Google recently blogged about the first anniversary of their current Google Analytics Interface. If you use Google Analytics as part of your blog metrics regime then it may be worth reading.

Google Analytics is getting better, however they are still not recoding a lot of visitors so tracking and reporting is still not an exact science.

The current interface is an improvement on the old one particularly the visiualizations.  As the blog posts states:

You can now view many reports by hour or day and graph data by day, week, or month. You can also graph two metrics against each other over time—we call it multi-line graphing. So, for example, you can compare the number of visitors vs. bounce rates for a certain week, or see whether visitors who come to a website through AdWords spend more or less time on your site than visitors overall.

The internal site search is also an important blog metrics assessment particularly if you are using a pay-per-click advertising campaign.

Google is blowing its own trumpet more and more these days as it tightens its grip on the number one search engine spot. As a blog metrics tool Google Analytics has it’s place, however it is not the only blog metrics tool out there and it often better to run two or even three to get a real idea of what is happening to your traffic as the arrive and leave your sites.

WordPress 2.6 has been released almost a month ahead of schedule. The latest release is not a major overhaul and has not addressed some of the issues that many had called for following the release of version 2.5 - it does however have a few nice changes.

For blogs with multiple authors, the latest release allows for the tracking of changes made to content.  Other changes include a toolbar feature that will allow you to insert content directly into a post. Compatible sites include Flock, FriendFeed, Facebook, Tumblr, and Delicious.

Other changes include:

• Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
• Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
• Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
• Plugin update notification bubble.
• Customizable default avatars.
• You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
• Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
• You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
• Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
• Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
• Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

Updating is quick and smooth with no problems. One of the smarter aids is the plugin balloon that lets you know when plugins need upgrading. Plugins generally require upgrading due to security issues or bugs so it always a good idea to upgrade them as soon as possible.

WordPress 2.6 continues to grow and evolve - is it getting better!

Some blog owners go overboard and submit their sites to as many blog directories as possible in the shortest time possible.  Not only that, they use the same text in every submission. This result is that the main search engines look at these links coming back as unnatural and treat them accordingly.

The key to successfully submitting your site to blog directories is to take it slowly and to do it smartly. Use different text in each of the submissions and only submit to a couple of directories every couple of days. Where possible, rather than using your index file as the URL, use a URL that you want to promote and write the accompanying submission text using keywords related to that page.

Free blog directories are the best particularly since Google has started to frown on paid directory listings.  Whilst DoFollow makes for a more valuable link, a link is a link. Selecting sites with a good PageRank also helps. Below is a list of possible sites with their PageRanks.

http://www.dmoz.org/ 8
http://www.la-ma.org/ 6
http://www.mxdu.com/ 6
http://www.jayde.com/ 6
http://www.mygreencorner.com/ 6
http://www.ghinmeca.com/ 5
http://directory.classifieds1000.com/ 5
http://www.concensus.org/ 5
http://www.directorydice.com/ 5
http://www.domaining.in/ 5
http://www.freewebsitedirectory.com/ 5
http://www.illumirate.com/ 5
http://www.info-listings.com/ 5
http://www.publimix.net/ 5
http://searchsight.com/Directory.htm 5
http://www.uc33.com/ 5
http://www.amray.com/ 4
http://www.a1webdirectory.org/ 4
http://www.boshuda.com 4
http://www.businesspagesupdate.co.uk/ 4
DMOZ always gets listed first in these lists, however it can take many months before your site is actually listed. Check each site prior to listing and be sure it suits your genre and has suitable categories to match your site. Blog directories are good sources of valuable links. Don’t however rely on them solely for inbound links.

Sometimes one of the most difficult tasks is to generate comments on your blog. You may ask why are comments necessary? The number of comments on your blog can be indication of the quality of your blog content. Poor content and you may not receive too many comments.

There is also talk in some circles that search engines will include the social popularity of content when ranking for search results. This may include using comments on blogs to measure the popularity of the blog content.

