The number of social bookmarking sites that have not gone the no follow route is slowly declining with Flickr the latest to join the no follow list. The seems to be an unhealthy interest in whether or not sites, social bookmarking sites included, use the follow or no follow tags. It seems that everyone is looking for rank juice rather than publishing for a audience.

Don’t get me wrong. Link building is important and if you can get inbound links with no follow tags then your ranking is going to be marginally affected. However when it comes to social bookmarking sites then is more value in what other are saying about your pages than a simple no follow link.

If your articles are bookmarked in a variety of social bookmarking sites then the search engines are going to notice you far quicker than by a simple spider crawl. If your article or page has been bookmarked by many then articles ranking climbs. Add to this the tags that are added to your page when it is bookmarked and the area of relevance is broadened. If I bookmarked this article with ’social bookmarking’ tags then that is one area. You come along and like this article and bookmark it but the tags you use are SEO and Linking. The article now has three points of reference. Each point of reference is reinforced every time someone bookmarks the page.

Whether or not the links have a follow or no follow tag, the search engines will still find the page within the social bookmarking sites and still reference them. I have had pages published, submitted to a site and been indexed by Google within two hours - the index is to one of the bookmarking sites, but that link still leads eventually to my page.

If you really want a social bookmarking site that does not use the no follow then check the following. From what I can see they don’t use the tag, however things are changing almost daily.

Furl
Propeller
Digg
Technorati
Slashdot

Once you have created a blog one of the quickest ways to get backlinks and to start building traffic is to submit your blog to as many of the blog directories that you can find. At least, that is the general advice that everyone will offer. There are however several things that you will need to consider before and during the registration process.

The first question you need to ask yourself is which blog directories do you want to submit your blog to. You can do a search and build a list or you can visit any blog that has a list of blog directories. You could also get a professional service to submit your blog for you. Often, the list provided by a reliable blog is your best starting point as they will generally have some knowledge of the directories being recommended.

Before listing your blogs, grab yourself a free email address from one of the free email services. Once you register your blog details on a blog directory your details including your email address are added to their database. Not all blog directories are honorable.  There are some that will either sell their database to advertising companies, or they will use their database themselves to send constant ad related emails. With a free email address you will at least save your regular email from being spammed.

Some blog directories require a reciprocal link on your blog. That is fine particularly if it is a little banner or text link. If they do require a reciprocal link avoid putting it in the footer. It seems at present that search engines such as Google consider links in the footer to be link exchanges or purchased links. This could have a negative affect on your search engine ranking. Place the recipricol link in either your blogroll   (for a text link) or in your sidebar. Group the banners together in the sidebar for a better aesthetic look.

Finally, when submitting to blog directories, choose your categories and keywords very carefully. Some directories may reject your blog if it has been submitted to the wrong category. You also want any backlinks that do come from the directory to come from the same niche as your blog. This increases the value of that backlink.

Submitting your blog to a range of blog directories is good PR and will improve the search engine value of your blog - just be aware of some of the pitfalls associated with blog directories.

When discussing blog software most people immediately think of WordPress and other blog publisher packages. There are however other blog software packages that help your develop your posts prior to publishing. One of these software packages is Microsoft Live Writer.

I must admit to not being a big fan of all things Microsoft. About the only Microsoft tool that I use on a regular basis would be Microsoft Office, in particular Microsoft Word. When I came across Microsoft Live Writer I was quite skeptical. Now that I have given it a bit of work out I must admit to be a quiet fan. The Microsoft Word feel does it make it a lot easier to use.

Live Writer does help me write posts a little quicker. One of the nicest features is the ability to insert images from my desktop. This means I can play around with various images until I get the right feel for my post. Once I have completed my post it is a simple step to upload into my blog and publish. The graphics are uploaded at the same time and Live Writer conveniently updates the links as it goes.

