This page should really be titled “Espresso” as that is my drink of choice.  These pages document my pursuit of truly amazing shots of espresso.  Many people drink espresso, but the reality is, they are drinking crap.  I don’t say this to be conceited, I say it because I have had espresso in a lot of different cities, but more importantly, where a the vast majority of people in this country get their coffee drinks…and they make shit espresso. There, I said it.

So, what pray tell is a decent or great espresso?  Well, you need to find yourself a real artisinal espresso shop.  Try coffeegeek.com or home-barista.com for suggestions in your hood.  WARNING: You are not going to be able to drink that shite you have been calling espresso without the “poo poo” look on your face after you do this. Be warned.

Ok, still there? Let’s get on with what I use and how I use it.

Espresso Grinder:

For those of you not in the “know,” the espresso machine is the accessory to the grinder.  Yeah, I know that doesn’t make any sense, but just trust me on this.  If you are in the mood, then read all of the equipment pages and you will probably have a better understanding why.

Thanks to Craigslist, I now have two grinders:

Rancilio Rocky

Poor little Rocky, he gets no respect.  This is an entry-level espresso grinder.  That is to say, it is way better than the POS grinders you will find in a department store or at the likes of Williams Sonoma (save maybe that Baratza Virtuoso).  Once to get Rocky setup, it can get you very close to the promised land and make a very good shot of espresso.  Read all about how I setup and use my Rancillio Rocky.

Nuova Simonelli MDX

This big mofo is a true espresso grinder.  It is big, it is heavy, and it is built like a tank.  Key features are the fine adjustment knob with the perfect amount of tension, large burrs, and simple design.  I am going to do my best to tame this commercial espresso grinder into a home machine with a few “simple” modifications.

Espresso Machine:

Yeah, if you have not guessed by now I probably have more than one espresso machine.  I am going to throw in my original machine here, because I still have it in a box in the garage.  I also have an older 3 Group Brasilia Portofino that I am going to try and restore…at some point in the next 30 years.  But, the star of the show right now is Miss Silvia…

Rancilio Silvia

She is a true lady.  She will take you to the highest highs…and the lowest lows.  Just when you think you have Miss Silvia figured out, she will remind you that no matter what you think you know, you don’t know shit.  I still love her though.

Brasilia Portofino 3 Group

I am not sure why I have this in my possession, but if you know me, then you probably know why.  This beast was just about donated to me.  You can follow along with the restoration (akin to watching paint dry) here.

Krups XP4050

Yeah, that’s right. I have a Krups espresso machine here.  If you want some really bitter shite, fire up one of these bad boys.   To be fair, I am not sure I can even recall what the espresso tasted like when we first purchased this thing. But, I do remember the toxic burning plastic smell that it gave off for the first two weeks we owned it.

Other Espresso Equipment:

Espresso Parts Ridgeless Double Portafilter Basket

Own a Silvia? You need to get rid of that double basket and pick up something like this ASAP.  Dosing was my single biggest hurdle when trying to tame that…nice lady.

Rattleware 58mm Tamper

It is a tamper, it is 58mm.  Well, Rattleware really makes some high quality products and this tamper is no exception.

Rattleware 20oz Milk Frothing Pitcher

Stainless is stainless, right? Wrong. These are high quality, THICK, stainless steel pitchers designed for this purpose.  They are inexpensive as well. I drink espresso, but I like to dress-up and play latte artist on a daily basis.

Rattleware 12oz Milk Frothing Pitcher

I bought this pitcher and was very impressed with the heavy gauge stainless steel.  It helps control temperature much better.  Great for making cappuccinos.  I prefer the 20oz for Latte work.

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.

Super Chef and lover of all things caloric, Jason Golod

Born out of my love for eating food, cooking has become one of my biggest passions/hobbies/outlets.  It all began hanging out in the kitchen, looking for hand-outs from my mom, while she was preparing dinner.  Mom was, and is, an amazing cook.