Comments ultimatelty are a conversation tool. There are one way of interacting with your visitors. If you can generate conversations on a regular basis then you will steadily increase your return visitor numbers. Here a couple of tips to help generate comments.

1. Make the occasional error:
   When writing semi-authoritative posts, don’t be afraid to make the occasional mistake.  For example, if you are talking about SEO, one of your tips may be to ‘fill your content with keywords - search engines will consider it spam’. You will get a few comments about the error. Give it a day then go in and make the correction (in this case it needed the words ‘don’t fill’.
2. Use controversy:
   Being controversial will almost always generate comments. Be careful when using this as you don’t want to irritate people. However, if you were to write that ‘Obama should not be President’, and have a reasonable argument, I am sure you will generate quite a few comments.
3. Ask questions:
   Asking questions can often lead to a good range of comments from readers. Many of the top bloggers now use this on a regular basis, often weekly. It is also the ‘easy’ post to write. Instead of thinking up new content, write a short piece setting up the question and publish - good for a Friday night or lazy Sunday. If you have a good reader base, you will get comments back. For better results, don’t reveal your opinion. The comments can be used down the track to generate fresh content.

These are three simple tips which, if applied to your blog content, may see a jump in the comments and the interaction with your readers. How do you generate comments?

Blogs have become one of the major sources communication with the advent of Web 2.0. There are a few different blogging platforms around, most of which rely on PHP to control the behind the scenes action. Trouble is, PHP is quite slow and needs to be interpreted before your page can load to the screen. These blog design tips may help to speed things up just a little.

Blog Design Tip 1: Convert your Header to HTML.
Whenever anyone accesses your website, their browser will call the main file - normally index.php. This file is written in PHP which is nothing more than a set of instructions. It loads all the information required to produce to page to the screen; translates it to HTML and sends it back to the browser.

The browser takes the HTML code and renders the page to the visitors screen. Some of the information doesn’t require converting, or rather, doesn’t need to be in PHP to begin with.

If you access your page source code you will see that it is all in HTML. A lot of the information in the Header section can be copied and pasted into your index.html file to replace the PHP file. Meta information, keywords, site name, these can all be copied and pasted over the relevant PHP code.

Generally speaking, you can also copy the header graphics information. If you have page menus at the top of the screen then you may need to take care. Always make a backup of the files before starting.

Blog Design Tip 2: Convert your Footer to HTML.
I could just say ditto here of course. The same applies to your footer. Most of the information there is stable and never changes yet it is generated in PHP. Remove the php and replace it with the HTML code from view screen file.

These two blog design modifications can actually save several seconds in generating  pages. If you have a lot of graphics or videos then time is going to be important. Optimize the blog deisng of your header and footer and gain a couple of seconds load time.

WordPress is a great tool for blogging. It can be easy to use, even for a novice and making changes to your site can be very easy. These WordPress tips will help to make some aspects even easier.

Making Changes:
If there is one aspect of WordPress that is frustrating it the inability to see changes as you make them. If you change the order of your widgets, or perhaps get brave and make changes in your style sheet, it doesn’t become obvious until you go back to your WordPress Page.

Tip:
Once you have entered WordPress’s dashboard, right click on the ‘view site’ button and click to open in a new window or new tab. You will now have a copy of WordPress in edit mode in one tab/window and a copy of WordPress in ‘view site’ mode in another tab/window. Every time you make a change, flip across to the site tab/window and refresh - you will see the changes straight away (if you are using a cache plugin, disable it until you have finished).

Changing Theme:
I hate changing the theme on any site - more so if the WordPress owner has signed up to endless different programs.  Many of these programs or social sites require the installation of snippets of code in the header, footer or body.  When you change themes these have all got to be found and written into the new themes code.

