Last month, I thought - It's a pain in the ass to remember my username and password for every website I've ever joined. I got into the habit of storing them locally on a spreadsheet, but even that is cumbersome. It would be so much easier if they were all accessible through one website, a sort of central portal: links to my favorite online stores, banking, message boards, etc along with my various usernames and passwords. Then I did a little digging. And of course it already exists. Passpack. Check it out if you're interested.

This month I was onto something different. It's geared towards webmasters. If you run a website and you want to know where you rank for a certain search term, all you have to do is Google it. But what if you want to know where you rank for a bunch of different search strings?

In 2005 when I started this site, I'd Google The Churning periodically to see where I ranked, and each time I'd see my rank increase due to my SEO efforts. Then I began to notice people were arriving at my site with all kinds of weird search terms. I could Google those search strings one by one to see where I ranked for each. But yesterday I thought - Wouldn't it be great if there were a way to find out every search string that had me listed as the top result? I wanted to create a reverse keyword search. And as usual - it's already out there. And it's fucking awesome. SEODigger.

After you register at the site, type in your web address and select "Full search for domain name". You can run 10 searches every hour (restricting this helps reduce the number of concurrent searches, allowing the results to load faster). The results are typically outdated by about two weeks, so while it is a very useful tool, your actual ranking might be slightly different. Regardless, what I discovered was fantastic.

Out of every website on the fucking planet, Google thinks I'm the number one resource for albino porn. And that's good because it's sorta true. I have never personally posted or linked directly to albino porn, but I did write a post on the subject. And what I found is that albino porn really does exist. You just have to sift through the comments on my post to find it.

So this got me thinking... What search strings rank high for my online pals? I ran a few SEO digs and discovered:

• Eddie Speaks Whale ranks #1 for rip whacker
• MacBros’ Place is at the top of the list for hip waiter and tad hilgenbrink nude
• The gang over at The Airing of Grievances are apparently experts on ass man fuck
• The Finest Kind of Pork revels in its undistinguishedness
• The Omnipotent Poobah knows a lot about gas randomness
• And Randi's Random Rantings apparently has a lot to offer when it comes to mammories milky

So tell me - What search terms put you in the top 20?

• Step one: Get all your blogfriends to link your website. Make sure the name of your website is part of the text in their hyperlinks.
• Step two: Return the favor by sending a handful of readers in their direction.

It really is easy. Well, step one is sort of easy anyway. All you have to do is send an email to any of your dorky friends who have their own websites saying something along the lines of "Hey, link up my website you silly goose. The Codes will one day rule the earth, muthafuckas!"

Step two feels like an aching hemorrhoid. You know you're going to need to get that fucker lanced eventually, but instead, you just keep living with the itch and rubbing cream on it every once in a while. Okay, that simile sucks. Too bad. You're not going to get much better from me on a Monday morning.

Anyway, a bunch of my friends linked my band's website and now it's payback time.

MacBros’ Place:

This guy's a real problem. First of all, he's got a fetish for middle fingers. I think he likes to use his flip off finger for the ol' dirty sanchez. I swear I do not know from experience. That's just the word on the street.

The other thing that bothers me about this guy is his Canadian heritage. When I was a kid growing up in the south, adults always warned us youngsters to steer clear of Canadians. There's just something shady about them. Take one look and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Oh - And if you're ever completely bored, you can watch this Canadian sit on his couch and guzzle beer in his underwear. Yippee!

Pointless Drivel:

You know how I just implied that MacBros is a real freak of nature with an attitude problem? Well, this next guy is the pile of shit festering in MacBros underwear. He goes by the name "Mr. Fabulous", which reminds me of Paul Orndorff. I wonder if Fab knows he stole his nickname from a washed up wrestler/Florida bowling alley owner.

Shit, I just remembered. I'm supposed to be pimping Pointless Directives, not Pointless Drivel. Both sites are run by the Anti-Christ, and both are laden with bullshit. But there's one major difference: Pointless Drivel gets crazy traffic, while Pointless Directives has a small devoted audience of Islamic fundamentalists (it's only real function is to allow Al Qaeda sleeper cells to pass messages back and forth). Subhan Allah wa Bihamdih!

