Writer Blog

Top 7 Free Things to Do in Las Vegas

2012-09-09T10:30:00.001-07:00

Here are some free things to do while in Las Vegas.

1) Fremont Street Experience: This is the place to experience Las Vegas - almost free. There are dozens of attractions. The biggest attraction of them is the biggest light and sound show, made possible by a canopy of 2.5 million lights.

Walk into downtown Las Vegas after the night falls for the most wonderful light and sound show in the world.

Also add to that free concerts, music shows, street performers, dance shows, body painting artists, spray painting artists, celebrity lookalikes, and what not. It is simply amazing.

2) First Friday at Arts District 18B: Just a few minutes away from Fremont is 18B, which stands for 18 Blocks, which originally formed the Art District. Although it has outgrown the original 18 Blocks, the name sticks.

Every month, on the first Friday, the street wears a festival look with musicians, artists, etc displaying their talents like nowhere else. Get more details here.

3) Casinos: Walk into any casino and it is an entertainment in itself with the ambient lights, attractive tables, and variety of casino games happening everywhere.

Flamingo is especially a nice casino, with real flamingo birds, swans, and other wildlife in natural habitat. See them all for free.

Circus Circus Hotel & Casino welcomes you with free circus and clown shows every day. You will see highly skilled circus artists, clowns and acrobats in action.

Paris Hotel & Casino is place for Napoleon's Duelling Pianos, where pianists compete against each other to create a surreal musical experience. On the foreground, there are cigars, and hundreds of variety of champagnes to taste and to enjoy. Live music is from 9pm to 1am every night.

4) Fountains of Bellagio, Fall of Atlantis Fountain Show at Caesar's Palace Hotel, and several dozens others also keep you entertained. The shows are very frequent - would start every 15 or 30 minutes.

5) Bevtainment: Serving beverages is an art for these beautiful entertainers. They take orders for beverages, sing, and dance at Rio-All Suites Hotel and Casino. Entry and entertainment free, you pay for the beverages. And, don't forget to tip.

6) Fashion Shows: Free fashion shows comes very naturally at Fashion Show Mall. They host as many as seven fashion shows a day. The runway, LCD displays, and the lighting fills the atmosphere with high energy. There are over 250 shops, several restaurants, and department stores.

7) Underwater Fish Feeding Show at Silverton Hotel is where you will see some 4000 tropical fish, sting rays, and sharks in a 117,000-gallon salt-water aquarium. They feed the fish at 1.30pm and 4.30 pm every day. Also don't miss the mermaid swim shows, Thursday through Sunday every week.

Check:

Las Vegas, NV Vacation Packages if you plan to visit the sin city some time soon.

Las Vegas Vacations Made Easy - for Families

2012-08-29T22:08:00.001-07:00

If your idea of Las Vegas, NV is limited to shining limos, glamor girls and uninhibited gambling and the like, you need to discover something more.

Take for example the Hoover Dam Helicopter Tour. An EC-130 Eco Star will take you over the dam, giving you a bird's eye view of the magnificent power station, the reservoir and the amazing landscapes that surround them all. Built in 1936, this 736' dam built across Colorado river is surrounded by picture perfect landscapes, making it an must-see destination in Southwestern US. The ticket costs $124 for an adult and $104 for children aged 2-11, for a flight of around 15 minutes. Hotel pick up and drop off included. You can take your still and video cameras with you.

Also consider a photo tour through the Valley of Fire State Park, a safe off-road adventure trip through the Aztec Sandstone formation, which are like nothing else in the world. You will also see the once spiritual center of Native Americans, which is a treasure trove of ancient American Indian art, petroglyphs, and a glimpse to the survival of people in the desert several thousands of years ago. The place not to miss is Lost City Museum, where you will discover the remnants of culture that existed here until around 2000 years ago. Did I mention there will be lot of stops to shoot the magnificent landscapes?

Red rock formations of Bryce/Zion also takes you to some of the breathtaking landscapes that you have seen in high-budget Hollywood movies. Nine out of ten photos you take here will be a picture perfect postcard for your own collection.

