About a month ago, I remember reading someone's opinion that Hillary Clinton was a sure bet for the next Presidency. Right now she's slipping behind in the polls. I've seen and read in a few different places that she's becoming emotional, even tearful, and vowing to struggle on.

There's a theory that nothing the Clintons do is unplanned. Everything is supposedly mapped out in incredible detail. If you take Mrs. Clinton's emotion at face value, it seems very normal. She wants so badly to win that even the thought of not being able to take America in a new direction is enough to bring tears to her eyes. But maybe there's more to this.

Yesterday I saw a clip on a news program about what Hillary said when confronted with a statement along the lines of, "What do you think about voters siding with this other guy?" Her response was, "That hurts my feelings." It was at that moment that I realized she was probably advised to play up her differences as a woman, when compared to a man. The old stereotypes say men are stoic, and women are emotional. So Hillary was probably coached into making it as obvious as possible that she's a leader of a different caliber, and since most people are looking for change, that's a big selling point.

But here's where things get interesting. Hillary has fallen behind (or it seems that way, or it is being made to seem that way), so she gets emotional. That garners her more attention, and the more attention you've got, the more likely you are to gain public favor. If you're unknown, nobody cares. If people are aware of you, they'll make up their minds one way or another. So to win an election, it's best to get as much attention as possible.

I once read about a memory test done with average folks who sat down and looked at some names of people they'd never heard of. Then they took a break of an hour or two. After the break, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding celebrities. The form had a bunch of names, and boxes that were to be checked off if a name belonged to a famous person. Most people ended up checking off names that weren't famous at all, but did in fact appear on the original list of random names. The conclusion was that the people looked at the questionnaire, recognized a name, assumed they knew it for a reason, and marked it as famous. This could work in politics, as well as with marketing your blog.

They say no press is bad press. A blog was once involved in a lawsuit. The "negative" press sent major traffic to the site, and it ended up earning record revenue. My theory for how this applies to politics is this: When you're falling behind, you need to get back in the public eye through any means necessary. The more people who are aware of you and what you're about, the more votes you'll get. That's a potential reason for why Hillary is hitting the media with a display of emotion. She wants more attention, which could lead to a reversal in her recent slippage trend.

How does this help us bloggers? The idea is pretty simple. Get as much attention you can, for reasons that appear on the surface to be entirely natural. If you come across as wanting attention, or obviously trying to pull some media stunt, it won't work. Hillary's getting attention because her emotional behavior is interesting, but not unbelievable. To put your blog on the map, you've got to be just like a Presidential candidate, and get enough attention and publicity to win over your fair share of voters and visitors.

There are lots of people out there who have become very wealthy with the internet, just by thinking ahead. These people came up with new ideas and techniques that very few others were thinking about. Lots of times it's easy to see someone's success and wish you could duplicate it. The internet is moving so fast these days that duplication can be hard to accomplish. It takes just a couple of years for a brilliant idea to be all used up, with little money left to be made. Many lament the fact that they can't do what the wealthy and successful people did. But you can!

There are stories about domainers, people who specialize in buying, selling, and monetizing domain names. If you owned candy.com, you'd be sitting pretty. Tons of people type their search terms right into their browser's address bar. So if someone wanted candy, they might just type in "candy" or candy.com and get taken to your site, which would just be a parked page. Then they'd see ads. They might click on one, and you've just made a few cents. With such a generic term like "candy," lots and lots of people do the same thing, and all end up arriving to your site as type-in traffic. So you've got heaps of traffic, which equates to heaps of clicks, and heaps of money. Good deal!

That's the kind of thing that attracts so many to domaining. It's the prospect of setting yourself up with a few good domain names, and then sitting back while they earn you money. But there's a problem. Most (or more likely all) of the key generic term domain names are taken! Darn, wish that industry was still young…

See, right there is an example of discovering a past success with making money online, getting enthusiastic and interested, and then realizing that most of the really big opportunities are gone. But there is a hidden truth that many people often overlook.

In other stories of domainers, there's a tale of a man who thought ahead. He set himself up with self-made software programs that would buy up massive amounts of domains. He was doing this before practically anyone else, and was able to get his hands on highly valuable domain names after they expired and were re-released for sale. He made millions.

So here's the deal. Most people focus on the actions he took. He bought domains, made millions. But with the internet moving so fast, actions get old fairly quickly. What we can do to adjust for this is to focus on his thought process. He thought ahead, and made millions. That's what we need to do.

