Optimist Under Siege

I set up the bare bones functionality for my soon-to-be cheese blog yesterday. While I’m not an expert php/mysql user (and probably should’ve just downloaded something from wordpress or blogger), I was quite satisfied that I was able to whip up a working blog with comments in just a couple of hours. Yeah me!

To put this in perspective, I didn’t even know how to write html as of a little over a year ago. Since then I’ve learned html, css, web design, seo, php, mysql, and a smidgen of javascript. I’m by no means an expert at any of them (although my html/css/web design skills have gotten pretty good), but I can reliably use them to do a wide variety of things.

As I reread what I wrote, I realize that this probably sounds a bit excessively self-congratulatory. But if you can’t applaud your own achievements in your personal blog, where can you? I just love this new tech-landscape in which I live and work and am so excited that I’ve managed to get here. Who would have thought that my degrees in French and Anthropology would land me here? Pas moi!

I’m really excited about my cheese review site and I just need to find a way to get other people on the internet excited about it too. It really is a neat, unique new site, but unfortunately that doesn’t matter until I can make people aware of its existence. That is, of course, where SEO comes in.

On the other hand, there are non-search engine targeted ways to promote a website (or so I hear!). As I sincerely want to be a part of the cheese community (as my website’s title indicates), the community of not only cheese eaters and lovers, but also producers and retailers, I think my next move is going to be the institution of a weekly cheese blog.

Now I just have to figure out what the specific subject matter of the blog will be, besides its obvious focus on cheese! My website already lives and breathes cheese reviews; so I don’t want my blog to be a rehashing of reviews. I could interview local and internet cheese experts (cheesemakers, cheesemongers, and the like), but I’ve already seen blogs out there that are doing this well and so there’s really no point in me adding redundancy.

So it’s looking like my cheese blog may be a discussion of funny or interesting facts or happenings related to cheese in the news. Or, and here’s my brainstorm for which I haven’t quite figured out the logistics yet…I’m contemplating starting each blog with a cheese-related question, serious or funny, trivia or opinion, and then asking three people what they think before giving my own opinion or thoughts. It could be something simple like, “What’s your favorite cheese and why?” or something more whimsical like, “If you could be any cheese, which would you be?” This has possibilities… And it has me thinking…What kind of cheese WOULD I be? Stay tuned.

Let me tell you about the greatest innovation for people who work at home since sliced bread (and we work at homers just LOVE sliced bread!): Free internet at Starbucks! Gone are the distractions of the home. Gone are the days of desperately searching for an open network to join when you’re out of the house. Now, today you can enjoy your vanilla latte, mocha, or dirty chai (chai plus espresso..mmmm) at your local Starbucks while comfortably surfing the net in a pleasant work environment filled with, oh yeah, OTHER PEOPLE!

Shout it from the rooftops! This happy day has finally arrived for the sometimes reclusive, but really quite friendly, work at home community. I hold my latte and I raise a toast to all of you others out there. Our days of being tied to our own solitary wifi networks are over. Cheers and enjoy those coffees!

As the weather turned hot, my husband and I were faced with a dilemma. We put our relatively small air conditioner into our relatively large window. This, of course, left a lovely (and quite substantial) amount of space around the AC. This less than ideal situation wasn’t particularly energy efficient, and, well let’s face it, was rather silly.

Last summer we had solved this same problem by squishing one of the old, stained pillows from our old stained couch into the open space. Since then, however, we’ve acquired a new (and not so old and stained) couch with no pillows we wish to destroy.

So what’s a hot girl and her hot husband to do?

Well, two is, as they say, better than one. And so we had our solution!

And hey, they’re both energy star ACs which is probably better than one bigger non-energy star unit, right? I’m quite pleased with our creative solution thank you very much!

There’s something extremely satisfying about adding more user-friendliness to a website. Today I’m talking specifically about adding a few new subtle features to my cheese review site, including the ability to comment on articles, to rate individual cheese reviews as helpful or not, and to see the user’s rating of a given cheese as stars (instead of numbers).

These brief forays into coding are for some unknown reason quite gratifying, despite the fact that they aren’t directly helping my search engine optimization. These improvements don’t help my seo with links, content (well, I guess they add the possibility of more content), or anything quantifiable. But they do make the site better. And making the cheese site better helps give users a reason to stay longer and come back often. But, more importantly from a work-at-home-and-am-prone-to-distraction-and-discouragement perspective, adding more user-friendly features is helpful because it makes me feel like I’m adding something to the internet, that my toils have a purpose.

So today I feel good; I feel accomplished. And this staves off stir craziness and distraction for another work-at-home day. Which lets me focus better on building links and writing content. Which helps my SEO. Which increases my website traffic from the search engines. Which makes me happy. And so I’ve come full circle!

Sometimes I just don’t know what to do next to improve my search engine optimization. Is it the lack of enough inbound links which keep my sites from generating more traffic? Is my keyword density too thick (or, less likely, too thin)? Everyone likes to say that “content is king,” but that really hasn’t been my experience. There is a LOT of content on my maid of honor site, and the traffic HAS increased significantly from zero, but not as much as I’d like! Or perhaps there’s just something that I’m doing (or not doing) that the search engines hate. My bounce rates are even decent.

And not knowing what the problem is makes it hard to decide what the next most valuable thing to do would be! It’s all very frustrating. For the moment, I plan to focus on adding a couple more features to the cheese review site that are really going to make it shine (so that I keep the traffic once I get it!). Then I’m going to gamble on links being the key to SEO and see if some of the cheese organizations and producers would be willing to link to me. I’ll report back on my progress (if any!).

So it turns out that one of the reasons my maid of honor site traffic spiked up and then came back down is because of that stupid “Made of Honor” movie. Okay, to be fair I didn’t actually see the movie, but it looked horrible (despite having the cute guy from Grey’s Anatomy in it!). My site was getting tons of traffic because more people than usual were searching for maid of honor. So that mystery is somewhat solved.

And on the bright side, the traffic is still up from where it used to be. I remain optimistic…as ever!

So last night I decided to make a fancy dinner for myself and my husband. I got out the nice china plates, the crystal glasses, and planned out three, count them, three courses! For me, who’s not much of a cook (maybe that’s why I’m so focused on cheese…someone else has already made it taste good!), this is a big deal! I even dragged out the pretty blue place mats that we registered for but haven’t actually used yet (don’t tell anyone!).

And so, mid-dinner, between the entree and the dessert, where do I find my wonderful husband??

Good question…take a look for yourself:

Well, I guess he LIKED the food, right? Sheesh!

This may sound random, but there’s just nothing better than cheese and ice cream. If I had endless supplies of both, I would want for nothing. Of course, I might weigh about a million pounds, but they’d be happy pounds!

Speaking of cheese (unfortunately I’m going to neglect the wonderful subject of ice cream for the rest of this entry, but it really is a fabulous thing!)…I’ve found someone else on the net who seems to appreciate cheese as much as I do! I know, crazy huh?

“Cheese Head,” as he is appropriately known, operates a cheese forum to let visitors discuss all things cheese, from making cheese to (more importantly) eating cheese! I, known as “Resident Cheesemonger,” operate a cheese review site (as you probably already know) and am just delighted to have a fellow partner in cheese crime (and yes, there is LOTS of cheese crime!).

Now if I could just find someone who appreciates ice cream as much as I do…!