AreasOfMyExpertise.com Blog of a self described minor television personality. edit this microsummary

Wiki edit

edit Areas of My Expertise

The paperback version of AoME
The paperback version of AoME

Areas of My Expertise (full title) An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order by Me, John Hodgman, a Professional Writer, in the Areas of My Expertise, which Include: Matters Historical; Matters Literary; Matters Cryptozoological; Hobo Matters; Food, Drink, & Cheese (a Kind of Food); Squirrels & Lobsters & Eels; Haircuts; Utopia; What Will Happen in the Future; and Most Other Subjects; Illustrated with a Reasonable Number of Tables and Figures, and Featuring the Best of "Were You Aware of It?", John Hodgman's Long-Running Newspaper Novelty Column of Strange Facts and Oddities of the Bizarre

Good Evening.

At the heart of AreasofMyExpertise.com is a satirical almanac compiled (i.e. entirely made up) by author and comedian John Hodgman. Hodgman is a contributing writer for publications including The New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney's. He hosts the Little Gray Book Lectures—a monthly series that has been broadcast on This American Life. He now appears regularly on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

The site not only acts as both a point of sale for his book in all its current incarnations, but as a center of web activity for his various other endeavors including a blog, additional commentary on key subjects of his book (including Hobo Matters and Furry Lobsters), and independent projects his work has spawned.

That is all.

edit History

A real furry lobster
A real furry lobster

Launched with the publication of the book in 2005, Hodgman's site grew with the viral popularity of his national best-seller. Weekly contributions via Hodgman's blog continue.

With the publishing of the audio and paperback version of the book, the peripheral work within the website focusing on the more popular facets of Hodgman's comedy grew exponentially. Not only did work on versions of the book and the work elsewhere it birthed change, but ironically at least one significant portion of the book - the "facts" regarding the Furry Lobster (in reality an otter) - necessitated additional hilarious commentary when it turned out to be real in some fashion when a new species was discovered by science. Hodgman explains:

The old furry lobster
The old furry lobster
It is true what you have read. Since this book was first published, an actual FURRY LOBSTER has been discovered in the South Pacific. Here is a photograph of the newly classified species, kiwa hirsuta.
Some readers have taken this as a worrisome portent that certain items in my book may be coming true. BUT BE CALM. If you observe the "FURRY OLD LOBSTER" described in my book, you will see that they are not the same creature at all, though both are DISGUSTINGLY FURRY.

edit Press release

The Areas of My Expertise Plug: John Hodgman & Jonathon Coulton explain why you need the Areas of My Expertise.

edit Contact

edit Related Domains

edit External Links


edit AboutUs Featured WikiPage

Image:FeaturedSiteBadge.gif
Featured on 7 December 2007

Featured Text -- AreasOfMyExpertise.com is a truly wacky book. Don't take our word for it; watch the video on this WikiPage. Also, be sure not to miss the furry lobster photos, no joke. Well, it started out as a joke, but read the WikiPage to find out what happened then. Don't say we didn't warn you. Look at the history of the page to see how Steven Walling rocked out on it!

How visible is your website?

Home Page Analysis

A better home page will help you show up in search results.

Titles & Headings Icon-result-problem
Links & Images Icon-result-warning
Search Engine Friendliness Icon-result-good

Get Your
Competitive Edge

See how your digital marketing stacks up,
and get ahead.

Get your Competitive Edge and we'll show you.

Web Presence Analysis

How easily can your site be found around the Web?

value for Google crawl date
value for Bing indexed pages

Home Page Analysis

The Home Page Analysis helps you understand how a site's home page appears to both search engines and site visitors.


updated over 2 years ago

AreasOfMyExpertise.com Home Page Analysis Summary

Titles & Headings The title and headings on the home page tell people and search engines what a website is about.
Analyze the title & headings of the home page for free or the entire site.
Problem
Links & Images Relevant links to other sites are good for people and search engines. Images on a web page should be described for visually impaired visitors and search engines.
Analyze the links & images of the home page for free or the entire site.
Warning
Search Engine Friendliness A few simple technical fixes can make any site show up better in search results.
Good
Want more? Our Competitive Edge service gives you actionable insight into the social and content marketing of you and your top 3 competitors, and how effective it is.