Take YouTube as another example. When it was brand new, only a handful of people knew about it. Not many others were thinking about video sharing. File sharing was growing, but video sharing wasn't being talked about much. YouTube's creators had a vision, saw a need, and built a site to fill it. Their thinking was ahead of most people's. So now that we all know about YouTube, we're caught up right? Don't be so sure… There are still new ideas out there that most people haven't even thought of yet.

Some people would say, "Man! I wish I had thought of that. I should have invented YouTube! But it's too late. All the good ideas are taken!"

People have been saying there is nothing new to be made for hundreds of years, and yet we keep advancing! There are some individuals who are constantly looking for the next big idea. They don't buy in to the "It's too late, the opportunities are taken," mentality. They know that the real money to be made is on the cutting edge, and where there are no opportunities, they make them.

People who think ahead get ahead.

Previously, I've explained how downloading the Alexa toolbar will boost your Alexa rank. Now I'm going to delve into how the redirect works.

It's pretty simple. You basically send traffic through Alexa's site, to yours. That way, anybody who gets redirected counts as a visitor, even if they don't have the Alexa toolbar. Using the Alexa redirect is a great way to make Alexa aware of all the visitors you have that Alexa usually can't keep track of.

This is the code for the redirect:

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect? + your chosen URL

So to redirect to misinterpreted.org, the link would be:

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://www.misinterpreted.org/

Great, so now that we have the code, how do we use it? There has been a lot of debate over whether it's a good thing to use it in links coming in from outside your site. Some people think the redirect will kill any transfer of PageRank, which would be bad. Others say that Alexa transfers PR no problem. But since the jury is still out, the risk is there. Another potential downside has to do with your ranking in the Search Engines. If you were to put a normal link somewhere out on the net, Google would eventually find it, and count it in your site's favor (usually). If you use the Alexa redirect, the theory (or fact?) is that Google wouldn't be able to see that link as being in your favor, and you'd lose out.

So, the Alexa redirect will boost your Alexa rank at the expense of PR and Search Engine placement.

But there are places you can use it where the negatives won't be a factor. Some bloggers change their in-site link to their home page, and use an Alexa redirect instead. There is some debate concerning whether the PR from all your pages can count toward your home page when you use a homepage Alexa redirect. My take is that there's probably not as big a risk concerning PR when using the redirect within your own site.

Another way you can use it is if you control a link that a lot of people use to get to your blog. If that link is very popular, you might try making it into an Alexa redirect. That way Alexa counts all the people who come through it, and you only have to change a single link.

If you decide to make use of this trick, keep in mind that every link you change will now rely on Alexa to work properly. So if Alexa goes down, the redirects won't work, and the links will be dead.

Update, 1-28-08: Looks like the Alexa redirect is gone for good.

Google provides everyone a great service with their website. You just go there, type in what you're looking for, and Google presents you with the results it thinks are most relevant. It is good for Google to strive for relevancy. If Google were to cheat, and put its own pages on top, when most searchers didn't want to see them, Google would make those people unhappy with its results. They'd leave, Google's traffic would go down, and Google would make less money from advertisers. Advertisers pay to be seen, and if Google isn't getting as many viewers as usual, advertisers will look elsewhere. So it is in Google's best interest to do a good job of cataloging every meaningful web page in existence.

Even if Google hired thousands of people to do research manually, individually going through the web finding and cataloging new sites, it still wouldn't be able to keep up. Many new web pages are being created every day. Plus, it is less costly to put machines to work doing the cataloging. And machines are faster. So what does this mean for us?

Since Google uses machines to index our sites, we can get ahead. We do this by learning the rules the machines follow. The Google Bot operates like any other program, using the formula that was programmed into it. Since Google hasn't yet revealed itself to be self-aware, we can assume that there is only a key set of guidelines we must follow (rather than the selective judgment of a person). It started out that Google's rules weren't immediately apparent. Some even considered them secret. Today, many of the basic guidelines are public knowledge.

Of course, there are most definitely other hidden guidelines that are not widely known. And since Google is constantly evolving, there will likely be new guidelines to follow in the future. However, the basic rules for getting your page indexed by Google are pretty simple.

The benefit of following these rules is that your page and site will rank higher (for search terms that you choose) than other pages and sites that don't follow the rules. You can use this to your advantage. If you do some keyword research, you can come up with search terms that are very popular. Then you follow Google's rules and optimize your site for them. Google will index your page, and it will appear somewhere in the search results for those terms. The best possible outcome would be for your page to come up as #1 on the front page of Google. Then when a surfer visits Google and uses the search terms that you optimized your site for, he or she will be immediately presented with a link to your site, up front and on top. That is a good place to be, because your site will then get a good amount of traffic. Getting traffic is half the battle when it comes to making money online.

