ibrian uses DoFollow - here’s more DoFollow blogs

So my past couple of entries were about connecting to blogs for SEO purposes, only to find that I’d been foiled by “external nofollow”, as I had forefox set to only find “nofollow”.
Well, I’ve been looking around and found a few lists online showing blogs that “dofollow” - ie, have removed nofollow to allow live […]

Some more great Wordpress Plugins

Writing on the fly here - but in an attempt to help make my sites more useful and professional looking, I’ve just applied a couple of key Wordpress plugins for some of the sites, and will finish the rest later:
Daily Top Posts - allows the display of most popular posts today, and of all time
WP-Email […]

Wordpress: Images with excerpt in categories

So bloody annoying - you run a news site, include images with the post, then set up excerpts in your categories a) because it’s easier to read, and b)to minimise duplication of content.
But the image you post with your story doesn’t display with the excerpt…
Just spend a while this evening trying to crack this (or […]

Revenue Share - the next webmaster economy?

Recently I’ve noticed an emerging new trend online - revenue share as a business model applied to forums, blogs, and news communities.
The idea is simple - whatever advertising revenues the site earns is split with the active community members.
The most common way this is set up is via contextual advertising accounts, such as Google Adsense, […]

Paid blog posts - a closing window of opportunity

I’ve tested out the ReviewMe service previously, but after they opened their campaign marketplace I’ve been tempted to try them again and run a few campaigns - especially after Shoemoney’s recommendation and decent quality of some of the paid for reviews.
Anyway, results have come in from the weekend - so far variable as expected.
There’s a […]

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 […]

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 […]

Tip: Google indexing faster via Google Blog Search pings?

Marketing Pilgrim reports - and says it has confirmed - webmaster chatter suggesting that pinging Google’s blog search service will get your blog indexed faster.
This sounds remarkably similar to last year when it was demonstrated that adding your blog feed to “my yahoo” also expedited indexing.
So if you’re using Wordpress and/or vbseo, there’s a new […]

Blogger hit by autogenerating account bot?

Has Blogger been hit by an autogenerating account bot?
Over the past few days I’ve been receiving a wave of blog spam from SEO lab - all of it to blogspot accounts - and all built around hyphenated money keywords ending in a seemingly random 2 or 3 alphanumeric characters.
For example:
college-loans-zet.blogspot.com
free-slots-lol.blogspot.com
flexeril-huf.blogspot.com
All of them are running a […]

Google Adsense testing new link title formats?

Interesting - just visited one of my news sites in development, and noticed something different with Adsense.
Normally, the keyword titles are simply bold text.
However, I’m now seeing both italicised bolded and italicised unbolded keyword titles - here’s two screenshots, side by side, of the same page after refreshing - notice the normal ad highlighted at […]

How I’ve increased Adsense earnings by 50%

I’m not a huge Adsense earner, but at the beginning of this month I decided to more aggressively try to increase my revenues.
I’ve now seen a 50+% increase in my Adsense earnings since I began.
What does that mean in real terms? It means my earnings would now comfortably pay off the monthly mortgage repayments […]

Researching blog networks

There are two issues I’m currently researching:
1. Existing blog networks
I run a few blogs, but never really looked at networking them - but recently I’ve begun looking into the idea of integrating them into existing blog networks.
Question is - which ones are available, and which ones could help leverage actual traffic?
A couple of sites I’ve […]

Converting b2evolution to Wordpress

I have some b2evolution installs from a couple of years ago, a couple of which have been used and really need updating to a more efficient software platform - such as Wordpress.
However, there is no official Wordpress converter from b2evolution. Apparently, what complicates matters is that the database structure changes significantly in successive b2evolution […]

Bye bye Brian’s Business Blog

Platinax is currently undergoing redevelopment, and with that it’s time to say bye bye to Brian’s Business Blog.
The key reason?
It’s a crap blog.
I read various other blogs online, and the good ones are:
*fresh!
*informative!
*interesting!
I’ve managed to fail on all 3 here.
I have some excuse, though - since the last Platinax redevelopment I found myself separating the […]

Who reads Guy Kawasaki?

Graywolf asks if Guy Kawasaki needs branding help.
Main reason is the change of name.
Originally it was “Guy Kawasaki’s blog”.
Then it was “Signum sine tinnitus-by Guy Kawasaki”.
Now it’s “How to change the world”?
That has a social conscience/spirituality philosophy about it - not a VC blog.
Plus the constant change in identity kills branding.
Simply put, Guy […]

Platinax re-opens comments without requiring registration

After reading up further on Wordpress Plugins I’ve been applying a couple of key plugins.
The first is Did you pass math? installed across Platinax.
This means I can feel confident about re-opening comments to guests without requiring registration, after a pretty severe attack of spam a few months ago meant I had to close them off.
Hopefully […]

Essential plugins for Wordpress

Michael Gray posts a great list of SEO plugins for Wordpress.
I’ve been referencing this over the past week to look for plugins I really should be using.
Namely because so far I haven’t been using any Wordpress plugins.
As I use Wordpress a lot as a Content Management Solution (including for Platinax) I definitely need use […]

Moniker vs Platinax

Platinax is currently under sustained attack from a wave of automated blog comment spam, by what looks like one of the most aggressive amateurs I’ve ever had to deal with.
The automated comment spam is all promoting a raft of finance, pharma, and gambling affiliate sites registered - and hosted - with Moniker.com.
The size of the […]

Word of Mouth: the Marketing Figures

Church of the Customer highlights some interesting stats about Word of Mouth as an engine for business growth.
The figures come from a study by the London School of Economics:

* A 7% increase in positive word of mouth unlocks 1% additional company growth
* A 2% reduction in negative […]

Whatever happened to Adam Bosworth?

So I’m checking out some old blog subscriptions, when I find Adam Bosworth as a Google blogger recommended as worth reading, via Threadwatch last year.
But he apparently hasn’t posted since November 2005.
That’s a shame, because when you check out posts such as his presentation for Salesforce.com - in which he highlights the need for a […]