Want free online marketing advice in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly email.


updated over 2 years ago

Title

The title of a web page appears in search results as the link to that page. Learn more ...

Purpose

The title of a web page appears as a clickable link in search results and bookmarks. A descriptive, compelling home page title with relevant keywords can increase the number of people visiting the site.

Search Engines

Search engines view the text of the title tag as a strong indication of what the page is about. Accurate keywords in the title tag can help the page rank better in search results.

Length

A title tag should have fewer than 70 characters, including spaces. Major search engines won't display more than that.

Content

The title tag of your home page (and any other page on your site) should not contain the site’s domain name or URL. These will appear near the title in search results, so use your 70 characters to tell people what the page is about. The title tag should not contain any HTML, because it will be displayed incorrectly or not at all.

  • Good: This web page has a title tag.
  • Problem: The title has fewer than three words. You may not be telling people and search engines enough about this page.
The title of this site's home page:
Good Evening

Meta Description

Search engines often use the meta description of a web page to describe it in search results. Learn more ...

Purpose

The meta description tells searchers what a web page is about. It is often displayed below the title in search results, and helps people decide if they want to visit that website.

Length

Search engines will read 200 to 250 characters, but usually display only 150, including spaces. The first 150 characters of the meta description should contain the most important keywords for that web page. Using fewer than 50 characters could mean you’re not saying enough about the page.

Content

The meta description should be engaging, and should include keywords that accurately reflect what visitors will find on the web page. The keywords should be the same ones that a site's potential customers are using to search. Include a site’s location if it is important.

  • Problem: The meta description is either empty or missing entirely.

H1 Headings

The H1 heading is an important sentence or phrase on a web page that quickly and clearly tells people and search engines what they can expect to find there. Learn more ...

Just one H1

In most cases, a web page should have just one H1 heading. Using multiple H1 headings is okay if that is a logical way to organize the page, but they should be used sparingly. That’s because search engines can view multiple H1 headings as an attempt to signal that all the content on a page is equally important, a tactic that’s seen as an attempt to game the search engine algorithms.

Purpose

Search engines look for an H1 heading to determine what a page is about. Human visitors do, too.

Content and placement

The H1 heading appears on the web page itself, unlike the page title, which people will see mostly in search results.

The H1 tag (which contains the H1 heading) is usually listed first among the other heading tags for a page. None of the major search engines, however, will penalize a site for listing H2 through H6 tags ahead of the H1 tag.

The H1 heading for a page should be different from its title. Each can target different important keywords for better SEO.

  • Problem: This web page does not have an H1 heading. It should have one.
Want more? Our Competitive Edge service gives you actionable insight into the social and content marketing of you and your top 3 competitors, and how effective it is.

Want free online marketing advice in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly email.


updated over 2 years ago

Robots

Your website's robots.txt file can tell search engines to ignore parts of your site. Learn more ...

Purpose

Website owners usually use robots.txt to let search engines know which pages or sections of their site shouldn't be indexed — for example, web contact forms, print versions of web pages and other content that's duplicated elsewhere on the site. Robots.txt can also be used to request that specific robots not index a site. For more information, read How To Use Robots.txt.

Be careful!

If you're going to use robots.txt, be careful not to accidentally exclude search engines from pages you want people to find. To learn more, read Don't Block Search Engine Crawlers.

Search engine robots

You'll need to know the names of specific search engine robots - or "bots" – if you’re going to exclude any or all of them from any part of your site.

