SOB Business Cafe 08-04-2006

Filed Under Branding, Design, Marketing, SEO, Successful Blog, Technorati, Trends | Leave a Comment

SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the title shots to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Darren Rowse offers an interview with Dave Sifry on Blogging Popularity.

Dave Sifry on Making Your Blog Popular

Mike Sansone considers whether blogging can be called a conversation . .. really.

Is Blogging Really a Conversation

Christine Kane lays out 7 great reasons why you should forget about email until after noon.

7 Great Reasons Not to Check Email til Noon

Scot Herrick has a fabulous read on creativity and innovation as a strategy in today’s Cubicle Nation.

Creativity and Innovation Series

Ann Michael has Google’s number laid out in keywords.

Google Are Key Words King

Related ala carte selections include

Minic Rivera has some Blogging Times News for Artists.

Gawker Offers Free Ad Space to Artists

Please know that I include this last because everyone should see Susan Reynold’s wonderful art. Do click on it to see it full size. The image is amazing.

Susan's Wonderful Art

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like.
No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blogspot Blogs — If You Can’t See Yours

Filed Under Basics, Community, SEO, Successful Blog | 18 Comments

With a Little Help from Our Friends

Thanks to Joe at Working at Home on the Internet, here’s what to do

If your page cannot be accessed by readers, you must go into Blogger and publish a post. Then republish your whole blog for it to take.

I know, because I just went through it with my Blogs on Blogger.

Thought you might like to know.

Joe

Thanks Joe!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles:
Blogspot Status Link
Google Blogger–403 Forbidden–How Could You Let that Happen!
Google–Do You Have Something to Tell Me?

Link Love Raises Your Property Value

Filed Under Community, Links, SEO, Successful Blog | 25 Comments

Springtime Link Love

Customer Think Logo

It’s spring and a young person’s fancy turns to thoughts of . . . blogging. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? The blogging version of spring would have to be link love. Ah link love . . . that warm, sweet connected feeling that you get when you click back to Technorati and see that incoming link that means someone loves YOU.

Well, wait a minute. For link love to be coming in, someone had to be sending it out. What is the advantage in doing THAT? Actually, if you know your SEO, there are some advantages to outlinking. Read more

Thinking Inside-Outside the SEO Sandbox

Filed Under Outside the Box, SEO, Strategy, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Tools | 2 Comments

Learning by Getting It Wrong

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

Remember your first web site or blog? You had to learn so much about coding and Search Engine Optimization. Bet you learned most of what you know now by doing–OJT, On the Job Training, otherwise known as getting it wrong and fixing it. Those were valuable experiences.

The thing about learning by getting it wrong is that you remember what you did. Tweaking a template and having your sidebar fall off is WAY more powerful than anyone telling you how not to code something.

As much as I wish that WordPress had an undo button, I know I’ve learned more because it doesn’t.

Think like a Search Engine

SEO folks think like Search Engines. They buy and read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and its updates. They follow and discuss Matt Cutt’s blog, and the Google Blog–probably not this one, the Google Blog, but this one Google Research Blog–or maybe all of them. They check in at Yahoo’s Search Blog, MSN Search, and with other SEO hangouts, such as Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Round Table, and Threadwatch. So I do some of that–the first half at least.

But reading doesn’t help me half as much as doing does.

Thinking Inside-Outside the SEO Box

I’ve been searching out experiences to help me think like a search engine. I use my stats to watch how search engines route traffic to my blogs. Sometimes they hit right on the page that has the content being searched for. That’s not interesting. I expect that. They’ve invested powerful resources into research in doing that right.

Sometimes they hit right next to where they should. THAT I find puzzling and intriguing, especially when the page in question is tagged with the exact search term that was entered.

It happened again this morning. Someone searched for “nextsplogs.” The searcher was sent to the home page of Successful Blog rather than to the page called SOB Business Cafe 04-07-2006, where Nextsplogs actually appears twice–in the text and as a tag. Is it because the term is singular in one and capitalized in the other? Hmmmm. I wonder.

I don’t like things I don’t understand, and I want to understand this.

I’ve learned a lot from watching my stats, but this kind of thing my stats can’t help me crack.

Build Your Own Search Engine

Just when I was about to give up on my chance of knowing, along came this post from the MSN search weblog, Build Your Own Search Engine. I thought, here’s a way to learn by doing. It’s not an actual full-blown search engine–it’s search engine macros–and it’s an early BETA version. That suits me just fine, though. It gets my brain and hands in the process and I can even watch how the parameters have to be tweaked to work right. Just reading the comments about it, I can feel myself getting smarter.

Go on over. Take a look. It’s an inside-outside the box way to learn SEO.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
MSN and Microsoft Joint Research Venture
SEO The Secret Life of Search Engines
Check Google Backlinks Through Yahoo
SEO–The Value of Outlinks to MY Blog

Great Find: 10 Reasons to Love Google Desktop

Filed Under Great Finds, SEO, Successful Blog, Tools | 4 Comments

Keith Dsouza and I shared some email this week about using Google Desktop. He’s an all-out customer evangelist, and he can give you 10 reasons why you should love it too.

Great Find: Top 10 reasons why you should love google desktop
Type of Article: Product Review
Permalink: http://www.keithdsouza.com/google-news/google/top-10-reasons-why-you-should-love-google-desktop.html
Target Audience: All internet users

Content: In this article, Keith Dsouza outlines 10 of his favorite reasons for using Google Desktop. I say favorite, because his writing is filled with such enthusiasm, I have no doubt that he could give you another ten, if you asked him. He also lets us in on a secret that–he’s developing a new plugin for it. Keith uses several plugins already–for Sidebar, Scratchpad, and Del.icio.us. He also uses a filter to keep his RSS feeds right there. If you’re thinking of using Google Desktop, Keith is the fellow you want to know. Click the screenshot to read about what he’s been doing with it. I’m sure that he’d help you, if you want to do some of the same things.

Top 10 Reasons . . . Google Desktop

Thanks, Keith.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Talk about Google-ing
Google Measure Map Tracks Readers
Google Zeitgeist–Will Make ME Millions
65th Crayon Finds that Google Doesn’t Use Search

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