So what is Google Caffeine all about? A simple analogy: Google Caffeine is to search what the iPhone 4 is to the iPhone; a modern update to an existing product. It still continues to provide all of the great features that made it great and whets the appetite for technology with a few clever new features — neither product provides any new revolutionary functionality, just some upgrades.

Without a doubt, Google revolutionized search engine technology and Apple did the same with smartphones. However, when it comes down to fundamentals, Google Caffeine is no more revolutionary than the iPhone 4. The new iPhone is slimmer, faster, prettier, but it’s not as groundbreaking as its predecessors. The same goes for Google Caffeine: faster more recent results, but again, not groundbreaking — it still provides relevant results and information being sought.

I’m more interested into probing into what Google Caffeine will mean for SEO. Initially, there will likely be some manipulation taking place. There will quickly emerge a new generation of “real-time SEO experts” that will know how to take advantage of the new technology, as they will poke and prod until they spring a leak and the waterfall of desired results comes pouring out. There will be a short window of opportunity where these “SEO experts” will charge a fortune for what will eventually turn into marginal results.

Fundamentally speaking however, Google Caffeine is not revolutionary. It does exactly what Google search has always done: providing the most relevant results; it’s just happening faster. It could eventually result in what has happened in mainstream media — who can provide the latest and greatest breaking news with the best delivery (hopefully minus the sensationalism).

No longer will it just be about bringing the most relevant content, but you will need to provide the most relevant content in the shortest amount of time. So not only will you need to provide the most pertinent information for those seeing it, you will need to do so as quickly as possible. For well-established topics and information it will not be as important, but if you are on the bleeding edge of technology it will be paramount.

For the big guys (TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Slashdot, etc.) it probably doesn’t mean a whole lot. They already have the infrastructure and resources to provide breaking news quickly and effectively. However, for the little guys, it may provide a window of opportunity to speak their minds and acquire the audiences they are seeking.

So if you’re interested in taking advantage of Google Caffeine, how might you go about it?

1. Keep your ear to the ground

Stay connected and read what folks are talking about. Write about what people are reading about. However, in order to be heard you need to…

2. Develop your own opinion

Probably the worst thing you can do is repeat what others are saying, as your voice will be lost in the noise. Do something crazy like compare Google Search to the new iPhone and perhaps piss off a few people in the process. Nothing drives more traffic to a website than anger and controversy.

3. Express your opinion

…express it quickly, and express it well. If you can gather your thoughts quickly and provide an intelligent editorial on breaking news, you’re likely to get noticed.

4. Apply all the same old rules such as…
• Relevant content
• Well-written content
• Original content (expressing your own unique opinion will take care of this)
• Inbound links (relevant, well-written, original content will eventually generate inbound links and take care of this as well)
5. Get involved

Whatever interests you online, get involved in some online forums. If you have an area of expertise, join forums in your field, hyperlink your signature file to your website, and start posting questions and answers. If you have relevant articles on your website to the topic at hand, hyperlink to them. The majority of forums allow you to create hyperlinks that provide coveted linkjuice back to your website.

Do not haphazardly begin joining any and every forum in your field and start posting garbage. You will quickly get banned and disrespected and will achieve the opposite of what you wish to accomplish. Go in with the genuine intention of providing useful information to those seeking it (the very same intention you should have with your website), and ask thoughtful and provoking questions that will solicit helpful answers. You will quickly garner the respect you deserve.

Ultimately, if you’re already providing relevant content on breaking news that others are interested to read about and you provide your readers with a unique perspective, you should be in pretty good shape to take advantage of Google Caffeine. It could mean a few late nights or early mornings to be the first one to break some big news, so you may wish to invest in a good coffee machine and a nice big mug. And with that… it’s time for bed. It’s past 1:30am here.

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Dofollow vs. Nofollow

The majority of blogs implore the nofollow tag in their comments. That means that when you specify your website URL when leaving a comment, the link created does not help to elevate your website’s status in the algorithms search engines use. Although not really an “official” term, people often use dofollow to describe blogs that do not use the nofollow tag. In other words, comments left on these blogs do help to elevate your website’s status in search engines.

Automatic Dofollow Detection

I had made a few attempts in the past to try to automatically detect whether or not a blog was a dofollow blog or not, but had little success. I’m pleased to announce that my latest attempt has proven successful, and I’ve managed to put together some code that will automatically detect dofollow blogs. It works relatively well and I’ve used it to identify more than 2,000 dofollow blogs.

Unlike other custom dofollow blog search engines, mine uses an automated algorithm to identify dofollow blogs. Many of the other dofollow blog directories and dofollow search engines I’ve seen are manually created, and are often out-of-date and littered with nofollow blogs. I will update my search engine periodically, to ensure that it remains up-to-date.

For lack of a better name, I’ve dubbed it The Ultimate DoFollow Search Engine. The search is powered by a Google Custom Search Engine, but the back-end that builds the list of dofollow blogs uses code I put together myself. If you do use my search engine to post comments on dofollow blogs, please do so responsibly.

Commenting on DoFollow Blogs

Do not post comments along the lines of, “Nice site. I’ve subscribed to your feed.” Such comments are likely to be moderated and tossed away into a pile of useless nonsense posted by others seeking quick and easy backlinks. Such comments are pointless and do not contribute to enhancing the information provided within the article and subsequent discussion. Most dofollow blogs moderate their comments, so you will get nowhere fast posting comments like this.

I would recommend submitting a question to the author about the article. It will appeal to the author’s ego of being an expert on the topic discussed in the article, and it will not come across as a feeble attempt at creating a backlink to your site. Asking a thought-provoking question is a great way to solicit an engaging conversation from the author.

