Archive for December, 2009

Thai Seafood (Thai Cooking Series)

In this Thai Seafood Cookbook there are forty six delicious Thai recipes like Crab Steamed in Coconut Milk, Sour and Spicy Seafood Soup, and Mussels Cooked in a Clay Pot.

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BookBinders Seafood Bisque

Case of BookBinders Seafood Bisque (6 total)

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Seafood & Fish Brine Seasoning

A combination of many spices that are blended in this great brine seasoning. Great when smoking trout, salmon and all other fish. Uses Insta Cure No. 1 (sold separately) Makes 50 lbs.

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What a graduation gift! My own Casio Men’s Titanium Pathfinder!

I was really excited about graduating from college. I could not wait to go on our senior trip hiking in Europe. My grandfather was excited about my having the opportunity to see the world. s. The problem is that as a college student, I really didn’t have a lot of extra cash. I really didn’t think I would be able to have a lot of extra items for the trip. I mentioned this to my grandfather just in passing. We were supposed to go into Swiss Alps and do some hiking and camping.
At my graduation party, I received several really nice gifts. I never thought I would get such a great gift! My grandfather gave me my own casio pathfinder. The Casio Titanium Pathfinder is an awesome watch.
This watch has Multi-Band atomic timekeeping in 31 time zones in 48 cities with city code display and daylight savings time on and off. This watch receives calibration radio signals either automatically up to 6 times per day or manually, that keep the time accurate. It has an altimeter that measures from -700 to 10,000 meters. It has tough solar power and water resistant to 100m. It has a barometer and a thermometer. It even has a 1 year original manufacturer’s warranty. The list goes on and on.
You just can’t find a better watch at this price. I couldn’t ask for a better graduation gift or a better grandfather.

casio pathfinder

Simple Ways to Make Your Web Site More Useful to Your Visitors

As a web site owner it is important to recognize your target market and make it as simple as possible for your potential customers to find your products or services. Internet users can be impatient, and with no shortage of competition, visitors can quickly lose interest in your web site and move on to the next one in the search results. Now, if you have this particular problem then at least you have traffic going to your web site and it’s simply a matter of how to keep your visitors interested. This article will touch on some of the common mistakes I see on web sites.

I see a lot of different web sites from all sorts of industries everyday and there are a few basic mistakes I see quite frequently that are easily fixed. This isn’t about the design or the SEO, but the simple and most basic details that are often overlooked. For example, let’s say I’m a DJ and have my own DJ company called “John’s DJ Services”. My web site has been designed to showcase my offered services, display images from past events, and even some testimonials from previous clients. I have contact information including my company email address and a phone number. Sound like a pretty good web site concept? Not bad, but what’s missing? Where is this DJ company located? What area of the city, country, or world are these great services being offered? It’s unbelievable how hard it can be at times to determine where geographically a company is offering it’s service based on its web site. I often find myself using Google to search the area code in their phone number just to find out what part of the world the company is in! The only reason I even bother is because I am evaluating their web site for them by request. If I was a potential customer there is no way I would waste my time and I would be off to the next site. I see this on a daily basis and I guarantee it is costing these companies money.

The point here isn’t to make fun of web sites or their lack of such details. What I really want to say is that sometimes there are some very simple ways to improve your web site without spending a dollar on SEO or expensive redesigns. Web site designers often overlook these details as well because they are focussed more on the visual look of a site, and generally only use the content provided by their customer. SEO companies often take a web site designed by someone else and clean up the code, and embark on elaborate link development campaigns also sometimes overlooking the most simple details. However as a business owner it is important for you to think about your web site from your customer’s perspective and not from your designer or SEO companies. You know your customer’s needs and wants. Designers and SEO companies know how to showcase your products and services, but they are not experts in your field.

When looking at either designing a new web site, updating a current web site, or increasing your traffic to either, first take a step back and ask yourself, “if a customer was looking for my product or service and found my web site, would he or she find it useful?” If a customer in St. Louis is looking for a “health spa” to visit and can’t find yours, perhaps you should make sure that your web site clearly states: “St Louis Health Spa – Relax at Sarah’s Health Spa”. Display this somewhere easy to see like in your title tag and in your heading tags. Don’t make the user search for this information, this is just as important as the actual service you’re offering. Think of the internet as a big shopping mall except all the shoppers are lost and have no idea what city they’re in. They have an idea of what they want, but they have no idea where to find it. Make it easy for them to get the information they seek.

