This is the second blog that I'm reviewing for Rome Uy, the first being "For Newbies Trying to Make Money Online" back in December of 2007.

So… what is "Rome Uy dot com" all about?

Since Rome's "about" page contains only "This will contain my about page :) Will be making one later.", I had to figure it all out on my own. Luckily, it was easy. It's a personal blog which focuses on different things, but the articles which stood out were about video gaming, both offline and on.

Site Design

This WordPress theme looks fine, even though the main content area is narrower than what I'm used to seeing. He's not using images at the top of every article, so it works well for him. If he did, I think it could get ugly, really fast.

The navigational items at top, as well as the categories and archives listing in the second sidebar, make it a complete blog as far as I'm concerned. Anything else added is just the topping on the cake, as long as it isn't overwhelming.

Article Content

I'm not into video gaming. Perhaps it's because it didn't get popular until I was well into my adult years, but I'll never know for sure. So… I look for content that's written about other things. It didn't take me long to find "Okrut and Orkut", where Rome talked about people in Brazil and India searching for Orkut but spelling it wrong. Not knowing diddly about Orkut, I didn't investigate any further.

I spotted a lot of articles that didn't have anything to do with video gaming, but they didn't stand out as much. I don't have time to go through them, but I'll be back.

My Overall Opinion

It's an unusual blog, for an unusual Pinoy (Filipino) from my neck of the woods. It just makes it all the more interesting.

For a blog that's a mere 7 months old, it's growing fairly fast. He already has 2300 subscribers to his feed, which is much more than I can say for myself. It's obvious he's a social blogger, or his numbers could never get that high, that fast.

Despite the main topics, I find the blog very interesting from my perspective.

Would you like a review?

My reviews are simple, including at least one link to an article as well as a link to the blog or website. They're also absolutely free. Make sure your blog is ready to be reviewed and then submit it on my "Request A Blog Review" page and I'll try to do my best to give you a fair review, without being overly critical.

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Although this is a commercial website that I wouldn't normally review without a fee (money or otherwise), I decided to do it because Thomas asked nicely for objective opinions.

What's the purpose of the "Esentepe Seaview Villa" website?

This is a website supporting villa rental units on Cyprus, a Eurasian island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean.

Cyprus is the third-largest island and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Mediterranean, attracting over 2.4 million tourists per year, so it makes sense to promote rental villas there.

Site Design

A lot of work went into making this site easy to get around on, that much is obvious. There are plenty of pictures and videos to give you a very good idea of what to expect if you happen to go there.

I did a casual search to see how well the website ranks in Google. When I looked, it ranked at number 4 for the single keyword of "esentepe", number 1 for "esentepe villas" and number 1 for "esentepe seaview". In my opinion, the only rankings that could be better would be if the website fell in the top 10 results for "villas" or "seaview", which is next to impossible. It looks like the website is optimized very well for search engines.

The font and background colors seem to work well together, but there's something I have to say. Since older people are the most likely to be viewing the website, I would suggest a slightly larger font size. That way, the older folks won't have to put on the reading glasses.

Article Content

The article, "Why Esentepe?", is probably the most important article on the website for people who haven't made up their minds about going there. As such, I think it deserves a more prominent location in the navigation bar, or at least at the top of the current drop-down menu.

My Overall Opinion

If you're in the mood to take a vacation somewhere in the Mediterranean, Cyprus may be a pretty good choice. I've been there once, but it was only for a few hours when I flew into the airport via helicopter to pick up and send mail while I was on ship in the early eighties.

As I already stated, there are plenty of pictures on the website. It should give you a good idea of what to expect if you pick their villa as your destination.

Would you like a Review?

My reviews aren't the best. They aren't even close. They are one thing, though. They're absolutely free! No refunds and no exchanges. Make your blog the very best you can make it and then submit it on my "Request A Blog Review" page and I'll try to make my review the best I can make it.

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The Kentucky Derby is not only a sports event, it's big business. It involves horses, jockeys, trainers, owners, television networks, Internet websites and videos, gamblers and consumers. The latest race occurred on May 3, 2008. Stay tuned until the end and I'll tell you why I'm writing about this. If you don't care for the sport, feel free to skip straight to the end.

Horse Racing in General

I don't know what fascinates people about horse racing, although it's obvious that gambling has been intertwined with horse racing for a long, long time. Horse racing dates back to the chariot races of the Roman Empire, well over 1,000 years ago. In America, it predates the establishment of the US, dating back to 1665.

I'm not a gambler in any way. I don't even play cards for fun. I'll never understand gamblers just like I'll never understand horse racing, dog racing or anything like that.

What is the "Kentucky Derby" exactly?

From the Wikipedia article on Kentucky Derby:

The Kentucky Derby is a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old thoroughbred horses, held annually in Louisville, Kentucky, on the first Saturday in May, capping the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. The race is one and a quarter miles (2 km) at Churchill Downs. Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds (57.2 kg) and fillies 121 pounds (54.9 kg).[1] The race is known in the US as "The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports" for its approximate duration, and is also called "The Run for the Roses" for the blanket of roses draped over the winner. It is the first leg of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing in the US and typically draws around 155,000 fans.

The 2008 Kentucky Derby Winners

1st Place: Big Brown
Post Position: 20
Time: 2:01.82
Odds: 5-2

2nd Place: Eight Belles — Runner-up Eight Belles breaks front ankles, euthanized on track
Post Position: 5
Time: 04 3⁄4 Behind #1
Odds: 12-1

3rd Place: Denis of Cork
Post Position: 16
Time: 08 1⁄4 Behind #1
Odds: 26-1

The 2008 Kentucky Derby Coverage

Official Website: Kentucky Derby 134
Video: The Official Website and YouTube
Television: NBC

Why did I write this?

