The Smart Way to check your Page Rank

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Page Rank is now quite a sought after asset for your website or blog. Its importance is still hotly debated, but its economic significance for some websites is no longer disputed. A higher page rank can translate into much higher income generation for websites, through selling text links, ad sales, affiliate sales, and so on.

Most webmasters used to check their page rank through a simple bar in the Google Toolbar, but these days there are quite a few pagerank tools available these days for checking the PR ranking of your website. I recently tried Smart PageRank.com and I was surprised at what a a fast and simple alternative it is. Moreover, there are a few interesting twists that might make the difference when you choose one page rank tool over another, such as automatic email if the PR changes, display of backlinks/alexa/DMOZ, and, very importantly for me, it was fast to load.

But perhaps the most important reason I found this to be a good site was the data was even fresher than I had first realized. In fact, I found out through this tool that my Alexa rating had changed since I checked just YESTERDAY. My blog had finally moved below the 1,000,000 mark, (actually, 946,176!) whereas URLTrends only updates once a month. They are still showing my OLD PR/Alexa scores. In Internet time, that is a long time!

So, I’ll be adding this PR Tool to my useful links list on the bottom left of this blog!

This page has been ranked and sponsored by SmartPageRank.com.

Autometa: Meta Tags for each post

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This plugin for Wordpress 2.0+ provides a neat way to create tags for each of your posts, based on the first time you save the post you are writing. Here is the text taken from the Autometa website:

Automatic Tag Generation

This plugin will automatically generate and include HTML Meta Tags and Technorati Tags based on the full text of your post. When you save your post (and before you publish it) the plugin checks to see if any tags have been associated with it.

In fact, this tool works very well. It’s simple to install, requires virtually no configuration to get started. But here’s the biggest HOWEVER. If you use it to create automatic tags, you may find that there are some problems:

  • it tags based on your post’s first save only;
  • it creates tags that may not be appropriate; and
  • you NEED to edit the tags for EVERY post.

The actual editing of the tags is relatively straight forward, too. In your blog page creation space, just scroll down until you see ‘Custom Fields.’ That’s where you edit your tags. It takes but a few seconds, and the results are well worth it.

IDrive-E: Sounds like a good IDEA

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Ever lost a hard disk with your precious data on it? I have several times. The first time was the most serious, the second or third times, I lost recent stuff only. But still having a disk go down means your files, pictures, data, addresses, favorites, music, etc.. all go with it! Frustrating.
IDrive-E is offering a service with lots of online backup features and enough space to save most of your work files, or important stuff, for FREE! With a small monthly payment of $4.95 you can get unlimited space for your backups. A year’s payment would certainly be cheaper than purchasing a new hard-drive, but there is an important additional security aspect: your data would be protected in an off-site location. If your house or work pc was stolen or damaged, as happened to a friend of mine, no problems, you’d still have your back up data set online.

In addition, you can make the space appear as a virtual drive with Windows Explorer. In other words, it would appear just like an ordinary drive, making data access easy, quick and convenient. When it comes time to restore your file(s), you can access any of the backup set versions that are stored, so you can make sure you have the right version.

For investorbloggers, backing up your data on a regular basis is a hassle, but a necessary one for the most part. The whole process can be automated, saving you time to focus on your business.

This post has been backed by IDrive-E.