Another common mistake I see regularly on web sites is the “intro page”. First of all, what is it trying to accomplish by being there? It’s telling me what I already know: I’m at this web site. Let’s visit this problem from a potential customer’s perspective and I’m the customer. I’m using Google to search for a “seafood restaurant in San Francisco”. I get the first page results and see that the first is from google maps, and the next two are directories, before seeing the fourth result is an actual restaurant’s web site. So I will start with that one. I click the link to the site and after waiting 15-20 seconds for the page to load, I’m shown a visually stunning “intro page”. At this point I have already spent more time than I wanted to with this web site, and I’m thinking about hitting the back button and moving on to the next result. What if I’m trying to load your web site in my hotel room and have week wireless internet signal? Now instead of taking 15-20 seconds to load, it could be up to a minute! I guarantee now that I won’t be dining at your establishment. The point here isn’t that all visitors are going to be annoyed by your intro page and leave, but many will. Why would you want any potential customers to leave your web site before even having a chance to turn them in actual customers?

The solution here again is simple. Do away with the senseless intro page. In fact do away with anything on your home page as well that will slow down the loading of your web site. Small images are great for most people’s internet connections and browsers, but text is obviously the best. It’s quick and to the point, which is how you want your visitors to find your web site.

Think like your customers, walk in their shoes and you will have more success at meeting their needs.

John Simmonds
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/simple-ways-to-make-your-web-site-more-useful-to-your-visitors-680070.html

How To Appear On The First Page Of Google Search Results

Once you create a website for your business, you quickly figure out that people are not flocking to it. When you assess the different ways of driving traffic, your options include advertising your website address, promoting your website address through Public Relations and gaining media coverage, encouraging other sites to link to you and getting placed in online directories.

However, these marketing activities will deliver small and sporadic volumes of traffic. The single biggest thing you can do to drive traffic is search engine marketing. Here is why: it is estimated that 80% of traffic to most websites comes from search engines. There are roughly 500 million searches performed everyday and 88% of that traffic comes from the top 4-5 search engines, Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. Of these, Google is by far the largest. Approximately 90% of people searching do not go past the third page of results and few go beyond the first page.

Therefore, if you want to drive traffic to your site it is imperative that you get onto the first three pages of Google and the other top search engines. Surprisingly, the majority of small businesses have not figured this out yet and for those who have, the majority are asking the question, How can I get my site to appear on the first page of Google search results?

Different Options

There are two main methods of appearing on the first page of search results.

Paid for results or Pay Per click (PPC)
This is where you pay to appear in the sponsored links section of the results page. In Google, this is at the top of the page and the right hand side. You decide which search keywords e.g. London restaurant, you would like to appear in. You appear in the search results and you pay for every user who clicks through to your site. The cost will vary by keyword and can range from 10p to several pounds or dollars per click, depending on how many other companies are bidding for that keyword.

Natural results achieved through SEO
Natural results are when you appear in the main list of results. You do not pay to appear or when a user clicks on your link. However, to appear on the first three pages of results, you need to implement a number of design and content changes to your website, which are termed Search Engine Optimisation or SEO.

Which is best?
Both have their merits, but natural results are by far the most preferable because once you have invested in SEO, you do not have to pay for the traffic that is generated.

PPC is a great solution if you:
Have just launched your website and you need immediate presence on the first page of result or if you have not yet successfully optimised your site to appear on the first page. Remember, there are thousands of websites all looking to appear on the first page of search results for certain keywords.

Spiders and Links: The Basics of How Search Engines Work

Without getting bogged down in the technical details of how search engines work, here are a few basics that you should be aware of.

Search engines want to ensure that the most relevant sites are displayed to customers who are searching for keywords e.g. London restaurants.

Each page is ranked by the search engine on different criteria.

Each search engine uses different criteria when calculating the ranking of the site, but there are some commonalities such as:
Automated Spiders are sent by the search engine to index each page on your site. These spiders log the content of your site. This allows the search engine to know whether the key words that a user is searching for appear within your site and on specific web pages. However, in addition, the search engines have decided that it is not sufficient to simply have the keywords appear in the site. They believe that the most useful and relevant sites for the person who is searching are those which have a lot of other relevant sites linking to it.

The important points you should take out are:
You want to make it as easy as possible for the spiders to visit and index your site.
You need to have relevant keywords on your site that are easily found by the spiders.
You need to have many other sites linking to your site.

Four Components of SEO

In order to optimise your website to appear in natural search results, there are four components that you will need to address.

1. Design: What to do when designing your website

Many small businesses make the mistake of designing their website and then start thinking about driving traffic to it. The problem is that the way you design your site can result in your site being ignored by the search engine spiders, which means you will receive very little traffic. When designing your site, ensure you avoid the following pitfalls and ask your marketing agency to confirm that they have been avoided.

