The New Official DMOZ Blog

The Official DMOZ Blog


DMOZ has launched their own blog now. i wonder if this has anything to do with the disappearing of the DMOZ homepage from the Google listings?

Changing the Blogger Title Tag

Changing the Blogger Title Tag ~ Widget-based

This is a great post. I recently read another article that said one of the biggest mistakes we bloggers make is letting the blog software automatically create page titles for us. It said to at least change the software code so that it automatically places the post title before the blog's title on post pages. Looking at Google's template, I was a bit clueless until I found this post from the Widget-based blog. This post has some very useful code that will do just what I wanted. It only affects post pages, so the index page of your blog will stay the same.

Print vs Silicon

A few times a month, I don't have time to read a really interesting article that shows up in my feed reader, so I go to the website and print out the article for reading later. I've definitely noticed that once I do that, it usually takes me 2, maybe 3 days to finish reading the article, and I generally read everything in the article. My behavior with reading articles on my computer screen is much different - I rarely read every word (or paragraph even), and I never leave the article until later, if I do decide to read it. Without delving too deeply into the issue (I'm pressed for time), I'm just wondering what the real causes are for the differences in behavior. Thinking of the two situations even more, I realize that I'm fairly likely to click on ads online, whereas I hardly ever pay attention to advertisements in a newspaper or magazine. There definitely are opportunities for exploiting such behavior for gain.

Another New Feature...

Just FYI, I have made another addition to the blog - I've added links to what I'm currently reading. This will be located in the sidebar, labeled "stack" (as in, the stack of stuff that I'm currently reading). I think it'll be a good addition.

BBC NEWS "Blog" - How not to blog

BBC NEWS | The Editors

I subscribed to the BBC News blog weeks ago, and I really can't find a justifiable reason why. I think I did it mainly because they had a blog, and as I am always reading blogs, I thought it would be good to read one put out by a major news organization that is read by everyone - not just bloggers and SEO geeks (sorry everyone, but that's what we are).

What I ended up with was a bunch of blog entries that I now just gloss over in my feed reader without thinking twice. And why shouldn't I? Does anyone out there actually read the BBC Blog?

For starters, the posts I end up reading have very descriptive titles. That's what I need to get me interested, especially when I have 100 new posts to sort through every day!

Take, for instance, this title from SELand:

AOL's Truveo Introduces New Video Search Site And Consumer Destination


What do you think this post is about? It's a stupid question - the subject is in the title. Now, look at this title from the BBC:

Setting up camp

What is this about? After reading the first paragraph, I'm still not sure. This is how it starts off:

It’s a pretty quiet period for news at the moment - fairly normal for August though - and sometimes it can be a bit of a struggle to find enough stories from around the UK.

It turns out that the post is about climate change protesters setting up camp near Heathrow Airport. What's more, it doesn't say much, besides the admission that there aren't many stories around, and so they're just writing about things people can see from their office window.

And even more than that, only the first 2 lines of the post were visible in my feed reader! Why am I going to go out of my way, click on the feed, open it in another window, and read to the middle of the post, just to figure out what the thing is about?

Here's the lesson for bloggers - learn from my inadvertent behavior.

• Make your titles descriptive and specific.
• Subscribe to your own feed so that you know what it looks like in a feed reader.
• Make sure people can read enough of each post in a reader to grab their interest.
• And... write about interesting stuff - don't just write to be writing!

Changes in the Future

Just to let everyone know, I've made a couple of changes to the blog here. Nothing drastic, but if you really don't like them, or if they are harmful to your reading, then please let me know and I'll give your comments consideration.

Now that the site has had over 500 visitors and counting, I've installed some Google-ness between each post. I've given in to the urge to place Adsense between each post. We'll see where this goes. I think it breaks up each post nicely. (!) I don't expect to make much off of it, but I figured it couldn't hurt.

I've also made all the post titles bigger, something I should have done long ago. I'm a sucker for design - which you wouldn't know from viewing this blog - so I like to change things up if I think they will look better.

More to come soon...

A quick correction to the last post...

My apologies to Rand over at SEOmoz. I said in my post earlier today that he was the author of the post I commented on, when in fact, it was written by James C. Zolman (jameszol).

My bad.

And, according to Rand, the article was actually promoted from YOUmoz. So, it actually wasn't an SEOmoz opinion, I guess, though they did see fit to promote the article to their site.

I just couldn't help but set the record straight.

More to come soon...

JT

Don't Obsess Over Superficial Details

Don't Obsess Over Superficial Details

A very good article over at SELand. That's a good site they've got going there.
JT

A few words about GoogleBlog

Google Blog >> Welcome, Postini Team

Once again, I looked at my server logs and noticed that my traffic is way down from a month ago for this site. I know that the main reason for this is the fact that my posting activity has been really low over that period. However, I also noticed a trend that has become so regular that I want to highlight it as a tip for you SEO bloggers that might be reading this -- linking to the Office Google blogs.

Notice the below screenshot, which is a picture of a typical post on the Official Google Blog:



I recently linked to this article with this post, and Google subsequently placed a link at the end of their post, linking to my post. It's an automatic script, which is effectively a back-scratching utility, sending Google's readers to other blogs and articles that provide comments on Google's post.