The Trouble with Angels:

I'm not sure why Diane and Mel call their site "The Trouble with Angels". I think maybe it's based on the porn movie with the same title. The film is uber-hardcore, with a vague plotline about two mentally challenged women who escape from an institution and go on a muderous rampage while boning every man in their path. It's a real heartwarming adventure tale.

One of the more popular series' over at TTWA is the Dead Guy on the Sidebar. It's morbid fun that rewards people who have a little bit of knowledge and some mad Google skills. I played along for a while, but never came close to guessing the right answer. And I'm a poor loser. I think at some point, if you lose enough times Diane shows up at your doorstep with a chainsaw and you become the next "dead guy".

Now I'm returning the favor by posting reviews of a few of the blogs that link thecodes.net. I'm writing these Churn-style as Ev would put it - meaning these are half-assed lazy reviews with no real value or content. Hopefully there's a little humor here, but at the very least you're getting a linkback and a handful of hits.

Idle Rantings and Miscellaneous Thoughts
This site is run by a fella named Cecil. I'd totally make fun of his name, but my dead grandfather was named Cecil, and I'm afraid he might return from the grave and beat me about the head and neck with his spindly skeleton hands. The other Cecil (the one who is still alive and writes a blog) likes to drink heavily and write about it. He also likes to talk about icky stuff like vomit and poo. Maybe some people like to read blogs that include poop jokes and puke humor, but I personally don't care for it. Someone's personal bodily functions are none of my business and they are definitely not funny. What's next - a blog entry about sex or masturbation? Gee whiz, I hope not.

Fuck. This charade must end. This site is exactly the kind of shit I dig. Haha - digging shit. There's a visual for you. Ummm... Where was I? Yeah. Okay. Check out Cecil's latest entry where he got shitfaced and drew a dumbtardulous picture of his house using MS Paint. Genius.

Misanthropic Tendencies
Sarah is one of the few bloggers I have met face to face. She wants me to let you know she has "nice titties". She's been doing this whole blogging thing for a long time. In fact, she was one of my first Philly blog connections and we've been buddies ever since. She even met Ev, which says a lot because Ev is a demented pervert I keep locked in the basement and I very rarely let him out for fresh air. He really doesn't mind though. There are pounds and pounds of weed stored down there next to my bong collection.

I Can't Believe He's Still Single
I'm really bad at blog-reading. I can barely keep up with the dozen or so sites that I like to check regularly. And sometimes I'll stop by an old favorite and see that it's gone. That's sorta what happened this time - only I discovered that a certain mystery girl started up an entirely new site.

It's a collection of horrible online personal ads posted by braindead perverts. Good times. I would tell you more about it, but the site is brand new. Check it out for yourself.

Oh yeah... one more thing... the mystery blogger would be disappointed if I failed to mention that she "knows how to give a really good blowjob.... has great boobies too. And back dimples."

I just want to help stat whores like myself increase their blog traffic. I can't guarantee you'll get more people to actually read your blog, but you will get more hits.