Avoid flash sites
Sites are designed in HTML or flash codes. The spiders that are sent to your site by the search engines cannot read flash.

No frames
Some agencies design sites within frames. For example, the menu on the left might be within a frame and the main body of the page within another frame. It makes designing the site easier as the only thing that changes from page to page is the content within the frame. However, spiders cannot read what is inside a frame so you will not get indexed and noticed by search engines.

No dynamic pages
Some sites are developed with a database which generates dynamic pages. You can tell if there are dynamic pages on your site if there is a ? within the page URL. Again, most but not all of the search engines can read dynamic pages.

Text within graphics
To ensure text is read uniformly by different browsers, design agencies often put text within a graphic. It looks great, however, a spider cannot read what text is in a graphic and simply moves on.

Keywords
At design stage, think about the keywords you want to be found by on search engines and incorporate that into your design. For example, if you were to design your site so that a page was allocated to the most popular keywords, it would be easier to include more keywords on the page which would be found by the spiders.

2. Content: What to do when developing your content

Keywords

Choosing the keywords that you want to appear in search results for is one of the most important things you can do. Think of it as planning the location for a physical shop. Choosing keywords that people search for a lot (i.e. generates a lot of potential traffic) and then ensuring that those keyword are peppered around your site (i.e. more chance that the spiders will index them giving you a good chance of appearing high in search results) could result in your being positioned on Oxford street as opposed to a back alley.

Invest time in choosing the keywords. Think about how you would search for your product or service. If you are running a restaurant, you should immediately think beyond the generic search keyword of restaurant and consider descriptive keywords such as seafood restaurant or family restaurant. You also need to think of target keywords, so consider London restaurant or London seafood restaurant.

Once you have decided on your keywords, you need to place them throughout your site. The main areas are:

Web page title
This is what you see written in the title bar of the browser. It is also what you see when you bookmark a page. This should explain what the purpose of your site or your page is and include keywords, but always in such a way that makes sense to a user who reads it.

Meta tags
The tags are not visible to users but they explain what the content of the page is. Keywords should be placed in here as they are easily searchable by spiders.

Homepage content
Your homepage is searched by the spiders and you should ensure that your keywords appear near the top header. They should also be sprinkled throughout the homepage. See keyword density for guidance on this.

Keyword density
A question often asked is how many times your keywords should appear on a page. The guidance for SEO is that each page should have a minimum of 250 words; your keywords should account for 2 – 8% of the word on the page. That means they should appear between 4 and 16 times.

Two important points to bear in mind are:
1. You need to balance the need to write your copy for your users, in order to sell your product, and the need to write your copy for search engines, in order to be found.
2. To help you achieve both objectives you should focus on a couple of keywords for each page rather than a large number.

3. Links

Inbound links are key
To combat a lot of sites achieving high page ranking by simply stuffing their sites with keywords, the search engines have placed a higher weighting on the value of the number of sites which link into a site. The rationale is that if a site is linked to by lots of other sites, then it must be offering popular and relevant content.

Therefore, your site might be designed in a way that is easily searchable by spiders and your content might be sprinkled with keywords, but you need to have other sites linking to you in order to achieve success.

Audit your links
Ensure you know how many other websites are linking into your site and set a goal for increasing that figure. You should have at least 100 quality links.

How to get links
There are many creative ways to generate links to your site:
Ask friends, customers or suppliers to link to your site.
Post comments on forums or discussion groups with a link back to our site.
Register your site with sites such as stumbleupon and if users like your site, they will bookmark it, creating a link to your site.
Issue an online press release which should result in online media coverage and links back to your site.
Register your site with multiple directories.

4. Maintenance:

Once you achieve a high ranking in the search engines, it is important to realise that you need to maintain your ranking. The criteria the search engines use in the algorithms constantly change and what works today may not work next week. Your site will need to be tweaked to bring you back up the rankings

Evan Mangan
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/how-to-appear-on-the-first-page-of-google-search-results-107737.html

Crock Pot Cooking is Perfect For Soup

If you think that you are too busy to make homemade soup, think again! With your handy crock pot, cooking tasty homemade soup is a breeze. Just about any type of soup can be adapted to the crock pot, so you can come home after a long day to a nice warm bowl of soup. Add some crusty bread and you are all set for a relaxing evening at home.