If you do happen to come across a nofollow blog when using the search engine, please let me know. I’m still fine-tuning the crawler and working on ways to improve it. Enjoy!

The Ultimate DoFollow Search Engine

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The following is a guest post from DR.  DR is the blogger behind The Dough Blogger, and internet marketing blog, and The Dough Roller, a blog about making and managing money online.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Bankaholic, a one-man WordPress blog that last year was bought by Bankrate for nearly $15 million. In the article I analyzed why the blog might actually be worth the eye-popping sum that Bankrate paid. I won’t rehash all that here, but do want to focus on one very important aspect that led to Bankaholic’s success–backlinks.

To get started, let’s run a search on Google for the term, “credit cards.” While rankings change, even daily, Bankaholic typically ranks anywhere from the bottom of the first page to the top of the second. Not bad for a search that generated 174,000,000 results. On top of that, the Google Adwords keyword tool shows more than 450,000 monthly searches on the exact phrase each month (more than 2.2 million on broad search). Now Bankaholic’s credit card page, while perfectly fine, is nothing special. I have a very similar credit card page on The Dough Roller, it just doesn’t rank as well (yet!).

Bankaholic Home Page

You might not be focused on credit cards. But if you are trying to make money online, you are focused on some keywords. And you also know who your competitors are. So let’s see how we can leverage our competitors to (1) determine their backlink strategy, and (2) identify possible backlink opportunities. And we will use Bankaholic’s credit card page as an example.

Step one is to run the following search in Yahoo!: link:www.bankaholic.com/credit-cards/. Of course, you can substitute whatever page you want, depending on who your competitors are. The search will return a list of links to the given page. A drop down box at the top of the search results allows you to exclude links that come from the given domain, in this case Bankaholic. Excluding links from other parts of the Bankaholic site leaves 12,992 banklinks.

Yahoo! Search for Bankaholic Links

At this point it’s important to keep a couple things in mind. First, we used Yahoo! because Google doesn’t return all of the backlinks. Don’t ask why because I don’t know; maybe the Big G is throwing Yahoo! a bone. Second, the backlink count includes links to the credit card page, as well as links to pages in any credit card subpages. Third, when links are in the sidebar, header, or other section that appears on every page of a site, every page counts as a backlink. That means that a sidebar link on a large site can result in hundreds or even thousands of backlinks. So while nearly 13,000 backlinks is a good start, it’s not nearly as impressive as it may at first appear.

Step two is to skim the sites linking to your competitor to get an idea of the types of links they are getting. A quick visual inspection of Bankaholic’s backlinks shows several things. First, Bankaholic is taking full advantage of directory submissions. Without getting into the issue of the value of directories, most believe that the Yahoo! Directory still has value, and Bankaholic has submitted its site to several of Yahoo’s directories. Its worth noting that the links are to the credit card page, not the home page, and typically use the anchor text, “Bankaholic.com: credit cards.” Second, many links come from the sidebar, footer or the end of articles on blogs.

And this leads to step three–digging through the backlinks to find potential sources for your own backlinks. What’s interesting to me about many of the backlinks to Bankaholic’s credit card pages is that they come from blogs, many of which are not updated regular or highly trafficked. In other words, they are links any of us could get. I suspect not all of the links are purely editorial, but nobody can be sure. Still, Bankaholic did what you and I should be doing, so stop reading this article and go get some backlinks.

Photo Credit: Andres Rueda

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In addition to the size of your market and existing competition, the quality of service you provide is a very important factor in making money online.  High quality will provide credibility for your content or service, and result in repeat visits and referrals. If your site is low quality, you may have a difficult time in earning the trust of those that visit your site.

My Failure in Quality of Service

I think another reason why ForeverSMS never took off is because of the design of the website. I designed the website myself, however, I should have relied on a professional to do the design for me.  I think I could have done more in terms of doing more search engine optimization, but the reality is that if the site had been higher quality and in a less competitive space, I would have seen greater success.

Improving My Quality of Service

I’ve hired someone to do the web design on my latest venture. I think it will help me to achieve greater success than I saw with ForeverSMS.  It is important to realize what you are good at, but probably more important to understand what you are not good at.  When you identify such areas, find others to do the work for you.

My Success in Quality of Service

The jury is still out. We shall see how my new venture does, which I will announce shortly.

Ensuring Quality of Service on Your Websites

If you have decided to make money online by blogging, a good blogging platform (WordPress, Drupal, TypePad, Blogger, etc.) with a nice selection of themes is a first good step towards developing a quality blog. The second most important factor in developing a quality of blog is of course developing quality content. Write about a topic you are passionate about. When you start thinking of topics for articles all the time, you know you’ve selected the right topic for your blog.

If you want to make money by developing a service, be sure to ask for help in areas in which you are lacking expertise. I’m pretty good at developing with PHP and MySQL, but I really suck at web design. Be honest with yourself and realize that you may not be able to do everything yourself.

You also need to ensure your site is fast and convenient to use. You may have the most gorgeous web design, but if the site is slow and complicated you may not achieve success. Try to keep it simple, yet appealing. This will help to maintain speed and convenience for your visitors.

Applying All Three Factors

It is important that you consider all three factors together: the size of your market, existing competition, and quality of service.  You need to understand how they relate to each other. You may have a very large market, but if there are many competitors it will be more difficult to make money. However, developing a high quality website can help to overtake the competition and achieve success.