I don't normally write about anything sports-related, so why did I do it this time? I want to show you that you can increase your website and search engine traffic with current events topics as well as answering the question, "What are they searching for?".

I answered the question for myself by looking through the Google Hot Trends for the last 10 days. At least 5 percent of the searches were related to the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, the names of the horses and even the state of Kentucky. You may not consider 5 percent a whole lot, but rarely do any of the search topics even reach that amount. Even rarer is when they reach the top 10. A lot of these did.

What am I looking for when I write an article like this, social traffic or search engine traffic? It should be obvious that I'm looking for search engine traffic. What may not be so obvious is that I'm not really looking for search traffic from what has already transpired. The Kentucky Derby will take place again next year. I'm willing to be that I'll get boatloads of traffic for two weeks prior to the 2009 Kentucky Derby. Blogging success includes long-term goals like this.

I'm breaking my self-imposed rule of one post per day, as I wrote about in "Producing Quality Versus Quantity", because I still want to capitalize on as much as the residual search activity as possible. Google indexes my blog nearly every day and I'm crossing my fingers that this article will show up in the SERPS within 24 hours.

Here are some more blogs with articles about the Kentucky Derby for 2008:

• Eight Bells euthanized on the track
• PETA AND THE KENTUCKY DERBY
• Kentucky Derby overshadowed by death of horse
• Experiencing the Kentucky Derby Infield
• PETA shows up at Kentucky Derby. Tries to have Jockey Suspended
• THE KENTUCKY DERBY WAS… BLAM!

(Image source: IT'S POST TIME!)

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John P. at One Mans Blog recently published 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog. You see these kinds of lists all over the place, but I think I should listen to this guy. He's the Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President for Layered Technologies, founder of HTMLHelp.com and former Vice President of Sales for SAVVIS Communications. If he knows enough to present information at WordCamp Dallas, and WordPress people actually listen to him, he must make a whole lot of sense.

I'm not going to repeat what he's written and I'm only going to list the subtopics I need to change and have control over. Here I go:

1. Use English Naming Conventions for Images

   This was something I wasn't paying much attention to until I read this. I named all my images myself, but I never made them descriptive on purpose. After seeing all the searches for "frog clipart" and "money clipart" (images I have on this blog) appearing in my logs, I'm convinced this is the way to go.

2. Use TITLE Elements on Hypertext Links

   Again, I failed to do it on purpose. If you saw titles when you hovered over a link, it was by chance and not intentional. From now on, it'll be intentional. However, with over 1200 pages on this blog, there's no way I'm going to go back and change all the links. Sure, I'll change them when I'm editing a page, but that's about it.

3. Pick the Right Theme

   I hacked the heck out of the theme I'm using for this blog. The original theme code is almost completely gone. What am I saying? Except for some stray strings, it IS all gone. I rewrote and compressed the CSS and I rewrote most of the theme code. I say most because I didn't need to rewrite the functions.

   I won't do it again, though, because someone has already done it for me with other themes. I'm talking about the themes available over at Court's Internet Marketing School. I've started two blogs using two of the themes he'd already gone through and I went through them again, looking for errors or missing functions.

4. Do You Have a Print Stylesheet?

   No. No, I don't. I'll have to investigate this and see what I can do.

5. WP Admin Bar Reloaded Speeds Up Blogging

   I'll get the plugin when it supports WordPress 2.5. Until then, I'll have to do it the hard way.

6. MyBlogLog Makes It Personal

   Maybe, but I was getting spammed by people on it, so I killed my account. Perhaps I'll set a new one up later on.

7. Show Recent and Top Commentators

   I show the top commenters on a separate page, not in the sidebar. I'm thinking of moving it back to the sidebar, but with it "nofollowed" on every page but the index page. I haven't implemented recent commenters yet, but I plan to do it soon.

8. Optimize and Resize Every Image

   I don't use many images, so I should be safe, and I almost always resize them. I'll have to check out the software he recommends.

9. Always Include At Least One Image

   I don't do it on every post and I have no intention of doing it on every post. I'm not a big image fan. Do YOU think I should?

10. Homepage Excerpts Increase Pageviews

    I don't agree with this at all. If you want to read the whole article on the home page, so be it. I get plenty of page views because of my content (7-9 per person average). Why make it any harder for you to read them? You're not clicking my ads, the searchers are. What do YOU think about it?

I reread and checked everything John P. suggested. I already do most of what he wrote, but I completely skipped the "VLogging, PodCasting and Multimedia" section. Because of my limited options here in the Philippines and because I can't keep a connection stable enough to view video from the 900-pound gorilla called "YouTube" without waiting for an hour, trying to get deeper into video authoring is foolhardy at this point.

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This post is directed at people younger than I, many much younger. I'm only going to list things that I lived without at some time during my 46 years of age and I'm only going to list those things that I can remember. If they're already obsolete, I won't bother to list them. Here we go and in no particular order:

• Television remote control
• Cordless telephone
• Cell phone
• Microwave oven
• Automatic drip coffee
• DVD player
• Computer
• Internet
• Color television
• Video game console
• Frost-free refrigerator
• Cable television
• Satellite radio
• Automatic washing machine
• Automatic clothes dryer
• PDA
• Mp3 player
• Camcorder
• Digital Camera
• Printer
• Copier
• Scanner
• Blender
• Electric Mixer
• Rice Cooker
• Refrigerated water dispenser
• CD player

I could go on, but I won't. Many of these things existed while I was young but were not affordable to the average family. If you're young, you probably can't imagine what life would be like without all of these advances. In my opinion, life was simpler and more fun.

Edit: Are there any items on the list that I failed to mention and you would like to elaborate on? Feel free to add them to the comments. The base date I used was the year of my birth, 1960. Anything prior is digging too far back.

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