I have learned everything I know from Mom.  Her most important lesson may have been not to be afraid.  I didn’t really understand the gravity of that until I met people, as an adult, who seem to be paralyzed by the thought of roasting a chicken.  Don’t be afraid. Just try  it and see what happens.

These pages are a diary of sorts where I can document my efforts and maybe even interact with a few sorry souls who venture to make something they find here…

BBQ

What is there to say other than it is really effing good.   You take a big ‘ol hunk of meat, dump some salt and pepper on it, and then smoke it for more time than you care to admit.  The result? Heaven.

Braise-B-Que

A technique that I continue to tweak.  This is something that is very appealing to me on many levels. You get the relatively quick cook time of braising, but with the smoky flavor that bbq hounds crave.  Braise-B-Que gets you very close to a well-smoked piece of meat in a fraction of the time.

Coffee

I never drank coffee until my wife and I went to Tuscany on our honeymoon in 2006.  And, they sandbagged me. I tried to find a bad cappuccino everywhere we went…but, alas I could not.  Now I make espresso and milk drinks for me lady every day.  My trials and tribulations with my Rancillio Silvia, Rancillio Rocky Grinder, other espresso gear, and tasting notes on as many new espresso coffees I can get my hands on.  Yeah, it is like crack for me.

Raw Food

Something that has caught my eye recently is raw food.  While I am allergic to tree nuts (just about anything that is not a peanut), there is still a whole bunch of stuff out there that tastes amazing…and doesn’t come from an animal. (for the record, I like eating animals…I just feel a whole lot better physically when I eat this stuff).

Stuff I Use and/or Recommend

Every now-and-again, I come across something that really helps a particular technique, saves time, or is just plain good.  Here is where you will find all of that biz.

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.

Equipment:

Grinder:  Rancillio Rocky (set to 2)
Espresso Machine:  Rancillio Silvia w/ Auber PID
Temperature:  Auber PID set to 218
Pressure:  OPV set to 9 Bar
Dosing: 15 to 16g
Basket: Espresso Parts Ridgeless Double
Portafilter: Espresso Parts Naked

Coffee:

El Blanco Espresso by Johnson Brothers Coffee.  From the Johnson Brothers Coffee website:

This lot is comprised entirely of the admired Pacamara variety of Arabica, a cross between the giant-beaned Maragogipe and Pacas, a selection of the heirloom Bourbon.

Blind Assessment from the Johnson Brothers website:

Gently bright and pungent in the small cup: fresh-cut cedar, buttery chocolate, night flowers, hints of apricot and pear. Impressively creamy mouthfeel; rich, flavor-saturated finish. Retains its buttery richness in two parts milk, with flavor dominated by a crisp dark chocolate.

Dial-In

Miss Silvia was warmed up for over an hour for each of the two sessions today and had two flushes somewhere around 20 and 30 minutes into warm-up.

It took me about 4 shots to get things dialed in unfortunately.  Rocky needed to be tightened up a notch, which I did not expect.   For these long beans, I needed to turn Rocky down to 2 from 3 (which seems to work well for many coffees).  Once I managed to get the grind close, I worked on dosing.

Fortunately, the 17g dose I typically use was pretty close, but was a bit bitter.  I have learned that lesson from Miss Silvia and decided to lower the dose. I went all of the way down to 15g, but found that something between 15.5g and 16g seems to work the best (depending on humidity).

First Impressions:

Once I had El Blanco dialed-in, it became obvious very quickly that this was not going to be some dark fruit action.  My wife and I were both surprised at how prominent the tropical fruit nose was.  After sampling the fruit really came through on the mid-palate through to the finish….and a long finish it was.  There was a nice chocolaty finish which was a little bitter for my liking, but that is more likely operator error than a “defect” in the roast or beans.

A very fine espresso indeed.

Looking forward:

Tomorrow, I will play with the temperature a bit to see what effects that has and try to take a video or two of the extractions.  It was really a nice espresso to watch as the crema production on extraction is impressive.

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.