Grand Canyon West Rim Motorcoach trips, Colorado river rafting, etc also will take your breath away with the sights of impossible landscapes, geographical features and thrilling tours.

Family trips to Las Vegas with children are not complete until you see the Las Vegas Zoo, The Adventuredome Theme Park, Fast Lap Las Vegas Indoor Car Racing, Madame Tussauds Las Vegas, and a trip to M&Ms World.

There is no dearth of hotels in Las Vegas as you will find great hotels as Flamingo, Imperial Palace, Excalibur, Tropicana Resort & Casino, Best Western Mardi Gras Hotel & Casino, Paris Las Vegas, and several dozens more.

Tip: Make reservations in advance or try Las Vegas, NV Vacation Packages, designed specially for touring families.

How to Survive Next Panda Update

2012-03-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

SEO professionals are now pulling their hair and biting their nails after news of changes in Google algorithms. They are yet to recover from shock waves sent by the recent Panda update floored and dusted several thousands of SE-Optimized websites. Let's find how to avoid a massive Google slap.

The Right Way to Create Content

Almost every SEO professional today uses some software to spin articles. Undoubtedly, articles produced this way are of poor quality. Most amateurs think such articles will pass as content in their websites. They are all wrong.

Readers recognize such articles as rubbish. If real people identify the content as rubbish, Google bots are not far behind. Google has been tracking internet usage through various channels - clicks from search results pages, toolbar, Chrome browser, and recently Google Plus. They all give immense insight into what real users find useful and what they throw away as rubbish.

So, if software-made or hastily written articles are part of your content strategy, you are up for some unpleasant surprise.

If people stay in your website for long, there are several ways Google identify it too. If people ditch your website the moment they reach your site, Google can sense your website is of no value to human visitors.

The verdict is straight and simple. If you want your web pages rank on top of Google search results, make sure the pages are appealing to the visitors reaching your site.

The Right Keyword Strategy

Filling keywords in meta tags, h1 tags, alt attributes, and throughout the page is not enough. You have to create web content - articles, blog posts, video, photos, etc that are of real use to people visiting the page.

Of course, you need text content. When you create content, create content for the visitors reaching your site. Not for manipulating Google search results.

Make sure you use top keywords, keyword variations and at least half a dozen naturally occurring LSI keywords in every content page you create. The keyword here is 'natural'. Don't push in keywords simply because they look cute. Use the keywords, because content is not complete without relevant keywords.

Unnatural Links Pointing to Your Site

If you have received a message like this, it is a bad sign. Although Google doesn't penalize you even for spammy links directed at your site, such links can seriously affect your site's credibility.

Google can now recognize link buying activity. You won't get any special benefits for buying those links.

More dangerous are link exchanges. When you link out to sites not topically related to yours, your site will be flagged as a potentially spam link exchange website.

So, link out to sites that are relevant to your visitors. And, make sure not all your links have nofollow attributes. Also make sure your site gets links from topically related sites.

Link buying won't hurt you if the links are from quality, topically related sites. Yeah, that is right! No Panda update is going to slap you if the inbound links are from related sites, which don't link out to hundreds of unrelated sites.

Next Panda Update Coming; Will Slap Over-Optimized Sites

2012-03-16T10:12:00.001-07:00

Over-zealous SEO professionals are yet to recover from the recent Panda update, which slapped and hit several thousands of websites out of the park. The worse is yet to come. The insiders are to be believed, worse is yet to come. Over optimized or over-SEO'ed websites are bracing themselves for some severe punishment. Let's try to find the SEO practices Google will be targeting with their algorithm update.

What is Over Optimization?

Over SEO'ed websites will receive the punishment. That is the general consensus among the SEO professionals from Las Vegas to Bangalore. How much SEO is too much SEO? Where to draw the line. How do I know if my website is over-SEOed?

Well, Google has given clear guidelines for content creation, link building and other stuff for webmasters. Most SEO professionals overstretch the guidelines and make a fool of themselves. This is what happens in most cases.

