Monday, May 26, 2008

Know Where Your Blog is Going

It has been mind blogging or lot of thinking. I should have post what I had in mind regarding concepts and analysis of a blog but I could not do it because I am talking to myself if its ready or not , so while waiting to decide , I post about the Entrecards new features which I think is very relevant and needs of all blog masters to proceed to just one direction.

Yes direction , every blog is going only in one direction that is to be in the no. 1 spot in the search engine.But to do that it takes a good blog content , lots of readership or subscibers and backlinks . I know this in theory but with what is going on my blog and its results in terms of Google analytics and revenue is not for me satisfactory , though Google rank my blog no. 3.


To have a good basis on what is the status of my blogsite I opted to consult an evaluation group . Coincidentally , I receive an email from Stomper net which has a new software that they want to try with their members. They called it the Stomper Net site seer , its an evaluation software they they use in analyzing the status of your blog site. When I read the offer I said to myself well this is timing . And it pushes me to reply on their email and had my blogsite for evaluation . It is free on the initial evaluation of the blogsite but for a more detailed man to man tutorial on what changes to be made with the web site you have to pay .


They provide guides or concepts on every aspect of the blog site . I believe it is a comprehensive evaluation and analysis that really helps in providing a guide for the basic changes and improvements to be done on your blog site. With just an initial report , it reveals the loopholes in my blogsite and pinpoint changes.


The Salient Points discussed and findings covers the following topics ;

  1. Presence

  2. What Google Think your site is all about ?

  3. Title Tag/ Meta Tag Analysis , What to do – Titles Done Right

  4. Keyword Meta Tag / Meta Description

  5. Headline ( Heading ) Analysis

  6. Analysis of Images

  7. Sitemap

  8. Google Page Rank

  9. Visibility on Google

  10. Visibility on Yahoo

  11. DMOZ directory

  12. Yahoo Directory

  13. Alexa Rank, Technorati Rank and Technorati Blog Reactions, Delicious Bookmarks

  14. Social Media

  15. RSS Feed

  16. Keyword Analysisin Adwords

  17. Top Myths About Google

The report is a 15 page discussion and evaluation on the basics of SEO . To post it would be too long and I believe every blogs are different from each other , and if you register on Stomper Net you will have your own unique evaluation. So I would just share some of the things that I consider very important for all blog site masters. They shared the following myths .


Top Myths About Google

Myth # 1: The higher your Google Page Rank( PR) , the higher you'll be in the search engine results listing . Page Rank has nothing to do with the ranking of web pages, it has to do with the level of authoritativeness the page has and how often it will be reindexed. Higher Page Rank pages tend to be reindexed more often.


Myth # 2: The Google Toolbar will list your actual Page Rank – the toolbar displays Page Rank and backlink information that is generally 3-5 monts old.


Myth # 3: Page Rank is a value based on the number of incoming links to your site – It is more to do with the quality of the links coming into your site.


Myth #4: Searching for incoming links on Google using “Link” will show you all your backlinks-Google only shows you a small number of the links they know about. The have publicly stated that the links they show you may not all be counted towards Page Rank. Instead use Yahoo or MSN as a qauge to your link progress.


Myth # 5: Being listed in the Open Directory Project gives you a special rank bonus – There is no “special bonus” , you get page rank from the ODP the same as you would from any other site. No special treatment is given.


Myth # 6: Being listed in Yahoo! Gives you a Special Page Rank bonus- See #5 There is no special bonus given.


Myth # 7: Google Analytics is used to track your user behavior for future products with Google- The data is not used by Google per the terms of use. There is no real value for Google to analyze that information , unless Yahoo! Or MSN decided to use Google Analytics.


Myth # 8: Google will not index dynamic pages - Google indexed dynamic content all the time, the issue is , does it index it correctly, and that is the responsibility of the webmaster, not Google


Myth # 9: Google will not list your site or penalize it, if you use Popups – Google does not view pop-ups as an indexing problem. However if the pop ups are abusive, you can be manually deindexed.


Myth # 10: Google will penalize you if, youre linked to by a link farm – While Google has stated that you cannot be penalized because of something that is not in your direct control, they do have systems in place to determine if you are participating in programs which are against their terms of use.


If you find these a challenge on your blogsite , submit your blog site for an evaluation. It would not do you any harm but would help you find your way , the direction and the blog status in the blogosphere. So watch for the changes of a new flipantasticweb in the coming days.



Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Great News , More Traffic For Bloggers



OFFICIAL E-Book release, AWESOME features added, and two BIG contests!

