Top Boat Sites: Our top 100 boating sites website

I had to make a change to Top Boat Sites today to help curb spam on the site. So I decided to write about the site and give an general explanation of what a Top Site is.
http://www.topboatsites.com/

Top Boat Sites is a top 100 site. Top Sites are websites that have links to other websites. Usually the sites are related by content. This Top Sites theme is Boating. The links to the different sites are displayed on the page ranked by unique incomming clicks. The more unique inbound clicks the higher the site is ranked on the page. Next to the In bound clicks is how many outbound clicks the site has had. Also displayed is a banner going to the site. I've added a neat feature to Top Boat Sites, at least I think, the ability for a site to display their Top Boat Sites rank on their site. Here's what it looks like.

Top 100 Sites

Hopefully this site will rank better in the long run. :)

So to sum up. Top Sites usually are great generators of traffic for both the site itself and the other sites that are listed on the Top Site. Top Sites also help with search engine ranking and ranking of the Top Site itself. More incomming links gives the Top Site a better Page Rank. And since the Top Site links to the other sites. It helps to improve those sites Page Rank also.

What can you make a vid of on a boat?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080725152417AALiu2a&r=w&pa=FZptHWf.BGRX3OFPgDNWVOALjOHPpC7aXphxVIhI_41SLHKNrQ--&paid=answered#NbUvWza0UjP5nm_ftzGc

Well I was looking around on Yahoo Answers yesterday and found someone asking the question.

"I'm going on a cruize with my friend, and we don't know what to make a vid of!"

And I answered them with the following.

one of the cool things about boating is that anything can happen at any
time. this however presents a challenge to taping video because:

1. You won't necessarily know when to have the camera on
2. You might not have enough space on your video tape.
3. Your battery might run out of power.

A few months ago I went out on my friends dads boat. And we saw a sea
turtle. I wanted to take a picture of the turtle but didn't have my camera out
to take a pic of it in time.

So a few rules to follow:
1. Action can happen at any time. Have your camera ready to tape.
2. Get extra batteries or if the boat has a power hookup. Get a power
cord.
3. Bring extra storage or video tape.
4. Tape your friends and or family when they are doing something. You never
know when you might catch a classic moment.

I guess to sum up. Just have the video cam on you. make sure you have
enough power for a few hours of taping. And bring enough video tape or video
storage for a few hours of video.You will never know when or where something
interesting will happen that's worth you taping. So just be ready.

Writing effective articles

Today at work our boss asked me to write some guidelines on how to post articles for everyone who works here at eBoat Loans. What follows is the email I sent out.


A few tips on writing articles.
Your title should be "Keyword Rich." The first 3-4 words of your TITLE determines the success of the article in terms of how much traffic your article will generate...so choose the first 3-4 words wisely.
Example of a Bad Keyword TITLE:
Top 9 Ways to Acquire Fractional Jet Ownership
Example of a Good Keyword TITLE:
Fractional Jet Ownership - 9 Strategies to Help You Acquire Your Private Jet

Standard articles have anywhere from 200 words to no more than 5,000 words. The article should have a keyword density of about 2 to 8 percent. That’s roughly using the keyword once or twice per paragraph.

Your article should be informative/opinionated and concise. You don’t want to bore the reader. If you want you can put most of your information in the first paragraph and then expound upon that information in the following paragraphs. Most article writers have learned that if you put the meat of the article in the first paragraph readers are more apt to read the rest of the article.

If your grammar is not the best, you can always write your article in word first and then copy and paste it into your blog.

It’s ok to use quotes from other articles and or pictures and youtube video in your blog post. You can comment on the article and or pictures or youtube video.
For example you can do your post on your customer’s new boat he or she sent you pictures of and how he or she likes it. Maybe even ask the customer to send you some video of their new boat and upload it to youtube.
Basically try to make your post fun and interesting to people.
People that surf the net are out there to either be entertained or to look up the answer to a question they have. If your posts fall into that category they will be popular.

If your blog has a tags feature, use it. Tags are basically keywords that are apart from the article but still on the page and they help with search engine rankings.
My suggestion is to write the article first and then use the google keyword tool and then edit the article and input the tags.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal






Follow the link, click on the website content radio button. And put the direct link to your single article not the blog homepage. Click the Get keyword ideas button.
After you do that google will generate some keywords for you. Use the keywords that best fit your article. Use maybe 10-20 at most.

The links below are good ones on writing articles.

http://www.ezilon.com/articles/articles/530/1/Checklist-For-Writing-Effective-Articles
http://ezinearticles.com/?Article-Marketing-and-Copywriting-Secret:-How-To-Make-Your-Article-TITLE-Sell&id=20000
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
http://www.searchenginecollege.com/articles/2007/11/how-keywords-affect-your-rankings.html
http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/online/articlewriting.htm
http://www.isitebuild.com/article-writing-2.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=writing+effective+articles&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLJ
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us%3AIE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GGLJ&q=how+to+write+an+article

Used US boats selling well in Europe

Now this is very interesting. It seems that even though the boating industry here in the US has been hit hard by the economy. Used boat sales, especially those boats that have been used in freshwater only, are doing well via overseas buyers.

Since the dollar has declined vs many european currencies, many buyers from europe are now finding that they are able to get more for their money by buying used american boats. The article says.

The upside of the weak U.S. dollar is that American goods look better and better
to foreign buyers. Five years ago, 20,000 euros would have bought a boat worth
about $17,500. Today, it buys a boat worth more than $31,000.

This of course is great news for boat dealers that are being hit hard by the economy. It's pretty amazing though that almost half of some dealers business is now going overseas.

Rick Fulmer, vice president of sales and marketing for Cadillac-based Four Winns
boats, said about 40% of his company's sales are going abroad, including
various sizes of boats shipped to Canada, and larger models to Europe and
Australia

It seems that the week dollar is producing a boating boom not just amongst the wealthy but also the middle class. I just hope everyone can survive the economical slump and stay in business.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080727/NEWS06/807270553&imw=Y

OMG it's the biggest Bass I've ever seen.

Wow this fish is so big it doesn't even look real.
It's probably a 550lb bass. Not a world record but pretty close in my opinion.
I don't even know how they got the fish inside the boat.
Watch the vid it's cool.

Kevins boat loan blog

Kevin is eBoat Loans CTO and he just started up his own boat loan blog.
Go check it out and see what he has to say.
http://weblog.xanga.com/friendlyoutdoors

Maria's Boat Title Answers Blog

Maria is our Title & Registration Specialist here at eBoat Loans. She handles getting our customers title's, registration and coast guard documentation. She has started a blog about what she does. Head on over and take a look. Boat Title Answers

Maria has written a really good article on how to decipher a Boat's Hull Identification Number. It goes indepth and explains how to read a boat's hull id.

eYacht Loans Window Graphic

After testing out our eboat Loans window graphic. And seeing how good it looked. We decided to add on the other side a window graphic for eYacht Loans.

As you can see the eYacht Loans window graphic looks great!

And they both look good together at night.

Eboat Window Graphic

Now that we have our office up in Fort Lauderdale with a great storefront on US-1. We decided to put a nice window graphic on the windows that face the street.


Here is the finished eboat window graphic.








And here is a shot from the street.

Miami Beach International Boat Show

We had a good time going to the Miami Beach International Boat Show.

The boats looked great as usual. The people were friendly and we got to see alot of cool things. I especially liked the floating boat lifts.

Here is a shot of our eboat loans flag that's on our booth.











Here's our eboat table cloth. It looks great in person.











Here's a shot of the yamaha boats area in front of our booth.

And here's another shot to the right of our booth