Tip:
Keep a log in a notepad file. Everytime you add a snippet of code document it in that notepad file. Don’t forget to remove it from the file if you remove it from your WordPress file. If you are logical the placement of these codes, that is, where ever possible you bundle them together, the next time you decide to change themes the snippets of code will be available to copy straight into the new theme. No more hunting for any code - no more missing code.

WordPress is a very user friendly  blog platform - remember these tips and you will find that it is even easier to use.

This may sound like a strange question, but how do you want others to see you? If you ask that question to all bloggers, a majority of them would stumped for an answer. Yet when it comes to blog marketing, this is one of the most important questions to answer first.

Given the amount of competition in the blogging world at present, you need to be able to clearly provide some form of branding for your blog. It doesn’t matter how many other blogs live in the same genre as yours so long as people can differentiate yours, and that comes from branding.

Decide on what you would like to be known for. Being an expert in a field  or perhaps being a radical.  Having the ability to solve problems or being able to find problem. The possibilities are endless. However before any blog marketing campaign can begin, you need to know what sort of outcomes you are trying to achieve - and one of those has to be some type of branding.

Many bloggers fall into the trap of thinking they are too small to be branded. The opposite is true. Blogs are remembered for what they represent and it this representation that is the start of your reputation.  Once you have that branding clear in your head, blog marketing can not only develop it, it can also protect it over time.

Before even considering a blog marketing campaign, determine exactly what it is that you want to be known for and include that aim in your blog marketing campaigns.

Today’s blogging tips looks at trackbacks and how they can help to increase your inbound links. Trackbacks are really just a notification. If you write a post that references another site, you can include the trackback URL in the trackbacks feature of your WordPress blog (other platforms such as Drupal have similar features available).

Once you write your post, including the link to another post on another site, you enter the trackback URL. Once you publish your post the trackback feature sends a small excerpt to that site advising them that they have been linked to. The advice appears as a comment for the linked post.

If the blog owner approves your trackback, it effectively becomes a comment with a link back to your post. Link to three posts with trackbacks enabled and you should receive three links back. Naturally, you don’t want to use trackbacks as spam, however where your posts are related then the links will be relevant.

Trackbacks can be found below the editing window. Some blogs provide a trackback URL - use this in the trackback window - if you have more than one, separate each trackback with a space. Hit publish and the trackbacks are sent.

This is an easy feature to use and used judiciously, can deliver some nice links back to your own site.

So you knew that you had to launch a blog and you have been planning it for some time now. You know that it is a must have as a part of your marketing strategy. Why would you not worry about the foundation your blog or website sits on?

Your hosting company of choice is just as important as the blog or website itself. You need someone reliable if something should happen and it goes down. You want to know you have someone that will do everything it takes and stands by their name. Host Gator will make sure that your website up time is nothing less than 99.9%. The hosting of your blog is the circulatory system of your website. It is the spine to your e-commerce platform and it is important that your hosting company keeps you standing straight up and ready for all your visitors. All it takes is to have a few visitors to come to your site and see it down for them to start losing trust in your company all together. Do not short change the hosting for your website otherwise you could find yourself struggling to transfer hosting providers down the road. This could very well eat up valuable time your business could be spending keeping your clients happy.

For more information please visit Host Gator’s website and learn how they can safely keep your website up and running.

WordPress and Drupal are possibly two of the most popular content management systems being used today. Both are used as everyday blogging systems as well.  The argument still rages - is one better than the other?

The two systems are like chalk and cheese. Wordpress is more blog than CMS; Drupal more CMS than blog.  Both have their good points and both have their negatives.  Like all software -they both have many followers.

Drupal is not for the faint hearted. It can be difficult to learn and difficult to understand. If you come from a WordPress background you will either love it, or run as far away as possible. If you come to Drupal with little or no experience of blog software, you may wonder about the fuss.

WordPress on the other hand is very user friendly. Coming from Drupal to Wordpress is like going from college to grade school - it is so much easier. WordPress is friendly to all users from novice to expert.

