Ocampo six

why do Kenyans have to contribute to bail out Ocampo six yet some of idps are still unsettled, people from some areas in Kenya are dying due to lack of food?

10 Essential SEO Strategies

Learn 10 essential SEO tips and tricks for getting a higher search engine ranking.

Search results under magnifying glassSearch engine optimisation (SEO) is a vast topic. There are whole websites and books out there devoted to the subject. The world of SEO is also constantly changing as search engines tweak their algorithms, and new search engines come and go.

However, there are some timeless SEO techniques that will always come in useful. Here are 10 top SEO tips that you can use to improve your website’s ranking on the search engines.

If you’re new to search engine optimization, check out SEO for Beginners first.
1. Write good content

This is maybe the most important strategy of all. If your pages contain good, relevant, useful content, search engines will be more likely to rank your page higher for relevant searches. As an added benefit, good content will encourage more sites to link to your pages, thereby further increasing your search engine ranking.

It’s also good to update your content regularly. Visitors like fresh content, so they will visit your site more often. More visits lead to more links to your content, which ultimately results in more traffic.
2. Do your keyword research

Don’t target a keyphrase just because it sounds right to you, or because it gets a lot of searches.

Think about what you ultimately want visitors to do on your site (your conversion goals), then find out what keywords people search for when they want to achieve those goals. Use tools such as Google Analytics to see which keyphrases result in the most goal conversions.

Stay away from 1-word (or possibly even 2-word) keyphrases that have thousands of competitive sites in the search results. Instead, use tools such as Wordtracker and the AdWords Keyword Suggestion tool to find relevant niche keyphrases with high search volume and low competition.

For example, if your online store sells Mega Widgets in the Boston area, target the keyphrase “mega widgets boston”, rather than just “widgets”.
3. Use your keywords wisely

Once you have a good list of keyphrases, deploy them sensibly throughout your site pages. Make sure you’ve used your keywords in the following text blocks (these are in rough order of importance, most important first):

* The title tag
* The h1 and h2 headings in the page
* Link text (in links within the page, and in links from other pages)
* The page URL
* Image alt text
* Bold and italicised text

Also make sure your keywords have a reasonable density (i.e. they appear fairly often in the above text blocks — but not too often) and prominence (place them near the start of each text block).

Make sure you use text rather than images in the page where possible. This is particularly true of navigation menus. If you must use an image, make sure it has keyword-rich alt text.
4. Get other sites linking to yours

Most search engines rank sites more highly if they’re linked to by other, well-respected sites.

The key here is “well-respected”. Just getting linked to from hundreds of reciprocal link pages is not going to do much for your ranking. Target a few relevant, good-quality sites and directories that are full of useful info and rank well on the search engines, and try to get a link back from them.

Some link directories let you submit your site for free, while others require a fee — either one-off, or recurring. While paying for submission can be expensive, it can be worth it, especially if you’re running an online store that has a lot of competitors.

Getting links from other high-quality sites can be a challenge. Here are some tips:

* Writing good content (see strategy #1) is one of the best long-term strategies for encouraging inbound links.
* A “link to this page” function on each page of your site makes it easy for other webmasters and bloggers to link.
* Get in touch with the site owner and strike up a friendship. You’re much more likely to get a link back from someone who knows you.
* If the site in question has useful content relevant to your readers, go ahead and link to that site from your own pages. This in itself might encourage a link back!

5. Structure your site for SEO

Your site structure can play an important part in optimizing your pages. Make sure your pages contain plenty of links to other important pages in your site, and that it’s easy to get to all sections of your site via your homepage or navigation menu.

Not only does this make it easier for visitors and search engines to find your content, but it also helps to spread your site’s authority score (such as Google PageRank) more evenly throughout your site pages.

A sitemap can really help here, as it lists all your site content on one, easy-to-use page — great for visitors and search engine spiders alike.
6. Analyse your site

It’s important to track your site’s SEO performance so that you can see if your efforts are paying off. Make use of the many free analysis tools out there, including:

* Yahoo! Site Explorer — Lets you find out detailed search-engine-related info on each page of your site, including the most popular pages and the inbound links to each page.
* Google Webmaster Tools — Gives you all sorts of details about how Google sees your site, such as problems crawling your pages and suggestions for how to improve your HTML.
* Google Analytics — Reports on vital traffic data such as visitors, pageviews, traffic sources, keywords, and lots more. Also lets you set up goals so you can see how well your SEO campaigns are performing.
* SEO Book and SEO Chat — these 2 sites offer a large range of free, Web-based SEO tools, many of which give you useful information about how your site is faring in the search results.

