News

Today is the big day where Mozilla will try to break a record for a piece of software downloaded the most number of times within a 24 hour period. It’s the launch of FireFox 3 which promises over 15,000 improvements including bug fixes, performance increases and an increase in reliability. However, there is one aspect of the new release which will hold me back for at least a month or so and that is the extensions.

After installing FireFox 3 onto my notebook just as a test, I discovered that a number of extensions I use on a daily basis as a means of getting my work done were incompatible. The extensions were as follows:

• MeasureIt 0.3.6
• SnagIt 1.0.1
• TinyURL Creator 1.0.4
• tweetbar 1.0
• whos.amung.us Users Online Counter 1.6

The only plugins which really matter to me within this list is the Tinyurl creator, Tweetbar and SnagIt. Without these, my productivity goes down the tubes. Considering FireFox 3 has gone through so many release candidates, I don’t understand why these plugins are not compatible. I did a check to see if there were any updates and the only one which updated was the FireFTP extension.

This reminds me of the situation with Windows Vista. There were so many release candidates for the operating system on top of the amount of time between beta releases and the final release yet, there were plenty of incompatibilities.

My advice, hold off on upgrading if some of the extensions you use are vital to your workflow. If you have already upgraded and noticed an extension was not compatible, let us know in the comments. Also, I’m interested in knowing what your experience has been like with the new version.

The Hive, a Performancing project, was created to provide a community for those looking to increase the performance of their blog and network with the pros. The Hive still continues to grow, and there are many great things being discussed within.

Here is a small sampling of the buzz:

Watering Holes:

Many bloggers act like magnets, trying to draw as many people as possible to their blog with hopes that they will stick around. Instead of this approach, it was suggested that bloggers should figure out where their audience hangs out and to visit the watering holes which pertain to your niche. Help them help you.

Which Stats Programs:

There is a post within the hive where user’s have opted to share which analytical stat programs they are using. While most people seem to be using Google’s analytical stats, others are using WordPress.com powered stats, Feedburner, AWStats and of course, pMetrics.

pMetrics is an awesome statistical analysis tool which blasts away the competition and allows you to quickly get an idea as what is happening on your site. My favorite feature is aptly named SPY, which allows you to check out who, what and where a particular user is browsing your site. You can register for your own pMetrics account here.

Share This:

A blog post which was written by a HIVE forum member was recently copied word for word by another blogger. After contacting the ripper in question, it was determined that because the original blog had SHARE THIS displayed on their site, the ripper thought it was ok to copy the entire post and publish it on their own site. This is not how the SHARE THIS moniker works. This reminded me of the (press the any key) joke except this really happened and according to the responses, has happened to more than one person.

Join the Hive

For $10 a month, you can become a member with over a hundred others which have already joined. What you have seen thus far is just a small taste of the discussions that take place on the forum. With some of the blogosphere’s most successful answering questions and participating in the discussion, you’ll surely get your moneys worth in no time at all.

[Advanced users:] In part 2 of this series, I discussed prettying up a “river of news” – which is essentially a mashup of several RSS feeds but is typically displayed on a web page instead of an RSS reader. What I built was a clone of Techmeme River., though my goal is to build a clone of Techmeme or Megite. To move from a river of news to a Techmeme clone requires a way to group or cluster related articles. Now, I’ve been racking the old noggin for about eight months to produce a suitable clustering algorithm, so I’m not going to give away what I’ve got. But I will give you some things to think about.

(Note: in the discussion below, “news item” is synonymous with “blog article”. Also, there’s no need to do this in WordPress, but that’s my preferred publishing platform.)

1. Define a list of keywords and phrases that you’ll want to cluster news items around. For example, in the automotive niche, you’ll have cars, trucks, motorcyles and accessories. Under cars, you might subdivide topics by manufacturer and model, but under motorcycles you might subdivide by engine size. It all depends on what you want for your monitor.
2. Prioritize your topic list, from most important to least.
3. Partition your stream of news items by tagging each with the most relevant topic.
4. A news item should only appear once in your Techmeme clone – that is, in only one cluster. So once you tag it with a topic or sub-topic, it cannot be tagged for anything else.
5. Cluster items for each topic.
6. Rank items in each cluster by choosing the oldest item for the main headline. Display links to the remaining clustered headlines. (If you look at any Techmeme item, you’ll see a “Discussion” section. Those are the news items that were published later.)

This is simply one possible high-level algorithm. I’m intentionally not giving away all details that I’ve come up with, but I’ve provided some clues. Overall, your niche monitor is only as good as your clustering algorithm. Spend time on a good division of topics, and list various clustering criteria before deciding on an algorithm. There’s no rule stating that your algorithm has to exactly mimic Techmeme.

Over on PerfCast I just put up an interview with Lyndon Antcliff, who you might know better as Linkbaiter extraordinaire Lyndoman or CornwallSEO.

Get an insight into the mind of a professional linkbaiter, find out how he earns his living, what the right way to approach linkbait is … and more.

Enjoy!

SEO works so well because most sites on the web do not actively practice effective SEO.
(SEO Book, pg. 43)

It seems like most bloggers don’t do SEO on a consistent basis. They might build a link or two once in awhile but for the most part, bloggers want to blog instead of implementing an SEO strategy.

