Written on April 4th, 2005 at 04:04 am by Darren Rowse
The Invisible Australian Blogger
Fellow Australian Trevor Cook has written a great post on the state of ‘new media’ including blogging and podcasting in Australia. He comments that whilst there is incredible growth in the medium of blogging that Australia is really yet to see bloggers rise in prominence as has happened else where.
‘Nevertheless, Australian bloggers have not yet generated the sort of media attention that well-known coups (Dan Rather, Trent Lott, Eason Jordan) have won for blogging in the USA. These “affairs” showed that blogging could change agendas and we are still waiting for some high profile agenda-changing from Australian online media community.’
This is something I’ve been pondering a bit recently. A couple of Australian newspapers have tinkered with ‘blog of the week’ type columns in their technology sections (usually featuring overseas blogs) but outside of this I’m yet to really see blogging mentioned in any real depth in the main stream media here. There is a growing number of the general public who seem to have heard of blogs (I notice a lot of people have some vague idea of what they are) but overall there is little prominence of blogging or individual bloggers despite the numbers of quality Aussie bloggers going around.
This is something I’d like to see change and am keen to work on being a part of - however I wonder what can be done. There are only so many contacts that we as bloggers can attempt to make with reporters - perhaps we need to engage a PR expert like Tony to get blogging’s profile up here.
Read Trevor’s article at Trevor Cook describes the new media, including blogging and podcasting, now available to consumers
Written on April 4th, 2005 at 03:04 am by Darren Rowse
AdSense and Borders
Deane at Gadgetopia experimented with a new format for her Adsense ads - no borders - and discovered one of the best ways of increasing CTR:
‘If you have Google Adsense on your site, here is the best piece of advice I can give you: don’t put borders around your ads. I had a border around my skyscraper banner on the right here, so it sat in its own little box.’
This simple move made a substantial difference to CTR and no doubt a corresponding difference to overall earnings.
Of course each blog is different depending upon the overall design - but this is a tactic I use on most of my sites pretty successfully. However if you do keep in mind you might get a bit of flack from it - check out the comments on the above post and you’ll see that some are ethically opposed to it.
Found via WorkBoxers
Written on April 3rd, 2005 at 11:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Tabbed Browsing for Bloggers
Arieanna has a good post on why she loves Firefox as a blogger. As I was reading it - especially this following section on tabbed browsing - I found myself agreeing with her whole heartedly - although for me you just need to substitute the word ‘Firefox’ with ‘Safari’ throughout her article. Here’s what she says about tabbed browsing:
‘I use Bloglines to read most of my news. My preferred method of reading is just to open up a folder all at once (I organize my subscriptions into folders so I can prioritize my reading). Bloglines then delivers all new posts for all blogs in that folder in a linear fashion. So, I scroll down the page reading post titles that appeal to me. If there is something I want to read more fully and/or perhaps blog on, I will middle click or Control+click to open that post in a new TAB. I have set my preferences so that new tabs open “in the background,” so to speak. Let me explain this: I tell Firefox to open the tab, but it does so by just opening a new tab behind the one I am currently reading. Non disruptive. I can keep reading without any popup or any clutter in my taskbar.
Why do I like this? Well, I have two stages for reading my blog subscriptions. Approaching 200 blog subscriptions, it is impossible to read everything, nor does everything interest me.
Stage 1: look at titles. If appealing, open tab. Keep scanning down for more.
Stage 2: Go through each tab and read the posts.
Another great advantage of tabbed browsing is the ability to read a webpage fully from top to bottom, while also opening up links you think would be interesting to read more about. No having to press the back button a ton of times. Each link is a possibility for a new tab. Indeed, I think I’ve come close to having 50 open at once. Try that with IE windows. No thanks.’
