Written on January 8th, 2005 at 12:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Bill Gates on Blogging
Gizmodo got a bit of a scoop with a face to face interview with Bill Gates. They’ve posted the first part of the interview which largely focuses upon blogging. Here’s a snippet:
‘I think blogging is super-important and we’ve got to do a lot more software. The phenomena for us is we’ve got in beta this MSN Spaces thing, and it lets you leverage everything you do around Messenger—that’s your buddy lists and those relationships—to set up blogs, and who has access, and who gets notified. We’ve got up over a million people [who] set up blog sites.’
Written on January 8th, 2005 at 12:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Adsense isn’t for all Blogs
MediaDailyNews has a great article that describes a situation where running Adsense didn’t work out for one blogger who wasn’t happy with the type of ads being served on his politically conservative blog.
‘Maloney pronounced Thursday on his site that Google’s contextual ad service, AdSense, was ‘not ready for primetime.’ He complained that Google routinely sent ads that weren’t meant for his conservative audience. One ad, for instance, asked readers: ‘How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?’–referring to the voters who re-elected President George W. Bush in 2004.
‘I could live with the occasional mistargeted ad, but it seemed that a vast majority of the ads were inappropriate for large segments of this site’s audience,’ Maloney wrote Thursday on his site. ‘I could even live with the many ads that highlighted positions different from mine, if some of them weren’t so downright insulting.’ Maloney cited ads that sold T-shirts labeling Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and President Bush ‘asses of evil,’ and ‘Hillary for President’ ads. Maloney since withdrew from AdSense.’
It is a good reminder that whilst Adsense can serve incredibly relevant ads at times that it is an automated service that does not have the ability to discern opinion, sarcasm, tone or the points of arguments or debate.
Written on January 8th, 2005 at 08:01 am by Darren Rowse
Keyword Identification Tool - NicheBOT
Thinking of starting a new blog but you don’t know what keywords to target? NicheBot might be a tool worth checking out. Its a very useful tool that helps you to identify keywords that:
1. are being searched for
2. don’t have too many other sites competing for the same keyword
To use it simply enter in a keyword that you’re considering targeting - I’ll choose ‘MP3 Player’ for our example as its something I’m kind of interested in. After a short wait they’ll come back to you with a result page like this which has some very useful information (well it gets me going!) - the results are made up of the following pieces of information which they glean from Google and Word Tracker
- Phrase/Keyword - they suggest a whole heap of keywords that are related to the one you’ve chosen that you might want to consider targeting
- Count - this column tells you how many people searched for this term in the last 60 days (I’m a little dubious about the actual numbers here - I suspect that digital cameras were searched a little more for than 6,965 times in the lead up to Christmas - but the results look like they are relatively accurate in relation to each other). Update - the FAQ page says this number is only ‘The total number of times the keyword phrase appears in the Wordtracker database over the past 60-days’ and not a live statistic.
- Pages - shows how many pages Google has listed with any or all of your keyword (which gives you a good indication of how much competition you have).
- Comp. - shows you how many pages are listed on Google with your exact keyword (even more useful).
- Ratio - calculates how many sites there are for every search. The lower your number here the better your chances of succeeding in being competitive for this keyword.
So with my ‘MP3 Player’ example - the results show that there is ALOT of competition for my initial keyword - but it illuminates a number of other options that I might want to target like ‘mp3 player reviews’, ‘mp3 portable players’ or ’sony mp3 players’.
Its not a perfect tool - but definitely handy.
update: Search Engine Journal has a good article on The Power Of The “Niche” - Choosing Keywords People Actually Use that shows the usefulness of a tool like this one. They write:
‘Keywords and keyphrases are the search words and terms Internet surfers use to find the products, services or information they are looking for.
Choosing the right keywords and phrases for your search engine optimization (SEO) program is critical to its success. The right keywords drive targeted traffic to your website - prospects that are ready to buy. The wrong keywords attract web visitors that are not likely to purchase your products and services - wasting everyone’s time and your money.’
Written on January 7th, 2005 at 05:01 pm by Darren Rowse
I need your help Bloggers
I need your help. Truly I do - but it won’t cost you much - in fact you’ll probably get something out of it if you do.
In the next months I’ve decided to interview a number of Pro Bloggers about their blogging ventures. These are bloggers who are currently making (or attempting to make) an income from the genre of blogging. Some are doing it by writing blogs on niche topics, others are blog consultants, others are providing blog tools or services to bloggers.
I’ve already lined up a few of the interviews with some prominent and soon to be prominent (I think) bloggers but I need your help (is there an echo in here?).
What would you like to ask pro bloggers? What is your itch that we can scratch for you? What do you need to know to take your blogging to the next level? You might also like to suggest who you’d like to see interviewed and I’ll add them to my hit list.
Leave your questions, ponderings, wonderings and suggestions in comments below either anonymously or with your details (I’ll credit you in the interviews).
Did I mention that I need your help?
Written on January 7th, 2005 at 03:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Quiz Time
It’s Jeremy’s fault that I spent the last 10 minutes doing this but I’m a sucker for a good online test.
My nerd rating is 9 - They say I’m definitely not nerdy and might even be cool! Can someone please tell my wife?
My geek rating is 153 - Digital Ace - although I was penalized for being a Mac user.
Written on January 7th, 2005 at 03:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Six Apart to go Public?
