Posts Tagged blogging tips

Keyword Optimization – Co Citation

Oct 10

Keyword Overload

My friend Debbie from the blog, New England Lighthouse Blog, asked me some interesting questions about keywords and keyword optimization. Here’s a quote from her:

On the first page of Google results, 8 links were to companies selling a product or service and only 2 links referred to traditional Lighthouses! I have no problem with any business being online or at the top of search results but, at this time our search is focused on traditional Lighthouses not products!

Finally, after changing keywords three times, the search results are better using the keyword phrase “traditional Lighthouses” with 7 non-profit links versus 3 product links! How many of us really have the time to try numerous keyword combinations?

Basically, the word “lighthouse” happens to be one of those words found in everything from lawn services to optical companies and beyond. Real lighthouses have been beaten out of their own keywords and phrases! How can she improve and what are some alternatives for her?
Read the rest
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Tags: blogging tips, citation analysis, co-citation, keyword combinations, keyword optimization, keyword phrase, keywords

33 Comments

Stumble Upon: A Cool Ethical Approach

Oct 8

Posted by Bobby Revell in blogging ethics, blogging tips, Stumble Upon

Stand Out With Stumble Upon

Here’s a short and sweet instruction guide for those of you new to stumbling. If you don’t use stumble, it’s time to join. Hey, you could even experiment on this post!

I was looking at my friend Polli from Polliwog’s Pond‘s MyBlogLog profile and noticed she had her Stumble Upon page listed as a blog. I’ve seen several people do this and thought it’s time I listed mine too.

I decided since this blog deals with blogging ethics, being nice and polite are part of ethics in my world! Many people use stumble but don’t use it correctly. What I mean by correctly, is doing the little extra things with stumble that make you stand out.

Add Your Stumble Upon Blog Anywhere You Can

The great thing about your Stumble feeds is that you are promoting the people you stumble as well as yourself. You have two feeds as a Stumble Upon user:

revellian’s reviews and blog

revellian’s favorites

Add your stumble blog to MyBlogLog to get started. These two feed addresses are the ones you need to enter when editing your stumble blog. Your Main Stumble Upon URL can be either of these two. I used the top one as my primary.

Check it out on MyBlogLog: Revellian’s StumbleUpon Blog

Stumble Upon Coolness

There are tons of great posts about using stumble, but this one is specifically for my readers! To be extra nice using stumble, here are some things beginners should be aware of. Here’s a section of the Stumble Upon tool bar. IE users can download it directly from stumbleupon.com. Firefox users can use the add extension feature available in their addons menu.

You can stumble someone’s home page and their stumble user page. It’s like saying not only is their site cool, but they are a great stumbler as well!

When you are looking at someones site, you click the thumbs up button. If the page hasn’t been stumbled previously, you will be prompted to write a short review (please tag it correctly). If it has been stumbled already, it will redirect you to another random page.

What I like to do is after I give a thumbs up on a previously stumbled page, I go back and write a review anyway. See that white bubble on the far right of the tool bar in my example? Click it to write a review.

These are two separate things. It’s nice to go back after giving thumbs up and write a review in addition! Most folks won’t do this. Stumblers who do this are extra cool.

You should stumble the sites and stumblers you like! When you run across a cool post, stumble and review it! Just make sure you are on the article’s permalink url. Just click the post title to get to it.

Stumbling is powerful and fun. It’s a great way to share with folks what you like and who you like. It’s great for traffic and I personally prefer it over Digg any day.

To get an idea of just how powerful stumbling can be, read Mike’s post: (Ordinary Folk) The Stumbleupon stampede – one amazing night of traffic

If you want to get really technical, read Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers by Tim Nash.
[Tags]blogging, blogging tips, blogging ethics, Stumble Upon, stumbleupon, Bobby Revell, Revellian[/Tags]

Tags: blogging, blogging tips, ethics, stumbleupon

47 Comments

Tales of Blogger-X

Sep 25

Posted by Bobby Revell in blogging ethics, blogging tips, thought

Who Are You?

Are you a leader or a follower? Are you a little of both? Do you project a fabricated image to psychologically manipulate the masses into believing your site is professional? Do you accept yourself for the person you really are, letting it shine through in every post? To have great blog in my humble opinion, it must be honest and full of heart!

We live in a world of images, reputations, money and lack thereof. All of these things are heavily reflected in the blogosphere and our daily lives. My good friend Karen from the philosophical blog Waterlearner asked me if I would write a post on self acceptance. Read the post that inpired me, Spiritual Facial. My good friends at NAFASG also helped inspire this article. Read their fascinating post, Don’t Just Watch, Observe! (make sure you watch the incredible video, you have to see this!) It’s been a while since I delved into the depths of the self and I couldn’t tell Karen no!