1. Write about things people are interested in.
   I know you want to write about your home improvement project or your children or your pets and that's perfectly fine. But there are millions of people out there who just want to read about sex, celebrities, and celebrities having sex. At least make passing references to celebrities or sports stars on occasion. Web surfers will love you for it. You won't believe how many hits I get every single day from people searching for Britney Spears' twat.
2. Post pictures - lots of them.
   And make sure to include descriptive alt and title tags. That helps search engines index your pictures. I'm getting several hundred hits per day from Google image searches. Obviously, it helps that I'm posting pics of Anne Hathaway's nipples, pubic hairstyles, and camel toes.
3. Join blog traffic sites like BlogMad and BlogExplosion.
   Here's how it works: You log in and surf blogs. The more blogs you surf, the more times your site appears when other bloggers are surfing. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. (I wonder how many times can I use the words blog and surf in one paragraph...)
4. Leave comments on other blogs.
   As you surf BlogMad, be generous with comments - but don't spam anyone by leaving pointless comments that are unrelated to the topic. Read at least a little of the latest entry on a blog. If it's halfway decent, leave a comment about that topic. They'll probably check out your site to learn more about the mystery commenter (you), and their regular readers might check you out too.
5. Be generous with your blogroll.
   When you come across a site that you find moderately interesting, link to it. A lot of bloggers regularly check wholinkstome and Technorati (aka an Egorati search). They'll see you linked to them, read your latest entry, and they may link to you out of courtesy. If your blogroll starts getting out of control, you can put it on a separate page.
6. Tell your friends about your blog.
   I'm not necessarily talking about co-workers. I'm talking about the kind of friends who might actually be interested in your daily bullshit. And if you write about something that happened to you and your friends, email them the link - especially if the story involves naked lesbians. Everyone loves a good naked lesbian story.
7. Join social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube.
   Whore yourself out online. All you have to do is create a profile, upload a little content, link to your blog, and add your readers to your "friends" list.
8. Allow readers to Subscribe to your blog.
   I use FeedBlitz for this (at the top of my sidebar). Readers enter their email address and they get an automatic email every day that your site is updated. People can also subscribe by adding your site to their feed reader. Just add a link to your RSS or Atom feed on your sidebar.
9. Connect with your regular readers.
   Don't be shy. If someone visits your site regularly and leaves comments, they probably would be happy to get an email from you. Again, don't spam anyone. Just send a little note like "Hey, thanks for stopping by my site. Hope you're doing well." Or even better, you can reference something they wrote about recently on their site. It will either open a line of communication with a potential new friend - or they'll want to retain their privacy and they'll ignore your email. No biggie.
10. Ask successful bloggers for advice.
    People who have been in the blogging game for a while are usually very happy to share some advice on web design or writing, etc. I've gotten some great tips over the years from fellow bloggers like Mojotek, MacBros, Jackie, Diane, Sam, Sar, and Franky. I know that's a long list, but I really do ask for a lot of advice.

I know it sounds like I'm in attack mode today, but the truth is I'm one of the worst offenders. In fact, I'm going to help feed your addiction.

• First up - Egorati:

It's a term bloggers invented for searching Technorati to find out who links to your site.

I run an egorati search at least once a week. If I get a new linkback, I'll check out the site, read a couple of posts, and leave a comment thanking them for the linkback. If like the site, I'll return the favor by linking them on my links page.

Go to Technorati and enter in your web address. Here's my egorati.

• Next - Who links to me:

This is the same concept as egorati, except it'll also show you your Google page rank. The higher your page rank, the better your placement in search results. The best way to increase your page rank is to get popular sites to link you. Go to wholinkstome and enter your web address. Here's my wholinkstome search.

• Next up - Google:

Everyone's favorite search engine. While Technorati and wholinkstome cater to bloggers, Google indexes nearly every site on the net. This will help you find out if a non-blog site links to you. Go to Google and enter link:(your web address). Here's my Google linkback search.

• And finally - Statcounter:

A lot of bloggers put counters on their site to see how many hits they get each day. I recommend Statcounter. You can hide the counter, you can check to see where people found your site, and it's free!

Go to Statcounter and sign up for an account. You'll have to put a bit of code in your template to track hits. When you're creating the code, you can choose to have it hidden so no one will see that you're only getting 10 hits a day - or you can choose to have a cool looking statcounter displayed on your page. I've chosen to hide mine, which is why I'm not putting a link to it here. What can I say? I'm shy.

The question: What's the best/easiest/free way to get Google to list your website in search results for topics you write about?

Here's my response (via e-mail):

Actually, I just resolved my battle with Google. I was banned for a couple of months because I cheated. I don't want to bog you down with the details of that - but just know that if you cheat, you get dropped.

So I cleaned up my site and the Google spiders are crawling it again (that's a good thing). That means Google recognizes that my site is valid and that their automated computers are looking at it daily and indexing it for keywords.

Anyway - back on track now....