Dave Winer believes that Six Apart’s motivation for buying is LiveJournal is about Six Apart wanting to go public:
‘In all the speculation about the deal betw Six Apart and LiveJournal I haven’t seen what surely is the motivator. Six Apart plans to go public. The market will value SA based on its ability to generate profits, and it will likely do so in proportion to the number of users, the theory being that they can sell things to the users, so the more users, the more they can sell. The more users the more value. LJ has a lot of users. So the founders of LJ get SA stock, and the shareholders of SA get more users, and value of the combined companies goes up and the day of the IPO gets closer.’
Written on January 7th, 2005 at 02:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Chat with me on MSN Messenger
I have had the fortune of chatting on MSN messenger today with a couple of my Problogging heroes and thought I’d like to connect with more in this way in 2005. So - with much trepidation I’m going to let you know my MSN Messenger ID.
It’s daziii@hotmail.com
Please note - this is not an email address I use or check - EVER. But if you’d like a chat please feel free to add me and message me to say hi (it might be worth introducing yourself in your first message and saying you are from this blog as I occasionally get a few ‘nutters’ msg me out of the blue who I tend to block pretty quickly).
Of course some times are beter to chat than others so don’t be offended if I’m a bit slow to respond - I’ll get to you eventually but sometimes when I’m multitasking it takes me a few minutes to finish up a stream of thought (or a stream of blogging as they case will probably be).
Written on January 7th, 2005 at 12:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Do Internal links boost Search Engine Ranking?
Interesting thread over at ‘Self Starter’s Weekly Tips’ forums - Do Incoming links from the same URL have less weight than incomeing links from a different domain? was the question that started the thread off.
The advice is good - and can basically be summed up as follows:
Internal links within your blog are good for a number of reasons:
- Firstly they help your readers navigate around your site. A well thought out menu or relevant links within your posts to other post on a similar topic will help you retain your reader for longer and send them deeper within your site.
- They help Search Engine’s robots to navigate your site and hopefully to get every possible page indexed. If you have a site map page or an archives page that links to every page on your blog this helps the SE’s robots index you more comprehensively.
- It seems that most Search Engines (like Google for instance) do give some weight to internal links when it comes to ranking your pages.
However internal links are not the be all and end all when it comes to SEO
- I suspect that Google are decreasing the value/weight of internal links. There is a number of other people that I respect who believe that the last few updates to Google’s algorithm have had something to do with this - and that pages with a lot of internal links have actually seen their search engine page rankings (SERPS) decrease. I don’t think internal links are penalized - but rather have been given less value. Its just my opinion.
- External links are more important to SEO. If you want to build your blog’s ranking and SERPs then it would be a better use of your time to look for external incoming links from other relevant sites than to plaster your own blog with internal links.
Written on January 6th, 2005 at 08:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Blog Ads seeks Sales Person - Blog Job
Blogads.com is looking for a sales person. Their advertisement reads:
‘Blogads.com ,a fast-growing ad network focused on bloggers, is seeking entry-level salespeople and assistants.
We’ve got offices in Carrboro, NC and Budapest, Hungary and have been featured recently in Business Week and the Wall Street Journal.
You must be an articulate, personable, pop-culture savvy, hyper-literate, ambitious media maven. You’ve got to love communicating. You are decent at math and enjoy science. You want to make money AND grow.
You will service existing clients and research and sell to prospective advertisers. You’ll analyze advertising trends. You’ll stretch and grab and pull in all sorts of unexpected directions. If you want the status quo plus 7%, don’t apply.
If you are interested, please e-mail a resume and a short cover note explaining what you think makes blog advertising special. Extra points if you already blog.’
Apply for the job at Sales person for blog ad network
Written on January 6th, 2005 at 06:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Breaking News Blog Collective is Launched
One of the projects that I’ve been working on with a number of others over the past two months is Breaking News Blog. Put most simply, the Breaking News Blog project is a collective of bloggers who are each focussing upon a niche news topic. There are currently 17 blogs that are live on the network in four general themes of Technology, Health, Sport and Entertainment and Lifestyle. The latest post from each blog in the collective are presented on the central Breaking News Blog home page but each is an independent blog in its own right at:
Technology Blogs: MP3 Players - Satellite Radio - PDAs - Robotics - Printers - VoIP
- Laptops
Health Blogs: Medical Research - Mineral Supplements - Diets - Medical Alarms
Sport and Entertainment: America’s Cup - Jessica Simpson
Lifestyle Blogs: Personal Finance - Credit Card News - Life Insurance News - Car Insurance News
Also hosted by Breaking News Blog is the Blogger Idol project.
Bloggers in the collective write about areas of personal interest and expertise. Of course there is a financial element to what we do (income stream is largely Adsense, Amazon and other affiliates) but we’re not only interested in the big dollar and are looking forward to some projects in the months ahead that will make a difference to the wider community that we are a part of.
The collective has only been live for a couple of months now but we’re already starting to see some reasonable results as our page ranking builds in Search Engines and as we build relationships with other bloggers and find ourselves on the receiving ends of incoming links. Of course some blogs do better than others but across the board we’ve seen significant growth each week since going live.
Breaking News Blog is not one for a lot of media spin - as a result we’ve not been talking it up of late but rather are quietly working on building quality sites with useful content. In fact we’ve been working so hard on our sites that we’ve forgotten to ‘officially launch’ and publicly announce to the blogosphere that we’re here - so consider us launched - tadarrr!
We are interested in developing relationships with other similarly themed blogs or websites (contact me if you’d like to develop either a sponsorship or link partnership with any of the above blogs - we have page ranks of 5 or 6 on most of them currently).
So stay tuned for further developments - more BNB blogs will be added in the weeks and months ahead. Each blog has its own RSS feed so subscribe to those that interest you and let us know what you think of what we’ve done so far.
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