A quick note:

I created a draft of this post weeks before the Penguin Update from Google.  While many people are still dealing with the aftermath of Penguin and Panda, building backlinks by syndicating your documents and articles via document sharing sites is still a great way to be heard…and pick up a backlink or two along the way.

Most people know that in order to rank for certain terms in the search engines like Google, they need to build quality, keyword specific backlinks to their website…but, don’t know where to start.

Enter this series of posts where I will walk you through great, free backlink ideas that anyone with a computer, website/webpage (there is a difference) to promote, and an internet connection can do when they have some time.

Quality Backlinks From Quality Content

First, lets talk a little bit about content.  Content has always been and will always be king.  In my opinion, if you want long-term, lasting backlinks then you need to create good content.  This is not hard if you: 1) are know a lot about your product/industry 2) are passionate about what you do.  By creating good content, be it a report, how-to, review, video, podcast, or blog post, you are giving yourself a great platform for quality backlinks (as well as doing a host of other things like building your authority).

More important than the “backlink opportunity” is that you might get someone to read / watch /listen to your content that you would not otherwise have been able to get in front of had you not posted your document on this site.  That IS the goal.  The backlink is really a side-benefit.  Keeping this in mind with all of your link building efforts will pay dividends.

In short, I am going to assume that you are not reading this because you are lazy and uninterested in what you are doing with your online venture(s).  If you are looking for quick link ideas so that you can build links to your Acai Berry affiliate page, sorry…but, I am gearing this towards people will real, unique content.

Building Links With Document Sharing Sites

With that out of the way, let’s talk about today’s idea: Building Backlinks With Document Sharing Sites.

Why Document Sharing Sites?

Document sharing sites are a great way to publish your content in a professional format or simply in a different format.  You can share PDF files, Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files.  You can share simple text or RDF files.  There are a host of other file formats that many document sharing sites support, but it really is not important to list all of them here.  What is important is that the major search engines (and a bunch of smaller ones) have the ability to parse or read these files.  It is also important to realize that using one of these formats might be a big help to a potential user or customer.

For example, you might have a checklist put together for traveling with a small child.  Using the PDF format would be great to use because when people print it out, it retains your original format and layout.  Printing from a web page will probably not do that.  Maybe you have created a Powerpoint presentation that explains the benefits and features of your new product…this might be a great way for you to present your product to a new customer or client.

In my mind, and this is simply my own opinion, it also seems more natural to me that if you are really in business, you will have content created in a host of different formats that can be found all over the internet.  If you are a car stereo manufacturer, it would stand to reason that your installation manuals, product brochures, press releases, catalog(s), product lists, price sheets, promotional videos, podcasts, radio ads (audio), and any number of other items would be found on retail, personal, and other websites.  As someone who has always been working with search engine optimization, I have always tried to think about what would make any website look “natural.”  Publishing content beyond basic HTML is something any company is and has been doing.

The reality is, these are another great opportunity to get your content seen.  AND, it is a great and legitimate way to get a backlink to your site.

List of Document Sharing Sites

I am writing this post in Mid September, 2011…and this list is sure to change and evolve as time goes by.  A good way of finding sites to submit to is to use the “related” operator in Google (here is a great guide to Google search operators).  Once you have a good site that you like to use, type in related:websiteyoulike.com on Google.  You will get a list of websites that are probably good candidates for you to submit to.  Here is a list of sites that you may want to post your content to:

1. Scribd
2. Docstoc
3. Google Docs
4. issuu
5. box.net
6. 4shared.com
7. esnips
8. mediafire
9. Zoho
10. Docshare
11. authorstream
12. divshare
13. slideshare
14. yudu

This is by no means the end-all-be-all list of document sharing sites.  This is just a starting point.  If you are looking for sites to share Powerpoint presentations, then search for “powerpoint sharing” or “powerpoint sites”.  You can even use the “filetype” operator and search for Powerpoint documents in Google (filetype:.ppt).

What Should I Publish?

