Optimizing for Bing - the new challenge - 5 surefire strategies

The SEO scene reminds me of how people hate their stomachs and just can't accept them for being how they are, even if they are absolutely flat. They would just like them to be flatter, slimmer, whatever. Similarly, webmasters can get so obsessed with SEO (check out the comments and browse through these excellent blogs to see how much similar information there is that's all highly followed), that they are always on the hunt for that elusive tip that will skyrocket their traffic, double their page rank, or something. No matter how nice their site is, it is not good enough.

Such insecurity. I have a business, I talk with clients everyday, I am familiar with how they describe what they want, and its simple to write my site in a way that makes sense to them. This will translate into correct keywords, automatically, or I could look around and get to that same list after months of research. Even long tailed keywords just happen, when you write in a way that shows your familarity with your market.

I don't need a keyword research tool to tell me that more people are familiar with (and thus search for) the term "team building", while fewer will look for Organization Development. I know that from my conversations with clients. But its not as fascinating as using some gadget/software to validate what I know and waste time. Is it any surprise that there are more male voices on this front? (I have an association with men and a fascination for gadgets/software and such-like)

The behavioural scientist in me worries about this kind of 'disowning' of a part of the whole. Its as though everything negative gets projected to one aspect and disowning that aspect till fixed is somehow miraculously supposed to cure all ills. All my discontent about not being a millionaire is because the site isn't adequately SEOd, or I'd be more look better in that dress if it weren't for this paunch.

Now that MSN and Yahoo are married, there is going to be a new SEO scramble. Did a search on what the scene is like currently, and Many posts from 2004 and 2005 are being unearthed and landing up on the first page of search results. Incredible how long people haven't really looked at Search engines other than the big G for so long.

The prediction is that the next couple of weeks are going to see a new rash of SEO tips and Tricks for Bing. I am no expert, but here are definite tips I can predict, which will end up coming as new and old mixes:

1. Content is King: Bing likes fresh content (as though Google and Yahoo didn't, but it will be presented as an insight)
2. Good design and clear site architecture (in all its forms). Some will call it optimizing certain pages for certain keywords, structuring categories on blogs, directories on sites, optimally named files and permalinks.....
3. No duplicate content: Cannonical urls
4. Build links. Be generous in linking out (hopefully to the guru that gave you this advice)
5. Encourage return visitors through encouraging comments, sign ups for newsletters, subscriptions to RSS feeds, etc. Create community, conversation, etc
   

and so on.

The truth of the matter is, no matter what search engine you optimize for, you are going to end up focusing on the same things. You will have an epidemic of self-proclaimed SEO experts writing posts which sound so similar to others, that its tough to keep track of who said what.

Wouldn't be surprised to see a few links to advice from Matt Cutts (never mind that he's with Google), since the rising star of Bing is yet to step into the spotlight. I don't ahve anything against Matt Cutts, and his advice is always sound, but it gets irritating to have echoes of the same few people (echoing each other) and their often similar sounding advice coming up as fresh content all the time.

In fact, Matt Cutts on content and spam, SEOBlackhat and Avinash Kaushik on Analytics are probably the few who come up with surprises.

On my part, I am not doing anything much at the moment to optimize for Bing. Let me see if there is something outstandingly different that I have to do that will kill my traffic if I don't other than submitting my site there. The way I see it, its the job of a competent search engine to keep track of content, and its our job to manage our sites as we see fit. Chasing search engines is only going to lead to obsession.

Nowhere on the Bing site are any instructions that their spiders are incapable of handling regular sites. In fact, I added my site to the Webmaster Tools they have, and it was happily indexed and providing data on my links already. Not as fancy as Google, but definitely faster, and seemed far more accurate. Why do I need to fix, tweak and optimize something that seems to be fine?

Okay, I don't make huge amounts of money online, but hey, my traffic pays for my site and brings me enough clients in the real world to not worry about ads paying for my coffee. That's impressive considering that I never go hunting for clients in the real world, and simply deal with the ones I get approaching me on their own.

If you are getting seduced by all the posts coming up on SEOing your site to bits, do keep a sense of perspective, and remember that all those tips are unlikely to speak of a single thing you haven't read before, unless its an individual's name, or promoting some product or service or book. Chill out, and let the bloggers do their thing and get traffic for their site. Do what you can, and enjoy yourself all through. You loving your blog will go a far way to getting traffic than you constantly trying to 'fix' it.

Afterall, if you can't love your space for what it is, warts and all, who will?