I will start by using this concept as it applies to blogging and how I perceive it from a multi-faceted detached state of consciousness. To see things for what they really are is one central idea in the structure of my blog. I use what I think of as motivic blogging improvisations. This is based on my life long studies of Jazz musical theory, Taoism and martial art philosophies.

When most of us start blogging, often it is a personal blog. That’s how I started. Other people have a reason for starting a blog like for instance, to make money or support a business. I have noticed some interesting things about the A-list blogs that most have in common. Let’s take a look at a basic time line in the life of a blogger. We’ll call him Blogger-X. This is a specific model to show you my point. It may or may not apply to you, but within, there is a lesson for us all. I am playing a bit of devil’s advocate to make my point, so don’t take it personally if you think of yourself!

The Tale of Blogger-X

Blogger-X starts out writing about his life and and his job. Then he meets some blogging friends. He participates in his first blogging meme and is no longer a web virgin. He gets tagged and re-tagged and triple tags all his buddies having all kinds of fun. He then gets a blogging award and starts thinking about making money on line.

Now that his on line cherry has been popped, he realizes through studying how the A-listers became successful, he wants to be one himself. He notices that A-listers don’t do memes or have friends like the rest of the bloggers.

He stops doing all memes, replaces his blogroll with one that only points to the big blogs, and ignores all the incoming links that don’t have page rank. He no longer cares about all those great friends he made because he is so much more important now. He fears that his newly manufactured and heartlessly fabricated reputation could lose it’s edge if people see a silly meme on his site. He is now a professional blogger who wants money and his blog is a business.

He no longer gives out links or cares about anyone unless they have a pagerank of 5 or better. If you want a link, he will sell you one. The public masses are now his sheep-like customers. Every post he writes is maximized for his niche as he rises higher in popularity . Tons of people trackback and link to every post he writes so that they too can be just like Blogger-X. And so on and so on.

His reputation and fabricated image are an illusion, using very similar mass-mind control and mass-hypnosis techniques that Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte used. Yes indeed, he now makes a truckload of cash and works it hard, optimizing for every cent he can milk from whoever! Things are often not what they appear to be in the blogosphere! Watch Nafa’s video to see some real illusion.

I say phooey on you Blogger-X. I will never stop doing memes and I most certainly will NEVER remove my friends from my blogroll. Can you make money and have friends at the same time? Of course you can. One thing I truly cannot stand is having an A-list blogger (or someone who thinks they are) not reply to my comments. If I take 15 minutes to write a very meaningful comment and you snub me by replying only to the other high ranked commentators on your post, I will never read your blog again. Hire someone to answer the damn reply! There’s an image for you to fabricate! Create the illusion that you care! Of course we will all see through that and you’ll lose all readers who aren’t your sheep!

Honest Blogging Begins With Self-Acceptance

I accept all people from all races and religions and when I make a friend, I keep that friend! I met 2 new bloggers who happen to be incredibly high-ranked who impressed me by taking the time to give me attention and call me by name! Hey, that is what good blogging is all about! These 2 incredible bloggers are: Garry Conn and Tim Nash. Both of these guys are in my opinion, true experts and cool guys. I just met them both and will be studying their blogs. Garry is a master who has so many blogs it will make your head spin. Tim is just plain brilliant.

I want to thank Mark from MeAndMyDrum for introducing me to Garry (please go checkout Marks new header and logo, talk about sweet! Mark has a fantastic blog and has me hooked with his most refreshing approach!). I met Tim because I kept seeing his face in my MyBlogLog widget and wanted to see who he was! I was thinking, “Wow, Tim Nash reads my blog! How cool is that?”

A side note: Have you seen Paula, from Polliwog’s Pond, new look? (she is now an incredible redhead, oh baby!) She looks so beautiful, I just had to give a shout-out to her! I was floored when I saw her new avatar on mybloglog. I haven’t done my long overdue awards post Paula, but I thank you for the award! It’s coming and all of you who have given me an award, I have not forgotten!)

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Garry Conn has written something about me that is one of the most awesome things anyone has said about me. While most bloggers out to make (we all need money) completely ignore me and NEVER take the time to pay any attention, Garry has been given the Revellian dot com seal of approval for fantastic business integrity and blogging ethics! Read the great post he has written here: The Power of One Blog Reader. Thank you Garry Conn for being a class act and I look forward to a lasting friendship filled with happiness and success!

