Martial Arts Classes in Evansville and Mount Vernon Indiana

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Women Need To Learn Self Defense

I read an interesting article today that while it is a ‘racey’ topic, I felt that the overall story was something to mention.

Exploited women in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu are learning self defense.

You can read the story here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8093946.stm

What is interesting is that these women (prostitutes) are being beaten, taken advantage of unfairly, robbed and degraded. It saddens me that women still have to sell themselves on the street in order to make a living. However, I am happy to hear that organizations are standing up for them and giving them the much needed training they need in order to survive.

Here in the United States, women are still being taken advantage of. Aggression, lack of respect and degradation, along with unfair prejudice is still haunting the female population. Being the father of three beautiful girls, it pains me to think of what they will have to face as teenagers and young women.

With the rise of teenage pregnancy and a society that is more open to sexual contact as a form of ‘expression’ I feel that this leaves women at risk. That is why I believe that women need to be taught self defense. The problem is that people believe that once you ‘learn the moves’ you are alright.

What statistics show is that women who actively practice self defense are nine times more likely to survive an attack versus those who merely went to a couple of classes. You see that the difference is an active and continual ‘practice’ outweighs a few lessons.

If you know of someone who is at risk, or you have a daughter about to turn into a teenager, I highly recommend them getting into a self defense program. If you are in the Evansville or Mount Vernon Indiana area, I highly recommend my two schools (http://www.communitymartialarts.com).

Master Jeff Barnes

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Extreme Website Makeover

Well, it is true!

We just put the final touches to the Community Martial Arts website.

This includes upgrades to class listings, more information and easy to use functionality. I also included all the original content but merged the site with my Community Martial Arts blog.

I am really excited about the changes and I think that the site reflects what I wanted to accomplish!

That said, be sure to comment on the blog which you can find at http://www.communitymartialarts.com/news and tell me what you think!

If you make a suggestion that I add to the website I will give you $5 that you can use in the pro shop!

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Tonight we focused on eye-hand coordination drills for the kids and followed up with some great sparring drills. The adults warmed up to a great workout and finished with more sparring drills and actual sparring. Fun was had by all.

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On January 20th we had a momentous day in history. We have the first African American President. No matter what side of the fence you prescribe to politically, you still con appreciate the historical significance of such an event.

Here is a video clip of the many things that are going on at the Mount Vernon school. You will get to see our Lil’ Ninjas class, Tae Kwon Do, Kids Kung Fu and our Boxing program.

There is absolutely something for everyone at Community Martial Arts.

“You would have missed it in your hurry to get your web page out to the world…”

One of the magic bullets in your arsenal of web marketing comes from a fairly obvious but often overlooked piece of web page development. The secret is hidden behind images.

Images convey a feeling or perspective. It is something that we hope that our readers will find appealing or relate with. We use images to set our brand so our customers know who or what we are about. Images help break up the text and entice our customers to read further and gain more information. We want our customers to stay on our website for an extended amount of time to give us the opportunity to either get information from them or to sell something to them.

That information is probably not new to you. However, it is important that you do have images on your website because along with all the benefits of images I listed above, there is the magic bullets that I wanted to talk about.

When you start to add images to your website, I recommend the following:

Rename your images to help add search engine friendly keywords - Remember search engines ‘READ’ your website to grab all the text and information and stores it in a database. When you search for a particular query, your ranking on the search engine is partially reflected by the number of words on your webpage that match the search query. So, rename your images to match the target market you are trying to reach.

For example:

Target Market: Martial Arts Evansville
Image: A Girl Throwing a Side Kick

So when I edit the Image Tag on the web page I would rename the image to a search friendly name. I have highlighted my image name in red for you. Mind you that you really have to change the name of the image that you are using, not just changing the name in the HTML.

img style=”width: 200px; height: 200px;”
src=”martial_arts_evansville_indiana.jpg“

The second piece I add is information for alternative text in the image tag . For the longest time I never worried about filling anything in the “alt text” box that was presented to me in my favorite web editing tools. Most of the time I was in a hurry or on a deadline. This often resulted in poor search returns for my website. After implementing this secret to my websites, it has dramatically improved my search engine placement due to have a greater mix of the key words in my web page documents.

Continuing my example from above, lets add some key words into our image tag. I have highlighted the added change in red for you.

img style=”width: 200px; height: 200px;”
alt=”martial arts evansville indiana self defense karate judo“
src=”martial_arts_evansville_indiana.jpg“

Adding these quick and easy changes to your website will definitely improve your search engine performance. Take some time this week to look at your website and see where you can make these easy changes. While it will take some time to rename your images and have them reflected on your website, I guarantee the effort is well worth it.