Wordpress 2.9 - the votes are in

The Wordpress site has just released the results of the survey on media features for Wordpress 2.9.

While the results are complicated, and best looked at right there, what I found intriguing was the number of features people found desirable, and the dilemma about including them in the core, distributing them with the core release as cannon plugins, or developing cannon plugins but keeping them in the repos for optional download.

The strength of Wordpress is its sleek efficiency, which will not remain so sleek, if things keep getting added to it, and the package keeps bulking up. Not everyone uses every feature, obviously. Most bloggers don't need exotic media stuff to blog. Yet, who would dispute that it would be fabulous to have the ability to work with media more efficiently? I dare say many bloggers will begin using it once they find it available by default.

Also, the more things added to the main distro, the more complicated it will be in terms of continued development, testing, updating..... that much more code to wade through, compatibility to ensure and functionality to be tested before each release. It is going to hold meaning in terms of manpower and skilled resources.

Its an interesting dilemma - functionality, but how? Increased function, or minimum bulk and high efficiency.... will be interesting to see how the decision flows.

Google Gods bring no rain

I wonder what is happening with my websites. All of a sudden, the traffic has gone down like....

Visitors are like....

 

I wonder what in the world is happening. Its happening on my other sites as well, but okay, I'd been fiddling with the design there. This one, I've done nothing but post.

On the other hand, this blog is largely neglected, and I've made changes here too. But its going up. Searches I've done before show me sites I've never seen before. Page ranks for many sites that were healthy earlier, including mine are 0.

What in the world is Goodle up to?

Some say its a new update. I say its not working. Not for my site well being, or my searches finding me what I want.

Anyone else going through the same? Anyone have a clue?

Pinging update in the new Wordpress

I just came across this post by Thord Daniel Hedengren where he speaks with quite a bit of outrage about a change Wordpress has made in their pinging code which he discovered in a post by Christian Bolstad. Basically, for the less techno-savvy (and for me) what it means, is that earlier, when you published a post, Wordpress used to ping (inform) various places that keep track of the content on your blog about the update. This took time, which directly translated into waiting time while your post was published. Now, what it does is publishes your post, and pings separately in about an hours time.

Thord is of the opinion that this causes some damage to his site being indexed fast enough. It may be true. Who knows? What I found so strange was that he seems disproportionately angry about the whole thing. Part of his anger is about the nature of response from Denis de Bernardy which he has quoted, where Denis seems dismissive about his concern and makes a valid point that its difficult to get people accountable when they aren't being paid, so if information on this change was not present in the documentation, it is likely to be an ommission because it didn't seem like a big deal, rather than a deliberate secret (which doesn't make sense in an open-source project :D) and he suggested that Thord put it in the documentation if it matters so much to him.

While it isn't such a big deal for me, I find it fascinating to see the kinds of things bloggers find threatening to their online well-being. "Putting the real time web to a halt", "Tells no one" is quite an extreme way of putting this scenario (is it only me who thinks it reads like its implying a deliberate conspiracy?). Your site is updated, services accessing your feed see the change immediately, and its only the notification of the change that is delayed. Have some perspective. To his credit, Thord has submitted a counter patch for this change.

I honestly hadn't thought that it would matter. I was not aware that the delayed ping will do much damage to my blog. Still don't think so. Perhaps because my blog isn't one that gets updated within hours. I don't see the big issue for me at the moment, considering that its only the notification getting delayed and regular access to the feed is up to date - at least that's how it is on my blog. My feed is showing correctly immediately.

On the other hand, with a large list of services to ping, I see the value in separating it from the regular posting in the interest of efficiency.

So to me, it looks like people want different things from something as simple as a publish button. I can't figure out the great deal if a publish button doesn't ping automatically for me. Afterall, it doesn't do many other things for me which make a difference to my site as well. It publishes, which is the main thing, and I am happy that it publishes more efficiently.

It may just be me, but I'm actually happy about this change,. as I often end up publishing, reading my post, editing, publishing the edit and so on a couple of times before I'm completely satisfied. I always worry that I may get penalized by the pinging services for 'ping spamming' if there is such a term. But there wasn't much I could do about it. Now, I can edit for an hour, go back and forth, and it gets pinged when its ready.

I like this.

10 tips for traffic generating comments

So, like everyone and his neighbour, you comment on blogs to get links and traffic. So, like everyone and his cousin, where is the traffic?