The easiest way to get indexed in the first place is to ping your site. Pinging = sending a notification to web trackers to let them know you've updated your page. I ping my site every time I post something new.

Best pinging site:
http://www.pingoat.com/

Type in the name of your site and the URL. You can ignore the XML feed thing. Click all three categories to select all services. Then click "go pingoat."

After that, you can bookmark the resulting page. That way it'll remember your choices for next time.

Google, Yahoo, MSNSearch, etc all have their own spider/webcrawlers. Those spiders regularly check indexing sites like technorati.com or blogrolling.com . Pingoat notifies those indexing sites that you've updated your shit and Google et al will find out via technorati et al. Capische?

So that should do it. Within a couple of weeks, you'll be popping up in search engines. The more you ping (whenever you write a new post), the more keywords get indexed.

Now... if you really want to speed up the process...

All search engines monitor Google, which leads the pack. So if you can prod Google to list your site sooner than later, you'll start seeing search engine traffic a bit sooner.

You can do that here:
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

It's super easy. Just enter your website's URL then enter the verification code and submit. You can put the name of your site in the comments field if you'd like.

And if you want tips on increasing your keyword success, you can read about that here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Holy fucking shit - this is a long email.

Can you tell I'm a great big dork and I like talking about this shit? Sorry! Maybe I'll post this on The Churning sometime. I bet others would like to know as well.

Rock on!
JJ

I've got nothing to hide here. Yes, I'm a great big dork.

So there was a follow-up question about keywords. Should a blogger place specific keywords on their site anywhere? That's where I got fucked - TWICE. But I didn't go into the details in my email (Ha! That rhymes!).

First, I cheated by hiding keywords in posts by making them the same color as the background. That's a big no no. I learned the hard way. Yeah I was BANNED. Remember, I'm still new at this. It hasn't even been a year yet.

Next, I fucked up by putting a meta keyword tag in my header. You'll know what this is if you've done it. If you don't, then you're fine. But what I learned through experience is that Google hates repetitive keywords in the meta keyword tag. I fucked up. BANNED again! I had keywords for some of my most popular posts in the header (i.e. JackEBrown, shit euphemisms, indie yuppie quiz, etc). But, the problem is, those are old posts that you'd have to search for or dig around in the archives to find. Hence, having those keywords on my home page makes them seem irrelevant. The Google spiders noticed and gave me the axe. I just corrected that issue a few weeks ago.

Again, I didn't get into all that in my e-mail. Here's my response:

Don't worry about keywords. You can enter Technorati tags to get better rankings on Technorati, but that won't lead to many hits at all, and the tags won't help Google one bit. It's way more trouble than it's worth (in my opinion).

The great thing about blogging is that keywords are just part of writing posts. Like if you had a website where you sold bicycles and the main page is just a bunch of pictures of bicycles and their brand names, then you'd have to worry about creatively placing keywords in there.

But with blogs, you're writing new entries constantly and each of those entries is indexed by the search engines. That's a ton of keywords every day, just because you're writing.

I know some of you may want to dispute my comment about Technorati tags. That's fine. I don't use them, but I totally respect what Technorati does for bloggers. It's a great service. I mainly use it to find out who links to me. I just choose not to tag my posts for them.

Anyway, I hope this info helps a few people out there. Enjoy.

Oh yeah - you guys have any other tips?

Then a couple of days ago, Google stopped sending people in our direction. I don't know what happened. It's like I've fallen off the face of the internet. I did a little digging around and was baffled.

This page used to be ranked number one when searching for The Churning. But now it's buried beneath hundreds of other results. I think it's safe to say that my site should be number one for that string, considering that's the title and 137 other sites link to this page.

I tried a few other searches that used to give me hits and got similar results. Searching for Jack E Brown dancing, Napoleon Dynamite Utah State Fair, or The Rawker no longer leads you to this site. Now I'm starting to feel a little paranoid.

I know the page is still listed, because it shows up when you search for "The Churning" or "www.thechurning.com." My only thought is that Google may think I've cheated. I do link to myself a lot, in the sidebar and within posts that reference older posts. Maybe I've been banned.

Any ideas?