We touched on some ideas of things you can publish above in the talk about your assets.  Anything that is or could be of value to your clients or customers…or to anyone really, is something you should consider publishing.  But, don’t just start submitting stuff willy nilly.  Read over everything you are considering publishing.  Be sure that there is a way for people to get more information, know how/where to order your product, sign up for your newsletter, or whatever you are trying to get them to ultimately do in at least one, prominent location in the document, video, or audio.  Give them a little blurb about you or your product and with a link using descriptive anchor text.  Don’t just whip through this without much thought.  You will be surprised at how much traffic this stuff can generate.

If you are really good, you can use Google’s URL builder so that you can track every link in every document (if you are using Google Analytics).  Yes, you will get your link juice using this stuff…it may just take a little bit longer to kick in.  Having this information is great.  Or, you can leave out the Google URLs. I have seen one person in particular mention that he doesn’t think it is a good idea.

Submitting Content

There is never a substitute for doing something yourself.  The reality is, nobody will do something as well as you will.  But, there are a number of different options when it comes to submitting your documents to these sites:

1. Do it yourself – Yeah, this is the best option, but submitting to these sites can get pretty boring.  Worse is actually setting up the accounts…see below for help with that.
2. Pay someone to do it for you – There are tons of people out there who are waiting to take your money to submit documents for you.  IF you go this route, be sure that you will get a detailed list of what was submitted, to what site, when, and the document URL so that you can make sure the document is available online and can be found.
3. Use software to submit – This is probably going to have the lowest success rate, but can obviously cover a lot more ground than you or the human you are going to pay to do it for you can.  The reality is, most of the people you might pay are probably using some kind of submission software.  There are a couple of big software platforms out there
• SE Nuke – I am not a subscriber…it just felt a little slimey to me when I went to check it out.  It has a ton of features beyond simple submissions…but, I cannot speak to it as I do not subscribe to the service.
• Magic Submitter – This is a much lower cost alternative to SE Nuke, and I have seen it work.  However, I think the days of automatic submissions is really numbered.  Completion rates/success rates for these applications is not good. And, if you are writing real content (like you should be) then you want every single submission to work, right? Do it manually.

 Rich Snippets

One final thought for those of you wondering why you want to publish your hard work on someone else’s site.  There are a number of good reasons that come to mind.  First, diversity.  While some people (like Warren Buffet) think diversification is not a good idea, in this case, I think it has merit.  Not only are you able to leverage the authority of some of these big document sharing sites, but you are also making sure you do not have all of your eggs in one basket.

Today, with Google’s Penguin update giving many webmasters pause, those who published real, quality content (not spun articles) on 3rd party sites may have more traffic coming their way than they did before Penguin, or more than they would have had they only published content on their site.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in building a strong website with great content as the cornerstone, but diversifying with 10 or 20 percent of the content you create is not a bad idea.

The point of this section though is to talk about Rich Snippets.  You can add Rich Snippets authorship to many 3rd party sites…and I don’t see any reason why it will not be a part of just about all of them soon. So, this is a great time to get on this before everyone is doing it.

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.

The beauty of the internet is that, well, things started off free.  There is still a ton of information that is readily available out there, but a lot of it is junk.  The USENET is great because much of it is well moderated.  In the early days, every ISP (that I ever knew of) had free USENET feeds and their own news servers.  Eventually, the news hosting was outsourced to companies like Giganews and other companies that specialized in newsgroup access.

Today, most major ISPs no longer provide news feeds of any kind.  Some still do provide text newsgroup access, but I don’t know of any that supply binary newsgroup access.

Today’s News Server Options

Today, we are presented with two options. First, you can search for a list of open or free news servers (NNTP is the acronym usually used). Second, you can pay for access.  The question is, how do they differ?

Free Access Options

I have posted a list of (current as of 5/2/2012) free news servers.  NOTE: I have no idea how secure any of these are…USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.  Got it?