The following list contains some tips to get the most traffic from your comments (and perhaps a few links too)

• Make meaningful comments: I thought I'd get this one out of the way. Its sound, and everyone knows it. Yet, what is a meaningful comment? I'd say, its a comment that enhances what is on the page. Add to the post, disagree with it, support and supplement the perspective of another commenter, ATTACK another commenter, sensitively, if an opportunity arises..... become a part of the story of that page.
• Be real. Have emotions, show uncertainty, have ideas you are enthusiastic about..... share experience not just for authority, but for sharing yourself as a person in related circumstances.
  
• Which blogs to comment on, which posts to comment on: Naturally, you want blogs that are relevant. You want posts that you can comment on with authority and enthusiasm. It works better to comment on posts with a few comments so that you are closer to the original post, and have less competition. Arun Bansi Lal suggests subscribing to blogs to find new comments that you can quickly post on.
  
• Subscribe to comments: This is often overlooked. You make an awesome comment, and the blogger or another person responds to it. If you are in the loop enough to pick up and create a conversation - you have succeeded in creating curiosity around yourself - guess how curious people will try to find out more about you? Click!
• Where to link to? Home page? heh. And you are building links! What you want to do is link to a page that is relevant to that post, or your comment. Who knows, the blogger may simply choose to link to it, if s/he finds value......
• The flip side of where to link to: Sometimes I have a post I'd like to bring people to. So then, I will hunt for blog posts that are relevant to that post, comment and link to that post. For example, I have written this list. Now, I can go around looking for who else has written about effective commenting for traffic, and comment there and agree/disagree/contribute.... and link to here.
• Be generous: Don't hoard your knowledge for your site and comment teasers everywhere. It works sometimes, but it gets old real fast. Be generous in your appreciation when you find something appreciateworthy, be generous in your responses to differing perspectives. Mostly, be generous with links, ideas, contributions..... and not just with some payoff in mind. People are more interested in what they can get, and if both of you think that way, there is no bridge. If you can be generous, the gap is bridged, and then you have a relationship you can take ahead.
• Link to blogs you comment on at times. Its not always about getting your link on their real estate. It often is about you putting your money where your mouth is - all the efforts in the world are not going to build you anything, if you enjoy someone's hospitality for their links, and refuse/forget to acknowledge them when on your own territory.

I think each person has their own ideas of what works best for them.

What works best for you?

Wordpress 2.8.1 Editor Problems?

Symptoms:

1. You upgrade your wordpress. Things are good
2. Suddenly, you go to make a new post, or edit an existing one, and voila, it opens with html code.
3. So you click on the 'visual' tab, of course.
4. Nothing whatsoever happens.

Other symptoms -

1. White text on white background - its there, just not visible.
2. Tough to upload/edit images
3. Tough to assign tags
4. Some issue with moving widgets around.....
   

Everybody and his cousin knew that there was a problem with the text editor in 2.8.0. You have gone from 2.8.0 to 2.8.1. surely this is not happening to you?

So what has really happened? My suspicion is that since they took out the fancy editor in 2.8.1, for some reason, your broswer cache lets it seem to work for a while longer than it actually does, so when it finally clears and you don't have it anymore, you don't even think of the update, since it had seemed to work since then.

What you have lost is just the fancy editor.

Never fear, when this nerd in progress is here!

Do so:

1. Upgrade your Firefox - for some reason, I observed that wherever people having this problem spoke about their browsers, there was mention of outdated versions of firefox. Wondered if they were linked for quite a while before giving it a shot - it worked. Didn't solve the problem completely, but it was much better, and I was then able to solve it easily.
2. You will now be able to see clearly where you stand with this. You will notice the difference between the html and visual views, and both will function, though without the editor - so you have one with bbcode kind of mark up and html.
3. Install the FCKEditor plugin.
   
4. Done.
   

Web Analytics Demystified

Just wanted to share an awesome post by Avinash Kaushik on his blog. Well, the post was long ago, and I found it long ago, but I found it again in my bookmarks today, and boy, was I glad.

What I really enjoy is the simplicity of this post.

Avinash speaks about using Analytics to improve the performance of your blog in terms simply enough for a child to understand. It literally boils down to what you want to do, and how you go about finding where to begin.

If you are a webmaster or blogger, this one is definitely not to be missed.

Another writer I enjoy reading is Arun Basil Lal of Million Clues. his posts are often packed with good information that is immediately applicable to see results.

Quick tip to increase AdSense income

Long time no write.

Just thought to dash off this note, if you aren't still doing it.

Link your AdSense and Google Analytics accounts with each other, to find out which content is earning money for you. Then, it gives you an idea of what works and what doesn't, and you can do more of what works, rather than waste time on what doesn't.