This is no marvel of technology of anything, so that's no the reason I'm posting about it. I am posting about it because I still see regular traffic coming in from the Google posts to which I linked - weeks after my links were created. This is simply showing that Google's blog has enough traffic from SEO-types, that their link-backs will send your blog traffic even months after your links were first created.

Now, there are a couple of obvious qualifiers here. Your blog post needs to be relevant to Google's in order to sustain this flow of readers from Google to you. You also need to post regularly. Nobody is going to read a blog that has 5 posts in the last year. Also, you need to post links directly to their post pages; don't just post links to the blog's homepage.

So, this is not really getting something for nothing. But it is a good way to get something for something. Often, bloggers' attempts to drum up traffic on blogs are unsuccessful, so this is a proven way to provide more traffic, provided your blog's subject matter is related to one of Google's blogs.

Some other Google blogs:

Google Summer of Code Blog
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Blogger Buzz
Google News Blog
Google Analytics Blog

[update 9/19/07] - Corrected the broken link "this post" just below the screenshot.

Notes on Blogging

I apologize for the absence. The Independence Day week has taken me to several locations around the southeast, most notably Lake Junaluska, North Carolina - a place that is, in the words of one Anglican minister, "not far from the heart of American religion." Family reunions are fun, even when you're still just getting to know everyone (I'm married in).

Anyway, back to a subject that is more relavent to this blog. Blogging. Due to my week-long absence, and my recent business at my job, I have been left with very little time to devote to other things, including posting on this blog. Not surprisingly, the traffic on the site went down very near to zero during the past two weeks, and I have had no comments to moderate.

So I think the take-home point is very clear: frequent posting is essential to improving traffic on your blog. Of course, other things are also equally important, but everyone needs to be clear that there is no reliable way to gain readership without also providing fresh content. This is true because your readers will always be searching for something new to read, but also because of pings - your blog won't ping the server if new content is not posted. Pings signal feed readers, and feed readers tell people who's got the freshest, most relevant material. So, that's all just to say that there is no static solution. A couple of tips to help with frequent posting:

Keep your posts relatively short. I still have a personal blog that I started a couple of years ago. I would post long dicourses on philosophy, religion, literature, and life in general. However, it very quickly became such a burden to write these long posts that I very nearly quit posting. It became a thing where I would post two or three times every six months, just because it took so long. Don't do that! Keep your posts under 500 words, and you'll be best served.

The other point to realize in this is that nobody reads your blog in the first place. Let's be honest - besides your friends and a few random surfers out there, who's going to read your blog? A relatively small number of people, compared to the number of people on the internet. You've got a much better chance of increasing that number if your posts are short and to the point. And the truth is that nobody's going to keep reading your blog if your posts are very long. If they don't know you, and you're not a columnist, they won't care about the ins and outs of how you feel about something.

Oh... and if you're not a columnist, you're not going to become one on a blog. Unless you think people only read very short columns.

Pick a well-defined subject matter and stick with it. This blog is about sEO issues, Google, and other issues related to web design. That's definite enough for me to keep the content flowing. The other problem with the personal blog was that there was no subject matter, other than me. Therefore, it was extremely hard to figure out what was worthy of posting and what was not.

The last point is to LINK, LINK, LINK! Find a post on the Official Google Blog and link to it. See what happens. The fact is that each post on the Google blog lists at the end all of the pages that link to that post. It's an automatic "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" situation. And if you post about Google and SEO issues often, linkbacks from Google will bring you lots of traffic, because the Google blog itself is a very widely read source. If you post about other things, go ahead and find pages within your subject matter to link to within your posts. Comment on your world within your sphere of influence. This will eventually bring you traffic, as other webmasters and bloggers see your blog on their referral logs and visit your site to see what you're up to, and why you're sending readers their way. You must link to things that are actually relevant, but there is a lot of freedom here. No link is a bad link.

And linking to a blog is better than linking to some website. A blog has an individual author, most likely, who will investigate your site if you send him traffic.

OK, got to go do some work. If I ramble on any more, I may violate my first point!

Over 100 visits

This blog is in the middle of its fourth full week of existence, and I'm proud to say that I've now received over 100 visits. The number must remain approximate because of the nature of web statistics, and also because I missed about a week of data around Memorial Day. I made changes which deleted my tracking code right before leaving town for 4 days (silly me). To all of you out there who check this blog from time to time, I extend my thanks.

BTW, be sure to check out the link to ConverStations on the blogroll. Mike Sansone is completely right about the importance of frequent posting in the blogging world. I made no posts yesterday, and consequently received no visitors. However, today I received 2 visitors within 30 minutes of making a post about Ask.com.

Thanks again to all you out there who read this blog. The blog is only a month old, and its growth has been pleasing to see. Feel free to comment, if you have any ideas about things I ought to pay attention to in my posts. Take care.