Read more at Firefox for blog reading
Written on April 3rd, 2005 at 02:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Important Google SEO Information
A couple of days ago I mentioned the new Google patent that reveals a lot about the ways Google is now indexing sites. The patent is long and if you don’t know the ins and outs of the technical stuff can be a bit overwhelming - so I’ve been checking out what it all means from a few bloggers and webmasters who have the gift of translating it for dummies like me.
What they are saying is fascinating stuff (I’m shocked more people are not talking about it in the blogging community) - let me give you a few snippets.
Inside Google has these tips worth taking into account:
• PageRank isn’t about the number of links, its about link growth. Sheer volume of links is meaningless, because Google tracks historical link volume data, determining rises and falls in the number of links. If your site earns a steady number of links every month, it may never move up in the rankings, because it is not gaining in popularity. Link building campaigns are one step removed from meaningless, because they can never gain momentum. In a sense, web spam won’t help rankings as much as might be thought, because you cannot infinitely increase the rate of spammage, and the moment it drops off, your site is dead.
• How often you update affects everything. If you update every day, and then start updating once a week, your site is dropping, no two ways about it. In addition, Google keeps a close eye on sites that shoot up quickly, and checks if its spam related or a Slashdotting-type event.
• How long you register your domain name for affects your rankings. There’s a boost for sites registered for longer. How many websites will we see buying 100-year registrations now?
• Google also knows who owns more than one site, because of its registrar data. Linking from one of your own sites to another is useless, because Google knows.
SEOmoz has the most comprehensive commentary on the patent I’ve seen so far:
How Changing Content can Affect Rankings. Changing content over time has a huge impact in Google’s measures according to this patent. They use changes to determine “freshness” or “staleness” of websites and pages and how that data impacts the value of the links on the page as well its rankings. They’ll also measure large, “real”, content changes vs. superfluous changes and rank based on that data.
Spam Detection & Punishment - Google is employing many new systems of spam detection and prevention according to the patent. These include:
• Watching for sites that rise in the rankings too quickly
• Watching for registration information, IP addresses, name servers, hosts, etc that are on their “bad list”
• Growth of off-topic links
• Speed of link gain
• Percentage of similar anchor text
• Topic/Subject shifts or additions
Other discussions on this:
- Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data - Sandbox Explanation, Aging Delay?
- Google’s War on SEO - Documented
- Does New Google Patent Validate Sandbox Theory?
- New Google Patent, Must Read
- Sandbox Explained by Google? “Information retrieval based on historical data
- New Google patent proves “sandbox” exists
Written on April 3rd, 2005 at 11:04 am by Darren Rowse
Pope Blog Update
Blogging might be a little lighter here for the next few days as i concentrate on the Pope Watch Blog. As you’d expect traffic levels have been pretty high with them reaching 1500 visitors per hour at its peak.
The interesting (and frustrating thing) is that despite its being running for months now Google are yet to index it properly. 99% of traffic referrals are coming from MSN search where the blog is ranked very highly for most relevant terms. I can only begin to imagine what visitor levels would be like if Google had indexed the site properly.
I’m also quite amazed by the outpouring of grief that readers of the blog are showing via comments. In the last few hours I decided to create a space for these comments specifically and am getting emails from readers thanking me for creating a virtual space for their grief which is lovely.
Written on April 3rd, 2005 at 03:04 am by Darren Rowse
Blog Strategy - Add Authors
Eoghann over at Blog World has an interesting post titled Blog Strategy where he talks readers through his Pro Blogging strategy. Eoghann writes 5 blogs on varying topics and each with their own strengths and weaknesses. He’s really just thinking out loud but its an interesting glimpse into his thinking.
The issue that seems to be facing him at the moment is time - Eoghann works full time, has 5 blogs (some of which are starting to take off) and 2 new born babies (twins). His goal of posting 3 posts per day on each of his blogs is sadly unachievable with his current circumstances so he’s faced with some interesting decisions.
