Miriness

A new report from Pew — Home Broadband 2010 — found that African-Americans experienced a 22 percent year-over-year increase in broadband adoption.
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CWA Local 9400 will gain new jobs and new members thanks to a broadband grant awarded to a union company in California.
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Let me be honest: I’m asking for your money There are ad spots free here on yoast.com, and I’d like to fill them. Due to a strange combination of circumstances, I’ve got a couple of ad spots free here at yoast.com at the moment, something I’m not very used to anymore.

Let me first explain why there are so many ad spots free all of a sudden: we ditched two advertisers because they were advertising things I couldn’t agree with. I have no trouble with advertising things I don’t use myself here, they’re not my ads, but I do have an issue with advertising things I’m actively against, so we bumped those out.

A while back, we also ditched some advertisers that were advertising themes that are not GPL. I don’t want to get into a discussion about this, but I prefer advertisements for companies that either do stick to the GPL, or don’t advertise WordPress related things.

Anyway, as you can see, the ad spots are available. There’s no doubt in my mind that BuySellAds will fill them up over time, but I thought I’d help them a bit. You can go here to buy an ad. In case you’re not convinced why you should advertise, see what Ryan Kelly, the CEO of Pear Analytics, one of our current advertisers has to say, who advertise their free site analysis tool:

“Out of the handful of ads we’re running on SEO-related websites, Yoast is converting at a whopping 92% on average, compared to other ads that range in the 20-40% range. It won’t be moving anytime soon.”

So, if you’ve got something you’d like to advertise, go buy that ad and support my effort of spending more time and money on this site.

Advertise on yoast.com is a post from Joost de Valk’s Yoast – Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

I get about 10 emails a day asking me for help with a website, not a specific plugin error or something like that, but more general requests for help, often relating to my WordPress SEO article. In the past I just used to give this advice sometimes, for free. Recently I’ve begun treating those requests a bit differently: I’ll email back that I can do a site analysis and tell people what to improve, which plugins to use etc. But… I’m not going to do it for free, so I’ll also tell them that I’ll do an analysis like that starting from $500 for a ‘regular’ WordPress blog.

You see, while it’s of more benefit to one user specifically if I help him or her fix their site, it’s of way more benefit to the community at large if I spend the time I work for “free” by writing plugins or articles here on yoast.com or elsewhere, like my recent article on Smashing Magazine. A plugin or an article like that will help tens of thousands, if not millions, of people. A quick site analysis from me telling you what to improve is of no benefit to the community at large.

When I charge for it, and people pay me for it, I actually make more money (d0h), which allows me to in turn spend time writing those plugins and articles. Sounds fair, doesn’t it?

If you just realized you want me to analyze your WordPress site, and you’re willing to pay the $500? Go get yourself a WordPress site analysis then!

How to get me to analyze your site is a post from Joost de Valk’s Yoast – Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

The Senate unanimously passed legislation to improve access to the Internet and other digital technologies for disabled Americans on August 5.
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The United States’ position in the global economy is dependent on our commitment to improving our broadband infrastructure and increasing bandwidth.
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Margrete Strand, the Sierra Club’s Director of Responsible Trade, praised a collaborative effort between the Communications Workers of America and the Sierra Club to promote the expansion of broadband Internet at the 72nd CWA Convention and Legislative-Political Conference in July.
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The FCC’s recently released Sixth Broadband Deployment Report points out that between 14 and 24 million Americans are living without access to broadband Internet.
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A new study from the Pew Hispanic Center offers a revealing look into the digital habits of America’s Latino community.
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So, just before I hop off on a 2 week holiday to France, I wanted to share something personal with you. In a long standing tradition of SEO’s and Affiliate marketers who show off their new ride, going from John Chow and Shoe on the affiliate side to Marcus and Dave on the SEO side, I’d like to tell you about my new pair, well actually trio, of wheels. I got myself a bakfiets. Or as you’d probably call it in English: a “Freight bicycle“. Yes, it’s a bike.

Why? Well because I either work from home, or fly, and for those small moments in between, I don’t need no car, I’d rather take a train. Ever heard of traffic jams? We seem to have invented those here in the Netherlands, or at least have a serious problem with them. Consider this: we’ve got longer traffic jams each office day, than that our country is long.

So why a “bakfiets”? Well I need to carry around my two kids sometime, and some beer, and this baby can carry it all at the same time. Ow and, just look how awesome it looks on me:

Now that we’re talking about rides by the way, I got my son a new ride too, a skelter:

Is that cool, or what?

Showing off my new ride! is a post from Joost de Valk’s Yoast – Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!