How much better can an SEO tip get?

Writing with emotion

When you make a post, share a bit of yourself in there. What are you writing about, why is it important to you, how does it make you feel, what do you wish to see, and so on.

As a reader, I feel great joy to discover a human angle to what I'm reading. Most of the time, if it is absent, I will move on without really registering what's being written. There is a sense of connection that brings credibility to the writing that is far beyond the usual "information exchange".

What is it that you wish to read on a blog?

How many backlinks do I really have?

Was just checking the back links for my blog Footprints on the mountainside, which is about my expereinces and reflections about my work in the outdoors and training. This was inspired by my recent problems with Technorati indexing my blog....

The more I looked into this, the more confused I got. Apparently, not only every system has its own ways of counting the links, but things differ within them as well. I tried different ways of looking at this. Each one had its own results and led me to different understandings on what these resources looked at, but little understanding on how many backlinks I really  had.

Not even going to speak about Alexa here, since it has nothing to do with links....

Outside tools like backlinkwatch show about 263 links to this page. When I login to my wordpress dashboard, the Technorati Incoming Links Plugin finds links to me on Technorati (never mind that they have stopped indexing my blog), while google blog search shows no links to this blog...... My dear old wordpress thinks me linking to another post on my own blog is a link too and shows it as a trackback...... while this is misleading, I like the feel of something being happy to index absolutely every link I have that it finds....

Then for the Google thing..... The "External Links" in my Webmaster Tools thingy says I have 463 links pointing to my blog, but the index stats show one link.

Searching for my link on the net excluding my blog gives me these results-->

So now, I am just wondering when everyone will agree about how many links people have......

In the meanwhile, I have decided to let them do their job, and I will do mine.

Technorati mess

I really don't know what the matter is with Technorati. I rarely check what's happening with my blogs there, so it came as a surprise to see my blogs as having been pinged 23 days ago. This is of course nonsense. My blogs ping technorati (and half the world) each time I make a post.

Then I searched for it to see if anyone else has similar problems, but most of the posts I found were from two years ago. I emailed their support, and am still waiting for a reply.

I found some technorati post explaining how they were not indexing 2.3 version blogs because of some vulnerability, but my version of Wordpress is always the latest - I update the instant I come to know.

The strange thing is that out of my four blogs:

• Footprints on the Mountainside seems to have vanished from their index, though it shows up complete with blog reactions and authority in my profile. This is a wordpress.
• Life As I Find It is also a Wordpress, with much of the same everything (and on the same server), but it is fully indexed.
• Adventures in India is a Postnuke I write to sometimes, and it is not even a blog, but fully indexed, though it shows some ancient posts as recent.... but I can live with that.
  
• Nerd In Progress - this blog - is a Blogger thing, and it is indexed until 2 days ago.
• My HTML website Wide Aware is also indexed (of course no latest posts) but authority 11 being registered.

I really don't understand what is happening. There seems to be no logical pattern. One Wordpress is indexed, one is not, one Blogger stopped being indexed two days ago, the Wordpress getting indexed is showing latest posts instantly. The Postnuke needs to be pinged, but indexes pretty fast too. The HTML site seems to be fine. It is not even as though there is a pattern with all my blogs having problems..... can't figure out where to start looking at this from.

Actually, I'm not sure I need to look at anything. I don't depend on Technorati in any case. I'm just getting hyper because I like everything to work. So I'm going to ignore it, and let Technorati figure their own life out, while I enjoy mine.

Update: I tried something different and discovered something interesting. I tried to claim my blog again. It wasnt' indexed, so it shouldn't matter, right? Wrong. Technorati wouldn't let me claim it, and finally directed me in the right direction...... straight into their FAQs.

The bottom line of the matter seems to be that this blog, and my other Wordpress blogs have been flagged for review (no clue why). The details of it:

When I try to find my blog in the Blog Directory, I get the Sorry :~( message.

Your blog may be flagged for review......

Getting the "There was a problem claiming your blog" message immediately?

If the system will not allow the blog claim to go further than the first step, then your blog has been flagged for review.....

Most recent posts not indexed AND "Last Pinged" date IS NOT updating?

If pinging Technorati manually does not work (After the really obvious suggestion of pinging it...)

If you are new to Technorati and claimed your blog, and you've tried pinging and the "Last Updated" does not change, your blog may still be pending review. If this is the case, please understand that it may take some time for the review and for indexing to continue for your blog. Claiming your blog puts gives your a higher priority in the review, so be sure to claim your blog!