Bloggers vs. Journalists

From SeoMoz:

Are Bloggers more Connected than Journalists

I just had to say that I think this post is incorrectly comparing journalists to bloggers. She says that, because bloggers in general have significantly more Plaxo address book contacts than journalists, they are more connected. The post then goes on to speculate about the implications of the fact that bloggers are enjoying higher connectedness than journalists, and what this means for the field of journalism.

However, I think she needs to back the post up considerably, because I don't think this is an indication that bloggers are more connected, as much as it is an indication that bloggers are more tech-savvy with their contacts. In other words, a blogger will be more likely to have all of their contacts in their Plaxo address book, while a journalist might only have his work contacts, or, more likely, might not use Plaxo at all. I think the journalist is more likely to download Plaxo, then forget he has it running, and stick with a system of Rolodex cards. The system of cards isn't broken, so why fix it? Furthermore, it doesn't make him a better or worse journalist.

A few words about NOFOLLOW

The current post over at search engine master DaveN’s blog has a few words about the NOFOLLOW tag, which are actually more questions than opinions or answers. The great NOFOLLOW initiative, begun about 2 and a half years ago by the big three, has left us all with little more than great questions in general, in addition to a little tag that we can put in our website’s link structure if we want. We’re not sure if it works, we’re not sure exactly how it works. Since the SEO industry is in general behind a great cloud of uncertainty that separates the royals (the googlers) from the peasants (the rest of us), as usual, the original statement of intent from Google was not specific enough to sufficiently describe how the tool is really used. In my opinion, the addition of the NOFOLLOW attribute (sorry if I called it a tag earlier), has added much more uncertainty than functionality to an industry of SEO consultants who are already dealing with considerable uncertainty because of the sheer nature of SEO.

Here are a few issues that we don’t really know:

1. If you use a NOFOLLOW link, we know that the link does not contribute to the recipient’s PR. BUT does the link actually count against the recipient? In other words, is a NOFOLLOW vote actually lowering PR of the recipient?

2. Does NOFOLLOW have any affect on the referrer? If I were ranking a page, and I saw that it had a bunch of links to bad pages (signified by the presence of NOFOLLOW), I would not want to rank the referring page highly. Who wants to see a page with a bunch of links for which it has no confidence?

3. What if NOFOLLOW is used within the link structure of the same website? Can a website drive PR to certain pages by using NOFOLLOW in links to less profitable content?

We actually used #3 at my company, before my tenure here, and I convinced everyone that this was not a good idea, since we don’t have definitive answers to #1 or #2. I felt that we were issuing votes of “no confidence” to ourselves by following this strategy, thereby hurting ourselves in the eyes of Google. In addition to this, I didn’t see the same strategy at work anywhere else on the web, which further eroded my confidence in it.

Personally, I wish that NOFOLLOW had never been devised, or that it had been devised completely differently. The device has added, in my opinion, just one more list of questions for which the SEO crowd doesn’t really have answers.

A few words about the new Google Analytics Beta Interface

I have to say that I am impressed with the overall functionality that Google has added with its new version of the Google Analytics interface, but it will certainly take me a while to warm up to it. It is definitely an improvement over the old interface, mostly because the new version better reflects the features that make other Google software good.


The only thing I really didn't like was the fact that the graph (pictured above) seems like it must show at least a month of data, no matter if you tell it to show only a week or a few days. Basically, it takes up the entire width of the screen, which makes it seem like they are devoting an awful lot of valuable screen real estate to the graph. It seems like they could have made it a quarter-screen module, and let you see another piece of info at the top of the screen. But anyway, it's annoying to me mainly because my blog has only been running for two weeks, so the first three weeks or so are zeros. Not a huge deal.

The best thing about the new beta is the added flexibility it grants the user. The user is able to add modules to the Dashboard easily, drag and drop them on the screen, and do other things that are reminiscent of the Google Home Page (oh yeah... it's called iGoogle, now that they admit it's a portal).

More commentary will come when I have time to write a proper post. I just wanted to get some words out there before dinner.

Frequency Matters!

I found a very informative and helpful post at ConverStations, the blog of Mike Sansone, a Conversation Conductor who lives in Iowa. What a job. For more about Mike, click here.

Frequent and Consistent Posting Does Matter

In the last few months, I've had customers/prospects tell me that frequent and consistent posting isn't important. Wrong. Especially at the beginning.

They insisted that if blogs are such a great thing, they didn't need to update that often. Sounds like a cob-web strategy to me. Sounds like they either don't want to put in the work or it's just not a priority. But for a blog to be successful, the blogger must put in the work.

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Ok. I know. You're thinking, "duh." Well, we all should be. But his post is pretty true to life, I think. People naturally are going to want more output than input. That's convenience - they call it the American way these days.

Thinking about it from an SEO perspective, pings are never generated when the blog is static, so it doesn't make sense to "strive" for a static entity that will consistently rank highly in the SERPs. The mentality actually goes against everything I said in my inaugural post about the nature of the SEO industry. Nobody ever arrives. It's very existential, very postmodern. Experience is everything, and experiences are by nature fleeting - therefore, SEO does not end. It's the never ending project. That's why you hire a web design team if you're a firm or a company. Or, that's why you become an SEO consultant.