So once you figure out what search terms you want to optimize a page for, how do you go about it? Let's say your top chosen term is "keywords and search terms". This is how to use those words in your page to get a boost through Google:

Use your keywords in header tags:

<h1>Keywords And Search Terms</h1>
<h2>Keywords And Search Terms</h2>
<h3>Keywords And Search Terms</h3>

Use the keywords in the URL of your page:

http://www.your-site.com/keywords-and-search-terms.html

*Many people believe that keywords-and-search-terms.html is better than keywords_and_search_terms.html as well as keywordsandsearchterms.html

Use the keywords in the file name of an image on your site:

<img src="http://www.your-site.com/images/keywords-and-search-terms.jpg">

Use the keywords in the alt tag of an image on your site:

<img src="http://www.your-site.com/images/keywords-and-search-terms.jpg" alt="Keywords And Search Terms">

Use the keywords in your content, and let Search Engines know they are special with bold, italic, and underline tags:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah <b>keywords and search terms</b> blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah <i>keywords and search terms</i> blah blah. Blah blah blah blah <u>keywords and search terms</u> blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Link to your page using the keywords in your anchor text:

<a href="http://www.your-site.com/keywords-and-search-terms.html">keywords and search terms</a>

*This can be done from within the page itself, from other pages on your site, and in links coming from other sites.

Link to your page using the keywords in the link's title tag:

<a href="http://www.your-site.com/keywords-and-search-terms.html" title="Keywords And Search Terms">keywords and search terms</a>

*This can be done from within the page itself, from other pages on your site, and in links coming from other sites.

The main thing to remember is that Google sees all the special things you do with words and phrases, so the more times you treat certain phrases (your keywords) specially (using them with bold, italic, underline, title, alt, and header tags, and in URLs and file names), the better you will rank for those terms.

A warning: If you use these techniques too intensely, Google could penalize your page or site as containing spam. It is best to use each of these tricks where they fit, and where they add to the user experience. Making a page look attractive while using a handful of these SEO tricks will usually prevent you from going overboard and into spam-like territory.

To track how your site ranks for certain keywords and search terms, you might try some free software called Free Monitor For Google.

Have you ever been so passionate about an idea, so completely enthused, that you couldn't wait to get to your computer and get your new project up and running? Did you work for hours and hours, trying to get things going as quickly as possible? What happened then? If you're like some people, you may have lost a considerable amount of interest somewhere down the line. Maybe you hit a snag, or maybe you just ran out of steam. But for whatever reason, your sprinting came to a dead halt. "It doesn't matter," you might have thought. "Wouldn't have worked anyway."

But what if it could have? All that passion you had to begin with must have come from somewhere. When you were still going strong, you knew it in your heart that you were working on a winner. "But it never took off." Well, nothing works when we stop working.

Sometimes we have to temper our passion, and make it last. If we use too much of it too quickly, we can burn ourselves out. It's like what tends to happen when the media takes a new hit and shoves it down our collective throats. At first we can't get enough of a new song, or artist, or video, or whatever. We say, "More, more, more!" And you end up seeing, hearing, or talking about it all day long. Pretty soon we get bored. Fed up. Overloaded. That same effect can occur with web development.

You might be so sure, so confident, so absolutely thrilled with your new idea. But you've got to be careful you don't wear yourself out trying to get too much done too quickly. Mind you, it is sometimes necessary to get things up and running in the rough as fast as possible. But as soon as you reach some basic level of functionality, you've got to give yourself time to rest, to recover from the intensity of it all.

Passion is somewhat self-replicating. As long as you take a break before you get too frustrated, your passion will have time to regenerate. But if you use all of your passion up too quickly, you risk losing it altogether.

The beauty of working online is that once we do something, it stays done. Once we create that brilliant image, write that amazing article, or format that gorgeous homepage, it will stay brilliant, amazing, and gorgeous for as long as we want, with no further effort on our part. This means that today we can easily build on the work we did yesterday. If ever you feel that you are losing motivation, just take a break. When you come back to your project, things will be just as you left them.

Your web site is like a castle. Every day you add a new room. When you do a little at a time, you keep yourself in a sustainable work mode. Without risking excess stress, you maintain the freedom to continue building your site up, little by little. It's amazing how much every little bit of effort can add up over time. Pretty soon, you might be shocked at the wonders you've created, simply through pacing yourself. It's no wonder so many people say, "Slow and steady wins the race."