Oh fabulous, so this takes me back to my loop. My blog is pending review and not cleared, so I must claim in, which is not allowed because my blog is pending review........

There are suggestions to contact support on each of these pages, and I have contacted support from each of these pages and for each blog separately, in addition to my earlier email...... Nothing from them so far except the automated email that my email was received, and the support staff has a lot of work to do.

Have I mentioned that I am sooooo not happy with this shoddy state of affairs at Technorati?

5-5-5-4-5 Traffic Tips

Here's a collection of the traffic and promotion tips that I use often and that work well for me. This first list is about posting in a way that promotes your blog:

1. Write good content. This one is not as simple as it seems. Take some time to think about what you want to write, and what arre the things you could do to add value to it. You want to give your readers something they don't know. This is not about writing random posts about every trip you take, unless you can also share how they can have some of those experiences, what is different about this trip, information about the place and its quirks that most people don't know, etc.
2. Write interesting titles - think of them as visiting cards for your blog. They appear in search engines, bookmarks and even in sidebar links of your own blog. If you read the titles you write, do you want to click through to find out what content they lead? Darren Rose (as always) has written an awesome post on how to choose a topic for your next post.
3. Add tags to your post. Tags are all important. They tell technorati, readers, search engines, etc what your post is about. If you use wordpress, tag lists and clouds can work as an interesting way of navigating your blog. Recommended Tags is a plugin for wordpress that shows all your tags and click to add them to a post quickly. Blogger and other platforms show clickable lists. Be sure to use them.
4. Take a minute to finish your post. Read it through, fix errors, take a break, take another fresh look. Do you enjoy reading? Change what you don't already.
   
5. Link to good resources. Link to other bloggers. Outgoing links are not half as bad as they seem. If you are worried about pagerank, think of the traffic they bring. If you link well and reference people, they are curious about you and what you are (and what you see in them). Think of it as meeting new people and introducing them to those you know. You may know someone briefly, but when you introduce them to more people who like them, it is a step closer in your relationship too. They are just as likely to write about you.

The design of your blog:

1. Keep it clean and uncluttered. Do you need everything there on your site? Do you need to have buttons to every social bookmarking site on the planet? Do you need to show that your blog has 20 readers? Get rid of it. Remove all distractions from your content (and your ads). Of course, some buttons to populat bookmarking sites are a great idea, but I find that it works better when they are in individual posts (and submit those urls).
   
2. Keep your RSS subscription button clearly visible and encourage readers to subscribe. While you are at it, subscribe to my feed as well. Some people choose to have different small icons for different readers. I prefer to have one nice, orange, large one that clearly screams "RSS Feed". I don't really care whether people subscribe in Bloglines or Google Reader, so why should I devote real estate to that? What helps is a link to a post near it that explains why RSS feeds are a good thing, for those who don't know.
   
3. Check your theme. Particularly check the styles you use. Ideally, your post should have one main headline, etc. See if the peripherals (sidebar, footer, etc) are using any tags you are using to emphasize stuff in your posts - they will dilute the impact of your titles and important content, and seem like duplicate content.
4. Use images in your post. They catch the eye, and attract immediate attention to what you have written.
   
5. Invite readers to comment on and share your posts if they like them.
   

These resources now have to do with getting your content out to people who want to read in the online world. Everyday stuff:

1. Publish RSS feed and submit blot and feed to search engines and directories. This will take time, and sometimes you come across new places that don't have you, so keep an eye out, and submit where they don't have you whenever you find it.
2. Create online social bookmarking accounts like Del.icio.us, Reddit, etc. SumbleUpon is another great resource for promoting, as well as having fun. Get your account in Digg and Technorati. Submit your site once in a while, along with others. Use categories and tags carefully. Ask your friends (and family, neighbours, students, colleagues....) to submit/vote for your posts too.
3. Get a Twitter account and post regularly. Get followers. Share your latest posts on your Twitter.
   
4. Give away something for free that will carry your blog link along. (This is an oldie, but it works). On one of my sites, I share some simple instruction sheets for participants for white water rafting, and I don't know how many people have contacted me because of them. On a more effective scale, creating and distributing themes, plugins, and other stuff that people will find useful are good. Themes give you a link from every page, but I don't know how useful it is for either traffic or as a link. What we are looking for is people liking your content and actively posting about it, sharing it with others, talking about it....
5. Write one "super-post" at intervals, and submit it absolutely everywhere - including news sites, if it suits. It helps if these posts (at least) have a catchy image to catch the eye of readers as soon as they land up.
   