The free options usually have limits on posting, do not allow binary newsgroup access, limit speed, and a number of other items.  Most importantly, none I have seen offer all of the ALT heirarchy, which seems to be what most people are looking for. They are all different.  Here is a list that I have found to work today:

• AIOE.org
• X-Privat.org 

Paid Access

If you don’t want to hassle with the above options and you are willing to shell out a few bucks for a reliable connection, high download speeds, and full newsgroup feeds you are going to want to pay for your USENET access.  I use Giganews.  I have been using the USENET since before the World Wide Web was created, I get it.  I would recommend you use Giganews.  If you get their Diamond package you get free use of their super-fast newsgroup application MIMO, free VyprVPN access (their VPN service with machines in the US and other countries), SSL access, and a huge feed.  I have not had one problem with them as I used to with my previous news provider.

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.

Thanks for visiting.  This site is in a constant state of flux, so forgive me if some things may not be right at your fingertips.  Below you will find a list of what you will find on this blog.  The short version is that I write about search engines, marketing online, tutorials for geeks, some reviews and everything else depending on my mood.

If you would like to contact me or hire me for SEM or Video production/marketing, please use the email address found in the header above.   I usually respond to email relatively quickly depending on my schedule and your reason for contacting me.

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.

Here are some items from this morning’s reading list that are worthy of a look:

Social Media Marketing

5 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Page

• Leverage the use of photos in your photo feed
• Optimize the order of the “left side” links
• Use “Rolling Feedback” to see trends of user interaction
• “Like” as your brand, not just as a person
• Optimize your default page layout

6 Tips to Increase Your Facebook EdgeRank

• Publish Objects that Encourage Interaction
• Create a Forum for constructive discussion
• Leverage photos and videos
• Share links of interest to your base
• Keep it fresh by repurposing content
• Ask users for action

Tweaking WordPress to Avoid “Duplicate Content” Issues

Tags, Categories, Author ARchives, Image Attachments, “ReplytoCom”, Cononical URLs, and dealing with content theft.

Finding Questionable Links Using Open Site Explorer

While Penguin has a lot of people’s attention, here is a good primer on using Open Site Explorer to investigate a website’s link profile.

 Understanding the Facebook Like Button

Not all Facebook “like” buttons are created equal.

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.

Ok, so maybe that is a little too much, but then again maybe not. Let’s take a look…

Before Penguin and Panda

Believe it or not, this blog has had +/- 1,000 unique visitors a day for many years.  With all of the stuff on my plate right now, I don’t pay too much attention to the analytics for this site…and it turns out visitors dropped to ~650/day at some point recently, probably after some Panda related business.

After Google rolled out the Penguin update on April 24, that traffic dropped to about 100 visitors a day.  Yeah, so I figured I should look into things and see what was going on.

Where to Begin?

I started taking inventory, as a lot of people have been doing lately, to see what sites that I work on may have been affected by Google’s Penguin update.  It turns out that two sites which have the same setup I am running here (WordPress running the OptimizePress theme) with some minor tweaks, were affected negatively.

After poking around online, checking out the standard SEO news houses, I didn’t find much outside of a lot of sob stories and angry people.  I headed back to Google’s Penguin announcement to see if there wasn’t something that caught my attention.

Duplicate Content, Sigh

After that, I ended up on the Webmaster Tools Duplicate Content page, when something finally caught my eye…

I had to laugh a few times when I found myself on that page.  It seems this discussion never ends.  Anyway, I started to wonder if Google didn’t finally do something about how WordPress typically gives you the same information chopped up in 62 different ways.  The Panda update was supposed to do a good job of removing a lot of the crappy content/noise on the web; having little to go on, I began looking into this more.

WordPress Tag/Category Pages

What I began to notice was that some of the best ranking/traffic generating pages were not showing up in the SERPs anywhere near their previous levels.  A few of these pages were “tag” or “category” pages.  For those of you familiar with WordPress, you know that it gives you the ability to add one or more Categories and all the Tags you can handle (I don’t know the max or if there is one) to a post. 