Today I updated Misinterpreted dot Org's theme to get it further from the default WordPress look. I think I did a decent job, but I can still see areas that I might change in the future.

Part of the reason I did it was because I believe a web site will do better when it looks like time has been put into it. I visited a site yesterday that had an interesting article, but at first I wasn't sure if it was a scraper site that had stolen its content. It was just using the basic WordPress theme, and I've seen other scraper sites do that. In the end, I think the site was non-scraper, but it made me think about how the look of your blog can have a huge impact on the impression you give your readers.

I recently watched a show that had an extravagant title sequence. The show was 2-D animation, but the opening was 3-D. It just added so much, and it made the show seem like there was more to it than 2-D action. I think in some cases, a well-done title sequence might end up being one of a viewer's favorite parts of a show. This could be applied to web sites. If a site looks good, like it has something to offer, the visitor will be more hopeful and friendly toward it. If a site has the best content in the world, but looks generic or poorly-made, a visitor might just dismiss it and miss out.

Bottom line: When it comes to your blog or web site, looks matter.

Lots of times, people will overlook what could be considered the most important key to building up a site's traffic — content. I know that in the past, I've been curious about simple tweaks and tricks that will get more visitors to my site without me having to worry about what they'll find when they get here. But really, when it comes to traffic, content is king.

You hear that idea so many places that it might get old. "Yeah yeah, content is king, whatever, give me the secrets! The tricks the pros use!" In all honesty, I have to say I think "content" really does belong on the list for tricks pros use. Maybe even at #1.

How will great content bring more people to your site? Let's say your site is a notch above unknown. You've got a steady trickle of visitors. Not a whole heck of a lot, but a consistent number, and it's above 0. Imagine if you suddenly put up some amazing content. What would happen? The few people that see your site would say, "Wow! This is great stuff! I've got to remember this site…" Maybe they bookmark you. Maybe they mention your content to a friend or coworker. Maybe they even blog about you, and post a link so more people (and the search engines) can find your site. All these great things will happen because of great content. It's the Great Content Effect.

Now let's say that after a while, your site hasn't changed. There's that one piece of great content, which probably ends up getting its own trickle of traffic from search engines. And that's on top of the original traffic stream, so you're site is now getting more visitors than before. But your original visitors have found nothing new, and see no reason to keep coming back.

So you put up another piece of really great content. The Great Content Effect returns. A visitor says, "Hey, all right, this is perfect! I can't wait to see what they come up with next!" Others tell their friends about your site, and your traffic grows a little more.

Each time you put out great content, you increase the overall value of your site. The more valuable resources there are, the more people will come. Great content = great value = great traffic.

The beauty of using content to build traffic is that it's largely passive on your part! You regularly take the time to write or create something great, something useful and attractive, and then post it on your site. Bam! Done. Now your visitors will do all the heavy lifting, telling others about your site, bookmarking you, and keeping you in mind in the future. You can focus on what matters most, providing excellent content, and the traffic will essentially build itself.

What if rather than great content, you put up something lousy instead? Maybe a Made For AdSense template with old information. A visitor shows up, and if they are decently net savvy, they can tell your site holds less value than they expected. Suddenly your site has made a bad impression, and the visitor remembers not to come back. That can happen again and again. Pretty soon, most of your remaining visitors are all unfamiliar strangers who immediately turn away when they see you don't have too much to offer. There's no repeat traffic, which is a major component to a site's success. And if anyone happens to mention your site, the description won't likely be very positive. The lesson here is that a website is only as good as its content.

The benefits of consistently producing great content are:

The Great Content Effect is magnified depending on how much traffic you've already got. The more traffic you start with, the better the results will be. This is because larger groups of visitors seeing your great content for the first time can spread the word more quickly and powerfully than smaller groups. So you can see how this could snowball:

Traffic Level (X) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X+)
Traffic Level (X+) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X++)
Traffic Level (X++) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X+++)
Traffic Level (X+++) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X++++)
Traffic Level (X++++) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X+++++)
…Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!

One of the keys to succeeding in business is to provide great value for others. The more valuable you make your site with great content, the more traffic it will receive. And when it comes to making money online, getting traffic is half the battle.