On the other hand, you may develop a very high quality site in a market with very little competition. However if there is no one interested in the service you provide, you will be doomed to failure.  It is sometimes difficult to judge what sort of market there may be for services that do not yet exist.

You could try performing surveys to determine whether or not a particular type of service may appeal to a wide audience. You could also take a gamble and go ahead and develop the website, and see if it is well-received.  As long as you do not spend a lot of time and money in developing the service, there is little risk in just developing the site and see what happens.

It is important to be brutally honest with yourself and learn from your failures. There is no better way to achieve success than to fail and learn from your mistakes. If you do not initially attain the desired results, take a step back and try to understand why you failed.  You will be better prepared when you try again.

What’s Next

Once you’ve decided whether to provide content or service and you’ve taken into account size of market, existing competition, and quality of service, it is time to select a monetization method. In the next post in this series, I’ll discuss ways you can directly and indirectly monetize your website.

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This is the third part of a multi-part series about making money online. So far I’ve discussed deciding whether to provide content or service as well as evaluating the size of your market. The next logical step to making money online is to analyze the existing competition in the market you are considering.

If you compete in a large market, you can expect to have a lot of competition. If there is little or no competition in your market, if you succeed you can expect competition to quickly appear. When Twitter hit the scene, it wasn’t long before competing services like FriendFeed, identi.ca, and others came to market to provide similar and improved services.

My Failure in Assessing Competition

Last year, I developed a free service for texting online. I felt as though it was a pretty decent service, but it never caught on like I had hoped. I believe a big reason for this was because there were already similar services such as Gizmo SMS and txtDrop.com. ForeverSMS really had very little to offer that these services didn’t already provide.

Improving My Assessment of Competition

I’ve learned alot with the less than stellar monetization of ForeverSMS. Lately I’ve been looking to develop services that do not exist yet or that have very little competition.

My Success in Assessing Competition

Well, the jury is still out for me on assessing competition. I am currently developing a service that I believe has very little competition. Whether or not it will succeed once I announce it is another story.  It depends on how I handle my assessment on the size of market, competition, and other factors as well.

Sizing Up Your Competition

I think the biggest reason that many bloggers fail early when they start, is that they fail to realize the amount of competition they face. There are countless bloggers out there writing about a tremendous variety of topics, and many of them do it quite well. Although it is easy to get started with blogging and it is easy to do, it is tremendously difficult to succeed.

That being said, do not be discouraged from blogging. You may find that you do it better than anyone else in the topic you decide to write about.  There are quite a few people that have managed to earn a living from blogging.  Although it is a long and difficult path, it is indeed possible to make money blogging.

It may be nearly impossible to find a topic to blog about where you would face little or no competition.  On the other hand, it is quite possible to develop new services that have no competition. The difficulty with creating new services is deciding on what they should be. Necessity is the mother of invention and often new services are born where individuals find a need for something that does not yet exist.

If you are developing a service and no such service exists yet, you will have a tremendous advantage.  It will increase the likelihood you will make money with it.  It is also easier to make money with blog posts where you provide information that does not exist or is difficult to find.  If you have scoured the net trying to solve a problem and you ended up developing your own solution, blog about it! It’s very likely there are others looking for the very same answer you could provide them.

What’s Next

The last of the three important factors I will be writing about in this series is the quality of service.  Quality of service does not just apply to services, it applies to content as well. If decide to make money with a blog, it needs to be informative as well as visually appealing.

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There are a number of PageRank plugins for WordPress, but it seems that all of them involve manually editing the template to incorporate them. With the lack of a better option, I took it upon myself to develop a WordPress plugin to display PageRank in a widget. And thus, the PageRank Widget for WordPress was born.

The options are very simple, as there is only one. You can display your PageRank either at a top-level (http://www.yourdomain.com) or display it at a page level (http://www.yourdomain.com/the-page-level). By default, the PageRank will be displayed at the page level.

Installation is very simple:

• Download the PageRank Widget plugin
• Extract the contents to your plugin directory
• Activate the plugin
• Navigate to Appearance > Widgets
• Add the PageRank Widget
• Select the display option (Individual Pages or Top-Level)
• Save Changes

I like the option of being able to display PageRank with a standalone widget. It makes it very simple to use and does not involve having to edit any HTML code or load images/JavaScript from another website. Try it out, and feel free to make any suggestions as to how I might be able to improve it.

Update (01/06/2009): Per a user request, I’ve also added a feature to display the pagerank within a page/post. To use it, place the following comment where you wish for it to appear within the page:

<!--pagerank-->

Update (02/24/2009): I noticed today that the widget was causing some errors on my page. There was increased traffic on my site, so I made some updates to the plugin so that the PageRank requests are only made once a day. PageRank really does not change probably more than once a month anyway, so this should not present any problems.

Update (05/09/2009): I broke the plugin a few days ago, and it is now fixed. Version 0.60 has many bugfixes and now the PageRanks are cached so that we do not upset Google for making excessive requests.

Earlier I was avoiding this by using http://www.gmodules.com/ig/proxy?url= as a cache because Google seemed to have no problems when requests were made from the gmodules server. However, it seems Google has plugged that hole and they now detect requests from gmodules.com as automated requests as they would any other server. Now the requests have to be made directly by the website, so caching the PageRanks was necessary for this to happen.

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Are you wondering what the hell Busby SEO Test is? The other day, I received a comment on one of my posts that went like this:

Busby SEO Test!!! it’s a nice post. thanks for informing

It was obvious it was just some comment spam to obtain a backlink. Mostly out of laziness or perhaps indifference, I didn’t even bother to moderate the comment or visit the site linked.