Of course, you can do whatever you want on your blog, but if you don’t do SEO on a continual basis, you’re missing out on a lot of benefits.

Reasons to Try SEO

Here are some reasons to do SEO for your blog.

• The vast majority of online traffic is sent by search engines.
• Unlike PPC and other marketing methods like blog commenting, SEO leads to recurring traffic. Once you get a first page ranking for a keyword, it doesn’t take much work to keep the ranking yet the first page ranking will send you traffic every month.
• By targeting relevant keywords, you can target the most relevant audience for the most relevant page on your blog. Relevancy leads to higher conversions and better visitor experiences.
• Other webmasters use search engines. As they find your blog through the search engines, they’ll often link to you and network with you.
• A first page ranking for a highly searched keyword improves how people perceive your brand.
• SEO helps you understand your niche better. Keyword research, a foundational SEO activity, is market research. By researching the keywords that people use to search your niche, you get a better idea of what your niche audience is looking for.
• You can use the keywords found in your research to improve the navigation and usability of your blog.

But the biggest reason in my mind to do SEO is most sites are not doing SEO. Sure, there are a few competitive niches where many of the sites have an SEO strategy, but for the large majority of niches, most sites don’t do SEO.

As I’ve dabbled in a wide variety of niches, I’ve found that the majority of bloggers have not done keyword research. I can tell this because they don’t have relevant keywords in their titles. Also, they aren’t building links. They subscribe to a “build it and they will come strategy”. However, with the large numbers of blogs on the web, it takes marketing to get people to visit your site. And search engine marketing is a great way to attract a steady stream of visitors every month.

This lack of SEO among bloggers means that it will not be difficult to achieve high rankings for relevant keywords.

SEO Doesn’t Have to be Complicated

With everything that goes into creating and maintaining a blog, it’s easy to forget about search engine traffic. However, there are many effective SEO tips that don’t have to take too much of your time and effort. Also, even if you do one SEO activity week (like building a few links or finding juicy keywords to target), you’ll be way ahead of your competitors.

Your SEO strategy doesn’t have to be complicated to outrank other blogs that are not doing SEO. Most of my work as an full-time search marketer is simple. Yet I’ve helped my company gain some great rankings. It just takes a little time and effort.

I’ll be going through SEO basics in the next couple weeks, so watch this space to increase your search engine traffic.

Feedback

How much time do you spend a week on SEO?

Bloggers Everywhere: If you can do one thing today, please do NOT write a ‘short’ and ‘to the point’ post.

Just don’t. You’re probably doing it wrong (there’s nothing unique / interesting / useful / powerful / likeable / discussable about your post) and not only is it adding to the noise, it’s also turning potential readers away from your blog once they find you talking about the same thing you’re reading elsewhere.

In other cases, there’s no meat on the bones – instead of raising a question and leaving it fashionably open-ended to allow for interesting conversation, the blogger leaves the slate blank with only a few scribblings that pique interest but leave the reader disappointed and feeling empty.

Exceptions

In some situations, short posts work. If you’re a leading news blog, then short posts work wonders because you are the news breakers, not the ones regurgitating it. However, to reach this level requires a certain level of audience, which you’re not going to build by regurgitating news from other sources (who do you hit first in the day for your sports news – ESPN or a blogger you’ve never read before?).

Build Your Audience Through Quality

Quality does not mean quantity, so don’t think that I’m advocating 2400-word blog posts (those work, for sure, but there are less painful ways too).

Instead, quality means two things:

One, sending your readers away with something to remember and talk about later in the day (and if you’re lucky, tomorrow). In the sea of noise you must stand out and stick in the reader’s mind – your job’s a bit easier because they’re already reading what you’re writing, but you will be forgotten if you cannot produce something that they will remember.

Two, consistently pushing yourself to improve. Let’s face it, we’re not the best bloggers in the world, you and I. But we have the opportunity to observe those around us who ARE ‘great’, and push ourselves not only to match them but eventually to be better than them. It’s not a question of whether it’s possible or not (you can’t actually be Steve Pavlina) but it’s definitely a question of how much you want it and how hard (and smart) you’re willing to work on it.

So, please – if you’re going to blog today, don’t do the usual short post. Think of how you can best serve your readers, and give them something to remember for the weekend.

Good news for everyone who posted a link to their pMetrics review in the “Get a free premium account” thread from a few weeks back. Your accounts have been credited, and are now good until May 11, 2008! Sorry for the delay, but some updates had to be made to the backend code first to properly support it. If I missed anyone, let me know.

Ryan mentioned that anyone who had also written a review PRIOR to that thread being posted would be eligible for this. If you are one of those people, please leave a comment here so I can credit your account – otherwise, I have no idea who you are!

I’m in the process of developing a sidebar widget for pMetrics that displays a blog’s “rank” in relation to other pMetrics sites. It should be released at the end of this coming week if all goes as planned.

In the process of building this widget, I’d like to build in other features that might be of interest to the pMetrics user community.

So let me open this thread up for suggestions. Of the data that you see from your pMetrics dashboard, what would you like the option of easily displaying to your blog readers from your blog’s sidebar?