Alexa is a company that tries to accurately measure web traffic to as many sites as possible. Their method is to watch user activity on browsers with the Alexa toolbar installed. So if someone visits your site without using the toolbar, Alexa doesn't know about it. But if someone else shows up, and they are using Alexa, your site will benefit. Here's how:

All websites start out with a crazy rank in the millions. A while ago it was around 5, now its closer to 10, and probably even higher. So if your site is brand new, it might rank at 11,000,000. That's the bottom tier, but it's better than "No Rank," which will happen if Alexa isn't aware of your site yet. What we want to do is improve our Alexa rank, because sites that rank higher are considered better, and more valuable in the eyes of potential advertisers.

There has been a great deal of debate about Alexa. Most people used to not care about the ranking system. It didn't really matter. Once advertisers started using it to judge sites, things changed, and many people began to complain because they believe your Alexa rank can be gamed. It is thought by some that there are definite ways to improve your rank. And that is true. One way is to download the toolbar. Another is to run a site geared toward webmasters.

On an episode of, "Family Guy," TV executives at a board meeting were discussing a recent problem on their network. Many people had phoned in to voice their protest. One executive summed things up: "We have received 20 phone calls from offended viewers. As you all know, each phone call represents a billion people, which means 20 billion people were offended!"

The issue with Alexa is it works in a similar way. Since Alexa only knows how many toolbar users visit your site, they use that number to guess how many total visitors your site has. That's right, guess. Can you see where this could be a problem?

If you ran a site that specifically catered to webmasters, many of your visitors, maybe even the widespread majority, would probably already be running the toolbar. So Alexa says, "Your site got 20 toolbar visits, so let's do a little math, and… OK, you must have received 20 billion total visits! Congratulations, and welcome to the top tier! Enjoy your flashy high rank."

What if you don't run a site for webmasters? Doesn't this tip the playing field against you? Absolutely. The system is flawed. But Alexa has acknowledged that the ranks aren't that accurate until you reach the top: "Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes."

So how can you improve your Alexa rank in an honest way? By installing the Alexa toolbar on the browser you most use to visit your own web site(s). The toolbar could be considered a scorekeeper for the net. On your browser, it pays careful attention to the sites you visit, and essentially gives each site a vote on your behalf. So if you spend a lot of time tweaking your own sites, it will make sure to give them votes, too. But Alexa makes it clear that to keep things fair, a site will only get one vote per IP address per day.

People have learned that this tends to add up over time. If you consistently visit your site(s) with the Alexa toolbar, you'll likely see results.

However, some have also noted that the higher your Alexa rank is already, the less noticeable a change like this will be. If your rank is still in the millions, then you should probably see some improvement. However, if you're already in the hundreds of thousands, you might not get as big a benefit (if any). But my guess is that if you're doing that well, you've probably already got the toolbar installed!

People have tried to come up with other tricks to improve their Alexa ranks, but some are considered underhanded and risky. There have been stories about companies being banned from Alexa for trying to game the system. I view installing the toolbar so it can see your web site to be upright and honorable because it's a simple, non-deceptive one-step procedure, and because Alexa encourages people to download the toolbar.

I'd say the best time would be as early as possible, once you've already begun the day. What I've found that seems to be true for me is I write my best stuff earlier in the day. When it gets late, I'm less focused, and a little tired. This is when I like to shift my focus to tweaking things or reading other people's posts.

However, you might find that you are just the opposite. There are people who are more creative at night, and write new material then. The next morning or afternoon, they proofread what they wrote and clean it up.

I enjoy not having to stay on one thing for too long late at night, which is why at that point I prefer surfing and learning new things, rather than outputting more material. I feel better and more productive when I work that way.

And I've learned that if I start to write as soon as I sit down at the computer, the ideas just pour out, vibrant and clear. It's a good feeling.

I came across a post by Seth Godin, marking expert, called The 7% solution.

He presents the following problem: You're in business. Everyone else is lowering their prices. You must raise yours. What do you do to keep attracting customers, even with the highest prices around?

What could you do to make your blog or website worth visiting, even if you charge all your visitors a fee?

If you can answer that, you know how to achieve the edge online.

The problem Godin presents is a type of scenario that gets you thinking in a different way. When you solve it, you reveal answers to your own questions of, "How do I do better?" and "What should I do differently?" We often already know the answers to these questions, but it is difficult to find them within ourselves without phrasing things just right. Godin's way helps us do that.

Here's another question: If you knew you were going to die if your website didn't reach its goals this month, what would you do? How would you accomplish those goals if your life depended on it?

Sometimes we need to shift our perspective a little before solutions can jump out at us.

There are lots of other questions like these out there. I bet you can think of a few.