A few days later my curiosity piqued, and I took a look at the site. The comment spammer was a participant in some sort of SEO contest. It took some time to find the actual contest website, but I finally managed it with a few different Google searches.

Initially, when I searched for Busby SEO Test on Google, I got a ton of hits on pages with that exact title. Funny enough, none of them actually provided me the information I was seeking, although they all made mention of the contest.

However, rather than linking to the official contest page, for SEO purposes they would simply link back to themselves. It quickly became apparent it was going to be somewhat challenging to find the official contest page. Finally I discovered that the contest is being sponsored by Busby Web Solutions.

The contest is the Busby SEO World Cup 2. The objective is to achieve the top spot in a search on Google for Busby SEO Test. There are cash prizes for the top five spots in the search results:

First Prize: $5000
Second Prize: $2000
Third Prize: $500
Fourth Prize: $250
Fifth Prize: $100

The contest began on October 1, 2008 and will end on January 31, 2009. There is also a Midway prize ($1000) being offered to the entrant with the highest average ranking as of January 5. At the time I wrote this post, there were 536 registered entrants in the Busby SEO World Cup 2 contest.

Other than writing this post and soliciting for backlinks, I will not put forth any further effort. I thought it would be fun and interesting to enter the contest with minimal effort. Rather than feverishly attempting to manually generate my own backlinks to my contest entry, I’d simply write an informative article that would provide the exact information that others may be seeking regarding the contest.

My entry into the contest is rather paradoxical. On one hand I’m attempting to win the contest by providing the best information about it. On the other, I’m encouraging competition against me by providing others the information they need to find out what exactly Busby SEO Test is.

If you like my approach, you’re not interested in joining the contest yourself, and you’d like to help me win, feel free to link back to this article with the words Busby SEO Test. Otherwise, if your’re interested in competing against me and the other 500+ participants, you can register for the contest yourself.

May the best SEO specialist win!

Busby Web Solutions Search Engine Optimisation Challenge

Photo Credit: Martineric

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What do you think of new year’s resolutions? I for one am not a big fan, but Chris Brogan had a good idea for setting goals in the new year. Since 2006, he has been using a few simple words to guide him towards achieving his goals.

The simplicity of such a strategy makes it easier to keep focused on the tasks at hand. It also makes it easier to know whether or not you have even reached your goals, because the measuring stick is very easy to read. I’ve decided to implore his strategy with these three goals in mind: listen, engage, and develop.

Listen

This is something that I began doing more of shortly after I created this blog. However, it is still an area of importance that deserves attention. Listening means finding more sources of information I find interesting and making note of them.

I also need to try to listen more on the social networks (Twitter, FriendFeed, and the like). This is an area where I’m having difficulty in filtering the signal from the noise. I probably need to start making use of some nifty tools like TweetDeck or PeopleBrowsr to help me to achieve this.

Engage

In the immutable words of Captain Picard (oh, wait, it’s actually just one word). Listening alone is not enough. I need to engage those who provide the words of wisdom I find fascinating. This is something I know I have not done enough of, so I’ve made it one of my goals this year.

Most of the discussions I had last year took place in comments on blogs. I don’t plan on abandoning commenting on blogs, as it is still a great way to remain involved. However, I will make more of an effort this year to try to increase my involvement in the social networks. Last year, the majority of my involvement on social networks came from broadcasting my blog and my Google Reader shared items to FriendFeed.

Develop

I will try to develop more useful tools and gadgets for whatever interests me at the moment. I’ve developed some nice free tools and iGoogle gadgets (most recently my Amazon Search gadget), and I hope to do more this year.

Development will not just be limited to programming. I also intend to develop more useful and interesting content for GeekLad as well as MakeUseOf. I would say I intend improve my own personal development as well, but I find that to be way too cliché and generic. This year I’ll just stick to programming and content.

Photo Credit: scottwills.

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Do you use FeedBurner for your blog feed(s)? Are you annoyed that the article links are feeds.feedburner.com URLs rather than the URLs of the original articles? This bothered me for some time until I was finally able to figure out what was causing it and how to prevent it from happening.

The reason FeedBurner changes the title URLs for your articles is so that it can track clicks on them. If you are not interested in such stats, you can disable item link clicks. With this feature disabled, the links in the article titles for your feed will contain the URL for the original article. To disable item link clicks:

1. View your feeds in FeedBurner
2. Click on the feed title to jump to the Analyze tab for that feed.
3. Click on Configure Stats.
4. Disable the checkbox for Item link clicks.
5. Click Save.

Disabling Item link clicks

I’ve seen this process for disabling FeedBurner redirects mentioned on a number of other blogs:

• Using FeedBurner may hurt your PageRank!
• Disable the Feedburner Redirect
• Blogging Tip: Turn off FeedBurner Redirect in RSS Feeds

I do not believe that the FeedBurner redirect will actually affect PageRank in any way. According to the first comment in the first article, FeedBurner uses a 302 HTTP status code to perform the redirect. From what I gather in Matt Cutts‘ article about 302 redirects, Google will honor 302 redirects 99% of the time.

Another thing you can do to reclaim your feed is to put your feed on a subdomain. For instance, I have my feed on http://feeds.geeklad.com/GeekLad. To set this up:

1. Navigate to the MyBrand feature within your Account configuration.
2. Enter the URL you wish to host the feed on.
3. Create a CNAME DNS entry for that address, as specified by the instructions.  You will have to do this through your host/DNS provider.

Setting up MyBrand

If you’re using AdSense for feeds, the CNAME will be a feedproxy.ghs.google.com address (you’ll append your Google Account signon to it).  If you aren’t, the CNAME will be feeds.feedburner.com.  Once you have MyBrands configured, be sure to update your site to link to the new feed URL.