Tags: blogging, blogging tips, taoism

87 Comments

SEO Keywords For Beginners

Sep 19

Posted by Bobby Revell in blogging tips, seo

We have all heard about keywords. We have all heard about seo. So what about these seo keywords? Many bloggers may see this article and say, “Another article about keywords?”

The truth is, most bloggers don’t know anything about keywords, they’ve just heard about them. Today, we will learn a little about them by looking at how this post is written. The way I chose the seo keywords for this post was by using Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

This tool is for adwords but it is great for choosing keywords too! Keywords can be a single word or a phrase. I typed in the word “keyword” and found the phrase “seo keywords”. Check the advertiser competition for the phrase before you choose it! If the competition is too high, the word or phrase you choose will not benefit you. The phrase “seo keywords” was middle of the road for both competition and popularity, so it was a pretty good choice for this post.

I chose the phrase, seo keywords, and actually used it as the central motif from which to build this post. Look at the title of my post. It contains the keyword phrase, seo keywords. This is important to do. I could have named it something else and used the phrase, seo keywords, in my title tags. If you use blogger with an xml template (new blogger), you will simply need to make sure you title your post so it contains the keyword phrase.

Notice how many times I use the phrase, seo keywords, in this post! A lot huh? You want the chosen word or phrase in the title, and you want it mentioned in the post itself at least once! This is good seo practice. If you are a self-hosted wordpress blog, you have the wonderful plug in, The all-in-one SEO Pack to use. You can use it to tweak your title tags! In other words, your posts can have 2 titles. The post can have a different title tag than the name of the post itself if you like.

Another powerful technique is to make sure any links to this post (from within this blog or external) use the anchor text, seo keywords. I recently wrote a post entitled “Optimizing Your Site By Decreasing It’s Size”. The keyword phrase for that post is: search engine optimization tips. The keyword phrase is the anchor text which is linked to that post! I linked to my own post using the keyword phrase. Click the link, look at the post and you’ll see all these concepts at work.

In the future, if I reference this post (the one you’re reading) I will use the anchor text “seo keywords”. It’s important to link to your own posts using carefully selected keywords if you are interested in building your site to grow.

WHY THIS POST IS VALUABLE: This post is for the rest of us. I have provided you with easy to understand information woven into the post itself. Most other posts like this are hard to understand and don’t explain things for normal bloggers like you and I. If I show you something, I explain it and show you how to use it. Let’s summarize:

Select a keyword or keyword phrase with the adwords tool.
Use the word or phrase in the post title or title tags.
Use the word or phrase in the post text.
Link to the post from other sites and your posts using the word or phrase.

Tags: blogging tips, choosing keywords, google adwords, keyword phrase, keywords, seo, title tags, wordpress

98 Comments

Optimizing Your Site By Decreasing It’s Size

Sep 13

Posted by Bobby Revell in blogging tips, seo

We all want a successful blog or website, but we may not be experts in the area. Decisions on what will make a site more search engine friendly never come if we don’t know the basics. Here are some search engine optimization tips that are easy to implement. Perhaps for some of you, your first seo lesson!

Many of us love to display tons of awards, pretty widgets and all kinds of fun things in our sidebars. The problem is, they are terrible for optimization and can make search-engines not like your site. The answer is, reducing the clutter on your site! Now don’t get mad at me for calling your beautiful set of awards “clutter”!

In wordpress, you can move them to a page in the tabs at the top of your site. On blogspot, you can do something similar if you are familiar with template modification and know html fairly well. If you aren’t confident in html, perhaps just moving some of them to a post will do quite well.

To find out if your site needs some cleaning up, go to Sitening.com and open an account. It’s free, and it’s a nice tool to use providing some easy to understand information. Once you’ve signed in, go to tools, seo analyzer. Simply enter the url of your site and see what score you get. I got a 75 my first go around which is not good. I moved several awards to a page and that almost fixed it.

You want your main page to be under 100 KB. Next, I removed the alt text from several widgets in my side bar. You don’t really need alt text and it’s fine to remove some. In the old days when lots of people used text only browsers (no images), the alt text is what they would see instead of images. I could care less if someone doesn’t see the alt text, they need to get a modern browser! I use text only browsers for certain things, but am not worried if the alt text isn’t there.

I ran the test again and scored a 90. Much, much better! I know it can be hard not displaying every award and best buddies site widgets in your side bar, but it will be good for your site.

For Blogger blogs: Here’s a nice little code you can put in your side-bar on blogger or any where else you want a link to your awards post to be:

<a href="http://yourposturl.com/">My Awards</a>

Just change the url to the post url of your awards post. This way, your awards will be easy to get to, especially if you are proud of them like me. If your site is 280 KB, I recommend you clean some of it up. Search engines are picky and they will love you for it!