Posted: 19 May 2008 01:29 AM CDT

Hello Entrecard Members,

We’ve just made a ton of HUGE updates to the site, and so we have a lot to announce!

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ADD MULTIPLE BLOGS TO YOUR ACCOUNT

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Today we rolled out a feature everyone has been asking us for since we launched:
the ability to add more than one blog to an account!

Starting today, you can add all your blogs to Entrecard simply by going to your Dashboard and clicking “Linked Blogs” in your Dashboard navigation.

linkedblogs.png

You will be able to choose whether to link your account with another EXISTING account, or to register a NEW BLOG with Entrecard, and automatically link it to your account.

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You can switch from one blog to another, and drop or advertise as either one, from the very top right of your Entrecard screen. Where your email address is displayed there will be a link to “switch” to another account of yours.

Add just one more blog to your account, and you’re automatically entered to win 15,000 credits!

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ENTRECARD OFFICIAL E-BOOK

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http://entrecard.com/static/entrecard_official_ebook.pdf

Our free ebook has arrived for everyone to download! If you’re new to Entrecard, and wondering what to do first, this E-Book will guide you along the way. And if you’re an intermediate or advanced user, it’s packed full of strategies you can use to get the absolute most from our service. Download from the link above.

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BLOG POST CONTEST - WIN 2000 CREDITS!

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We are holding a contest to help us spread the word about our “add new blog” feature and our new E-Book, so anyone who posts on their blog, mentions our new “add a blog” feature, and posts a link to our new E-Book on their blog wins 2000 credits. Just leave a comment on this blog post with the link for us to see.

Credits will be paid to all winners on June 25th

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MULTI BLOG CONTEST - WIN 15,000 CREDITS!

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We’re giving away 15,000 credits to people who add new blogs to their accounts. We will randomly select one winner in each of the following classes:

2-5 blogs in account
5-10 blogs in account
10-15 blogs in account
15-20 blogs in account
20-25 blogs in account

We’re giving away a total of 75,000 credits, as there will be one 15,000 credit winner for each class. All you have to do is use our new feature to add Entrecard to your other blogs, or simply link your other blogs together using the “switch” button in the top right of the site. Winners will be picked on June 25th.

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NEW HOMEPAGE

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If you haven’t been around in a while, then you haven’t seen our new homepage! It automatically posts links to YOUR posts, every time you update your blog. You can also use it to see in real time what Entrecarders are talking about on their blogs!

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NEW CAMPAIGN PAGE TABS

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On your “Campaign” page we added quick jump tabs to easily see the Most Popular, Newest, Cheapest, and more at just the click of a button. The “Search” tab on the end of the campaign navigation will bring you to the browser that you are currently familiar with.

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TOP DROPPERS RSS FEED

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The people who visit your blog more frequently than any other members are known as your top droppers. We just created an RSS feed, found on your “Statistics” page, that will allow you to subscribe.

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Whew, so that’s what we’ve been up to. We hope you love our new E-Book and find it incredibly helpful. We also hope our new features make things easier for you, make you’re Entrecard efforts more fruitful, and all these new features are designed to help you get MORE traffic, MORE exposure, and MORE value for your blog and your time. Don’t forget to enter our contests by adding other blogs to your account, and posting a link to our new E-Book!

Entrecard Team
http://entrecard.com

Monday, May 12, 2008

Elevate your page rank, its an experience

Every web blog have different topics, template , format and bloggers have different experiences . Its an advantage for professional writers in doing the blogs. They are more skilled in putting up articles although they still have to be a computer geek. But , all blogsites and all bloggers have the same mission , that is to reach a maximum number of readers or subscribers for their blog.

The more readers/ subscribers the more possibility of earnings. There are web logs that are private , commercial and non commercial. The non-commercial bloggers just love to write and express their passion thru blog or video log. Be it commercial or not, web site publishers encourages blogging with the same goal to earn an income. If there's no income which are derived from the Ads, how will they survive. So, for conscious bloggers specially the newbees like me , who want to have lots of readership/subcribers here are some simple tips to rank your web logs.

From my own experienced barely four months in blogging;

1.Good topic or article is a must. Simple but catchy layout and daily or consistent publishing of articles. When you start blogging choose the topic which is close to your interest and related to the goal of the blog site. The articles should be related to each other and not off tangent. Developing a topic is like a thread , its inexhaustible.

2.Presentation of the topic should be of interest to the reader. There are a lots of ways how to present the article in the blog. You should be patient in searching and be creative, its all in the internet. Choose text, images and video. In getting images I use the “jing project” which is free and downloadable. And for the video its “you tube”, there are instructions on how to load a video from you tube to the web log.