  • Google’s bot is called Googlebot. Google is the world’s largest search engine, and is where many people discover new websites.
  • Bing’s bot is called msnbot. Bing also provides search results to people using Yahoo to search the Web. Together, Bing and Yahoo are the second largest search resource, after Google.
  • Baidu’s bot is called Baiduspider. Baidu is a major search engine in China, and the number of people using it is increasing rapidly.
  • AboutUs.org’s bot is called AboutUsBot. To create a Site Report, AboutUs uses crawling technology that’s similar to what search engines use.
  • Good: This website’s robots.txt file is not blocking major search engines from crawling its pages. Your website can appear in any engine’s search results.

Canonical Url

This website can live at www.AreasOfMyExpertise.com or AreasOfMyExpertise.com. It's best for your site's visibility to live at just one URL, or web address. You'll want to create a 301 redirect to the URL you choose from the other URL. Learn more ...

Choose one or the other

Whichever of these URLs you choose, make sure your website lives ONLY at that location, which is called the canonical URL for your site.

Be careful!

If you choose www.MyWebsite.com for your site, make sure people who don't type www can get to your site, too. Create a permanent 301 redirect from MyWebsite.com to www.MyWebsite.com.

If the same web page exists at two different URLs, people can choose to link to one or the other. Links from other sites to your website are valuable — they tell search engines that your site is important to people. By splitting valuable links between two identical pages, you're diluting the power of those links to help a page rank higher in search results.

Learn more about why you should have just one home page: Read Twin Home Pages: Classic SEO Mistake

  • Good: Your website resides at www.AreasOfMyExpertise.com, and AreasOfMyExpertise.com is permanently redirected to it.
Want more? Our Competitive Edge service gives you actionable insight into the social and content marketing of you and your top 3 competitors, and how effective it is.

Want free online marketing advice in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly email.

Web Presence

Search Engine Visibility

Check this site's prominence around the web and in major search engines.

Backlinks

value for Google
value for Alexa

Indexed Pages

value for Google 263
value for Bing 476

Rank

value for Quantcast 0
value for Compete 202,005
value for Alexa 396,413

Date Last Crawled

value for Google ?
value for Bing ?

Check this site's presence on news sharing and community sites.

Social Media Visibility

value for Digg 0
value for Dmoz 0
value for Google Groups 167
value for Yahoo Answers 0
Want more? Our Competitive Edge service gives you actionable insight into the social and content marketing of you and your top 3 competitors, and how effective it is.

Want free online marketing advice in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly email.

Redirectory

Below we show domains that redirect to AreasOfMyExpertise.com.

We survey every domain on the Internet ending in .com, .net, or .edu to see if any redirect to this website. Large or famous websites like Amazon.com often have many sites redirecting to them.

Domains that redirect to the home page of AreasOfMyExpertise.com

A website owner can point one domain to the home page of another. Learn more ...

Capture visitors who type the wrong name

It can make a lot of sense to redirect a domain to an existing web page. For example, many people are likely to type wikipedia.com when they are really looking for wikipedia.org. Creating a redirect from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org helps these people get to the site they want.

We have not found any domains that redirect to the home page of AreasOfMyExpertise.com.

Domains that redirect to a page within AreasOfMyExpertise.com

A domain can point to any page within another website. Learn more ...

Get people to a specific web page

Creating a redirect from a simple domain name helps people find an existing web page that has a long, hard-to-remember URL. For example firefox.com redirects to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/.

4 domains redirect to a page within AreasOfMyExpertise.com.
bookoflists2.com
redirects to: http://areasofmyexpertise.com/?t=1
moreinformationthanyourequire.com
redirects to: http://areasofmyexpertise.com/?t=1
thebookoflists2.com
redirects to: http://areasofmyexpertise.com/?t=1
areasofmyexpertise.net
redirects to: http://areasofmyexpertise.com/?t=2
Want more? Our Competitive Edge service gives you actionable insight into the social and content marketing of you and your top 3 competitors, and how effective it is.

Want free online marketing advice in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly email.