His conclusions vary from blog to blog and a lot of what he decides I agree with but wonder if perhaps he might explore the following strategy also:
Add new authors - One good way of increasing the amount of posts on a blog is to add authors to it. One person might post once or twice per day but ten committed authors can do a lot more. This strategy is not suitable for all of his blogs but I wonder if perhaps his Solar Flare blog might be worth giving it a go on as its on a topic which is sure to have some passionate readers (science fiction). His Pro Wrestling Blog might be another worth trying this on.
I’ve found on some of my blogs that potential authors are often willing to write for free just for the love of a topic. Some bloggers have revenue sharing models - but I’d probably approach two or three of the more avid readers of that site (every blog has one or two addicted types) and see if they were willing to write something once or twice a week.
The other benefit of having a blog with multiple authors is that with others participating in content you often find that they also become your best marketers and PR people. Back when I did the Olympics Blog last year we added a number of authors to help out - whilst they didn’t post as many posts as we did as owners - one of the best things they gave us was links from their own blogs and promotion via word of mouth.
Of course on the down side of multiple author blogs is that you run the risk of losing a little control over quality and content (although you can always edit) and it can take a little time to set them up and initially manage them. However in my experience the benefits of increased amounts of content are well worth the effort.
Written on April 2nd, 2005 at 05:04 pm by Darren Rowse
BloggingHelp
Arieanna and Ianiv of Blogaholics fame have just launched a new blog - blogginghelp.
‘Blogginghelp can help you create dialogue with your stakeholders in an easy, powerful way. We can help you decide on what type of blog you need, how to position it, and give you some great tips or services that get you noticed quickly. We can even work with you on an ongoing basis to populate your archive, link throughout the blogosphere, and help improve your SEO ranking for your blog and your static business site.’
By the looks of things its going to have some useful tips and posts that might make it worth adding to your regular reads - its already on my News Aggregator.
Read more at blogginghelp
Written on April 2nd, 2005 at 12:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Is Google Page Rank Still Relevant?
Paul at Work Boxers asks Is PR Still Relevant?
‘However, it definitely isn’t as important as it used to be, since so many people have learned to game the system. PR is good for long term success in the search engines, but is not something that can be measured very well short term.’
I agree with Paul - Google’s Page Rank isn’t anywhere near as important as it has been previously - however I don’t completely write it off. I suspect that it still plays a part in how Google ranks sites in its results - but another important factor is that page rank can still be an important factor in working out how much to sell ads on your blog for.
I am regularly asked by people to sell them text links on my blogs and Page Rank remains one of the main factors that they ask about. The higher my page rank the higher amounts I’m able to charge for a link - so I’d answer Paul’s question by saying - in terms of Search Engine Rankings I’m not sure Page Rank is as relevant as it previously has but in terms of grading the value of a blog for other purposes it remains one of the few tools people use and therefore is helpful.
Written on April 2nd, 2005 at 11:04 am by Darren Rowse
Yahoo! announce Search Index Update
Yahoo are doing something that I’m not sure has been done before today - they’re telling us that they are about to do an index update on their blog. This is a great move that I wish Google would take note of and follow. It would take a lot of the guess work, stress and confusion out of the lives of webmasters who sweat on each update.
It’ll be interesting to watch the changes in this latest Yahoo! update - let us know in comments if you notice any difference in your rankings and traffic from Yahoo.
Read more at Yahoo! Search blog: Yahoo! Launching New Search Index Tonight
Written on April 2nd, 2005 at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse
Making your blog sticky
Duncan over at The Blog Herald has a great post on Making your blog sticky which is a second post (first one is here) on what he’s doing at his great blog to make readers stick around after surfing in for the first time to one of his individual archive pages. Its a great article with some useful tips that I’m going to consider playing with.
I am particularly interested in his experimentation with the ‘Recent Posts’ plug in that he’s implemented at the base of each of his posts. I’ve been considering doing that on one of my blogs which has struggled to get people to view more than one page per visit.
In making this move on Blog Herald he now estimates that 60% of his readers now read more than one article on his blog per session in comparison to 10% a month ago. Thats a serious improvement!
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