3.Links /linking is the life blood of the web log. Links are “clicked on” to go to the Web page you specify. Articles are useless without readers. When you publish the blog , visitors could see it when they surf because a spider web is crawling . Readers will find the article and read it, but to maintain a readership or subscribers to its maximum, you will need links. The goal of linking is to connect readers and subscribers to liken your blog and link back to your write ups. It is not the goal of linking , just merely to link and click your website, for the sake of visits or impressions which is related to earnings for the ads. Google call this “link spamming”. And it is not what publishers wanted , there must be an outcome from your visitors either to appreciate your topic and subscribe or the end result download something, visit the ads and buy a product.

4.Linking - the simplest way to link and have readers on your page is to click to other web logs which is related to your topic, do comments on the other web log and invite the co- blogger to your site. It would be a good karma , if you give, you may receive, likewise with a comment for the article. The traditional way of having readers is invite your friends, relatives, family and neighbors. Tell them you have a blog for and push them to visit your work. But its very limited . The technology has devised a way to virtually double, triple or infinitisinally send your work in the web.


The articles are kept in a data base by the computer and the system that distributes these to other web is thru the Feed or Feeder. Feed or Blog (url) are transmitted to other web servers like yahoo, msn , digg, technorati, delicious , facebook, and many other. The blogs are transmitted thru server sites by these feeders . To avail of these service the reader must subscribe to your blogsite. A button for the subscribers must have been ready to facillitate your patrons.

5. Traffic – this is not the traffic in the street , its a traffic in the web. If you have hundreds , thousands and millions of readership that's a lot of traffic. And that a huge potential client for the products being advertise in the blog. Here are some traffic sites that generate visits;

Entrecard.com – this is a site where you connect your blogsite to another site. By being a member your are provided with an entrecard widget which you drop to another member. By these visits and dropping system you'll gain points and the other droppers will follow you and also drop his own entrecard. So if your addicted to dropping your card to other blogsite members, you will get a lot of traffic, but be sure before or after dropping your card , please do give comment to the article of the blog being visited.

Mybloglog.com/ Blog Catalog.com – these are sites where you meet other bloggers and knowing about other blog articles. Here you can share your blogs and sites and can invite them.

Directories - sites which enlist your blog site and also do ranking based on their systems . Like Sikat ang websayt ko , Top Blog List, IZEA ranks, Pinoyblogosphere,

Search engines - A search engine is an Internet facility that searches documents posted on the Internet for keywords and compiles a list of URLs or web addresses for the documents containing those keywords. Google is a search engine , its no 1.

6. Site map - A site map is a blueprint for a Web site. Its a map of all the pages of the blogsite written in the language of the computer. It is very important because if you want every page of your blogs to be read , you have put a sitemap on the blog.

Summing it up , the meat of the blog is the article or topic but somebody has to like your meat , not only like it but be addicted to your site. This is the traffic , and for your site to have a tremendous traffic you have to be connected with your linkages. Hand in hand with these components Google will naturally support you with ads that are relevant to your blogs and surely you'll be rewarded with earnings through the ad sense program.

If you like this article or have something to share , please shout it out at the bottom of this topic. Thank you very much , I highly appreciate it.


Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Increase in Page Rank, After the Locked?

Yah ! Amazing , it happened , yesterday May 6 , I noticed that my page rank increase from 0 to 3. I am not expecting this . Thanks to Google , readers and bloggers who commented on my articles. As you know my blog was locked April 2 and I was only back in writing on April 23. From then on I had only two articles and up to this writing , my rank is now PR 3.

Perhaps for long time and expert bloggers , its not a big deal but for me, a newbee in blogosphere , its a discovery on how things are going , its a sign of progress . Page rank also mean increase in earnings on adsense. From a few cents to a few dollars , its start of a milestone but still a lot of things to be improve.


How it came to be?

Its almost three and half months since I start my first article on blogging . I had no idea on how to do it , I just followed the steps as illustrated in the blogger. My initial write up was about why I have to blog. Its more on personal matters , I just want to let go thru writing feelings of loneliness here in a strange country. Earnings is just secondary . Second article was more on the structure of my blogsite. Then , its about Davos Question the meeting of world leaders about doing something for the world and the succeeding write ups were more on the political situation happening in my country the Philippines, the “abduction of Jun Lozada and the related events after. Then until my web log was locked in April 2,

All in all it was 20 topics. When my blogsite was locked and enabled after two weeks , I had to do some research in google , its policy and surf to other blogsites to determine the reason for the disabled blog. And upon hopping , I also happen to learn techniques on improving my blogsite. Then I apply it after the locking incident. Throughout the period there were not much traffic on my blog. There were also minimal comments ranging from 1 to 5 comments per topic. I was already using entrecard , though I just drop my card to small number of entrecard members. There was no google page rank , its 0 , technorati rank started and increases now to 30.