Soup for the Crock Pot Cook

There is nothing as satisfying as ladling a warming soup into your bowl. When you use your crock pot, you can easily make soup from fresh or pre-packaged ingredients. Canned broth or creamed condensed soups make an easy base if you do not want to make one from scratch. Add vegetables, noodles, rice, or any other favorite ingredient and let it simmer all day long on low. Even if you are feeling under the weather, it only takes a few moments to throw some ingredients together and plug in the crock pot. Later in the day, you will have a wonderful, nutritious soup to soothe your throat and make you feel better.

What Kind of Soups Can You Make in a Crock Pot?

Add some stock or broth and your favorite vegetables before you leave for work. When you get home, add some noodles and let it cook for about half an hour. Before you know it, you have some lovely chicken noodle soup or beef noodle soup all ready for dinner. If you prefer dumplings, add them instead of the noodles for a filling meal. If you have leftover ham, you can easily make a tasty bean or split pea soup for a cold winter night. For bean soup, it does take a little planning, since the beans must be soaked overnight before adding them to your soup.

Chowders are perfect for the crock pot. Since they are usually milk based, scorching is a concern when making seafood chowders from scratch on the stove. In the crock pot, add your ingredients and set the pot on low. When you come home, you’ll have the best tasting clam or seafood chowder you’ve ever tasted, perfectly prepared every time. Just drop in the oyster crackers before you serve each bowl.

Just about any combination of ingredients can be thrown into the crock pot to make soup. If you have some kielbasa in the refrigerator, make some soup! Sausage, hamburger, potatoes, broccoli… they can all be used to make soup in the crock pot. If you prefer vegetarian fare, pumpkin soup is easy to make with pumpkin or squash, parsnips, apples, potatoes and some seasonings. Just puree it at the end of cooking with a stick mixer and you will have a tasty bowl of goodness to warm you through and through.

Crock pots are also an excellent choice for stews of all kinds especially when using cuts of meat that may be not quite so tender for budget reasons. This is not so much a problem in a crock pot or slow cooker as the process naturally tenderizes the meat and makes for a very flavorful stew. All you need to do is cut up into bite sized pieces some meat and sear it in a pan and add to this some sautéed mushrooms, onions and some of your favorite vegetables in bite size pieces, cover in liquid (wine works nice), season, and let cook on low all day. At the end add a roux to this to thicken the sauce and you have a wonderful hunter’s stew.

KC Kudra
http://www.articlesbase.com/food-and-beverage-articles/crock-pot-cooking-is-perfect-for-soup-749297.html

Upper Normandy Property Guide

Upper Normandy is located on the North Coast of France. To the North of the region is the English Channel. It is surrounded by the regions of Picardy to the East and Lower Normandy on the west side. To the South are Ile-de-France and the Centre. There are 2 departments: Eure and Seine-Maritime.

Upper Normandy Landscape
The Northern coast is typically limestone (chalk) cliffs with long beaches. Inland the countryside is dominated by the meandering Seine. The estuary is just south of Le Havre. Inland there are huge tracts of agricultural land which are not inspiring. Several rivers punctuate the landscape and these areas are attractive. Typified by the Monet Gardens at Giverny on the banks of the Seine near Vernon.

Upper Normandy Attractions
One of the big selling points is the Gastronomy of the region – lovely open air markets to sample the wide range of foods: produce from local farms (selling cider, ostrich meat, snails, Calvados, foie gras, and much more).
Water is a distinctive element – from the beaches and cliffs in the North to the rivers that meander throughout the region: rivers, with vast meadows, offering a taste of paradise to all fly-fishermen. The towns of Pont-Audemer and Bernay are surrounded by water and the ever present Seine is a feature in the Regional Nature Park.

There are visits to the archaeological gardens at Vieil-Evreux, medieval fortresses in Chateau-Gaillard, Harcourt, and centuries-old abbeys (in Bec-Hellouin, and Fontaine-Guerard). In the forests of Normandy – Lyons-la-Foret, Ferriere-sur-Risle – one can explore quaint towns and villages.

Fishing boats still land their catches at Fecamp, so that one can savour fresh seafood in the harbour-front restaurants. Further along the coast the large town of Dieppe is well worth a visit. There is plenty to see, with a good choice of shops and excellent restaurants along the quays.

Rouen, the capital of Normandy, is a delight. Its pedestrian centre allows easy access to Rouen’s history. There are walks through the historical centre, past half-timbered houses, discovering Gothic treasures like the Notre Dame Cathedral, St Ouen abbey, Saint Maclou church and the Palais de Justice or the Renaissance style monuments such as the Saint Maclou ossuary.

Monet’s Gardens
Last, but by no means least, are the beautiful Monet gardens at Giverny. The village alone is a delight to walk through but Monet’s Gardens are ablaze with colour during the summer and cannot be missed. Sample the bridge over the Lily pads. These are images that you will treasure.