Exotic stuff (need to spend money):

1. Hold contests and giveaways for writing about your blog.
2. Pay for links/posts, etc. Unattractive, but hey, why not?
   
3. Pay someone to promote your content. College kids should be good at this. Many of my students seem to live online.
   
4. Pay someone to write articles (expensive, and rarely satisfies me)
   

Posting and interaction:

1. Comment on blogs. The more you get out and read what others are writing and share it, the more you will meet new people. All bloggers want to know what the readers think. If you can write a comment that conveys that, it is very likely that people will follow through to your blog (don't forget to put in your url) to find out more about you.
2. Link to posts you find interesting. This sounds similar, to the earlier point, but this is about you finding something interesting and talking about it on your blog (as different from referencing a resource). Find an initiative to applaud, something to criticize, contribute to, have a different take on, and link to the original post. Do trackbacks where you can.
3. Submit posts to blog carnivals. This is one way of getting your good content acknowledged as well as a link. Host blog carnivals too. Increase interaction.
4. Write articles and submit to directories.
5. Write reviews and testimonials. If you have done a good job, the subject of your attention should be happy to showcase your writing on their site.

In the real world. Make your logo your style statement. T-shirts, caps, luggage(?), Why promote NIKE when you can do it for yourself? I know a friend who has his url engraved on his door. That's one url I will never forget.

So what are ideas that work for you?

Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us in blogger posts

Adding Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us and whichever social bookmarking button you like to blogger posts seems to be difficult for many people. As you can see, I have today added these buttons.

For Digg, I used a piece of code floating around for a long time. It seems to be there on quite a few sites, so I don't really know whom to credit for it. Regardless, this is the code:

I replaced <p><data:post.body/></p> in the template with

<p>

<!-- DIGG -->

<div style='float:right; margin-left:10px;'>

<script type='text/javascript'>

digg_url = '<data:post.url/>';

</script>

<script src='http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js' type='text/javascript'/>

</div>

<data:post.body/>

</p>

And that easily, its done.

The smaller buttons I have added to each post (you can have Digg here too) what you have to do is:

1. Find the buttons you would like to use, and upload them somewhere from where you can access them. You can use a site you have, or some free image hosting service.
   
2. Note the links to the image files for each.
3. Finally, create code like this for each service:

<a expr:href='&quot;http://del.icio.us/post?url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title' target='_blank' title='Add to Del.icio.us!'><img border='none' height='20' src='http://www.wide-aware.com/share/delicious.png' width='20'/></a>

<a expr:href='&quot;http://reddit.com/submit?url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title' target='_blank' title='Submit to Redit!'><img border='none' height='20' src='http://www.wide-aware.com/share/reddit.png' width='20'/></a>

These are the two examples I have given, but really, you can do this to submit to any service you would like to submit to. Some popular submit urls for the commonly known services are:

• Blinkbits http://www.blinkbits.com/bookmarklets/save.php?v=1&source_url=
• Blinklist http://www.blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&Description=&Url=
• Blogmarks http://blogmarks.net/my/new.php?mini=1&simple=1&url=
• Co.mments http://co.mments.com/track?url=
• Connotea http://www.connotea.org/addpopup?continue=confirm&uri=
• De.lirio.us http://de.lirio.us/rubric/post?uri=
• Fark http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/edit.pl?new_url=
• Feedmelinks http://feedmelinks.com/categorize?from=toolbar&op=submit&url=
• Furl http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=
• Linkagogo http://www.linkagogo.com/go/AddNoPopup?url=
• Ma.gnolia.com http://ma.gnolia.com/beta/bookmarklet/add?url=
• Newsvine http://www.newsvine.com/_tools/seed&save?u=
• Netvouz http://www.netvouz.com/action/submitBookmark?url=
• Rawsugar http://www.rawsugar.com/tagger/?turl=
• Scuttle http://www.scuttle.org/bookmarks.php/maxpower?action=add&address=
• Shadows http://www.shadows.com/features/tcr.htm?url=
• Simpy http://www.simpy.com/simpy/LinkAdd.do?href=
• Smarking http://smarking.com/editbookmark/?url=
• Spurl http://www.spurl.net/spurl.php?url=
• Tailrank http://tailrank.com/share/?text=&link_href=
• Wists http://wists.com/r.php?c=&r=
• Yahoo http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=
  

Promoting your blog for more traffic takes sustained efforts. I hope this information helps. Do let me know if there are any problems or if you need anything in particular.

