where we have been, what we did that was interesting along the way, and what we learned.

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1st on Google – Week 1

January 30, 2012 by Alan R Leave a Comment

Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google. If you missed the first post, you can find it here. Here are the results as of Sunday, 01-29-12 (click here to do your own search):

#46 – My personal blog, BlueCapra.com (Up 45 places from last week – #91)
#102 – Author page on EzineArticles.com (Down 9 places from last week – #93)
#107 – Reviews on BookSneeze.com (Down 9 places from last week – #98)
#110 – Comment on AndyTraub.com (Down 11 places from last week – #99)
#111 – Profile page on 48Days.net (Down 10 places from last week – #101)

The 1st entry on Google was a search on LinkedIn.com that had 25 other Alan Reeves. I was 13th on that list. I made a huge jump in my 1st ranking, but 2-5 slipped about 10 places each.

The search was done on my desktop after I had cleared the cache, browser history, etc. On top of that, I used Internet Explorer (which I don’t normally use). This week I will try several computers at the same time side-by-side to see if there are any differences just out of curiosity.

After looking closer at my site, I did not have the author link setup properly. Here is the fix:

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Picture a day – 01-22-12

January 28, 2012 by Alan R Leave a Comment

Here are the pictures from the previous week (Saturday, 01-21-2012 through Friday, 01-27-2012) for my Picture a day. This week I concentrated on miniature pictures, usually involving Legos. This is the first time I have missed taking a picture. On Tuesday, 1-24-12, I dozed off after work at around 6 pm and ended up sleeping for 12 hours (I must have been tired). That was the first day I had not taken a picture in about a month. There is also no picture for Friday, but not for the same reason. I could have taken any picture but I wanted to follow the miniature theme. Tomorrow is a new day.

I will be changing the schedule that I post the pictures in an effort to get in sync with the calendar so next week, I will post the newest Picture a day post on Sunday, 2-5-12.

If you missed the previous week’s Picture a day, check them out (you can also find them on Flickr and Google+) [Read more…]

1st on Google – My Journey to be first

January 26, 2012 by Alan R Leave a Comment

Would you like to be ranked 1st on Google? I would. Not necessarily with my business or personal blog, but when someone searched my name, Alan Reeves, I want to be ranked 1st, maybe not on all the search engines, but at least at Google. Narcissistic, maybe, but from a business and marketing standpoint, who would not want to be #1 on Google for something. But how can I do such a thing?

I am no SEO expert, but I am willing to learn. I now have a (very specific) goal and I am just curious enough to see how long it will take me. First, I need to determine where I am.

Google is great at incorporating other services into their search. When I am logged in under my GMail account, my likes, friends, and posts are taken into account when Google returns the search results. Since I am trying to show up 1st to a complete stranger, that nice feature makes it a bit more difficult to test. To get around that feature, I could either log out of my account or do my searching on a completely separate computer. I decided not to log out and do my searching on other computers and devices, including public computers when available, such as at the library. Now that I have that squared away, I need to figure out where I am starting from.

Where do I compare to that 1st spot

As of January 25, 2012, I show up #91 with my About page at my personal website, BlueCapra.com. That is a long way from the 1st spot, so I have my work cut out for me. As an interesting side note, my Google+ picture shows up beside the link to my blog. If you want to know how I did this, you can walk through the steps yourself on this post by Amit Agarwal on Digital Inspirations. I also show up at the following places (to round out the top 5):

#93 – A book review I left on BookSneeze

#98 – My author page at EzineArticles.com – I wrote an article about laser engraving glass

#99 – A comment I left at 48Days.com

#101 – my Google+ profile (displayed with picture)

My restriction

The link has to be obvious to me and not a link to a page that might contain a link to a page. For example, I did not even go to any site that said there were 25 people named Alan Reeves on whatever website. I wanted to only count the links that directed traffic to a page with my content or information.

My Google search settings on the computer where I performed this initial search is as follows

Google Instant Predictions – OFF (easier to display a longer list of results)

SafeSearch Filters – Strict

Results per page – 100

I also cleared my cache, cookies, history, whatever I could so I could get as accurate of results as I could

Search results vary from day-to-day so I will be doing an official search twice a week and sharing the results. I will share the steps I take, including links, once a week. There are a few more things I can tweak on my business site, Book Worm Laser & Design and I will share those as well. I hope my journey to ranking 1st on Google helps you with your own SEO. Stay tuned.

Click for the 1st week update

(photo by: sheelamohan)