Frequently, business proprieters get email spam from individuals claiming that they will increase their rankings in the earch engines. Some of the emails have the most ridiculous stuff in them. Promises of a #1 ranking or tons of traffic within days. Can they really live up to their claims after taking your money?

The truth of it though, because business owners crave more traffic and better rankings, these SEO businesses are forming to capitalize on these desires. Some of these so called SEO companies start up with one business name, and then a few months later, after taking money from the unsuspecting, doing a poor job, shut down and then pop up later with a different business name.

SEO is as much an art as it is a science. There are a number of methods that will have your site ranked higher on Google and Bing but you can't just depend on one way, alone. You risk an algorithm change and then your history.

Ian Scott, SEO expert was overheard not long ago pointing out that there are very few legitimate SEO businesses today.Ian has some expertise in the area of providing legitimate SEO services to clients throughout North America since 1997.

It is best to run from anyone that makes ridiculous claims about how fast you will rank #1 in the search engines. Anyone who makes you that kind of guarantee is just looking to take your money and run.

Some SEO companies will promise you page one Google rankings for the most obscure terms. What's the point of being ranked highly for something no one searches on? A fraudulent SEO expert once promised me number one rankings for a crazy keyword phrase about salt water fish in grand prairie.This was to do with a fly fishing site I had. Well, how many fly fishers would be searching that term in the first place? Because it is doubtful that there are any other websites that would even contain that term, it of course would not be difficult to get ranked for it. But what would it matter? What would that get me for the money they wanted to be paid for?

To see really good results that are useful, one must be patient. The work should be done in a comprehensive manner where a number of methods are used. There is no single SEO method that should be relied upon because Google is constantly adjusting the way it provides results. Search engine optimization requires knowledge of many different aspects and if you don't incorporate them all, you could find your site has dropped like a rock in the results pages the next time there's an algorithmic change.

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One of the most enjoyable things about my business is the wide variety of clients I have. With each one, I get to learn new things, discover things I never knew before and had no idea about.  One of our most recent clients deals with lightning detectors - not the "white lightning" sort but one of the most dangerous weather killers - those electrical storms in the sky that strike the earth.

Did you know that lightning is the second highest storm killer in the United States since 1959? I had no idea that was true, until I started working with SkyScan International, a distributor of the SkyScan brand of lightning detectors.

Up until working with this business, I did not even know that there was such a thing as lightning detectors, and now that I do know, I wonder why more organizations that have employees or run sports programs outdoors don't have them. Instead, they rely on weather forecasts which cannot accurately predict electrical activity in the atmosphere, or they use what they believe to be "safe" ways of counting the number of seconds that pass between a flash of lightning (who knows how far away it is exactly), and the sound of the thunderous boom.

There have been a number of tragic deaths reported in the news in recent years about people being struck by lightning with tragic consequences. Perhaps if a lightning detector had been close by, those tragedies might have been prevented.

Although there are companies that work in mining, forestry, gas and oil, and the military, who have an interest in protecting their employees that work outdoors, lightning detectors are not only for them.  With both permanent detector installation as well as portable lightning detectors like the EWS-PRO, schools and both amateur and professional sports organizations should have them at their venues.

In fact, there are some portable lightning detectors that are quite affordable for many people who enjoy outdoor family activities while camping or hiking - $179.95 for this portable lightning detector isn't a whole lot of money when it involves protecting loved ones while participating in activities during those months of the year when lightning could strike. With the ability to detect lightning within a 40 mile radius, that's a lot of safety time built in.

I think I'll make sure I have one at the camping trailer next summer. And the nice thing is this one is portable and I can take it where ever I go!

Does your school, organization or company that has a lot of outdoor activity going on have access to lightning detectors? Is there a policy in place about what to do under a variety of situations when electrical thunderstorms are in the area?

I had never thought of this myself until I began working with SkyScan International - and that's one of the reasons I love what I do!

I came across an article in CNN this evening that discusses what some are calling a "radical change in search" in the way Google may deliver some search results to you. What's all the fuss?

Well, now if you are logged into your Google account, when you do a search on something, Google will also provide you with what they call your "personal results" as well as other more generic and organic results. Sounds like an interesting concept. Google is talking about it like this on their own blog:

"But clearly, that isn't enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the Web, the people you know and things they've shared with you, as well as the people you don't know but might want to ... all from one search box."

Words can often mean different things. In this case, "radical" isn't quite the word that describes what Google is probably hoping for, and I am personally a bit dubious that this addition of "personal search results" will greatly transform the general internet user's way of searching.  I have several reasons for this dubiousness.

The first one is that I think Google obviously has some work to do on this "personal results" area. I have a Google account (which I will discuss later) and logged into it to see what I could see. Sure enough, when I went to Google.com, and typed in 'fly fishing', I was given an option to see my so called "personal results." All 300 of them, apparently. So out of curiousity, I clicked.