Tags: blogging tips, optimization tips, search engine optimization, seo

48 Comments

Seven Surefire Ways To Avoid Looking Like A Pro Blogger

Sep 7

Posted by Bobby Revell in blogging tips

Write a post about caring for someone you love with pictures and emotionally touching sincerity. I don’t have to worry about most of them doing that! They may lose a point in page rank!
Show personality in a post.
Respond to your reader’s comments with warmth and genuine friendliness. Better yet, respond to every comment on every post calling your readers by name!
Actually go leave comments on other blogger’s posts smiling and chatting on their shoutboxes! You would lose your reputation of being a callous unfeeling seo robot.
Only read the personal blogs of MyBlogLog and join a ton of keyword free communities!
Go on a five week spree of meme writing and tagging everyone you can.
Actually get to know people in your community and comment back and forth in a frenzy of gossip and fun!

I read a post from a famous blogger this week who spoke about how comments can hurt you. He bickered on and on about little things that bothered him, complaining about how some people take advantage of his status. Well, first of all, you know absolutely nothing about commenting because you NEVER reply to any of them. You avoid leaving comments on other blogs in fear if losing a few page views! You make a lot of money and have a lot of readers. I can guarantee you didn’t make any money from me and I don’t subscribe to your blog either!

If any of you out there who aren’t rich or a noted blogger are clicking ads on the pages of big bloggers, please go get some professional help. You need it! I noticed that ProBlogger only belongs to two communities on MyBlogLog. That’s two!!!!! Still he has a massive horde of people who are members of his. Are you one of them? If you are, you should ask yourself why! Since when did SEO stand for Soulless Entrepreneurs Only? Anyway, that’s enough of my funny blogging tips!

Here’s a linked post: Page Rank Research

Landing Pages Crash Course

Bush Mackel has a great post: Speedlinkin

Tags: blogging tips, pro blogger, soulless

72 Comments

How To Get Explosive Results For Your Blog

Sep 6

Posted by Bobby Revell in blog marketing, blogging

After reviewing the site Article Marketer.com I have come to the conclusion this is one of the best overall ways to get your work noticed and to build a massive chain of incoming links. One of the most important ways to get ahead, no matter what you blog about is to have tons of links pouring in on each of your posts. Sounds nice huh? You can join and use it free! That’s the best part, though you can get the paid service which gets you an astonishing amount of links.

Most of my readers are either newbies or people who are not tech oriented so I am bringing this to you guys. The idea is that you write a post. Make sure it’s actually about something too! Then you rewrite the article changing it up so it becomes a new article. They both are about the same thing but you want it different enough so it’s not just a copy. They may reject it. The article you submit can contain an html link which is very cool. When I wrote my first they had two text boxes, one for your html link and one plain text. What they are doing is submitting it for you, and it’s set up to be accepted everywhere. A lot of folks have heard of or used Ezine before, and it is no comparison at all. Article Marketer is the biggest and most popular site of it’s kind on the web. They are the best. There is no doubt in my mind this program will get you results. I am going all out for this but I will remain patient and not get too over excited. This is something you work steadily and continually. I will be publishing all of my results even if articles are rejected. That’s how you learn, by making mistakes. The html below is basically what you will use as your link (or something very similar).

Bobby shows people all about <a href="http://revellian.com/">blogging
for money</a> by writing articles about
<a href="http://revellian.com/2007/08/21/reality-niche-this/">
article marketing</a>
and other topics.

If any of you have any problems whatsoever, I will gladly help you get it right. There is no such thing as a stupid question, so please don’t hesitate to ask. There are two links built in: one to your site, and one directly to your post. Simply replace my url with yours. You could rewrite some of your best older posts and raise them from the dead. With the free account your article will reach 14,488 people at 32 sites – that is a lot of links. The reason I’m writing this is so many of my readers don’t read tech blogs and they would like to succeed with what they write about. This is the best answer for you. It will boost your page rank and get your work out there. A lot of you aren’t interested in money necessarily but the tactics of money bloggers will work for anyone no matter what you blog about. Click the banner below and get started now! They will help you get it right. Their tutorials and guides are amazing and will help any writer!