Live Writer does have several drawbacks. One of blog sites simply refuses to accept posts. I know Live Writer has issues with the Bad Neighborhood plugin (there is a fix available) and perhaps it Akismet has the same effect. I haven’t had the time to disable Aksimet and test it out.

On the plus side, Live Writer is free. It is very easy to install at set up. During the setup process it will visit your blog and download the page template you are using. When you start writing your post you are writing into the template which provides for a real WYSIWYG feel. Live Writer has the standard formating tools and buttons that you find on other Microsoft products such as MS Word. The graphics interface is very good allowing you to insert graphics and fine tune them. As with MS Word, you can simply click on the graphic and drag it to where you want it. You can also click and drag to resize as well. The graphics have several different borders that can applied.

I often want to use tables within my posts and have always had difficulties with the process. Live Writer has made that a breeze.  There is a Firefox tool that can be installed as a further option. Visit a page, select some text and click on the toolbar and Live Writer opens with that text ready to edit.

Blog software is not always about the platform you are using. There are some very good blog software applications available of which Microsoft Live Writer is one. Live Writer is compatible with most of the popular blogging services.  If you have the time to play around with it then it may just make blogging that little bit better.

Does your blog content planning include pillar posts? Do you have a clear idea of what a pillar post is? Pillar post are, as the name suggests, posts that support the whole structure of a blog. They are the kind of posts that people will reference time and again and are generally written to the following format.

• They are articles with a definite structure in that they include an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.
• They are usually longer than your average articles running to 700 or more words.
• Readers find the articles valuable and feel they benefit from the articles contents.
• The article is not only original it is fresh and demonstrates the authors expertise on the topic.
• The article remains valuable for a longer period of time.
• These articles are  well researched and include referencing and other relevant links.

Pillar posts are important to your blog content as it increases your standing as a writer within the blogging community. You will know if your readers consider it a pillar post as it generally receives more attention in the social community through Diggs, Stumbles and other recommendations. Your pillar post will generally have the more inbound links than other articles within your blog content.

When it comes to your blog content you need a pillar post and it is handy to be able to write one on a regular basis. Just don’t over do it.

Creating a blog is easy and so is getting your blog design right. Avoid these seven mistakes and you should have a blog design that is all set for your content. Get your content right and you will have a blog that is well on the way to success.

MISTAKE NUMBER ONE: Not Using Your Own Domain Name - The biggest mistake many people make is in simply not believing in themselves so they head of for a blog hosted blog like WordPress.com or blogger.com. If you are serious about blogging then get your own domain name and hosting. In this day and age the annual cost is quite small.

MISTAKE NUMBER TWO: Not Defining Your Niche - A lot of bloggers use a scattergun approach when it comes to publishing content. Settle on a genre, even if it is a broad one, and stick to it. Make sure each post that is published relates to that genre.

MISTAKE NUMBER THREE: Not Creating An Identity - Readers will want to know who you are. One of your first tasks should be to write an ‘About Me’ page. This can be edited over time. A photo is also a nice touch.

MISTAKE NUMBER FOUR: Infrequent Posting - You may write the best material on the web but if you only publish when you feel like it you will not build a reader base. Establish a posting routine, preferably every day. If you cannot post every day then at least establish a routine that readers can expect. This may be every Friday, or every second day - so long as it is predictable.

MISTAKE NUMBER FIVE: Poor Post Titles - Make the the title of every post stand out so that it attracts readers. The more attractive or luring the title, the more readers you are likely to get.

MISTAKE NUMBER SIX: Burying Your Hits - You are sure to write some great articles. Make sure they are always promoted and readily accessible from the home page. It only takes a carefully crafted list of links.

MISTAKE NUMBER SEVEN: Dead or Mysterious Links - There is nothing worse that reading an article that has a link with no reference to what the link is about or where it is going. Users can hover a mouse over a link and when they do they expect to get some feedback as to where the link is going. Worse still is when the link proves to be a dead link. Check your links on a frequent basis.