Overdoing Content Creation

It is common knowledge Google values quality content. Webmasters overdo content creation. They use software to create spun articles, which they publish in their websites. The websites have hundreds of so called content pages, which are nothing more than spun articles.

It is over-zealous content creation. The content is not useful for the visitors at all. It may have helped the websites fool the search bots for some time.

Google has been studying the behavior of internet users for several years now. Google can now tell the pages that people find useful and the pages people find useless. All those spun articles are useless pages. People find them useless. Google also guess thus much.

If you have been creating content for the search engines, dear webmaster, you are up for some unpleasant surprises.

Overdoing Link Building

Topically relevant links are valuable. Links from unrelated websites and topics are going to stop serving you any purpose. If real users are not going to click on the links to your pages, Google bots too are going to stop following those links. The thousands of links you have bought from all kinds of websites are going to become useless.

Keyword Stuffing

This is the same as overdoing content creation. Filling your web pages with keywords is no longer a viable SEO strategy.

Well, if you thought any or all of the tricks above as SEO strategies, wait till the next round of algorithm update to see the fun.

Yes, IWriter Is Good for Freelance Writers

2011-12-08T19:10:00.001-08:00

When it comes to a freelance writing, iWriter.com is a great place for writers to find work. Find out why my iWriter.com review is a highly positive one.

Writers can log in to the site, select one topic from the dozens available and get paid for good work in a matter of maximum 72 hours. I have been with iWriter.com for the past 6 weeks and I love the site.

First my experience. I have got two payments from iWriter.com as follows:

First payment - $48.13 (three weeks after joining the site)
Second payment - $75.70 (two weeks after the first payment)

The second payment got just bigger because I got 'ELITE' status after my first 31 articles. Would reach there if one of my articles was not rejected and given a one-star rating by the requester.

As a basic writer, you qualify only for $2.58 per 500 words you write. I see several $2.58 in my account. However, once I became an elite writer, the payments are $6.48, $5.67, or $8.10 per article. I now can write an article in less than one hour. An extra $5 or $8 for otherwise wasted hours is a good thing for me.

I have a full time job and I don't plan to take up writing as my main source of income. The numbers may not look big, but I still love the extra money.

Starting Out
Initially, I was a little wary of using the site and writing for others. The requesters can reject your articles without citing any reason at all (it happened to me once). I accept it as part of the game. However, I don't write for anyone who rejects more articles than he accepts. Such people are not worth your time and they will pull your ratings down for no mistake of your own.

Hands on Experience
After writing four-five articles (every one getting a five-star rating) a requester hired me to write several articles. He liked my writing style very much. I could write without worrying about rejections. This guy gave me lavish tips too - $3 as tip for an article that paid me only $2.58. I feel lucky finding this requester.

Rejection
Till date, I have only one rejection. The requester said I used a brandname in the article. I still resent the rejection because I can't find any brand name in the article I gave him. I wrote for this requester because I saw him approving most of the articles. I may be just unlucky. Anyway, seeing a one-star rating for an article I thought worth at least 4 stars was very shocking.

Elite Status
It took me only 31 articles to reach the elite status. The several five star ratings I got helped. Then I saw requesters willing to pay up to $20 per article. I was quite apprehensive taking such high paying articles. However, all my articles are accepted. These high paying requesters are also more pleasant to work with. They give you detailed feedback when they take a point away from you. They also don't seem to reject articles for invented brand names in the articles.

Will I use iWriter.com in the Future?
Yes. Definitely. Now it is more than a nice side income. I don't have many hobbies. I think I can make writing as my hobby or passtime activity. The payments are just a bonus.

Sure, there are other people who don't like iWriter because the payments appear low. Everyone has his/her own reasons to love or hate anybody and anything, right?

Using Robots txt for SEO

2011-11-30T16:09:00.001-08:00

Robots.txt disallows all or select search engine bots or crawlers accessing whole or part of your website. Use robots.txt file to improve your SEO efforts. Here is how.