Somehow or other, Google thinks I should be interested in some individuals named "Ed Burgass," "Dean Burris," and "Shannon Long." With all due respect to these three individuals, I have no clue who they are or why Google thinks I should either know them or want to know them, other than that they have some fly fishing related images up somewhere. But surely there are some others interested in fly fishing that might have images up as well? Indeed, while playing around with my Google + part of my Google account, I have friends there that I know quite well and have even competed with in fly fishing competions.

And yet these people are not there in my "personal results" even though in their own web wanderings, they have uploaded fly fishing images (using their Google Account as well).

At the top of the results are "Images for fly fishing." The very first image in the row is an image of a wine bottle beside a wooden fountain pen case sitting on my desk. Sure, it's my image, and it's on my home winemaking site, but it's certainly got nothing to do with fly fishing or my fly fishing site!

The title and file name have nothing to do with fly fishing either. So I am puzzled as to why it would appear there when there are so many other images that I do have that ARE related directly to fly fishing.

The next result in my "personal results" is a link to my above mentioned fly fishing site, but the rest of the results don't make sense to me other than the fact they were "shared" by the above mentioned people, Ed Burgass, Shannon Long, and Dean Burris.

More Dubious Reasons That "This Is Radical"

Personally, more of my friends don't have Google and Gmail addresses than do. I realize that there are lots and lots of individuals that do have Gmail and thereby a Google Account, but from my own unscientific studies, the majority of average internet users do not. They don't see the need for another email address; they are quite happy with what they have.

Don't get me wrong, I love Google and all the nifty features they offer along with a Google account. But there are so many, I really don't even have the time to explore them all! I don't think the average internet user has the time either.  As well, although I have a Gmail account, I use it in a very limited fashion. It's where I subscribe to newsletters like Dr. Mercola.. who has some quacky ideas, but I'm sometimes interested in his quacky ideas but don't want his emails polluting my primary email address and distracting me from my work and close friends.Sometimes there are websites offering "free reports" which might be interested in reading but I don't want to take the chance that they will send me daily email once I subscribe.

I also use when I need to test and diagnose an issue between email servers. And that's about it. I check my gmail address maybe once a week at best.

Having said that, I do use some of the other features of a Google Account regularly.

I also will often create Google and Gmail accounts on behalf of my clients and provide them with the login credentials out of transparency, but I know for a fact they have no interest in logging in. They just want me to do the work I have promised and send them reports. They don't have time to mess around.

Finally, Google+ is so unintuitive in my opinion, that the average internet user will not ever really use it to it's full potential. I'm pretty smart and internet savvy, and I even get confused and am sort of "not quite getting it" as far as how Google+ is organized, or what's going to happen if I share "publically" or just in "circles" or what have you.  There really isn't much reason for the average internet user and consumer to jump into Google+ and leave Facebook, in my opinion.

However, we do know from seeing some search results, that Google appears to have at least a litte bit of ranking built into their algorithms that they use Google+'s even in their organic search, and not just in what you and your friends may have "plussed" while logged into  Google accounts. So for those of us involved in search engine optimization, we need to learn as much as we can and make adjustments - but at this juncture, I'm not so sure we're going to see any "radical" changes in the typical meaning of the word.

About The Author: Ian Scott is a partner in a web consulting firm that provides Ontario SEO (based in Ontario, but with clients through out North America). As well as search engine optimization, Ian and his business partnership have been assisting businesses in a wide variety of Internet marketing services including Local Search, Mobile, and online reputation management. Learn more about Ian Scott here.

I don't own a USB printer other than a fairly poor quality Lexmark which is an ink jet printer. I really dislike using it, and it won't run under Linux which is my preferred operating system on my laptop. So when I need something printed in good quality, up to now I've been emailing the document to my business partner who then prints it off on her printer.

However, I do own a huge Tektronix Phasar 560 laser printer which, except for its size, I like. It is very fast and does a nice job for my needs. But, it uses a parallel port which my laptop does not have.

I have managed to get it working though! I need to print a large number of documents over the next several days so I was looking for a solution and discovered that I could purchase a parallel usb converter cable. I did not know that such a thing existed, but they do. After purchasing the cable, and with a bit of research, I managed to get the laptop with the Linux operating system to print to the Phasar.

In case anyone else has a similar issue, I am providing the solution here. First, I needed to download the driver for the printer. My version of CUPS did not have it, but I found it here.With the print configure tool in OpenSuse 11.2, I installed the driver, but that was not enough to get the laptop to recognize the printer. The operating system did detected that there was a printer but it was in an "unknown location."

So my next stop was to manually enter the device uri location like this:

parallel:/dev/usb/lp0

After doing that, the laptop was able to communicate with the printer, and I can now print!

For some reason though, the operating system changed the device uri location to:

usb://Tektronix/Phaser%20560P which I don't understand, but I don't really care as long as it works.

I was thinking that I might try to sell the Phasar as I thought it was going to be useless to me with my laptop.  However, I also have several ink cartridges for it, and they are very expensive but last a long long time.

So, if anyone else has a laser printer with the parallel port, you can still keep it and make it work with your laptop's USB port.