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate to help promote the program and make money click the link here: Become an affiliate

Tags: article marketing, blogging, blogging tips, seo

31 Comments

A Look at Technorati’s WTF

Aug 13

Posted by Bobby Revell in blogging

I tried out Technorati’s WTF recently and I actually had pretty good results with it. The WTF stands for “where’s the fire” referring to that heat you feel when reading the hottest post. It’s kind of like Technorati’s DIGG. The one thing about it that I did like a lot is that I know a lot of people on Technorati but I don’t on digg. Most people use Technorati so they’re already signed up – that made it easier for me because I just don’t want to join another latest greatest craze to hit the market. Just go to: http://www.technorati.com/people/technorati/yourusername and you’ll see WTF at the top.

I have two WTF’s up right now:

Beginner Bloggers Neglected

3 blurbs � add a new blurb � view search results for this topic

Beginner Bloggers get left behind while most tips are too…

by revellian � 3 days ago

There are 1000′s of beginner bloggers who have great potential but end up reading tips from popular sources. I’ve been helping lots of newbies lately, and every detail must be explained down to which mouse button to click. And they are bloggers! Big league bloggers often won’t link to them but what they fail to see is that you never know who will rise. New bloggers are a great source of links if you help them and coach them. Don’t be so concerned with every article being on time and perfect.

Continue �

Also I have this one:

Malaysian Artist Emila Yusof

1 blurb � add a new blurb � view search results for this topic

Help a truly talented artist and blooger win the All…

3 days ago

HELP A FELLOW BLOGGER WHO DESERVES RECOGNITION My wonderful friend Emila from Emila’s Illustrated Blog has been selected top 20 out of 600 in the All MalaysianBloggers Project sponsored by Genting – the City of Entertainment If you don’t know who she is then you are missing out on one the most talented artists around today. Her artwork is so original, upon seeing it once, you will never forget her magical style. This is a chance for us as bloggers to help bring this talent to a higher level.

Continue �

To write your own WTF just click “Write a new WTF”. Write a short description of the post you’re referring to; it can be your own post or a post from someone else. Also, look at the other WTF’s and each one as you can see has the option to “add a blurb”. To really give someone extra support you can write a post about their post (a blurb). After you write a blurb or a fresh WTF go to WTF – My WTF’s and you’ll see under the title “view search results for this topic”. Click it and find a very important page for WTF’s. Lets take one of my WTF’s for example:

http://www.technorati.com/tag/Malaysian+Artist+Emila+Yusof

Now you may not have anything listed on this page, your WTF and post are new so probably wont be listed yet. Go to the bottom righthand corner and you’ll see the little java script that references your post and links. Copy and paste it the actual post on your blog – make sure you put it in using HTML view or code view etc. and make sure it’s on the bottom of your post. Save it. You will now see a little green icon that links to your technorati search page.

Lets look at this Tecnorati search result again:

http://www.technorati.com/tag/Malaysian+Artist+Emila+Yusof

Now you have this to remember as your assignment:

http://www.technorati.com/tag/

and type in your technorati tags after, like in the first example. You can use any combination of words you like. Lets say you sell internet hamburgers, delivered hot anywhere on Earth in 30 minutes or less – you type in “http://www.technorati.com/tag/hamburger” or add other words with a plus sign “http://www.technorati.com/tag/hamburger+delivery” and maybe your post isn’t listed among the topics it should be. Well, write a WTF about your post, publish the WTF and then paste in the javascript we discussed earlier. Click your new green icon to go to the newly created search result! Do you see the point? Now you’re post is referenced by Technorati. Now when you search as in my example above you’ll find the search result:

http://www.technorati.com/tag/Malaysian+Artist+Emila+Yusof

This will now bring you to a search result where you will see the people who put in the javascript. Emila herself put in the javascript and her’s is what my WTF is about. If you read my WTF, you’ll see I have three other links listed at the bottom. This is a good thing to do. You should add some links in a post that you use to write a WTF and also add those links or friends links etc. in the WTF itself. All in all I like using it, and try it out for a little while. Digg might not be the right place for a new blogger and really I think it’s mostly effective if you already have a popular blog. Of course you may be a Digg master so don’t hesitate to use it. The WTF I think would be a pretty good place for a beginner blogger to learn. You also learn to see how technorati searches work from writing WTF’s which can be valuble if you want more references to your work or to help someone. If you’ve never used Digg or anything like it, at least go have a look at WTF’s and see what you think. Or envision how your new philosophically perplexing post on transcending human consciousness could rise to the top and get you some new traffic! Don’t be confused by the searches with plus signs like in the above examples. When you look at WTF’s you’ll find your searches already have these plus signs. I just want you to pay attention to the address in your search bar and be aware of what you’re looking at. This awareness alone will help you immensely While you’re at it, just go vote for Emila!