What does robots.txt do?

Robots.txt is a text file that tells search engine bots or crawlers not to visit certain parts of your website. You don't want to see search engine bots like Google Bot to see folders in your website that may contain sensitive data. You can also hide duplicate content from the eyes of search engines by disallowing the bots from accessing your pages.

Structure of robots.txt

The robots.txt text file is usually placed on the root folder of the website, along with the index file. It will be publicly accessible at http://www.example.com/robots.txt

Disallowing Every Search Engine Bots

This is a simple robots.txt file that rejects every search engine bots:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

The '*' refers to all search engine bots. The '/' prevents search engines from accessing any of the folders.

As you can see, using this directive prevents search engines from accessing your website and listing your website in search results. You do this when your website is in building stage and you don't want search engines to index your website.

Disallowing a Specific Search Engine

User-agent: Google
Disallow: /

This will disallow Google bots from accessing your site. However, it will allow all other bots to access your site.

Disallowing Certain Parts of Your Website

You can disallow certain parts of your website by using the following directive in the robots.txt file

User-agent: *
Disallow: /tags/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /tmp/

This will prevent search engine bots from crawling the folders named tags, images and tmp. You need to add a separate disallow line for every folder you want to hide from the search engine spiders.

Search engines wrongly assume your website has duplicate content if you use 'tags' or 'labels' to organize your articles. The snippets of a single article or content page can appear under different tags, which search engines think of as duplicate content. Disallow access to the tags pages and they won't see duplicate content.

Disallowing Specific Pages of Your Website

User-agent: *
Disallow: /www/pages/page1.html
Disallow: /www/pages/page2.html

This will prevent every search engine bots access to specific pages (page1.html and page2.html) of your website.

Robots.txt Use Can Go Wrong

Even experienced web designers make the mistake of using robots.txt the wrong way. That is, they disallow access to every search engine bot and complain their website is not showing up in search engine results pages.

Wrong use of robots.txt file can undo the effects of your good SEO. So, make sure you don't disallow parts of your website that you want to be indexed by Google and other search engines.

No, there is not a directive to ALLOW access to a page or folder.

SEO Content Articles - Write Them this Way

2011-11-29T16:14:00.001-08:00

Writing SEO content or content rich articles is simpler than most people think. Follow these simple guidelines to write SEO content articles that don't look like keyword stuffed pages.

This article is a follow up on SEO content writing, in which I gave a quick overview of the art and craft of writing for search engines and real people at the same time. OK, here we go.

SEO Content Headlines Writing

Use the target keywords as the first words of the headline. However, if you simply write the keyword as the headline, people are not going to click on the link to reach your website. Make the headline appealing by making a promise. In the title of this article, I promised you to teach you a way of writing SEO content articles and you are here.

SEO Content Descriptions

Write a very short description of two-three sentences. Write a lively and engaging description to get people hooked to the topic. Include more than two variations of the primary keyword. The first paragraph of this article is a description, which contains keywords like 'writing seo content', 'articles', and 'keyword'.

Use Sub-headings with Keywords

Subheadings with headlines are a key factor of SEO content articles. These sub-headings will make it easy for readers to scan your article. The subheadings also make it easy for you to divide your article into sub-sections and write useful content easily. The keywords in the subheadings tell the search engines that the page is contextually consistent. That is, you don't start with SEO content writing and wander into affiliate marketing.

Use Relevant Keywords to Make it an SEO Content Article

Bring keywords related to the primary keyword to as many places possible into the article without questioning the intelligence of your readers. In other words, your SEO content article can have keywords repeated multiple times in the article. It tells the search engines they have directed their visitors to the right page.

TheNextWeb published a neat joke, which clearly explains what keyword stuffing is. Avoid it or become the topic of jokes.

Forget About Keyword Density

If you are looking for keyword density of more than 3%, you are wasting your energy. High keyword density doesn't translate into better SEO content articles. You don't have to use any keyword more than 10 times in a 500-word article. Concentrate more on the natural flow of the article instead. Sometimes the keyword density can be more than 4% or even 5%. When it happens, make sure it happens in a natural way.