Shout Stories

After a break again.... I was out of town, on a training programme, I'm back with a new idea.

This one is to shoutstories. I was on a trip of reading what people do, and I realized that one of the most attractive things I found was stories with a personal connection that procide me with insights I can apply in my life as well.

Talk of vicarious learning. But why not? People look for all sorts of things in blogs. Why not look for inspiring personal learning experiences. This leads me to research the impact of personal sharing on leaders.

I invite you to help me in this endeavour. If you have posts you share your experiences of learning in, do share them here along with any insights related with them. If you haven't, its a good opportunity to try and help a fellow blogger as well :D

Wordpress 2.6 released

If you are thinking of creating your new blog, look no further, really, Wordpress rules. With a strong community of developers and followers, wordpress offers tremendous functionality and versatility in both looks and features.

Its famous three step install skips you through the set up process and before you know it, you are elbow deep into the stuff you really want to do rather than spend time setting things up.

Of all the softwares I have used, and I have used quite a few, Wordpress wins hands down. I literally learn to use this one software, and I can create sites, blogs, galleries, discussion forums..... no one said it has to remain limited to blogging.

Its sheer ease of use makes it simple and tempting to publish updates regularly, and its management of multiple levels of users keeps life happening for multiple contributors. Most of the time with my clients, lower access levels are not so much about limiting access and authority as it is about limiting the number of confusing choices and damage potential. Wordpress works very well for this.

I have literally made sites so static from it, that no one would guess that its actually running on a blogging platform.

Finding themes is a snap. I think wordpress probably has the most number of themes available. AND if you can't find something that suits your fancy, its pretty easy to convert an existing theme into a wordpress theme. Maybe I'll write a post about that eventually.

Finding plugins to do pretty much anything you wish is a snap too.

I'm finding this so strange to be writing about wordpress on a blog hosted on blogger, but then, what do I do, this is my backstage with my website work, so to say.

The only downside I have seen with wordpress is that it is pretty demanding on a server - like any classy creature. Fancy bikes inhale fuel, pretty women are expensive and handsome men are .... well .... demanding. Let's not lose track here. Point is, this is the expense for using wordpress. If you don't watch out, your first date with digg will bring the shutters down. However, like most things in wordpress, there are plugins to the rescue, and some pretty efficient cache plugins should do the job easily.

So, quit working hard, work smart.

Commenting on blogs

It is an important part of being a blogger to read and comment on other blogs. It helps you keep in touch with what other bloggers on your subject are up to, brings in new ideas and learnings, and helps you broaden your views and develop new perspectives about your own subject.

This is important because as we continue to write, we exhaust the things we originally wanted to say, and begin to get repetitive. Naturally, repetitive is boring. Also, unlike a book or a website, a blog is an evolving publication. Nothing here is frozen for all time, and it is a log of your own evolution as a person interested in the subject. Perhaps to be compared with a magazine with fresh issues each month to catch the readers interest.

Not evolving makes YOU boring. You don't want that.

Why comment? Remember the excitement you feel when someone comments on your blog? Well, other bloggers feel that too. Sharing the impact of the post on you is the easiest way to connect with an author. Connecting with other authors helps you build relationships in the online world, which mean a whole load of new things - links to your blog, references to you, blogging relationships, reputation, advertising income..... you get the people interested in you as a person, and you can get them to do a whole load of nice things for you.

Another way is of course to write about what they are up to on your blog. This needs some relevance to what you are up to. For example, we are now talking about blogging and commenting. Have you been to problogger.com? Darren Rose there has a fabulous way of writing about blogging in a way that leads to development of our skills and its really easy to read.

If you are interested in earning from your blog, look at John Chow's blog. Again, many useful tips and references that will help us.

So how do you go about reading and commenting on blogs? One way is to keep an eye out when you read something and look for opportunities to get in touch with the author. Now, inane comments are only going to irritate the author, but if you can share something others would want to know, people get interested in you quickly.

As an author for example, I enjoy knowing what my blog does to you. Do you feel happy, sad, irritated, inspired, challenged.....? When I go to other blogs, reading such comments give me an idea of the writer's relationships with the readers. Other comments I enjoy knowing is when you bring in a perspective that I hadn't thought of or add information that is not included in the original post.

Very often, and interesting comment makes me follow through to the commenter's link. I expect to find more of what I found interesting there. If nothing, I will follow links in comments on my own blog to see who is interacting with me. Never mind the search engines, even the kind of interest you can generate with this is quite high.