Think about these seven blog design mistakes and then think about your own blog reading experiences. You will see that most, if not all are relevant to what you would like to see when visiting a blog. You want to know a bit about the author, you want regular on topic posts, you want to know where the links are going and often you will want to check out some of their older titles. Start to leave these out of your blog design and you will find that your blog reader base will not grow.

Starting a blog is easy, getting your blog design right is also easy - we often just make it hard on ourselves.

This latest blog plugin for WordPress, Photo Dropper, allows you to search for Creative Commons photos on Flickr and, with one click, add them into your posts.

As with most WordPress blog plugins, just download the file and upload it into your plugin directory. Once activated go to to the Photo Dropper options. For commercial use you will need to select the commercial use option - this restricts the photos in the search to those allowed for commercial use.

The Photo Dropper blog plugin is accessed through the ‘Write Post’ window. Enter in your search text and Photo Dropper will search through Flickr and return thumbnails of those images marked as Creative Commons. You can preview the photo full size and then add the photo to your post with a single click. You can add the photo as either a small, medium or large image. Photo dropper will also add the photos attributes below the image.

Flickr has one of the largest collections of photos online. Creative commons photos are photos that the owners have marked for public use at no cost. For more information on Creative Commons  I suggest you read Skelliewag’s article on Creative Commons and the use of Flickr photos - this is the best article on this topic that I have read in quite some time.

This blog plugin has to be one of the best so far for 2008. It is very useful and I can foresee a lot of blogs now starting to include images in future posts.

There are many blog and website services provider in the market place now. What features do you look for before buying their services.

The first and most important feature to look for is the level of expertise in the services they offer. Some services providers claim a high level expertise but unless they can back these claims up with evidence, generally in the form of a portfolio of successful clients, then tread warily.

The second feature, whilst not truly a feature, is price. Cheap is not always best, in fact it rarely is. The lower the price the lower the level of service - it is a simple matter of economics. If your are offering a service that requires a high level of expertise from a team then low fees indicate either a small team or a lack of dedicated resources.

The major features to consider are of course the services themselves. Do they offer web hosting? Price again is important here - cheap hosting invariably leads to cheap service - frequent down times and little support. When it comes to web hosting, you get what you pay for.

Other features include web design, content writing, directory and search engine submission, SEO, blog and/or website marketing and  an ongoing help program.

Providers such as Brick Marketing not only offer a comprehensive range of blog and website services, they have the expertise to see your project through from start to finish. Brick Marketing also have a wide range of blog and website services to assist you in the ongoing development of your blog or website.

Content theft is now rife within the blogging community and this blogging tip will help you combat some of the content thieves. One of the most irksome trends now is to find a blog that is ‘parked’, filled either with every post that you have written or filled with a variety of posts, some of which are yours and others you recognize from fellow bloggers. Not only that, these ‘parked domains’ are optimized to the hilt with income earning ads, generally but not limited to, Adsense.

How do you combat this type of activity? Once you identify a site that has ’stolen’ your content you should try to follow these blogging tips:

1. If possible, notify the domain owner that the content is yours and that you want it removed.
2. If the domain owner does not respond or if you cannot identify the owner then contact the domain host and advise them of the content theft - or being politically correct, breach of copyright.
3. If Adsense ad units are being used then notify Google - provide them with as much detail as possible - the domain’s URL, the URL of the post with copyrighted content, your URL and contact details and the URL of your original post.
4. While you are at it, request a ban from the search engines. These guys rely on getting referrals from the search engines to get their traffic.

