R.A. Brown Ranch
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
Meta Keyword Tag and Google
One of the first things you always hear somebody who knows just enough to know what SEO stands for but doesn’t really know anything about search engine optimization say is that you need to make sure you include the right keywords in your meta tags. In fact, at a recent ag conference I sat in on a web design session and heard the speaker discussed how many keywords was the proper amount to stuff into the meta tags.
While I’ve never really thought the keywords tag really impacted much (I started web stuff after they did) I did make sure to at least include a meta keywords tag. It was obvious that the keyword tag didn’t do much but it we always included it in a page because it was just another little thing that would help.
Well, Google’s confirmed that they don’t even look at the keywords tag…
Google does not use the keywords meta tag in ranking
Does this mean it should be deleted? No, it just means it's officially the waste of time most people have thought it was for the past few years.
- By Jeff | Comments (2)
Texas Steer Breed Difficulty
I’m going to have to ask for forgiveness for subjecting you to my stat whore ramblings in advance on this one. A thread on Steerplanet from a few months ago got me thinking about what really are the most and least competitive steer breeds in Texas.
Everything I say after this point is with the understanding that the days of taking an American steer from the auction barn and placing at the majors are for the most part over. With the kids that grew up with the TCCA now adults that have kids (and more importantly they have money to now live vicariously through their kids) there’s no such thing as an easy class any more.
The ranking below is an attempt to rank the 16 Texas major show breeds based on readily available stats from the TJLA and the three largest majors. It took three things into consideration…
1 – Number of TJLA Exhibitors
Under the assumption that more kids with points in a breed indicates more competition, we used the current number of kids with points in each breed.
2 – Points Required to Rank 10th in the TJLA Standings
Under the assumption that a higher number of kids racking up points meant a higher level of competition, this was used to measure that.
3 – Major Steer Show Sale Slots
For Fort Worth I divided the AOB and ABC equally amongst the breeds.
There were no personal biases taken into consideration, just numbers but there were a couple assumptions made for the index. First, I assumed that the TCCA is a good indicator of competition levels. Secondly, I assumed that making the sale at a major show is a success.
- Charolais 1.86
- Maine Anjou 1.32
- Simmental 1.22
- Limousin 1.21
- AOB 1.20
- Chianina 1.12
- Shorthorn 1.02
- Angus 1.00
- Brangus 0.93
- Red Angus 0.89
- Hereford 0.79
- Santa Gertrudis 0.77
- Polled Hereford 0.73
- Simbrah 0.69
- ABC 0.63
- Brahman 0.54
#3-5 are just tied, there’s no real difference in those ratings. AOB doesn’t rank higher because they have 84 slots at San Antonio and Fort Worth compared to a mere 42 for Charolais and 62 for Maines. The ABC class had something similar in that the large number of sale slots allotted them vs TJLA exhibitors.
Red Angus would be lower if it weren’t for the relatively low number of major show sale slots. The other British breeds would be higher if it weren’t for the large number of sale slots allotted to them at Fort Worth.
Predictably, Charolais blows the rest of the breeds out of the water.
I don’t know, it’s looks pretty legit to me but of course it would, I made it. Tell me if there’s something way out of the norm on there.
- By Jeff | Comments (2)
Forum Activity Index - September 09
For the time period 8/19/09 to 9/18/09
- Ranchers.net 37.26%
- Cattle-Today 31.00%
- Steerplanet 22.05%
- 5BarX 4.14%
- Advantage Cattle Services 3.98%
- Clubcalves 0.78%
- Breedersworld 0.59%
- Showsteers 0.12%
- EDJE 0.07%
There wasn’t much change other than the 10% drop in total traffic due almost exclusively to the Cattle Today and Ranchers.net (same owner) forums being down due to technical issues. That stuff happens, especially when you get into running those higher traffic sites with databases that have multi-GB tables in them. It's not going to be an issue with a static HTML site but databases are a completely different beast.
This is right at the one year anniversary for this index so I thought it might be fun to take a look at how the rankings have changed over the past year. We didn’t have EDJE or Ranchers.net in the index back then so I’ve dropped them out of this comparison…
Site – Sep 2008 – Sep 2009
- Steerplanet – 31.87% – 35.19%
- Breedersworld – 5.54% – 0.95%
- Cattle-Today – 47.76% – 49.46%
- Advantage Cattle Services – 6.51% – 6.35%
- 5BarX – 7.38% – 6.61%
- Clubcalve – 0.74% – 1.25%
- Showsteers – 0.21% – 0.20%
Well, that was a waste of time. There are only two sites that had anything resembling a significant change in traffic but there’s nothing to really comment on, I’ve beat that dead horse too much already.
- By Jeff | Comments (1)
Texas Drought Map
It's sort of strange to be happy to be in an "Extreme" drought but dang it, I am. I most certainly feel for those along the coast that didn't get anything out of this. However, very small traces of green grass and new calves on the ground really make things easier to not get depressed over.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
September Cattle Site Traffic Report
- Cattle Today Sites 20.37% (2)
- CattleNetwork.com 18.90% (1)
- Cattlerange.com 10.11% (5)
- Beefmagazine.com 9.26% (3)
- Cattle.com 7.62% (4)
- Showsteers.com 7.30% (8)
- Drovers.com 5.75% (7)
- Cattlegrower.com 5.04% (6)
- Clubcalves.com 3.43% (NR)
- Cattlepages.com 3.04% (9)
I’ve commented on the drop in EDJECattle.com a few times over the past year. While I wouldn’t suggest putting a ton of weight in this index regardless of the situation, take the EDJECattle.com listing with an additional grain of salt.
That URL is currently redirected to a page on EDJE.com. There are number of reasons do something like that. It’s a positive for things such as search engine optimization because it helps aggregate PR on one domain name although EDJE only has a PR of 4. If they’d use a proper 301 redirection (which is something I’m going to talk about tomorrow) instead of what they’re doing, that would probably help.
I’m not sure when it happened but it’s been that way for longer than I realized it and explained the drop in that domain. None of the 3rd party sites used to compile this index differentiate that.
Changes to Index
After Jeff Hopes’ comments on this update last month, I’ve added a category for “General Livestock” to the index and added listings for EDJE.com and Breedersworld.com. EDJE is pretty solidly in #1 for that category.
I’ve added Breedersworld to the “Show Focused Sites” category.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
R.A. Brown Bull & Female Sale
Sell 789 cattle, one by one, in one day.
That’s what R.A. Brown Ranch is going to try to do on October 14th in Throckmorton, TX. They’re working day and night on the catalog right now but you can sort through the information on all of the cattle on their website…
http://www.rabrownranch.com/Sale_09/
In addition to the traditional 500 or so bulls, they’re also selling show heifer prospects for the first time and SimAngus bred heifers for the first time in a few years.
- By Jeff | Comments (0)
Blog Spider Update
I've added the CattleMax blog (located at http://www.cattlemanagement.com/) to the list of recent blog posts on the right side of this page. Currently it checks the following blogs twice a day and posts updates here for 48-hours...
While this isn't sending a ton of traffic anywhere (about 5-15 visits total per blog post based on our tracking) if you have an active blog that you'd like to have added here free of charge, just let me know at jeff@cattle.com.
- By Jeff | Comments (1)
AgriTalk Interview With Bryan Walsh
Is your blood pressure low this morning? Take a moment to listen to the interview with Bryan Walk on AgriTalk to get it back up...
TIME Writer Bryan Walsh Interview
- By Jeff | Comments (0)