Disabling item link clicks and using MyBrands are two great ways to make your usage of FeedBurner a bit more transparent to your readers. It also makes life a bit easier for them, if they spend a lot of their time in their feed readers. If they want to site your article, they no longer have to click through the FeedBurner link for the sole purpose of obtaining the original article URL.

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I have a couple of Google Alerts set up to track the mention of GeekLad and ForeverSMS on other websites. You can do the same with the names of your blogs or websites. Tracking your names and brands is particularly useful when they are mentioned on blogs. Blog articles provide you with perfect opportunities to respond by replying with comments.

Unfortunately, there were some recent changes to Google Blog Search that makes this strategy a little more difficult. Google Blog Search now includes blogrolled links within the search results. That means if someone has blogrolled your site, every time they post a new article or page, the article or page appears in the results when you search for your name. You will also receive a Google Alert when the article is posted, because the blog has your site blogrolled.

Although the alerts now include blogroll links, all is not lost. It is possible to discern between alerts coming as a result of a blogroll and those from the direct mention of your name. When you receive an alert from a page where you’ve been blogrolled, you’ll see your blog/site name and a · symbol (that’s a bullet, not a period) separating it between other blogrolled links. Essentially, you can ignore alerts with those bullets.

Using Google Alerts to track your blog or website also helps to track inbound links to your sites. It’s a nice and simple little tool to add to your SEO toolbelt.

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Izea recently ran a promotion for Kmart that would offer influential bloggers a $500 Kmart gift card, if they blogged about their experience at the store. In addition to offering the bloggers gift cards, they also gave them an additional $500 gift card to offer as a prize to one of their readers. Whether or not you agree with the ethics of the campaign, you have to admit that it was quite brilliant.

Not only did Izea manage to promote Kmart to thousands of blog readers and Twitterers, but the discussion within the blogosphere has generated even more buzz for Kmart, Izea, and the bloggers that participated. Many criticized the participants for writing paid posts. Others weren’t so critical and had no problems with it. Regardless of whether they agreed with the campaign or not, it got a lot of people talking about it.

Chris Brogan responded to the criticism with his thoughts on advertising and trust. I seriously doubt if Brogan and other participants have seen a measurable decrease in followers and subscribers. If anything, the controversy and other discussions may have actually helped to raise awareness of their blogs and their presence within the social networks. The situation demonstrates that any press is good press.

Participants’ Articles

Chris Brogan: Sponsored Post-Kmart Holiday Shopping Dad Style
Loren Feldman: Kmart FTW
Michelle Madhok: Sponsored Post: Win $500 From Kmart And Do Your Holiday Shopping In One Fell Swoop
Jeremy Schoemaker: What Would You Spend $500 At Kmart On?
Julie Roy: My Kmart Shopping Spree
Wendy Piersall: Enter to Win a $500 Kmart Gift Card for Christmas

Recent Articles about Izea and Paid Posts

Cleaning up after a social media shitstorm
Understanding Izea’s Sponsored Blogging Service
Has Paid Posting Finally Matured? And Is Ted Murphy a Genius or What?
Jeremiah Owyang Inserts Foot In Mouth (Again) Over IZEA Sponsored Posts
Paid Posts: Why they’re not that bad, but why you shouldn’t do them
Kmart embracing social media in a unique way
Paid Posts, Izea, Kmart, Sears, Social Media, Reputations and Cash Money
Are Paid Posts now acceptable on blogs? (poll)

And the list goes on and on… The biggest beneficiary of the campaign was not Kmart, the bloggers, or the blog readers. Without a doubt, Izea has received the most benefit. Izea has raised awareness of its services to even more bloggers. Many will join PayPerPost and SocialSpark as a result, and new advertisers will be drawn as well.

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It’s not a big secret that promoting others is a great way to make friends online, as well as promote yourself. In doing so, you site sources of great information and demonstrate to others that you can be a trusted source as well. In accordance with that thought, I’d like to introduce you to a few other blogs I really enjoy reading and that you may enjoy reading as well.

Bwana.org

I really have to put Bwana at the top, as he has been a great inspiration to me not only in blogging but in my career as well. I met Bwana over ten years ago, when we worked together at the computer labs on campus at the University of Florida. Bwana and I had many similar interests we more or less became instant friends when we first met at work.

Bwana is well versed in the world of blogging and social media. I often seek his valuable knowledge when I’m navigating the sea of social networks, and attempting to learn what I can from them. He’s also a big-time gadget guy and if you are too, you definitely need to follow his blogs. Although he probably most often blogs about Apple products, he’s been known to blog about other gadgets too. Be sure to check out Bwana.org as well as Bwana.TV.

My Thoughts on Social Media

Michael Fruchter is a frequent guest poster on Louis Gray’s blog, which is how I came to find him.  He is an expert in social media and often writes about it in the context of search engine optimization.  Mike has been another great source for information in learning more about social networks and media.  Like Bwana and me, he also happens to be a resident of the great state of Florida.

The 2.0 Life

David Pierce is a fellow author on MakeUseOf, and is an Internet evangalist and provides info about great web and desktop tools.  He does an excellent job of catering to novice computer users, yet his articles are appealing to more seasoned users as well.  He writes on a variety of topics that includes desktop applications, video games, Internet websites and tools.

Shimon Sandler

Shimon Sandler is an expert on Internet Marketing and search engine optimization.  Like me, he does not tend to update his blog on a daily basis.  However, you can be sure that when he does write a new post that it will be filled with intriguing information about SEO.  If you want to learn more about what an SEO consultant does, look no further.