7. Keep abreast of the latest SEO news

Search engine algorithms change constantly, and it pays to keep up to date with the latest changes and SEO strategies. The following SEO sites are well worth bookmarking or subscribing to:

* Search Engine Watch is a huge SEO resource, including articles and white papers on SEO and SEM (search engine marketing), as well as some busy SEO forums.
* Matt Cutts’ blog — Matt is a Google engineer, and in his blog he frequently discusses the latest changes at Google that can affect SEO.
* Sphinn is a social bookmarking site for SEO topics. Great for finding out what’s new and hot in the world of SEO.
* SEO Book features a comprehensive, paid SEO training program, a regularly-updated blog, and some handy free SEO tools such as keyword suggesters and rank checkers.
* SEO Chat contains a large number of SEO articles, a huge range of free online SEO tools, and a big forum community.

8. Avoid black hat techniques

SEO techniques come in 2 forms:

* White hat techniques play by the rules of the search engines, and aim to create high-quality, relevant content.
* Black hat techniques attempt to “game” the search engines by using techniques such as keyword stuffing (overusing keywords in a page), hidden text, and cloaking (presenting different versions of a page to real visitors and search engines).

Black hat SEO techniques can sometimes produce a short-term hike in traffic; however such sites invariably get weeded out — or, worse, banned altogether — by the search engines. Black hat SEO simply isn’t worth the risk if you want to build a long-term stream of traffic from search engines.
9. Watch out for duplicate content

Search engines dislike pages that basically contain the same content, and will give such pages a lower ranking. Therefore, avoid duplicate content URLs on your site.

Many factors can result in a search engine seeing 2 URLs as duplicates of each other — for example:

* Articles republished from other websites
* Print-friendly versions of pages (make sure you exclude such pages from search engines with a robots.txt file)
* Similar product info pages that contain very little changing content apart from the product name and image
* Session IDs in URLs, or other URL parameters that result in different URLs for the same page
* Displaying your site at multiple domains — for example, http://www.example.com and example.com. Choose one domain or the other, then use 301 redirects to ensure that everyone (including search engines) is looking at just the one domain.

10. Don’t forget the description and keywords tags

Many webmasters overlook the description and keywords meta tags, but they can give your site the edge over your competitors. Pay attention to these 2 tags in each page.

* The description tag should be a useful, compelling summary of your page content. This tag is often used to display a summary of your page in the search results, so it’s worth making it keyword-rich and including a call to action.
* Most search engines ignore the keywords tag these days; however it doesn’t hurt to create one (if nothing else it’s another chance to insert your keywords in the page). Some directories also use the keywords tag to classify sites.
* Ensure that each page has unique description and keywords tags. If a search engine finds many pages with the same description and keywords, it can see those pages as less important.

SEO for Beginners

Explores the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What is SEO, and how can you get started with improving your site’s search engine rankings? This article reveals all!

Search engine optimization (SEO) can seem like a black art to the uninitiated. Many SEO companies promise that your site will get a “top ten ranking” or a “number one position in the search engines”. In reality, there are lots of factors that can influence your site’s position in search results. What’s more, that position can change on a daily basis: you may be number 1 one week, and number 15 the next!

In addition, SEO has a bit of a bad reputation. Many people believe SEO is simply a way to “spam” the search engines; to fool them into including a site in the top ten, even if that site has no useful, relevant content.

However, SEO in its basic form is simply about making it as easy as possible for search engines to find, index, and rank your Web pages based on their content.

This article cuts through the mystery surrounding SEO, and shows how you can start improving your search engine rankings today with some simple, ethical techniques.
How search engines work

Although search engines vary wildly in the details, most engines work in the following basic way:

1. They crawl your site’s pages, following links from one page to the next and reading the content of each page.
2. They analyze each page, extracting information such as the page’s topic and keywords.
3. They index your pages, which involves storing information about each page in the search engine’s index.
4. They return your pages in their search results. When someone searches for something using keywords that match those of a page on your site, the search engine returns a link to that page in the search results.

The key point to understand here is that every search engine’s job is to match the search phrase entered by the searcher with the best possible pages in the search results. They do this by looking at the words the searcher enters — the keywords — and comparing them with pages in their index. The pages that the search engine feels most closely match those keywords appear at the top of the search results.

The only way a search engine can do this is by looking at the content of your page (as well as the links that link to the page). Therefore it stands to reason that you should make sure your pages prominently contain the keywords and key phrases that visitors will be typing in when they’re searching for your page content. This is the essence of SEO.

Urban agriculture in the slums of Mathare and Kibera in Kenya

Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in, or around (peri-urban), a village, town or city.

Urban agriculture truly brings the farm into the city but not a farm like anything you have seen before.The field to table urban agriculture is by demonstrating new and innovative ways to grow food in the cities, small community_based bussiness are bieng created that improve Mathare food sufficiency and reduce the need to imports coming from a long distance.