I have been involved in search engine optimization since 1997 - back when the major search engines consisted of WebCrawler, Hotbot, Infoseek, AltaVista, and a few others. They were all fighting for attention, trying to improve how they offered search results and even came up with some interesting ways to determine what websites should rank the highest for a given search term.

Today, their are really only ways that most people conduct searches, and that is with Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google of course is still considered the King of search engines and although many of my sites rank quite high on Bing for relevant search terms, Microsoft's search engine really does not send me that much traffic.

With an emphasis on getting as much traffic as possible to their websites, many businesses are realizing the importance of good search engine optimization in both organic search results and local search. This has spawned a huge growth in the SEO industry with many businesses springing up and making promises that they have no business making.

Some of the tactics they use to get clients are simply immoral as well as using sales email letters that are pathetic. Today, I received one such email in which a so-called SEO expert advised me that my website was not ranking very well on the search engines for relevant search terms. The problem is the email contained a website which has nothing to do with me, and for which I have never had any interest in whatsoever. I do not own, did not work on it, and there is no contact information on the website that was referred to in the email.

I do however have a competing website in the same niche. And it gets very good results in both Google and Bing.

Some time ago, I wrote about another person who noted that my fly fishing site did not rank very well for the most ridiculous of terms and she promised she could have me on the first page of Google for the term. I managed to get do that myself in 24 hours just by writing about her email. But it's a pretty useless term for me to rank well for as no one would be searching on it. You can read more about that in this article on SEO companies.

Over the years, I have seen so much garbage spewed about in regard to search engine optimization that I wonder how some of these so called specialists stay in business. It is almost as if many of them want to come up with a theory that sounds good (the more complicated the theory, it seems the more likely others will accept the author of the theory as an "expert"), but has no basis in reality.

I've even come across individuals who have taken a short course on SEO and with little experience behind them, call themselves an "SEO expert."

If you own a business, it's likely that you could use some degree of search engine optimization along with maintenance. Be sure you find out exactly what the SEO company that is offering to help you has done in the past and ask for referrals.

Quick Bio Of Ian Scott

Born in Northern Ireland in 1963, Ian emigrated to Canada with his parents at a very young age. He missed the so called "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, but also missed the land of his birth. As he grew older, he realized and appreciated why his parents decided to come to Canada - to get away from the nastiness that was going on in the land of his birth.

He has one sibling that was also born in Northern Ireland, and another that was born in Canada.

One of his favorite activities was fishing with his dad! He loved it, and his father was a very loving and kind man, so time spent with his "Da" was valuable time. But, in about 1973, Ian Scott came down with health issues that included rheumatism and heart problems and was hospitalized for a greater part of 4 years.

While in the hospital, Ian was tutored for his schooling, but had lots of time to read Hardy Boy novels which  motivated him with a desire to learn and find things out, to solve mysteries that others could not.  At the same time, he also had a desire to learn how to "coach" others (although at the time, coaching was not the concept he had in mind). He wanted to learn all the details about his favorite team sports - hockey and soccer - and the details about how to be successful at fishing, or other sports like track and field.

In 1977, Ian made a recovery of his illness, and began to actually play soccer and participate in track and field activities. Most of the doctors thought it was a pretty amazing recovery after the health issues that had plagued him. However, Ian Scott was driven to be the best he could, and ended up being on a championship soccer team (after being turned down by another team that went no where), won several silver medals in long distance running events (including a Mayor's Invitational where he ran 10 KM and came in second place in his age group), and other things that were thought impossible in previous years.

Upon graduating from high school, Ian decided to follow in his father's foot steps and enrolled in Law Enforcement training at a community college. After graduating, he was accepeted for employement in an agency that his father had once worked for. The greatest satisfactions to Ian Scott were the times when he could help solve problems rather than have to use force to arrest or his powers to charge individuals. That was his philosophy: How can we help, rather than make someone's life miserable for the rest of the their life?

Fast forward to 1997.. some events occured that made Ian change his thinking about his career. At the time he had in addition to his full time job, a part time custom fishing rod building business. The advent of the internet really helped that part time business out as Ian learned the best methods to market his business with a website and what was known back then as "newsgroups." And according to Webcrawler, Ian was the first custom fishing rod builder in Canada to have a website!

Ian started to see the efficacy of Internet marketing - and being able to help other full time businesses. Subsequently, he made the aquaintance of Wendy Woudstra who also had a fascination with internet marketing and the two of them joined forces. Today, they still have the same clients that they convinced that their internet skills would help them. How many internet businesses can say that? how many internet businesses can say, "We started in 1997 and still have the same clients to this very day?"

The business that Ian Scott and Wendy Woudstra started back in 1997 has grown in leaps and bounds and now not only provides website design, but a full range of services, even including online reputation management.  We've grown our team so that you can take advantage of our services, no matter you need!

Ian has four sons, and one of his most favorite things is fly fishing rivers that are close to home. When not helping out clients with their seo, he might be found on a river with any one of his four sons, catching fish and enjoying the outdoors.

Ian Scott loves to help others, and you will find some case studies of his search engine optimization successes here.  Give him a call!!