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In creating a new blog, I’ve found myself in need of new friends.  No there’s nothing wrong with my old friends, but most of them aren’t geeks like me.  I’m not talking about getting as many people on Twitter following me as possible, just for the sake of doing so.  I want to befriend the folks that write the stuff I’m interested in reading and learning about.  So how does one go about making new friends, when they have few or none to begin with?

Link Love

Bloggers love link love.  Linking to an article on another blog that you found interesting, along with some of your own thoughts is a great way to attract someone’s attention. This is particularly true for blogs that have trackbacks enabled, as the owner of the blog will be notified via trackback that you linked to them.  Sending flowers has been known to work as well, but that can get expensive.

Blogrolling

Adding a blog to your blogroll is even better than a link to a single article.  When you add someone to your blogroll, every page on your blog will link to them!  It’s sending lots of link love with one simple act.  If those bloggers also have blogrolls they will often reciprocate.  Regardless, they will appreciate your act of kindness and you will likely have made a new friend.  No one appreciates the power of blogrolling more than I do.

One problem with blogrolling is that unless they watch their inbound links closely or you tell them, other bloggers will be unaware they’ve been added to your blogroll.  You could always give someone the 1-2 punch by blogrolling them as well as linking directly to an interesting article.  If the other blogger has trackbacks enabled, it is likely they will read your article and may notice the blogroll link to them as well.  Otherwise, you will need to contact them directly to inform them of your act of kindness.

Commenting on Other Blogs

Providing your words of wisdom on other blogs is another good way to make friends.  It will likely take more than just a comment or two.  As you engage in more discussions within comments, the blogger will start to notice.  Eventually they may start commenting on your articles, Tweet you, etc.  Although it doesn’t have quite the same initial impact as link love and blogrolling, it can be just as effective.

Email

With all the attention that microblogging gets these days, people seem to forget that everyone still reads their email.  If you frequent a blog that posts interesting and relevant content to your blog, send the blogger an email and solicit them for a guest post.  Send them an email to just say, “Hi.  I really like your writing!”

Be careful not to send the latter type of message in a blog article comment post.  Even if you are genuine in expressing your appreciation for the blogger, it may be confused as a comment intended just to drive traffic to your blog.  If you want to just say hi to make the other blogger aware of your existsance, do it in an email.

Just as I use these methods to contact others, I emplore you to do the same with me as well as other bloggers.  If you’d like to contact me via email, I can be reached at geeklad [at] geeklad [dot] com.

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A few days ago I got an email from Google telling me that I had been whitelisted to use Google Friend Connect. I took a glance at the Friend Connect pages, fooled around with it a little bit, but I didn’t yet put any widgets on my site. Then, yesterday the Official Google Blog announced that Friend Connect is now available (the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog announced it as well). Yesterday, Bwana made a nice write up on three ways to utilize Google Friend Connect, so I decided to go ahead and put it up on GeekLad.

I went ahead and put up two Friend Connect gadgets: the member gadget and the wall gadget. The member gadget allows folks to join your community and make use of other widgets. Unless you allow anonymous posting on your wall, people will need a way to join you. I decided to put up a seperate page for my wall, just as Is This Stupid? did in setting up the reader wall there.

Initially I was running into problems when I tried to put the wall on a separate page. The WordPress post-processing was messing up the JavaScript code for the wall gadget and it was driving me insane! Unfortunately, by default WordPress has no mechanism for preventing the post-processing of pages and posts. Ergo the Raw HTML Plugin for WordPress. Once I installed the plugin, I just placed the JavaScript code for the Friend Connect wall gadget between

<!--start_raw-->
and
<!--end_raw-->

tags. Then the gadget worked just fine. You may have pulled out all your hair if you’ve ever tried to place bookmarklets or other JavaScript code directly into WordPress posts and pages. I don’t know what to tell you about your hair, but at least you can have your sanity back with the Raw HTML Plugin.  Plus you’ll be able to set up a whole separate page for your wall.

Right now Michael Fruchter is the only one that has joined my community. Hopefully after this post he and I will have some company. If you do join my community, please feel free to stop by my wall and say hello.  If you start making use of Friend Connect communities on other websites, you’ll probably want to update your Google profile as Chris Brogan has suggested. You can update your profile here.

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Today, Ann Smarty posted the first guest post on my blog. She wrote up a great article on how to find people that share your interests. I solicited her and other MakeUseOf.com authors to guest post for me on my blog. I’d like to open the invitation to anyone else who is interested in making a guest post.

Chris Brogan says it is important to promote others, and I could not agree more. This is something I would like to often on GeekLad. I’m fortunate in that I have the opportunity to do it early too, as this blog will be a mere three months old tomorrow.

I would also be more than glad to guest post for you as well, if you’d like to have me do so. Exchanging guest posts is a great way for bloggers to promote each other, and it is fundamentally the same as posting trackbacks. Trackbacks are essentially guest posts on a micro level. Exchanging entire articles across blogs takes place at a macro level.

If you’re a blogger, please do feel free to offer up posts to me on anything related to technology. The sky is the limit! I don’t even mind if you use affiliate links in your articles, but I do ask that you disclose them.  Although there is no obligation for reciprocity, I would certainly appreciate it if you linked to your guest post (or any GeekLad posts you find interesting) from your own blog(s).

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I recently made the move to install Disqus here on GeekLad. I had been running it on WealthBoy for a while and decided to go ahead and install it here as well. I did also take a look at IntenseDebate, but in the end Disqus won out.

