I thought I’d add the introduce yourself thread as top level navigation, since it’s always nice to know who reads here. If you haven’t done so before - please do it now. Lookin’ forward to meeting lots of new friends at Pubcon - and it’d be nice to know a little bit about YOU before we chat (since you know what a dork I am:)
I’ve been lucky enough to work with Mike P. for a quite a while now - and he’s put together a great redesign for me (okay maybe I’m biased - but I think it looks much cooler). The really good news is that he figured out how I borked my comments again - and they are back in action now. My sincere apologies to anyone who wrote a comment that didn’t work - it woulda pissed me off too - as well as thanks to several people who wrote to let me know. Let me know what ya think of the new design - if you don’t see it - you may need to choose the “stuntdubl lights” from dropdown “style switcher” and refresh.
Neil wrote a very nice piece called The 5 deadly sins of blogging - I thought I’d add a few more of my own to the list. Here’s 5 of the deadlist sins I’ve made and witnessed.
5. Stealing other people’s ideas (without links)
Yes - I appreciate the irony here - but the blogosphere is about conversation. Neil had a great post, and I had a little inspiration to respond. The moral of the story is add some value, and DEFINITELY add a link (hopefully with some prime anchor text - did I mention that Neil offers web strategy consulting?)
4. Not having an about page
I wanna see what you are about. If you vehemently support Bill O’Reilly - it’s going to be pretty hard for me to take you serious. Posts can show intelligence, but the about page will show your personality (that I can identify with). The first thing you should do on any blog is change a default design (add some images, change the header, or at minimum snag a template ) - then add your about page. If you’re not afraid of stalkers - pictures are nice.
3. Not having a subscribe button
Grrr…if you haven’t figured this one out, and I can’t subscribe in under 5 seconds with bloglines - please go back to your geocities site - or set it up in just a few minutes with feedburner.
2. Not having a best posts page
The bests post page theory is very similar in the not having an about page. A best posts page tells what the blog is ABOUT when you’re not writing about your cat and your travels.
1. Being a Wanker
Don’t become an egomaniac blogger just because 200 people in the world read your site. You’re still very lucky that they do, and if you act like a douchebag to people, always assume to be correct, or just plain talk out of your butt about topics you know nothing about - you can bet that your blog will become a worthless drain of time. Write what you know, and do extensive research on what you don’t (and publish it). It’s okay to make mistakes as long as you can own up to them when you do.
*Bonus sin -
Having broken comments or a slow loading site - and again, I appreciate the irony here. I’m hoping to have a redesign complete in the very near future after some database cleanup.
Elite Retreat sounds like a pretty good gig for those looking to understand SEO better. Rather than paying for a consultant, you can learn from multiple consultants about their given field, in an atmosphere that is still small enough to get some good face time. It looks like it’s a pretty limited group that will be selected, so check it out soon.
I’ll be doing a show with Cindy Turrietta and the e-marketing talkshow group tomorrow evening if you’d like to check it out. We’ll be talking about “SEO from all sides” - as a vendor, consultant, consumer, and DIY’er. I’ll post links to the podcast if I don’t suck. I talked about links with Todd Sarouhan a while back. The podcasts are now live for download.
I’ve been playing with digg quite a bit lately, and one of the big problems is duplicate story submissions - or power users walking over smaller users by resubmitting the same stories from different sources. In my opinion, it’s only right to give a digg to the person who originally submitted the story - assuming it is the same topic and a reasonable story (I didn’t digg the article that had “AMAZING STORY!!!” in the title today despite it having been submitted an hour earlier than the one I DID digg). So do digg a favor - if you submit a story and SEE those duplicates, don’t say “screw those guys” and submit anyhow. Give a good karmic digg, and keep hunting for another good story. Consider the time as well as the better title - if there’s 5 minutes difference, and the late guy has the better title - I vote that the better title wins. A good title (as all SEO’s know) goes a long ways, but time should generally be the main consideration.
A few digg related links:
Digg Etiquette - DigitalSoap
Social bookmarking etiquette
Digg at Encoclopedia Dramatica
I’m in need of a few copywriters at varying levels of expertise, and figured it would be worth trying a blog post to see who replied. If you or maybe a friend writes content - please drop me a line with examples of your work. Just like everyone, I would like A grade work with discount prices;) - but we can negotiate. If you enjoy copywriting, please drop me a line, and we’ll see if it would be a good fit.
SEO/ Internet Marketing Training