These are quick and easy blogging tips to follow. However it is still a pain in the butt to have to go through these processes particularly if you are busy. The question is, how do you prevent them. There are a couple of blogging tips I can suggest which, whilst it may not stop them, will reduce the damage that stolen content can do. These blogging tips include:

1. Adding your own details to the foot of each post - your blogs name, your blogs URL and the URL of the post (you will need to publish - determine the URL and then edit the post to add it in). Content thieves often don’t actually read all of what they take, they just step in and copy and paste. With your details in the foot of the post you will at least get a link back to your post and of course it is advertising the source. It also makes it easier when you report it to advertisers such as Google. If enabled, this link will also send a trackback when published on another site.
2. Some content thieves are smart enough to remove the footer so also use links within the post that link to other posts on your own blog - it is good SEO practice anyway. Again you will at least have links back and of course some proof of the origin of the post. Again, if enabled, these links will send trackbacks when published elsewhere.
3. If your content is being regularly taken, try to determine when. If you post at the same time everyday, change your routine. Post your article and then keep watching the site. You can bet if your content is being regularly taken then they are watching at the same time each day.
4. This tip is a sneaky tip. If you notice that your content is being taken within 15 to 30 minutes of posting - post a dummy post. You can get cheeky and just write a dummy post that says very little except that it has been stolen from your site. Wait until it has been posted on the thief’s site then delete it from yours and post your normal article. I read one blogger who actually filled the bogus post with totally unacceptable content, waited for it to be posted and then reported them to the domain host. It doesn’t always work, and in the meantime you may get reported - interesting concept though.

My main blogging tip is to act quickly. Report them to Google. Report them to their domain host. With luck they will be closed down before they can do to much damage.

I often hear the term blog metrics, web metrics and even business metrics. At times I have to walk away wondering if the speaker really understands the concept behind the term blog metrics. The concept is very straight forward but I will start with some formal definitions.

Blog metrics can be defined as:

[source] Numbers used as a measurement for standard of quality for comparing different items or time periods. Visits, Unique Hosts, Goals, and Value are all fields that might be used as a metric.

[source] Any type of measurement. Metrics could include business results, quantification of system usage, average response time, benefits achieved, etc. The measures that an organization believes is vital for its success.

[source] Often used interchangeably with measurements. However, it may be helpful to separate these definitions. Metrics are the various parameters or ways of looking at a process that is to be measured. Metrics define what is to be measured.

The one thing that all three definitions have in common is the term ‘measurement’. However it is the last definition that interest me the most. Metrics, and let us take blog metrics as an example, ‘define what is to be measured’. It is the term ‘what’ that is of most interest.

We can spend all day measuring our blog. We can keep statistics on traffic, unique visitors, bounce rate, click through rate, average pages and/or the average time for each visitor. These are all measurements so you could classify them as blog metrics.

If we take the third definition then the term metrics is going to refer to ‘what’ we are going to measure and how we are going to measure it. As an example, if I decide to run a promotional to increase my newsletter subscription numbers then I know I have several parameters to measure. The dollars spent. The increase in traffic and of course, the actual number of sign-ups I  receive. You could argue (correctly too) that each one of these can be measured and there are blog metrics tools out there to measure them.

From my position, these numbers, whilst interesting, don’t go far enough. When I talk about blog metrics I am after the next level of data. The data that interests me is the cost per sign-up; the cost per hundred visitors; the conversion rate per 100 or per 1000 extra visitors. Blog metrics from my viewpoint is a tool that I can use to measure the effectiveness of what I am measuring, whether it is a promotion, a new affiliate ad unit on my blog or a new social site that I decide to target.

Blog metrics, in fact any form of metrics, is not just about measuring. It is about measuring the right factors to help you succeed. Again I quote from one of the definitions, metrics, blog metrics included, is ‘The measures that an organization believes is vital for its success’.  I wonder, what is your definition of blog metrics?

How much time and effort do you put into your blog SEO? Have you hired a professional to do the job for you? Either way, the following checklist will help to determine if the right areas are being targeted. If you haven’t commenced blog SEO activities then this checklist will help you get started.

