Search engine optimization from the horse’s mouth
Google’s Matt Cutts has put together some videos on search engine optimization.
Law and Ethics for Bloggers - Legal & Ethical Blogging Considerations
Law and Ethics for Bloggers - Legal & Ethical Blogging Considerations
Business Tennessee article on the Tennessee blogging community.
An excellent article from Business Tennessee magazine on the Tennessee blogging community, with a nice bio of the Blogfather.
TIME.com’s Coolest Blogs of 2005
Time.com has posted its list of the 50 Coolest Blogs of 2005. I haven’t checked all of them out yet myself — and probably won’t check out some of them — but some look, well, cool.
What to Get Your Blogger for Christmas
So that certain someone in your life has become obsessed. Several months ago, he (or she) started using a word you’d never heard before. Blog this, blog that. You ignored it, thinking it would go away, but now, it’s a full-on obsession, and as much as you’d like to, you can’t escape it.
Yet you still like this crazed person and you want to get them something he’d appreciate for Christmas.
So what do bloggers want for Christmas? Here’s a few ideas:
Some bloggers blog using free platforms (think of them as software programs like Microsoft Word, but for blogging, and they reside on the web instead of on your computer). More serious bloggers, though, use a more serious platform like Movable Type or WordPress. Your blogger’s site will usually indicate which one they’re using, somewhere toward the bottom of the page or one of the sidebars. For example, you can tell from the very bottom of my site that I blog using WordPress.
Like most technology, most users only understand and use a small percentage of the technology’s capacity (brains fall into this category as well), so there’s always more to learn. Here are a couple of books you can get your blogger that will interest him or her:
- Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress
- Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition
- Sams Teach Yourself Movable Type in 24 Hours
Key to both Movable Type and WordPress is a basic understanding of the PHP programming language. Here are a few ideas on that subject:
One of the coolest things you can do to make your blog snazzy is to learn and use Macromedia Flash. It’s part of a larger product suite called Macromedia Studio 8 Win/Mac
But there are always gift certificates, and you could always get them a book that they could use along with a free trial to see if it would be worth the investment:
- Macromedia Studio 8 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
- Macromedia Flash 8 : A Tutorial Guide
- Macromedia Studio 8 : Training from the Source
Any other bloggers out there have suggestions for a blogger’s wish list?
Testing New Domain Pointer
Just registered for a new domain pointer — www.viewfromrockytop.com — and trying to figure out how it works.
Nothing to see here.
Move along.
Integrating Chitika eMiniMalls and Google Adsense Ads into Your Blog
Acting on the advice of ProBlogger, I’ve spent a bit of time working ads into the blog. Apparently, ads perform better if they are (1) positioned close to content; and (2) color-coded to match the theme of the blog.
Chitika eMiniMalls (affiliate link) seem to perform better for me, and I wasn’t very happy with the way the Google Adsense script loaded with my site, so I decided to move the Adsense script from my post template to the sidebar and put the Chitika ads in my posts.
I’m using the Chitika eMiniMall WordPress plugin, which allows me to add the script to a post simply by clicking a button when writing posts. Since it’s a button rather than a script you add to a template, you can add it to some posts and not to others. It’s more flexible.
The Adsense looked funky in the sidebar, and it was quite a challenge to modify the colors to more fully integrate it into the theme. First, I tried to locate the HTML color codes from my theme’s style sheet, but eventually figured out that the colors I most wanted to mimic were actually images. (Now that I think about it, duh!)
So that left me trying to figure out how to determine what colors those images are. I had to download a screen grabber, and ended up with a trial version of SnagIt, which works pretty well. I used it to grab a section of my blog showing all of the various colors and saved the grab to an image file.
I then opened up the image file in the Windows’ Paint program, used the Pick Color Tool to choose a color, and clicked on Colors, Edit Colors, and Define Custom Colors. That opened up an Edit Colors box that showed the selected color and the Red, Green, Blue values of that color.
Then, after some searching, I found this HTML Color Code Combination Chooser. I input the RGB values, and it returned the HTML code for that color.
On the Google Adsense page that generates my ad script, I clicked on Manage Color Palettes. That brought up a page where I could modify the colors of the various components of my Adsense ad by inputting the HTML codes I found in the previous step. I saved that palette as a custom palette and returned to the main script-generation page to begin using that palette.
You can see all of this at work right here. Here’s what clicking on the eMiniMall button does:
The color-modified Adsense ad is on the sidebar.
That’s where it’s at now, anyway, because another piece of advice is to move ads periodically so readers don’t become blind to them.
ProBlogger’s Hot Posts of the Week
ProBlogger’s hot posts of the week:
- How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs
- Adsense Dumb Pricing
- Google PR Update Underway
- Chitika eMiniMalls Tips: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Lots of excellent information here. I’ve signed up for Chitika eMiniMalls, and I plan to place the code this weekend.
Show Darren your appreciation by making ProBlogger a regular read.
Converting First Time Visitors into Regular Readers: Day 5 of ProBlogger’s 31 Days Project
Day Five of ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog has several suggestions on how to convert one-off visitors to your site into regular readers.
In reading through this post, I realized why I was having so much difficulty following the organization of ProBlogger’s 31 Days Project. Basically, instead of following a pre-ordained 31-day schedule of topics, ProBlogger instead told readers that he was going to blog on blogs for 31 days, and he encouraged them to participate. He facilitated the discussion, throwing out ideas and engaging readers in conversation. The organization was therefore a bit fluid, but in doing so, he was harvesting regular readers.
Here are his tips on turning first time visitors into regular readers:
- Create Conversation. When posting, invite comments, and when you get comments, respond.
- Build Anticipation. Inform readers when you intend to continue blogging on a certain topic with a series of regular posts. They’ll be more apt to return if they know they can expect to find new content on a topic they’ve enjoyed.
- Partner with Readers. Give them some participation in your blog, beyond commenting. Encourage them to interact not only with you, but with other readers.
- Engage Readers’ Senses. Liven up the look and feel of your blog to set yourself apart from everyone else.
- Get Permission to Remind Readers You Exist. Invite readers to sign up for a newsletter that will allow you to reach out to them on a regular basis instead of counting on them to return to you. I plan to use this to remind readers when I switch “seasons” of blogging. Right now, I’m doing a lot of blogging about Tennessee football, but I know some readers just aren’t in that. After football season is over, I’ll send out something noting of the switch in topics.
By the way, I didn’t get a lot of mileage out of social bookmarking for whatever reason.
Prior Posts on My Experience with ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog
Long Term Care Risk Management Report
Long Term Care Risk Management Report is a new blog about, well, risk management issues in the long term care industry.
His first post concerns the recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicating that nursing homes rank below the pharmaceutical industry in public perception.
