Free blog sites

Found a nice list of free blog sites on my travels:
Blogger
Wordpress
Live Journal
SelectaBlog
Blog Text.org
Now Blogging.net
Okay Blog.net
Dakota Blogs
Out Blogger
Blog Thing
Daria Be
Blogg Host.net
The Blogs.net
From a SEO perspective, they offer an opportunity to build up a network - even across different themes - and use them to backlink to main sites and clients you want to power.
The drawback? Relying […]

Rats!

So we’ve been living in our new house for over 6 months and everyone was nagging me for a pet.
I don’t feel settled enough to have a dog as yet - especially as I know I’d be the one who ended up walking it twice a day, which I seriously do not have time for. […]

The Portalisation of the Web

I’m increasingly finding myself portalising websites.
Sure, I have lots of online communities - but by themselves they are looking increasingly weak.
So now I’m looking to develop those communities into portals - that means building around the community element to provide news, article, and blog services.
By doing so, I see portalisation adding increasing value to visitors […]

Madeleine McCann - what about parental responsibility?

What has happened to far to Madeleine McCann and her family is obviously tragic and heart-wrenching.
There are so many campaigns going around to help find her that I couldn’t even begin to start.
But - am I the only person thinking “Parental Responsibility?” Such as you never leave a 3 year old unattended in a room […]

Revenue share for vbulletin

I’m currently looking at the possibility of setting up revenue share on one or more of my forums.
Just for reference, here are a couple of the plugins I’m currently looking at:
vB Ad Management 3.1 (Ad Sharing Edition)
Adsense Revenue Sharing for 3.5.x and 3.6.x
A number of revenue share forums can be found listed here:
AdSense Revenue Sharing […]

Paid links - no argument, just dealing with it

Matt Cutts is asking for spam reports on link selling, and doesn’t receive a warm welcome from SEO’s regarding Google’s newest economic policy.
Let’s look at what Matt’s actually saying:
1. Google thinks paid links really impact Google
2. Google is testing at least two new algos to spot and devalue paid links
3. Matt wants reports on live […]

ReviewMe: Benefits, hazards, and overall use

ReviewMe is one of a number of services that pays bloggers to review websites. Simple.
The aim is to try and generate some kind of buzz for sites leveraging the blogosphere, and there has certainly been no shortage of nervous comments about the potential for commercial corruption of the blogosphere.
Anyway, when Aaron announced discounts on the […]

Fight complacency: make your websites even better

It’s easy to feel comfortable when a website is successful, but this is an illusion created by a sense of complacency.
Every time you raise a site’s profile and rankings, you are pushing others down. SEO is a zero sum game - winners do so at the expense of losers.
Many SEO’s will look at their client […]

Opportunities in a multi-tiered internet

With the growth of social media has come a massive fragmentation of the internet into individual tiers which in themselves are microcosms of a larger whole.
These microcosms aren’t necessarily small - YouTube, Digg, Flickr - are all structures built into the internet which are mini-internets unto themselves.
Similar rules apply, similar opportunities apply.
I already knew this […]

Google Adsense changes format

It made news when Google changed the ads format for AdWords from a blue background to yellow (how long before Yahoo! copy this? :) ).
However, I’ve not seen any mention the fact that Adsense has also been changed - instead of the default little box with text stating Ads by Gooooogle, we now get an […]

Quality content indicators for human users

I’ve posted before about possible quality indicators for Google, so now we’re going to look at a couple of quality indicators for human users.
Michael Gray posts a nice set of indicators for providing value content for human users:
1. Create a Glossary
2. Use Video and Podcasts
3. Do Interviews
4. Provide Conference Coverage
5. Cover News and Emerging Trends
In […]

Resources for improving conversions

While looking for information on PPC management, I’ve found an interesting number of resources about improving conversions.
While many of these are focused on the PPC market, the organic SEO’s like myself ignore these at our peril.

Four Steps To Better Business Leads From Search
Podcast: Use Feedback to Boost Lead Generation
Do You Recognize the 4 Warning Signs […]

vbulletin SEO

When it comes to SEO for vbulletin, there are a few simple approaches you can take that most vb admins simply do not understand:
1. Duplicate content
I’ve already listed some of the serious duplicate content problems that vbulletin has, and how to address them.
However, despite being given a SEO perspective, some vb admins think they are […]

How to make money online

Someone in one of my forums asked how they could legitimately and profitably make money online.
I answered: Seeking a solid scam free/completely LEGITIMATE way to make lots of $$$ on the NET.
I didn’t even begin to address advertising revenues and income from internet and webdevelopment skills, because I’m presuming this is still too much for […]

Aged domains vs branding new ones

One of the big mistakes I’ve made recently is to take some older domains and try to launch new content on them for news portals.
Even though the domains are like 3+ years old, they haven’t had much of a search history on Google. The result is that they are effectively being treated the same as […]

Windows XP - anyone seeing weird behaviour past few days?

Anyone else had any problems the past few days with Windows XP programs?
McAfee crashed a couple of days ago on an update, and after the PC restarted McAfee wouldn’t load up.
I contacted McAfee, where a technician told me it was a known conflict with Zonealarm.
I unstalled Zonealarm, uninstalled/reinstalled McAfee and it worked fine again.
However, WS_FTP […]

Need links? Follow the breadcrumbs

I posted before that I was going to follow the breadcrumbs another SEO had left for searching for cheap links in a certain sector.
However, something I’ve always done when pushed is to follow the breadcrumbs for links left around from SEO activity.
For example:
1. Following advertisers
If you see a site selling links in your vertical, do […]

Using SEO to fight scams

I had someone turn up at Platinax, warm themselves up to members - and then invite others to be “mentored” by him - by paying $1k to join what appears by all accounts to be a pyramid scheme.
The scheme is entirely based on reselling rights to resell rights for a bunch of junk ebooks and/or […]

Would be nice if you could select UK sources in Google News UK

On Google.co.uk search, you can opt for “Web” or “UK” only results.
Wouldn’t be nice if you could do the same on Google.co.uk’s News section?
That way, if I’m searching the news by keyword - ie, “Ford” - I would be more likely to find something about Ford cars and the UK car industry relating to “Ford” […]

Getting free tips from a SEO dumbass

Some dumbass from a big name SEO company just emailed my contact address at one of my sites. He’s looking to build links to targeted pages for websites owned by one of the UK’s biggest banks.
Sure, I don’t mind a link purchase approach - but I don’t expect fucking pennies for links on an aged […]