Weather/Climate
Weather is similar to the South of England with distinct seasons. Perhaps slightly warmer and sunnier in the Summer! The countryside is green so it does rain.

Getting there
By road:
From Calais ferry port / Eurostar driving times are about 2 to 3 hours. You can travel by Autoroute (tolls) all the way.
By Ferry:
Upper Normandy is well served by the Ferry Ports of Dieppe and Le Havre so one can arrive in the heart of Upper Normandy from the UK. Other nearby ports include Caen, Cherboug ports to the West and Calais and Boulogne ports to the East.
By Plane:
Beauvais airport is short distance away in Picardy. One can also fly to Paris and get to Upper Normandy in less than 2 hours.

Upper Normandy Population
Just under 2 million inhabitants

Major Towns
Dieppe
Major port on the coast – lovely harbour with restaurant on the quays. Good selection of shops and monuments to visit.
Evreux
Evreux is situated on the river Iton just a 100 km from Paris. XII century cathedral with impressive stained glass windows.
Fecamp
Popular harbour town on the coast – between Le Havre and Dieppe.
Rouen
The capital of Normandy and full of history. Sited on a river, this city is well worth visiting for its architectural treasures.

Prices
(August 2006)
Property prices are affected by the proximity to Paris. Many Parisians buy weekend retreats in this region and contribute to property inflation.
Price Guideline
Apartments: 65,000 euros (Coast)
Farmhouses: 120,000 euros
Townhouses: 110,000 euros
Villa: 160,000 + euros
Land: from 10 euros per sq. m

Howard Farmer
http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/upper-normandy-property-guide-55100.html

Choosing A Theme For Your Wedding Day

Attention all brides, planning a wedding can be time consuming. Not to mention it can cost a lot of money as well. Are you looking for ways to make your wedding planning a little easier? Choosing a theme for your wedding and pre-wedding events can help ease some of the stress of planning your big day. Knowing what theme that you are going to use can cut down on all of the guesswork. After you have decided on a wedding theme, it is best to use this theme as a common thread throughout the pre-wedding events as well. Your theme should extend from your bridal shower, Bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, bridesmaids gifts, and lead up to your wedding day.

For example, if you choose a beach-themed wedding, then it would be a great idea to have a beach-themed bridal shower. What makes this easier? First, using the theme of your wedding for your bridal shower makes it easier for the bridesmaids to coordinate the event. Often times, it is difficult for the bridesmaids to decide on what type of bridal shower to host not to mention the bridesmaids gift to the bride. When you use a common theme, it cuts out all of the guesswork. Secondly, you can use some of the decorations from your bridal shower for the wedding reception as well. Now, that is what the experts call multipurpose!

Traditionally, the bridesmaids contribute funds to buy the bride a gift for her bridal shower. It is sometimes difficult for the bridesmaids to determine what to buy the bride. Using the theme of the wedding can be helpful. If they are hosting a beach-themed bridal shower, the bridesmaids gift to the bride should be something related to the beach. Some suggestions are a swimsuit and cover-up, a straw hat, a tote bag filled with things necessary for the beach, sunglasses, beach bridal jewelry etc.

Another aspect of hosting an event is deciding on what menu to serve the guests. Again, if you have an overall theme, the task will be a lot simpler. An ideal menu for a beach-themed bridal shower would be Crab Salad (can use imitation crabmeat), Tuna Salad with Sea Shell Pasta, Shrimp Cocktail, Croissants (they resemble seashells), Strawberry Lemonade, or other Tropical Beverages. Be sure to offer an alternative, in the event that a guest has seafood allergies. The bridesmaids are sure to earn brownie points (i.e. bridesmaids gifts) with this great menu!

It is time for the fun stuff! Every bride looks forward to her Bachelorette party. This too can follow the theme of the wedding. The bridesmaids may consider throwing a party at the beach (depending on the time of year and location of course). This would be a wonderful opportunity for the bride to give her bridesmaids gifts. If going to the beach is not an option, an alternative is to rent a hotel suite or a clubhouse and convert it to a beachside getaway. Whether it is during the day or in the evening, the bride is sure to enjoy herself at this event. Planning a wedding with a theme can make the task a lot easier than going about it blindly.

Nicole Lindsey
http://www.articlesbase.com/marriage-articles/choosing-a-theme-for-your-wedding-day-128502.html

Thinking about a Logo Contest

I was thinking about getting a new logo instead of just the old site layout logo we have.

Found some places that design logos so we’re looking into it. Also maybe a logo contest… drop a comment and let me know what you think.