So if you want to do this actively, how do you go about doing it? What I usually do is I plan a post I would like to write, and search for blogs related with it as a part of the research. It gives me a good idea of the kind of approaches to the subject, as well as provides me the opportunity to interact with other writers on it. Then, I write my post and link to resources I found interesting and comment on the others sharing my experience of their posts and adding anything of value that occurs to me.

There are many ways of finding such blogs. Blog search engines, technorati, regular search engines are some. There are commenting softwares that make this much easier for you. They are able to search for blogs on a subject you specify that are open to comments. Comment Kahuna and Fast Blog Finder are two free examples. There are possibilities to look for page rank or no follow on links, etc, but their greatest strength is having a list of commentable blogs quickly lined up fo ryou.

While some bloggers frown on the use of such softwares, the real reason of the frowning is people leaving random comments on blogs that add no value and only spam links. If you are willing to read the posts and make an effort to comment in a way people would enjoy reading, the only difference the softwares bring in is that of removing places you can't comment on from your searches.

With judicious planning of the comments you make, it is possible to build links, relationships and a reputation in the online world.

ScribeFire review

I use ScribeFire to post on my blogs. Its quick and convenient and allows me to post to all my blogs from my browser. So if I find a site that is interesting, I can staay with that site as I write about it.

If you are a blogger and don't have scribefire, you are missing out. Go get it now (I'm assuming you are already using Firefox - If you aren't, get THAT first).

Anyway, I have recently experienced this problem with ScribeFire where the posts I publish are filed as pending review in my WordPress (not here, of course). Blogger works fine.

Additional whines:

• I have include a lack of a list of available tage/autocomplete, so I risk creating unnecessary and duplicate like tags for my posts.
• Shows some strange errors after closing its blogging window about the API of my platform or similar. To date, I haven't figured out any problem this has created beyonf the inconvenience of clicking away those alerts.
  

Pluses:

• Having the blogging tool at my fingertips all through my browser experience tempts me to post more often because of sheer accessibility.
• Much of the good bits work - copy pastes (including media), uploads via API or FTP, etc.
• Picks up Urls and stuff from the browser or clipboard making linking much easier.
• Posts to multiple platforms -WordPress.com LiveJournal Xanga Windows Live Spaces Performancing Tumblr MySpace b2Evolution Splinder
  
• Is extremely convenient an dsupports the objectives of a blogger.
  

Emotion and writing

If you look at great content around the net, it contains emotion. Why is it so? It is because emotion connects people. It helps us the writer's perspective and reaches out to us. We respond how we are addressed. If someone speaks to you in terms of data, you tend to respond similarly. If someone shares their feelings, you interact on the level of feelings. It is really difficult to not do this.

So, when you find a writer writing from the heart, you tend to listen, respond, agree, disagree from your heart. That person becomes "real" to you, and the connection you feel makes you feel acknowledged by the writer, even if you don't ever communicate directly with each other.

This works for all communication. Be it in life, online, or reading a book.

So how does knowing this help you?

The next time you write an email, a blog post or comment or anything, share your state of being and you will find your reader interested in what you have to say. Its not easy and doesn't happen like a switch, but the more you make an effort, the more you will find yourself experiencing the impact on your writing and in the responses you get. It takes time, effort and courage to open your heart, but its worth it.

It isn't great writing that has emotion, but writing that has emotion becoming great.

What does your expereince tell you?

10 Tips to an earning blog

1. Write regularly
2. Spend some time once in a while to look at your earning, but don't obsess - spend that time in working toward getting traffic
3. Invest your traffic and income efforts among various services - don't put all your eggs in the google basket. Try other ways of monetizing your content or getting traffic like Direct-link-ads, Linkworth, Chitika, Payperpost, Sponsored Reviews or any of the many programmes out there - these ones work very well for me.
4. Create a schedule and stick to it - come rain or sunshine.
5. Divide your time between content, presentation, promotion and income management - in that order.
6. Brainstorm for perspectives that could add fresh value and meaning to your blog
7. Interact with other bloggers and respond to the comments you get
8. Use your social networking profiles to create an interest in yourself and share your blog as another way to know you.
9. Add a reference to your blog in your signatures on emails and forum posts and links when you comment on other sites or share videos, etc. If you have photo albums, use your link as a watermark on the most interesting photos.
   
10. Don't get hooked to any one of these and keep your mood flowing and presence relaxed on your own blog, as well as other places you frequent online.

Promoting your blog for more traffic is an art and a science. Losing sight of either will not help.