Where do I attribute increase in my Page Rank;

Summarizing my short experience for less than four months. I would say my page rank increased based on the combination of three factors ; content of the article or topic being discussed , comments from the readers and back links.

I will share a more detailed topic on the content and back links on my next issue.

But this video will relay what is a Page Rank..

Thursday, May 1, 2008

SPAM BLOG and HOW NOT TO BE LOCKED?




IF we could make the Spider Robot crawl our blogsites and not make false readings on our blogsites , it would be HAPPY DAYS for the bloggers. It would mean that our blogs will prosper and reach an infinite success. But that is not the virtual world and reality , there are rules that has to be followed for our blogsite site to thrive , sustain, rank and also make money. But there are also bloggers who goes around the rules and try to outwit the “robot”. Or there are foolish people around who makes fun of fellowmen and loves others to be down.


Since my blogsite was LOCKED , I became conscious to study about this spamming and how to prevent it being blocked. A blogsite to be suspected of a spam blog could be a handy work of fellow blogger . With a simple click of the mouse and a report of your blog, your doom though it still has to be proven. It ' s really more on the “Robot”, detecting blogsite, if it has crawled and with the algorithms not suited with the spider robot then it would suspect the blog to be a “corruptor” .

And , probably this was the basis of the Admin's stopping my blog activity. This is also how I interpret what had happened. Reality has proven otherwise , I am back and it was indirectly declared that my blogsite as not a “spam blog”. The admin admitted that sometimes spam detection is very “fuzzy” or very intricate and the classification of being a spam could be wrong, that is why I was a victim.


To better understand all about spam , spam blog and policies , we had to bear in mind the following ;



SPAMMING is not allowed in GOOGLE as a basic policy that's a fact .


What Are Spam Blogs?
As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.


Link spam
Davison defines link spam (which he calls "nepotistic links") as "... links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit." [6] Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, such as Google's PageRank algorithm, which gives a higher ranking to a website the more other highly ranked websites link to it. These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based ranking techniques such as the HITS algorithm.

Link farms
Involves creating tightly-knit communities of pages referencing each other, also known humorously as mutual admiration societies [2]PDF (1.55 MiB) Hidden links Putting links where visitors will not see them in order to increase link popularity. Highlighted link text can help rank a webpage higher for matching that phrase.


"Sybil attack"
This is the forging of multiple identities for malicious intent, named after the famous multiple personality disorder patient "Sybil" (Shirley Ardell Mason). A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs known as spam blogs.


Spam blogs
Also known as splogs, a spam blog, is complete fake blog created exclusively with the intent of spamming. They are similar in nature to link farms.

Page hijacking
This is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites.
Buying expired domains


Some link spammers monitor DNS records for domains that will expire soon, then buy them when they expire and replace the pages with links to their pages. See Domaining. However Google resets the link data on expired domains.

Some of these techniques may be applied for creating a Google bomb, this is, to cooperate with other users to boost the ranking of a particular page for a particular query


It is very clear from the above information that SPLOGS OR SPAM BLOG is a complete fake blog created by a human being and presented as a robot or any means for malicious intent of developing or trying to reach a high percentage of visitors for the blogs and or ranking. This we I call it “ corrupting the blog” for the primary reason of more income .


Spamming or other forms of being a SPAM BLOG is linking or link spamming , the linking is done just for the purpose of blogs popularity and not linking with other blogs for cause of developing content or sharing the blogs content.


Other articles and readers is highly needed by blogsites . We need readers , fellow bloggers and other sites to link with us and linking is the lifeblood of the blog . But there are now a lot of methods in going about this linking aspect which is badly needed by our blog. But I think we have to be very careful with our linking. Google in particular are guarding the blogs and they had the means to take out this spam blogs from their system and from the web world. The latest that there doing are ;

Automated spam classifying algorithms keep spam blogs out of NextBlog and out of our "Recently Published" list on the dashboard. The same classifiers are used to require an extra word verification field on the posting form for potential spam blogs. This makes it harder for spammers to set up automated systems to do their posting, since a human needs to complete this step.


The Flag as Objectionable button in the Navbar lets you notify us of problem blogs that you find, so we can review them and take appropriate action. Report spam here.


I do hope you won't suffer what I had experience . If ever you had the same situation please do comment on this blog and let us know your experience. So be very careful with your blogs , be conscious of who your linking and hope for your great success with your blog and enjoy blogging.