by jeffc
Are you still on the fence on whether or not to have your own blog? Howard Flomberg of the Examiner published his list of 10 reasons on why to blog. While some of the items have a comical feel to them, most are down to earth such as number 2,
2. It will improve your writing skill. Just think, if you have a hundred people reading your blog, you now have a hundred editors!
After you give his quick ten reasons a read, come on back and let me know a reason or two as to why someone should blog.
by jeffc
We all know what SEO is, I’ve heard of SMO, but this is the first time I have heard of the term ‘VSEO‘ or Video Search Engine Optimization. Over on Jack Humphrey’s blog, Jack answers a reader question that asks what can be done to promote videos and improve their SERPS. The information is pretty straight forward. Ironically, many of the same tips provided by Jack for VSEO coincide with SEO. No surprise there. If you give your content descriptive titles, summaries or descriptions, tags, etc. you should do just fine whether it be SEO, VSEO, PSEO (Podcast SEO). In any case, Jack’s blog post is still a good reminder that the basics of SEO in general still matter.
by jeffc
About a week or two ago, I happened to be browsing around Pmetrics for Performancing checking out the stats and of course, spending some time monitoring the Spy feature. Good thing to as I caught a spammer in the act. Refer to the screenshot to see what I mean.
The screenshot reads best when read from the bottom up. I noticed that the IP address had a registered account and was editing a page they had created on the Performancing website. Administer this site long enough and it becomes pretty easy to spot something out of the ordinary. A post title of “Professional Details” screams out spammy to me. Sure enough, you can see that my IP address (173.#.#.#) visits the users profile page. I then block the users account while they are editing the details. When that user clicked on the save button, they received an Access Denied error because I blocked their account. I admit, it felt pretty satisfying and humorous at the same time to actually nail a spammer in real-time.
Unfortunately, the feeling of making progress was short lived as a couple more spammers signed up for accounts on the site. As it stands, Performancing.com is in a bad position right now because the site contains hundreds of user accounts which have public profiles showcasing either spam or pornographic material. Just the other day, I deleted 10 pages worth of users and I didn’t even put a dent in the situation. I’ve discussed this with J Angelo Racoma and we are working on at the very least, getting the site to the point where we can turn user registration off but because the Performancing.com database is linked with Pmetrics, disabling one disables the other. A quick lesson to be learned here is this, really think things through (longterm) before you decide to link databases together.
As part of the revamp of Performancing, I believe most, if not all of the user accounts stored in the Performancing.com database will be removed. At least, that is how I understand it. The bottom line is, if you type into Google a certain set of keywords or phrases that are usually published by spammers and your site comes in with not one, but many hits and they are public user profile pages, it’s safe to say that you have a problem.
As we transition Performancing.com, there are a number of things that are worth sharing that I believe many within the audience would benefit from. In the coming days, weeks during the transition, I’ll be highlighting specific changes that will be taking place and the reasons behind them. After all, sharing the experiences of administering/running a multi authored is a great way to learn.
Ok, back to the subject at hand. I wanted to let you know that pMetrics is a web statistics package that gives bloggers and web site owners a deeper look at traffic and visitor activity. It comes with a sparkly-clean and simple interface, live, real-time statistics and search keyword and keyphrase tracking. As far as blog stats and web site statistics packages go, pMetrics is unrivaled. Packages for the service start at just $2.99 per month however, Pmetrics does contain a free plan. All new accounts get a free 21 day trial of the pro service so head on over to pmetrics.performancing.com to sign up for your account.
by jeffc
I don’t link to him often but Jeremy Schoemaker a.k.a. Shoemoney had an interesting topic today in that, perhaps you should replace the “Donate!” button on your site with an Amazon Wishlist! instead. His opinion is that, the donate button with a set amount or one of those buy me a coffee buttons which is practically the same thing doesn’t really allow for someone to give back. While it might feel great donating a couple bucks to someone, personally, I’d feel great if someone were to purchase a product for me that I either want, or need.
I’ve donated some cash here and there to WordPress plugin authors but I don’t do it very much. Have you? Would you rather see a list of items that the person needs or wants and simply buy one of those? How has the donate button performed on your own site?
by jeffc
Just a few days ago, I put out the reminder to check over your about page to make sure all of the information is up to date. However, I noticed at least one person ask, “What should go on our about page”?
By no means is there a complete guide on what should absolutely be presented on the about page but keep this in mind. If a visitor comes across your blog and their first impression doesn’t tell them what the blog is about, they will head straight to the page that provides more information. Here is my non-concrete guide of suggestions to what I think should be on your about page.