First, let’s take a look at the major common features between them:

• Comment Threading – By default, WordPress comments do not allow threading, and all comments appear in a single thread. With Disqus and IntenseDebate, a thread is created when responses are posted to other comments.
• Reply by Email – When responses are made to other comments, they are sent via email. A reply to the email sent will post right into the comment thread. There is no need to revisit the post to reply.
• Comment Synchronization – Comments are synchronized between WordPress’ built-in system and Disqus/IntenseDebate
• Comment Voting/Ranking
• Importing Existing Comments
• Commenter Profiles
• Moderation
• RSS Feeds
• Gravatar Support
  

All of these features make sense and are relatively comparable between the two. Here are the IntenseDebate features that are lacking in Disqus:

• Twitter and FriendFeed integration
• Visual Appeal – I think that IntenseDebate comment threads have a better overall look and feel to them.

Not a particularly long list. Now for the features in Disqus that are lacking in IntenseDebate:

• API
• Full Comment History in Profiles
• Community Page – The community page mirrors post/comment activity on the blog, but also allows Disqus members to start new discussions.

Not a particularly long list either. I think they are both great products. If you like the Twitter and FriendFeed integration that IntenseDebate offers, that feature may be what sways you toward IntenseDebate. However, if you’re concerned about search engine optiimzation, then Disqus is probably the better choice.

The community page for your blog will contain backlinks to your posts. That can help to boost your status with the search engines. The profile pages of the folks that comment on your blog will have backlinks to the posts as well. The more folks you have commenting on your blog, the more backlinks you will receive from profile pages.

IntenseDebate was recently acquired by Automattic (creators of WordPress.com), so they will most definitely be working on tightening up the integration with WordPress. I believe that they recently updated the WordPress plugin to have WordPress display the comments, rather than displaying them via JavaScript. That’s definitely a good step towards making it more search engine friendly. I’d like to also see them make changes to the profile pages, to allow people (and search engines) to see all of the comments that IntenseDebate users have posted.

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As far as all of my blogs have gone, GeekLad really has started with a bang. I never really had this kind of blogular momentum (I think I just made that up).  My other two blogs (jsierra.net and WealthBoy) have been plagued with inactivity.  Although in WealthBoy’s defense, it has fallen back mostly due to my efforts on GeekLad.  I really have no excuse for having neglected jsierra.net other than my own laziness and lack of direction with that blog.

GeekLad has been a great experience in trying to find my identity online.  I can’t say that I’ve truly found my online identity yet, but I think I’m probably closer than I’ve ever been.  Today I read an article by Chris Brogan about what he would do if he started today.  Having “just started” only a few months ago, it’s as though he wrote the article just for me.  Thanks Chris!

It was actually quite reassuring to know that so far I’ve been doing a lot of things right.  There are also a few things that I could be doing better, and Chris has helped to bring some of those things to light.

Before it All: Listening

Earlier this month, when I spoke about my experience as a microblogging n00b, I discussed my approach to getting started with microblogging.  Essentially, I started following my good friend Bwana and some of the folks that he follows.  Bwana and I are of like minds and have many common interests, so I knew he would be a good place to start.

Microblogging services like Twitter and FriendFeed can be a great place to start listening.  In addition to following some of the people Bwana was following, I started reading their blogs as well.  That’s how I came across Chris’ article.  I’ve been following his blog for a while now.

First Platform: A Blog

Got that covered, you’re reading it. 

Second Step: Outposts

I more or less started my outposts at the same time I did this blog.  However, I really have not done a good job of promoting my outposts on the blog.  I also haven’t really used them to their full potential.  I’m on all three that Chris mentioned (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook) and many more.  I think that FriendFeed is a very good one to add to the list of outposts.  It’s a great place to aggregate all of your outposts in one place.

Third Step: Audience

This is what I’ve really struggled with the most.  I think the biggest reason why is because I haven’t listened enough.  Chris put listening as step number 0 for good reason.  You can’t just fabricate a reputation overnight.  You can’t build a good reputation by screaming at the top of a mountain like a lunatic and expect people to listen to your every word.  You have to earn your reputation and when you do you will reap the rewards.

In order to build a good reputation, you’ve got to listen to what people have to say and interact directly with them.  I’ve been struggling to find a good platform for doing this but I’m experimenting with them all of the time.  Of the ones I’ve seen so far, I think FriendFeed has gotten the most attention.  I like the forum-like qualities of FriendFeed, and I think it will be a great place to get to know some sharp people.

I also like DISQUS because of the way blog articles become forum posts and the comments are the thread that follows the initial discussion.  I also like DISQUS for SEO reasons, but that’s another post for another day.

Fourth Step: Experiment

I’m definitely experimenting and having fun with it.  For instance, last night I found a good article about copywriting, SEO, and blogging with a FriendFeed search for SEO on DISQUS.  It was actually a rather cool way to combine both of the services I’ve been experimenting with recently.  I’ll continue to experiment as I always do, and I’ll be sure to share all of the interesting things I find here.

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I was very surprised when I learned that I had quickly increased to a PageRank of 3 within less than 30 days of having created this blog.  A few weeks later, I reflected upon some of the things that may have contributed to improving my PageRank. More recently, I came across some additional information that may actually provide the real reason I rose so quickly.

So what is the secret to going from a PageRank 0 to 3 in less than 30 days?  It’s actually quite simple.  Have your site added to a blogroll on a site with PageRank.  The incoming links from the blogroll must not be nofollow links, otherwise they will not contribute to your PageRank.