Urban farming is generally practiced for income-earning or food-producing activities though in some communities the main impetus is recreation and relaxation. Urban agriculture contributes to food security and food safety in two ways: first, it increases the amount of food available to people living in cities, and, second, it allows fresh vegetables and fruits and meat products to be made available to urban consumers. A common and efficient form of urban agriculture is the biointensive method. Because urban agriculture promotes energy-saving local food production, urban and peri-urban agriculture are generally seen as sustainable practices.

The recognition of environmental degradation within cities through the relocation of resources to serve urban populations has inspired the implementation of different schemes of urban agriculture across the developed and developing world.

CHALLENGES

1.Lack of certified seeds which leed to unhealthy seedlings.2. Due to high rate of insecurity many people tend not to involve themselves into urban agriculture3.People tend to lack basic knowledge in crop pest and diseases management Limits or destroys the natural habitat of most wild creatures, and leads to soil erosion.4.Pesticides generally kill useful insects as well as those that destroy crops.Generally not sustainable– often results in desertification,or land that is so poisonous and eroded that nothing else will grow there.5.Requires large amounts of energy input to produce, transport, and apply chemical fertilizers/pesticides6.Use of chemicals on fields creates run-off, excess runs off into rivers and lakes causing pollution.7.Use of pesticides have numerous negative health effects in workers who apply them, people that live nearby the area of application or downstream/downwind from it, and consumers who eat the pesticides which remain on their food.

SOLUTIONS

1.Mazingira instutute as an organization has volunteered to train urban people on how to grow crops in sacks and multi_storey stores and provide certified seeds at a cheaper price.
2.Youths living in Mathare are enganging themselves in constructive project hence the fear of food theft is reduced.
3.Environmental sanitation has been managed since bare land surfaces which used act as breeding plaes for vectors and crimes site have been converted to useful agricultural land.
IMPORTANCE
1. urban agriculture may also positively impact upon the greening and cleaning of the city by turning derelict open spaces into green zones and maintaining buffer and reserve zones free of housing, with positive impacts on the micro-climate (shade, temperature, sequestration of CO2).Degraded open spaces and vacant land are often used as informal waste dumpsites and are a source of crime and health problems. When such zones are turned into productive green spaces, not only an unhealthy situation is cleared, but also the neighbours will passively or actively enjoy the green area. Such activities may also enhance community self-esteem in the neighbourhood and stimulate other actions for improving the community’s livelihood
2.Increases entrepreneuial activities and creation of job opportunities.
3.Food cost reduction and production of better quality.
4.Food security enhanced and source of income.
5.Acts as a strategy for poverty alleviation and socisl integration.
6.Local production of food alsoallows savingsin transportation costs,storage, and in product loss, what may result in low food cost.

am back

I went to collect more facts and data concerning Kenya,now I have a long story to tell.Follow keenly

MY BACKBONE.

Am Carolyne Mbulwa Mwaniki, born in the year 1989 in asmall town called Mwea in central Kenya.In the year 1997 i came to Nairobi where i continued my education till now.I got 269 marks in K.C.P.E at mathare primary school later on i joined st.teresa’s girls secondary school where i left with a mean grade of c- year 2008.
I idled for a while and them settled my eyes at Mathare Maji Mazuri youth group. The group was my stepping stone for not only developing me morally it also sponsored me to nairobits where am currently taking studies on web design.
I am also a volunteer at Nairobi,Kenya redcross society at a time we compete with other branches where i scoped a trophy for emerging number three as a public speaker and I was also awarded 3 drinking glasses for emerging winners in a play.
I was to be selected a taskforce to foresee network’s activities basically the network deals with environmental sanitation and garbage management while the network is known as COMMON INTEREST GROUP [C.I.G]
I have also used my agriculture knowledge from secondary school and few research to start a project on urban agriculture.
I was lucky to be selected one of Maji Mazuri Multi-media reports network where we specialise in achievements, problems and any activity that the Maji Mazuri family is encountering.
Last but not least, I love reading, travelling, making new friends, adventuring into businesses and listening to stories and music.

rural v/s urban life

RURAL
Rural life tend to b better tha urban life this is because the youths tend to have this big respect on themselves compared to urban youths – most of them make the area a drug free place, they utilise their free time in gardens/farms working to meet the societies expectation in community development,availability of fresh food making it a healthier place. Due the green enviroment the area is less polluted compared to urban.
URBAN
Urban life has an added advantage making it better than rural life because the youths have the previlege- of studying I.C.T,due to the problem of unemployment sime youths have specialised in urban agriculture and volunteer work in the society while others abuse drugs and involve themselves in crimes as compared to rural life. urban residents tend not to care for each other and therefore rate of street children is rising as compared to rural where a child is for community not for individuals.Infrastructure as for now urban is much better.
As for me i rather say that both life are o.k.we need to improve infrastructure in rural area while in urban we need to improve on the way teach on drug abuse,clean the environment to prevent arise of diseases such as malaria and other diseases as we all know prevention is always better than cure