Use Keywords in the Last Paragraph

Honestly, I don't see any benefit using the keywords in the last paragraph or sentence of the article. It may just tell the search engines that the content remains topical without wandering into random topics.

Do tell me if this article will help you write SEO content articles that get human attention.

Also read: SEO Content Writing Best Practices

SEO Content Writing Best Practices

2011-11-28T17:24:00.001-08:00

SEO content writing is profitable craft anyone can learn. Learn the best practices of SEO content writing here.

Content writing, especially SEO content writing, is a valuable craft, highly appreciated and very much in demand today. New writers attracted to this craft think it is easy to insert keywords into articles and get a well optimized article. Nothing can be farther from truth.

SEO Content Writing is Not Keyword Stuffing

If you add so many keywords into every line you write, it will become keyword stuffing and keyword spamming. SEO writing has its primary goal attracting the attention of search engine spiders. However, your SEO content is a failure if it fails to keep the attention of real people reading the content.

In other words, people see your article listed in Google or Yahoo. They click on the link to reach your page. They discover the page is not useful. They quickly hit the back button and escape from your page. That is the result of keyword stuffing.

SEO Content Writing Makes it Easy for the Readers

Writing good web content is helpful for anyone reaching your web pages, because they can easily find what they were searching for.

Following are seven good qualities of SEO content writing.

1. Main heading has primary keyword

2. Has sub-headings

3. Sub-headings have primary and secondary keywords

4. Has relevant data/information

5. Primary keywords and keyword variations are used throughout the article/web content

6. Doesn't look like keyword stuffing (and most importantly)

7. Doesn't question the intelligence of readers

How to Write SEO Content

Do thorough research before you start on any topic. This way, you can present facts and cut fluff. You will get a quality, engaging article in return.

While writing this article, I wanted to get the attention of people looking to learn the craft of SEO content writing. If you have read this article this much, I am successful in retaining your attention. Do this much and I say you are a good SEO writer.

How to Structure SEO Web Content

Heading: Use keywords as the first words of the heading. Keywords moved away from the beginning may attract real users, but search engine spiders value them less.

In other words start your heading in this format: Keyword Keyword ___ ___ ___. See the heading of this article for a live example.

Description: Start your web content with a very short description of two very short sentences. Use keywords in these sentences too. Scroll up and see if I have written an engaging description.

Sub-headings: Break your content into sections. Separate each section with subheadings. Use keywords in the sub-headings. This article uses sub-headings.

Sprinkle keywords: Use keywords in different parts of the article. For this article, the keyword is SEO content writing. You can see the phrase repeated several times throughout the article. If the keywords affect the flow of the article, I stuffed keyword. It is bad. If the keywords appear naturally, it is successful.

Use natural variations of keywords: Have you seen web content writing, SEO web content, writing SEO content, etc in this article?

Use contextual keywords: Articles, marketing, web, etc are contextual keywords that go well with SEO. Write a naturally flowing article and these contextual keywords should appear naturally in your articles/SEO web content.

I hope you now have a good framework of what web content writing for SEO is. I wrote this article as an example of good SEO content writing.

Did you enjoy reading this article? Share this article so that your followers can learn the basics of SEO content writing.

Writing Services

2011-11-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

I am a part time writer, delivering articles and press releases.

If you have reached this page, I assume you already know me from somewhere else. Request my writing services only if you have used my writing services elsewhere and if you like my output.

Rates:

Press Release - $10 (400 words)
Articles - $3 to $10 (500 words, depending on topics)

Well, you wouldn't reach this page if you haven't seen my works somewhere else. If you have seen my work before, it is OK to contact me:

mach720 at gmail dot com

Please don't contact me if I haven't written for you. I am not looking for new clients as of now, because I already have a tight schedule. However, I feel it is good business to keep existing relations going.

Thanks,