1. Blog SEO Strategy: Have your blog carefully evaluated to identify the areas that require optimization; then put together a strategy to achieve that optimization.
2. Keyword Research: The evaluation of your blog should help to identify ideal keywords. Further research will identify what steps are needed to fully optimize those keywords to complete the blog SEO.
3. Optimizing Meta Tags: Blog SEO should also include writing effective Meta Tags and Meta Descriptions based on your keyword and blog evaluation.
4. Content: Create content that is not only rich in keywords but also relevant to your blog, engages the reader and provides enough attraction to bring the reader back for more. This is an ongoing component to a successful blog SEO strategy.
5. Link Building Strategy: Develop a link building strategy that targets your keywords and focuses on linking to content rather than just the main page.

Blog SEO is not as easy as it sounds. It takes time and careful analysis, something that perhaps should be left to the professionals in the field. If you do decide to do it yourself, take care that your blog SEO activities do not focus too much on one area to the detriment of the others. A balanced well thought out strategy is the only way to successfully complete a blog SEO campaign.

You can spend a lot of money on a blog design. If you have, do you also have a matching favicon? Now I can hear some mumblings. What is a  favicon?

Have a look in the address window of your browser. Have you ever noticed the little icons that precede the URL. This is the favicon. Now have a look at your site and tell me if you have your own favicon? These are not difficult to put together. Favicon’s are simple 16 pixels by 16 pixels images - if you use the .ico standard then you can use 32 x 32 size images.

Most browsers search for a favicon file whether or not you have one. Including the favicon to your blog design is like putting the finishing touches on any project. It adds that little touch of professionalism to your site.

Once you have your favicon designed, place it in the root directory of your site with the name favicon.ico - most browsers will automatically pick it up and use it. If you want to make sure that a browser uses the icon, or if you wish to place the .ico file in another directory then include the following line of code inside the <head> </head> code of your site.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://yourURL.com/directory/favicon.ico" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon">

This is standard code that is accepted by most browsers. You can also use .gif and .png graphic files as well although their resolution sizes are restricted to 16×16 pixels.

If your blog design does not have a favicon then why not design one. They certainly do add those finishing touches to your blog design.

Our previous post on WordPress Tips looked at decreasing the time it took to load and run the PHP code together with plugins and widgets. Today we will take another look at the sidebars but first, one of the biggest enemies to time when it comes to loading a page, graphics.

Graphics, particularly the memory hungry high resolution photos can take forever to load. Just visit some of the celebrity sites - and grab a coffee while you are waiting for it to finish loading. I am sure you have witnessed this effect.

There are a number of ways to sidestep the slow loading. While it may sound obvious, reducing the size of the graphic helps. You can do this using a good graphic editor. If you cannot reduce the size physically, then try reducing the size within the graphics link. You can use either pixels or % and use the <height=”xx”> and <width=”xx”> tags. You can also use a blog plugin like ImageScaler to do the job more efficiently. Another option is to use a plugin that render thumbnails of the image. Hover the mouse over the image and it appears full size. Images are always going to effect the load speed of a blog. The key is to use them wisely.

The second WordPress tip to a faster blog involves the sidebars. WordPress by default allows a maximum of nine text boxes. You do not have to use all nine boxes. Wherever you have related code, for example, banners with links, they can be combined within the one text box. If you have nine text boxes in use, each box is loaded into memory, the code run and the results rendered to the screen - one box at a time. By combining the code into only a few text boxes you will gain extra speed on loading.

These WordPress tips work well to help your blog load faster. What is most important is that you take the time on a regular basis to review your blog. Make sure everything is up to date. Remove what is no longer needed and keep everything optimized for speed.

If your blogging income comes from pay-per-post or other paid links then Andy Beard’s response on how he intends to get around Google’s penalties for paid links may interest you.

Google would like to see all paid links using the rel=nofollow tag to prevent those links being followed and so earning page rank link juice. If your blogging income is from paid links then you will know that the advertisers do not want the nofollow tag being used - it runs contrary to their intention for a paid link.