Without a doubt there are many more themes, plugins and sites offering help for WordPress. Drupal does have a good community of users there are still plenty of themes and modules (plugins) available. SEO is to easier to perform ‘out of the box’ for WordPress users. SEO can be a little messy for Drupal users.

That still doesn’t answer the question about which one is better.  It is a bit like Coke or Pepsi. Truth is, neither - or both. They are both excellent blog software programs that can and do do the job well. It is a matter of taste, experience and challenge. If you like a challenge - take Drupal for a test drive. If you like user friendly then jump onto the WordPress bandwagon. As to the argument - its academic - Drupal users will remain faithfull and will WordPress users.

Call it customer loyalty, reader loyalty or just  regular visitors, over time they are going to come and go. Sometimes the numbers go down faster than you can replace them. Natural attrition is quite normal in any business, website or blog - there are steps you can undertake to breath new life into your online presence and help slow down, or even reverse, that natural attrition.

Undergo a face lift:
Not you, your blog or website. Blogs are more prone to staleness when a free or cheap theme has been used. If you really want to stand out from the crowd, get a unique theme. If you already have a unique theme, talk to the developer to see what changes could be made. Sometimes the design can remain but the colors can be altered to better match the current trends. If you have a dark theme, try to reverse the colors. You will be surprised at the results.

Shift your angle:
If you are blogging in a certain niche the last thing you want to do is change that niche. You can however take a step back and review your angle on that niche. Are you still approaching things from an outdated perspective? A change in focus, becoming a little more radical or perhaps becoming a little more robust in the way you present your information can work wonders on a tired blog.

Interact and engage your readers:
Become a little more interactive with your readers. Ask for comments and provide feedback when you get those comments. Become a little more pro-active in visiting other pages and commenting when appropriate. The more you can engage your readers the more valued they will feel.

Offer freebies:
Not as effective as it once was, offer free ebooks or downloads to your readers, perhaps as a reward for signing up to newsletters or RSS feeds. The link can be included exclusively in the feed or newsletter. Your daily visitor numbers may not increase but your subscription numbers may.

Become a socialite:
Become more active in the social networking and social bookmarking scene. Don’t engage with a view to pimping your links - engage for the sake of being social. You will be surprised at inquisitive people become when you don’t push your own pages.

Pimp your content:
Despite the last tip, this time push your content for publication elsewhere. Whether it’s article submission, ghost writing or blogging on forum sites, push your quality - good quality - work in as many places as possible. Show the world the quality of your writing.

Buy a dictionary:
With quality content come the extras like spelling, grammar and punctuation. Get your content, especially if submitting off site, proofread by someone who knows how to spell and use grammar and punctuation. You can have a great story to tell only to see your credibility lose out due to spelling.

There is a lot of work involved in revitalizing your blog or website. However if you want to keep your current readers and attract new readers, you have to put in the hard yards. Do the work and you will reap the rewards.

Blogging income is becoming harder with more and more blogs monetizing their sites. The downside is that most visitors to blogs develop a certain blindness to any ads displayed. Perhaps the use of videos can increase your blogging income.

Videos are no longer a novelty on the internet. However having mainstream media use YouTube can be a big advantage particularly when you can display those videos on your site together with Adsense ad units.

The Adsense blog details the newest partners for video ad units. These are:

• Broadbandtv: “Broadbandtv is partnering with YouTube to bring the very best video program lineup to a growing and engaged online audience. Broadbandtv shows include hits from Fashion, Celebrity News, Sports, Technology, Comedy and Travel to top notch Spanish-language TV series like Somos Tu y Yo.”
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: “CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada’s national public broadcaster and one of its largest cultural institutions. CBC/Radio-Canada is available how, where, and when Canadians want it.”
• The Orchard: “A global leader in digital music, video, new media and brand services, The Orchard offers family content like Gumby, Mr. Bill, My Favorite Martian, and other categories of content like music and comedy.”

