Since I started writing my own blog, many of my topics revolved around self improvement, creating a better life, becoming a better person and the million different little ways there are of achieving that.

So what is self improvement really? How does one do it? What tools are needed? Can anyone do it? What conditions need to be fulfilled? Is it hard?

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Aspartame has gotten a bad rap over the years. So, what exactly is aspartame and why are people scared to consume it? I want to provide you with a very basic break down of this sweetener. Simply defined, aspartame is an artificial sugar that has a very simple chemical compound make up. Aspartame contains two amino acids (phenylalanine and aspartic acid) and a methyl group (CH3). Ironically the flavors behind this combo work together to make a super sweet product that is 200x sweeter than sucrose, because the flavors by themselves are bitter or tasteless. This sweetener is marketed under a number of trademark names, including: Equal and NutraSweet, and it is an ingredient of approximately 6,000 consumer foods and beverages sold worldwide!

In the digestive tract, enzymes split aspartame into its 3 parts then the body absorbs the two amino acids and uses them just as if they had come from food protein. Caution needs to be taken when consuming this product because this sweetener contributes phenylalanine. Products containing aspartame must bear a warning label for people with phenylketonuria (PKU). PKU is an inherited disease that inhibits a person's ability to dispose of any excess phenylalanine. An accumulation of phenylalanine and its by-products are toxic to the developing nervous system, causing irreversible brain damage.

During metabolism, the methyl group of the aspartame molecule momentarily becomes methanol, a methyl alcohol, which is potentially a toxic compound. This breakdown also occurs over time when aspartame sweetened beverages are stored at warm temperatures. The amount of methanol produced would still be ok to consume, but you may not want to because the beverage has lost its sweetness. In the body, enzymes convert methanol to formaldehyde, another toxic compound and finally, formaldehyde is broken down into carbon dioxide. Before aspartame could be approved, the quantities of these products generated during metabolism had to be determined, and they were found to be below the threshold that would cause harm.

The big controversy of aspartame was a result of an Italian study that found aspartame caused cancer in female rats. This information fueled the controversies surrounding aspartame's safety. However, statements from the FDA and others indicate that such a conclusion is not supported by the data.

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SEO tIn today's internet, where the measure of a site's worth is largely based on its ranking in major search engines and where the value of real estate on your site depends on things such as Google Page Rank and Alexa rankings, it comes as no surprise that the webmasters spend a lot of time, and often money, on making their site as appealing to search engines as possible, without cutting its appeal to people. The ability to encourage search engine bots to crawl your site efficiently and place it high in results is perhaps more important than the maintenance of the content of the site itself simple because; what's the point of updating a poorly optimized site every day if no one finds it to appreciate it? That said, we'll now go into simple technique you need to know to do your own basic optimizing.

First, right of the bat, be careful with Flash. Flash animations are pretty and visually appealing but search engine bots cannot read them so if your site is designed with most of its content in flash you may have a problem. What I recommend is using flash but ensuring that your links are represented outside of the flash code so the bots can find them.

Also, use good keywords. Remember that the results are compiled by a computer that follows an algorithm to determine the value of your site to users based on a number of factors including the keywords it finds on your site. As such, if your site is about music, try to use ‘music' as well as other keywords such as ‘rock' if it's about rock music often on your site. This will earn your site a higher listing if someone searches for those keywords.

Page Rank is the next important asset to a webmaster. This little number can make the difference between selling a banner ad on your site for a dollar per month or charging hundreds. More noticeable, this number wields the greatest influence over where your site falls in search results. To use this to your advantage, you need to know that Google uses the amount and quality of links to your site from other sites to determine your rank.

The simple option is to set up some reciprocal links with other webmasters. This means that each of you links to the others site on your page. This has minimal effect however.

A much more effective way is 3-way-linking, in which 3 webmasters link to each other in a chain reaction that ensures that no two websites link back to each other. Articles are available to explain this in more detail.
All in all, the procedures shown here can and will make a big difference to your site if done correctly. Alternatively you could hire a search engine optimization professional to do it for you.

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