Andy Beard’s approach is not new, but may be novel in this situation. He is targeting his Robots.txt file. This file directs the search engine robots to the directories and files that can and cannot be indexed. Andy’s theory is that if he excludes the paid links files from indexing, the included links should not be followed - if they are not followed they are not earning ‘paid link juice’.

The theory is that links may appear in other editorial entries to compensate for the robots exclusion. Those links are not paid for so they should not draw any penalty. Andy also notes that whilst these pages are not going to be indexed by Google, they will still be syndicated through email and RSS feeds and through various directories. The links may draw ‘link juice’ from those placements.

This is fine and I agree with this scenario. I wonder though if Andy has gone too far in broadcasting this to  the broader public, and Google. I am sure that Google will now look at this situation, particularly if it is picked up by others, and consider extending its penalties to those that only use the robots file to limit indexing.

Using pay-per-post for blogging income and the Google page rank penalties are an interesting issue - I am sure the tug-of-war is far from over.

Blog design is one of those areas that most blogger’s feel dissatisfied with most. Either it is never quite right or you have simply become bored with it. So what can you do to improve your blog design.

You have a wide variety of options. You can:

• hire a specialist to revamp your blog design
• find a template that you can purchase, preferably with exclusive use
• use a common license template, remember, there will probably be others using the same template
• tweak your current template

If you are confident and comfortable playing around with the CSS files on your blog then tweaking your current template can be one of the quickest and easiest ways to update your blog design.  There are many areas that you can modify to get a fresher looking blog. You can:

• change the color scheme
• change the font, font color and/or font size
• for some blog designs you can change the width of the sidebars, content or whole page
• add or remove a sidebar
• change the header image or text style

These are only a few of the areas that you can modify. On one of my other blogs I was able to increase the page width thereby allowing me to increase the width of the sidebars and the content. While I was at it I fully justified the content and increased the font size marginally. I then added a new header image. The end result was a blog that I was much happier.

Part of the reason for being happy with the improvements was due in part to the fact that I had done it. I do urge a word of caution. If you blog design was created by a specialist designer then may be easier and cheaper to get them to do the redesign.

Whichever path you take, it can often be easier to just tweak what you have. Your regular visitors may notice the improvements, but most items like your categories and archives will remain the same (unless you make a major change to them as well). A total change in template may have undesired results when it comes to your regular visitors. Humans like the norm, not change.

Your blog design - if you are bored - tweak it first - you may be surprised at the results.

When planning your blog content, do you write naturally, or do you plan for a particular audience? There is nothing wrong with either style, however, if you write to a particular audience, how effective are you.

If your blog content is aimed towards a particular social media audience, do you write for one particular outlet, or do you write in the hope of targeting them all? Each outlet has a particular leaning.  Skellie wrote a post on Problogger today that pretty much summed up the target areas for blog content on Digg Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.

……Each service likes certain types of content and dislikes others. Digg likes mass appeal. Del.icio.us likes anything its users like, but an item won’t go popular unless the source page gets thousands of hits.

If you’re in a niche without mass appeal, SU can help you where the other services won’t. Digg’s categories are deliberately broad to avoid diluting its power to send waves of traffic……

If you are writing to target these social bookmarking sites then you need to have a thorough understanding of what is required.

Where I do take issue with this philosophy is that it can be difficult to write to this market every day.  Often it is more fruitful to write naturally on topics you understand and are completely comfortable with. Along the way you are going to have some good articles; some articles may be so so; and every now and then, an A++ article. When you strike that A++, you need to examine it carefully to see which social bookmarking site you can target, then fully optimize the article for that site. Hopefully you can then reap the benefit.

While waiting for that A++ article in your blog content, be active in each of your target social bookmarking sites. Promote the articles of other. They will come to appreciate your daily articles and when one of those articles shine, they will help promote it for. Try to get them to promote your post every day and they will become jaded and turn off.

Your blog content is very important. Your target audience is very important. It stands to reason that your blog content is written to satisfy you target audience.