Australian online news and views

Received an email about another analytics service today.

http://crazyegg.com/

I have just started testing it and so far it seems to work quite well. It is defintiely worth checking out there are few different tools that they have
For example i like the “heat map” imaging tool example below:-

It may not really tell you anything different but it does look cool. Not to be confused with eye tracking software but it looks great.
Another image to put into your consultants folder.

Check it out signing up is free for now with a limited account. BTW I don’t get anything from this I wish I did.

In an hurry again.

Copywriting is hard its not something that just roles off your puters keyboard, well not for me anyway. I then suggest that quality blogging can also be hard, it is something that you should at least briefly plan out and think about before you do. It is very easy in a rush of ideas or a rush to get content into your blog to just start typing. If you do not have good content and I mean by that easy to consume content that is on topic you will not have much success. That is you probably won’t get any repeat visitors “stickiness” on your blog.

One of the key successes of a blog is in bound links and email or subscriber users.

I often find myself typing away on my laptop before I have even start thinking about what it is that really want to communicate.

Who am I writing for?
What am I trying to say?

Don’t forget when you publish information anyone can see. So you should always be putting your best foot forward. With this in mind I have decided to try and fix up all of my previous posts and sites and find out the best way to do it. I have just added this blog to my blogroll and suggest you take a look.

This blog covers a number of copywriting issues and i think they cover them well.

such topics as :

1. Tips for designing the ultimate landing page
2. SEO copywriting
3. 10 effective ways to get more blog subscribers

and much much more check it out its good stuff.

Blogs, Blogging, Bloggers there are millions of them, search almost any subject and a blog is returned in the SERP.

So what is a blog anyway?

Well if you weren’t aware you are reading one now !

According to wikipedia a blog is a website where entries are made and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

They can provide commentary or news on any subject many are personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.

Here are a few other definitions from “pro blogger”:

‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ ‘A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.’ Source

‘From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ Source

‘A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.’ Source

‘A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.’ Source

‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’ Source.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic - there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies - blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

This is a complete copy of the posting from http://seo4wordpress.wordpress.com

I wanted to keep a copy for myself and so have grabbed the compete entry.

Or you could also check out this page it seems to have the ultimate in content word press management.

problem at the moment is i can;t get it to work !!!! argh

Running a WordPress Blog is best done on you own Domain, and for the best results you need to create Search Engine Friendly URL’s.
This means instead of a post link like

http://seo4wordpress.wordpress.com/page=33 (example)

you get links to

http://seo4wordpress.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/the-beginning-of-search-engine-optimization-for-wordpress/

If you want to use the permalinks option to get clean urls, there are three conditions you have to meet:

Conditions:

* Webserver running on a Unix or Linux Distribution (Windows is possible, but much harder)
* Webserver software you use is Apache with the MOD_Rewrite module active (Most hosting servers provide this)
* Use of you own .htaccess file.

If your webhosting provider is running these options, as said most of the do, you are ready to activate the permalinks option.

Login to you administration panel and go to the Options menu and then choose for Permalinks.
Tick the option - Custom and use then /%postname%/ for the best results.

WordPress will not let you create the same post slugs so you don’t need to be affraid that you get duplicate urls..

The .htaccess File

Once you set the option, you get an update of the field content below that shows you the content of what is going to be your .htaccess file.

If you uploaded an empty .htaccess file and made sure it was writable WordPress would have filled it for you.

If you didn’t you need to copy and past the content of that field into an empty file created with Notepad, Not Word or any other wordprocessor, because you need a flat file.

Save it as htaccess.txt and then upload it to your root directory of your wordpress installation.
Once you have done that, set the permissions to 707 and rename the file to .htacess.

Most FTP Programs will not show you the file anymore, than the . files are hidden files in Unix.
Fillezilla has an option to show you these hidden files.

If you did everything the right way, you should now see your URL as mentioned above.

I have posted a few entries on this blog about “link baiting” inadvertently.

Through the inclusion of links in tools and lately the inclusion of embedded links in word press themes

Its another of the multitude of SEO terms that I hear all the time but have never really defined for my self.

So what is link baiting?

John Chow uses an analogy of fishing. He a kins it to fishing for links from other blogs and websites for SEO purposes, that obviously bring you traffic and hopefully revenue.
Rather than using any old bait he says you should use ” content specially designed to get you linked up by the websites you’re fishing for.”

Here are four other techniques that john chow mentions on his blog

Ask For A Review
Write About The Site You Wish To Bait
Interview A Site Owner
The Trade Show Photo Trick

Another blog by Nick Wilson also talks of 5 other techniques that can be used.
Comments on this posting are good as well.

In order to bait a link, you need a hook. Hooks come in variety of flavors, some of the more popular would include:

* News hook
* Contrary Hook
* Attack Hook
* Resource Hook
* Humour Hook

Here are several other blogs and definitions I will read later and summarise. These are 5 good posts to take a look at.

Wikipedia definition
Matt cuts blog
Aaron Wall SEO Book
Use Link Bait to Catch Better Rankings By Bill Hartzer
Jim Westergren blog on link baiting
Link Baiting & Effective Link Building by Rob Sullivan

It has been a little while since I have posted anything to the web ! In Fact it been a month or so !!!!

Well I have an excuse I have been busy over the past few weeks with many things but the biggest being moving house. Moving reminded me that “Packing up a house is the pits”.

As part of the move I was temporarily disconnected from the net which was quite disconcerting. Until someone or something takes away your access you do not realise how much you can use one form of communication so much that is be it for banking, investing , communication, or blogging sometimes I forget how much I use the web. Being disconnected was actually a good reminder.

Anyway I digress as usual, now that things have settle down a little I have decided to get back to work and update my web pages at

www.kenwong.com.au
www.hidedesigns.com.au

Begin with updating the theme of this blog.

So as usual after a little searching on my favourite search engine I found the word press theme viewer website

After browsing through the word press themes I discovered that most of the uploaded themes had a few strange non relevant links embeded in the footers.

I thought to my self does this mean that there are thousands of blogs out there with embedded links in them! I would imagine that most of these link salso stay embedde as most end users wouldn’t know how to edit them out of the code.I am not a html php freak so I can tell you I wouldn’t really know how to take them out.

So are these really free word press themes or do they come with a “price” embedded

This begs the question how many of these themes have embedded links?

I have taken around the site and I can tell you that all of the new templates have irrelevant links embedded. As a percentage I have absolutely no idea. Take a look for your self it is quite amazing.

How many of these themes are downloaded?

Well searching by most downloaded shows you just how mnay of the top templates are downloaded.
Tens of thousands, in fact we are talking hundreds of thousands.

How many of these themes are edited by the end user?

Well again i have no idea but I wouldn’t imagine that many are actually edited by the end user.

So if you want passive links from thousands of blogs then start creating good designed word press templates and upload into the word press theme viewer website.

If you have already done this drop me a line let me know how this went, is this ethical SEO link building, does this really work?

I am sure this isn’t a new technique but I just hadn’t realise that some of the links that are in these themes could be so random or rather irrelevant.

Seriously take a look you will be amazed by the types of links you will find in these templates.

Oh update:

This is a form of link baiting !

Not so sure this is an ethical style though. I mean a link back to your design site s fine but putting in links to ohter site that may be you SEO client is another thing altogether. Think I need to write a separate blog on link baiting..will do that tomorrow