 The Video Ad Solutions page list other generes covered by video ad units. These include comedy, sport and entertainment among others. The ad units are only available in English and Japanese at present and can only be displayed in Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States.

You need to obtain the video providers YouTube username before setting up your new ad unit. The ads are available in two formats, 728 x 90 and 160 x 600. Both ad units expand to video players when clicked. As an advertiser you are paid on any clicks made on the text ad units.

Blogging income with a little difference.

In case you are not familiar with the concept, StumbleUpon allows you to pay for visitors to your pages, five cents per visitor or click. The question is, do you consider this to be a simple form of paid advertising, or paid social bookmarking.

On a simple level, it is just paid advertising and not social bookmarking. If you set a limit of $20 per day, you will get 400 visitors. They may stay on your page or they may spend five seconds and dissapear.

Where the situations changes is when they thumbs up your page. That’s a stumble and can lead to more than just the 400 visitors. Once you start to get votes your page is treated the same as any other page - he more thumbs up - the more visitors you are likely to get. That, however is still not the real concept of social bookmarking.

The real issue is if you are lucky enough to get a review with the thumbing. Now you have a social bookmark in place and it has started through a paid campaign.  Social bookmarking is all about getting as many of those ‘real’ votes, that is reviews, as possible.

So are paid ’stumbles’ just plain promotion or a part of social bookmarking? Does it matter? You could be using any form of paid per click advertising, a social bookmark is a social bookmark. Not a cheap method to get that bookmark and there are no guarantees of getting ‘reviewed’, however if you are simply after traffic, the bookmark may be a nice bonus.

Since being acquired by Google, Feedburner seems to be a backward slide into Googleism.  Many may not be familiar with Google’s lack of information, read any of their blogs and you only get a slight insight into what they are up to - Feedburner is saying even less.

There is no information coming out of Feedburner now. There have been no ‘Publisher Tips‘ since August 2007 and nothing on the official Feedburner ‘Blog‘ since May this year. Sounds like every other one of Google’s blogs - an occasional post that really only repeats what everyone has already worked out.

Up until the last post in August last year the Publisher Tips pages where publishing content fairly regularly, about every two to three weeks. It is close to 12 months with nothing more said. Perhaps they have run out of tips? It is all very quiet and given the following statement from their announcement of the acquisition last year, it seem the take over has not really been for the best:

We are confident that we’re going to continue to have fun and innovate for customers as rapidly as possible. We are confident and hopeful that you’ll look at your feed dashboard soon and say to yourself “Well, *that* was a good idea!”

They certainly haven’t continued with anything. It does seem strange that the regular posting of information from Feedburner dried up shortly after the acquisition. Either that, or there is no longer anyone home at Feedburner?

One of the biggest issues with the use of the internet is the security of information that is often collected as visitors pass through. What is missing from many websites including blogs is something as simple as a privacy policy.

A privacy policy should be a part of every blogs design and should be one of the first items created when starting a site. The format can be very simple or quite involved.  You can see our privacy policy, which is quite involved, too get an idea of what could be included.

If you run Adsense ad units on your site, part of Google’s terms of service include having a Privacy Policy. Failing to include one could see your site excluded from publishing their ad units. To quote from Google’s Adsense Blog:

We’ve also added some specific requirements that make it necessary for publishers to post and abide by a transparent privacy policy that users see. According to this policy, publishers must notify their users of the use of cookies and/or web beacons to collect data in the ad serving process. This change relates to advertisers’ use of innovative products and features like Gadget Ads and other offerings in the future.

Whether you knowing collect data, for example with newsletters, or allow third parties such as Google to collect data, having a written Privacy Policy brings a level of professionalism to any website, blogs included.

If you have several sites, or several blogs, you can allow them all to link to the one Privacy Page. This page does not require indexing so the simple use of a ‘nofollow’ tag in the link will prevent the spiders from indexing the page.

There is a need for openness on the web and the more transparent and open you are, the better your reputation. One simple page can mean a lot to your visitors.