Notice I said simple, not easy.  If you already have a blog with PageRank or a very good friend that has a PageRanked blog, then it is simple and easy.  If not, go out and make some friends.  I added GeekLad to my blogroll on WealthBoy, and I believe it is the number one factor in what increased my PageRank so quickly.

Last month, I developed a Greasemonkey script for providing nofollow information in Google Webmaster Tools.  I took a look at the incoming links for http://geeklad.com and what I found was very interesting.  There were only a handful of incoming links (that were not nofollow) to my site that had a PageRank, and the majority of them coming from WealthBoy.  There were only three other inbound links that were not nofollow, had PageRank, and did not come from WealthBoy:

• http://www.seo-scientist.com/
• http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/GeekLad/
• http://e-businessadvantage.com/blogging-tools/the-unlimited-search-engine-for-dofollow-blogs/

In all, I have 15 inbound links that are not nofollow with PR 1-3.  I have 154 inbound links that are PR 0 that are not nofollow.  Of the 154 inbound links, only 29 of them are coming from sites other than WealthBoy.  I think this is all very compelling evidence that all it takes to increase your PageRank quickly is to be placed on the blogroll of a site with PageRank.

When I came to the realization as to why my PageRank increased so quickly, it did take some of the wind out of my sails.  It wasn’t due to all the time and effort I spent in developing lots of useful and relevant information.  It was because I took 10 seconds to add myself to my blogroll on another blog.

However, it was an important discovery to make and share.  I was compelled to find the answer, and in the process I’ve learned a lot about search engine optimization.  I also developed a useful tool for nofollow link analysis.

I’m also working on a server-side tool.  It will allow people that do not use FireFox and Greasemonkey to perform external link analysis as well.  The server-side tool I’m working on helped me perform the analysis I shared here, but it is not yet ready for production.  You can be certain that I will share it with the masses as soon as it is ready.

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In 2007, a micro-blogging service called Twitter took the ‘Net by storm.  I will often jump onto public (and sometimes private) betas to check out new products, but for some reason Twitter never grabbed me.  In real life I am somewhat social, but online I never really developed the kind of presence I would have liked.  On the other hand, my college buddy Bwana did a much better job of developing an online presence over the course of many years.

What Does Microblogging Mean for Me?

For Bwana and other folks like him, Twitter became a natural extension for blogging and podcasting.  It became a new and exciting medium to broadcast their wisdom to the masses.  For someone like me lacking online presence, it provided little value.  Eventually it became something I could not ignore, so I decided to give it another shot.  I’ve probed Bwana for answers and he has helped me to try to get a good handle on social networks and microblogging.

I recently signed up for Twitter, FriendFeed, and a host of other microblogging and social networking services.  I also came across a nice service called Ping.fm, that allows you to post to multiple social networks simultaneously.  I have occasionally posted to some of the microblogging services, but as I told Bwana, it seemed to me that it was much like a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it.

For those like me who are trying to develop an online presence, micro-blogging is very much like blogging.  Initially you are talking to the wind and there is no one else around to hear you.  However, traditional blogging does have one advantage over micro-blogging: search engines.  As you develop more content on your blog, you become a legitimate source of good information for search engines.  People will find you via search engines when they seek the information you are providing.

How Do You Build a Following?

So what is a microblogging n00b to do?  Well, a lot of people on Twitter will simply follow the people that follow them.  If you follow 10,000 different people, you are bound to have a few hundred if not thousands of people following you.  This is certainly one approach to get a lot of people to follow you.  Unfortunately, if you take this route, you will encounter a lot of noise as well.

You may find it difficult to filter information in which you may actually be interested, if you intend to use Twitter as a source of information as well as a medium for dispensing it.  If a lot of the people you follow also follow a lot of people, they may not hear the interesting things you have to say or may not really even care to listen to you.  Twitterviews has a nice article explaining that followers are not the same as having reach.

Rather than going and following thousands of people, I decided to start off by following some of the people that Bwana follows.  Bwana only follows a few of the people he’s really interested in following, which is an approach I like.  It results in a lot less noise and more useful information.  Unfortunately, for a microblogging n00b like me it won’t result in a lot of people following me on Twitter.

There Is No Silver Bullet

I’ve more or less come to the conclusion that there is really no quick and easy way to build a large following when it comes to microblogging.  The process is nearly identical to building a following for a normal blog.  I will attempt to build a true following by publishing interesting and useful content on my blog.

I will also do my best to engage and participate in insightful and interesting conversations within the social networks.  Participating in the discussions that take place within comments on other popular blogs is another good way to get noticed.  I will also make guest blog posts on occasion (if invited to do so), to help promote myself on the blogs with similar content (becoming a Make Use Of author is definitely a step in the right direction).

It is no easy task to build a following in this manner, but I think it will produce the best results.  It takes a lot time and effort, but essentially this is how people like Chris Brogan and Chris Pirillo have done it.  If I grow impatient, I can always just bring up the followers list for one of these guys and follow everyone that follows them.

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Last month, I read Jimmy Roger’s tips & sites for finding freelance blogging work. At the end of the article he mentions that Make Use Of is always seeking writers. I decided to offer my services and I contacted them.

A few days later, Mark O’Neil (managing editor for Make Use Of) contacted me and allowed me to join the team! I think it will be a good opportunity for me to promote GeekLad. It will also give me another place to share some of the great software tools and sites I come across from time to time.

My first article was published just a few days ago. I wrote about a tool to turn Windows Live Writer into a portable app. Initially I was going to blog about it here, but later I decided it would make a great article for Make Use Of. I’ve already submitted my second article as well. Hopefully it gets approved and will get posted soon.

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