For those of you still confused about when to use each, see this post on Categories vs Tags.  This has always seemed to fly below the “duplicate content” radar with Google.  I typically think about this when people mention duplicate content and it has always helped me to conclude that it really wasn’t a big deal in actual practice.

Looking at a site we have been building over the past year, it turns out it is not ranking for a tag page anymore.   It used to rank on page 1 in or around the 3rd position.  However, that page is now gone.  On page  2, there was a different tag page from the same site that was ranking for that same query. Strange.

I checked the pages in the Google index for the site in question and searched for all of the pages with “tag” in the url…the original page was not listed.  Clicking the “omitted results” link displayed the page. Hmm.

Kung Fu Panda

I didn’t really have too much information to work with, so I kept poking around.  I began looking at the pages indexed in Google and pages indexed with tag or category in the url.  Everything seemed fine.  So, I started checking for this site.

No pages indexed with tag or category in the url.  Maybe, I was doing it wrong and my Google operator kung fu was weak?

So, I checked everyone’s favorite WordPress guru’s website:

(he has a subdomain named xref that I wanted to eliminate to see only the main site’s pages)

Yoast had 111 pages with tag in the url…just about all of them were “tag” pages.  Hmm.

So, I looked at his category pages…he changed the name of his categories to “cat” btw:

9 pages came back…and if you check his sitemap indeed, he has 9 categories.

WTF?

Well, let’s take a look at the holy grail shall we?

0 Results

Matt apparently has changed his default “category” name to “type.” There are 25 results for that…and I could not find a sitemap.  You will also notice that he does not appear to use tags on any of his posts…

Time for Another Look at My Site

I began to look at what pages did come back for golod.com using the site: operator.  Turns out I started seeing a lot of pages that looked like /page/2/ or /page/23/.  Crap.

The front page of my blog is simply a list of the most recent posts.  At the bottom of the page is a bunch of pagination links.  OptimizePress is an amazing theme that is built for deploying sales pages, squeeze pages and the like very quickly and beautifully.  In one of the last updates, James added blog functionality and on the home page, these pagination links are displayed.

Conclusion

My hunch at this point, is that Google saw the links to these pages, linking to all of the posts, on the Home page of the site…and naturally figured those would be considered the best ones to use…as they are on the Home page after all. They then ditched all of the category and tag pages which link to the exact same content from their respective pages.  IF that is in fact what I am seeing (I can’t really think of any other logical explanation as to why the category and tag pages are gone from the index), then I am actually pretty impressed.

Feedback

I would love to hear if you are seeing anything similar with your WordPress sites or if you are able to blow some holes in my theory.

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.

In my quest to have Google’s Rich Snippets display for all of the content that I have  created on the web, I have been trying to find a way to have my Rich Snippets author bio linked to my Twitter profile.

Unfortunately, I have not been successful at this point.  I am posting this in hopes that either someone on the Rich Snippets team, Twitter team, or an at-large super geek will be able to shed some light on a technique that will get my author data shown next to twitter posts in the the Google SERPs.

To be honest, I am not sure there is a huge amount of value here, but my thought is that Google will probably be using (if not already on a small scale) Rich Snippet/Google+ profile data as a ranking signal in their SERPS.  I am sure that this will increase in the near future as this product matures.

So, here is what I have tried at this point, I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences trying to get this to work on your own.

1. I have included a link to my Twitter profile in my Google+ “Contributor to” list
2. On my Twitter profile, I added a link to my Google+ profile with rel=author as an html anchor tag (Twitter strips html tags in the description area)
3. On my Twitter profile, I added a link to my Google+ profile with rel=author as plain text (which my browser displays as a link, but in the source is not an html anchor tag)
4. On my Twitter profile I added a link to my Google+ profile with rel=author in the “website” area.  The script code that Twitter includes the link in does not appear to be validating using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool.

So, that is when I decided to shelve this little aside and get back to work. But, if you have any ideas, please let me know!

Best,

Copyright 2011 ©Jason Golod.