Short And Sweet – Right at the top of the about page, you should be short and concise as to what the blog is about and the information that is covered. There is no need to provide a mile long description of why the site exists because you can provide that further down the page.
Personalize – Let me tell you, going to a blog conference and not being able to match your favorite blogger with a face is pretty weird. To keep that from happening, place a picture of yourself on the page. This gives the overall blog a human touch and also enables your fanbase to recognize you out in the real world.
Detailed Information – As far as detailed information is concerned, depending on the type of blog this is, you can add your real name, occupation, hometown, education, etc. As for myself, I treat my About Page as part of my resume and so, most of what you would see on a resume is published on my about page. This gives prospecting employers information that they would otherwise have to contact me for.
Contact Information – At some point within the page, you should either link to your contact page, publish your email address, or provide a means for contacting you. Having an about page or doing anything online is almost worthless if there is no means in getting in touch with you.
All About The Details – After providing pertinent information about yourself, now would be a good time to tell your audience just how the blog came to be. At this point, you can dive into the history surrounding the site to give your audience an overall look at the big picture.
Where To Follow You – Again, depending upon the type of blog you have, you can also list the places for which you have worked/written for on the web. I do this on my own page because it acts as my resume place holder. It also gives my audience a chance to follow me across the web as I move from place to place.
In a nutshell, that is pretty much the basis of what should be in your about page. Of course, depending on what kind of site/blog it is will determine the type of information presented within. Keep in mind that a good way not to have anyone write about you or your blog when introducing it to their audience is to either have little to no information on the page or no about page at all. If you happen to be one of those bloggers with no about page, thanks for contributing to blogging frustration.
If you need more ideas on what to put into your about page, check out this post on Problogger from 2005 which interestingly enough, is still relevant today.
by jeffc
I’m sad to report that my Related Posts plugin for WordPress which was created by W-A-S-A-B-I no longer fits the bill with WordPress 2.7. This means I had to replace an old favorite with a new plugin that provided related posts. Upon browsing through the plugin repository, I came across one that I’ve heard about throughout the community called YARPP or, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
I found YARPP easy to configure and was happy to know that it comes bundled with a widget that I can place in my sidebar. YARPP has two critical elements. The first being that it limits the amount of related posts to display and the second, displays posts based on a relatedness score that is configurable. The relatedness score is what is called a match threshold. With various options, you can configure how tight or how loose that threshold score is by editing titles, bodies, tags, and categories.
Last but not least, you can also configure the output of the plugin by adding bits of html to the before and after sections of the related posts. As a bonus, YARPP also has a new option to display related posts in the RSS feed. If you’re not using a FeedBurner FeedFlare to provide this functionality, this plugin makes a nice substitute.
All in all, I think I can qualify this plugin as my new recommendation to others who are looking for a way to display related posts on their WordPress blog. How about you? Which related posts technique or plugin are you using?
by jeffc
Well, it’s near the end of 2008 and I think now is a great time to remind everyone to check your About page on your blog and update it with current information. I think too many of us create the About Page when we initially launch a blog and then we never update the darn thing. Take this opportunity to mark down your achievements for prospecting employers to see, rethink your priorities for the blog and update your goals for the new year as they relate to the site. All in all, just make sure the information is current. Try to make it a habit to update that page at least once a month if necessary because I feel that it is the most sought after page that visitors look for, especially new visitors. Also, I can’t tell you how dumb I feel when I read a persons bio information on a podcast only to be told that the information is out of date and that they will need to update their about page.
So what do you say, will you help me spread the word?
by jeffc
I want to thank Steven Hodson, DaveAC, Patrick O’ Keefe and Mark E. for helping to co-host the show with me last night. Our special guest was Jonathan Bailey of PlagiarismToday.com. During the show, we discussed how you can stop Internet plagiarism, copyrights, enforcing your copyright, tips and tricks to help combat content theft and much more. Be sure to bookmark Jonathan’s site as it contains stock letters for sending out cease and desist letters, DMCA notices, and more.
Also, Jonathan keeps tabs on the Legal Issues section of the Performancing forums which will be included in the Performancing Reboot. If you have questions pertaining to copyright or content theft, ask them in the forum.
ANNOUNCEMENTS: This was our last episode of Perfcast for 2008. Our next episode is on January 1st, 2009.
LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 50 Minutes
NEXT EPISODE – January 1st, 2008 at 7 P.M. EST
ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes
DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode17.mp3
LISTEN TO EPISODE 17 OF PERFCAST: