Archive for October, 2007

Making Sense of Your Google Page Rank

Published by Beth on October 31, 2007 in Promoting Your Blog. 1 Comment

Those of you tracking your Google Page Rank (PR) may be well aware of the huge pandemonium that arrives whenever Google is said to be “updating its algorithm” or “distributing penalties.” Google takes these steps periodically in an effort to provide the most relevant results and ensure that no dubious or “black hat” techniques are being used to toy with the system.

PageRank is Google’s patented method of measuring a site’s authority and popularity. If CNN links to your site in an article about the Middle East conflict, Google can easily assume that your site has some very good content that CNN recognized by linking to your site. Similarly, if your site about the Middle East conflict has dozens of links to Viagra, Make Money Fast!, or other spammy types of sites, Google will look very suspiciously upon your site.

The PageRank that is visible on the Google Toolbar is an approximation of the real PageRank that Google measures for your site. While the Toolbar PageRank changes once or twice a year, the “real” PageRank is always in flux and constantly being adjusted.

When Google updates its PageRank algorithm, their engineers are literally going in and making tweaks to the algorithm it uses to measure various components of a website and assign it Page Rank. Page Rank is separate from other measures of success, such as search engine results. There are other factors outside of links, such as terms and phrases within your content, that affect your ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Last week, a Google PageRank update occurred that was focused almost exclusively on those sites that were buying, selling, and/or trading links for the express purpose of artificially raising PageRank. Some sites may have fallen through the cracks, and some might have gotten unfairly swept up in the cleanup. We feel compelled to caution that if your site has fallen through the cracks, it would be a very good idea to clean up before the next Google sweep – remove irrelevant links, link swaps, and paid links that don’t use the “nofollow” tag. Google unleashes these new algorithms and spreads penalties a few times a year, so take this time to learn more about how to properly increase your ranking without breaking rules so you can make sure that your page rank goes up without Google coming down on your site. Following the “rules” put down by Google ultimately support your readers by encouraging you to rely on providing well-written, quality content and follow good practices to raise your popularity, rather than leaning on questionable “quick fixes.”

Austin Rated Bloggingest City

Published by Tim on October 26, 2007 in General. 1 Comment

We just got news (via Wired News) that a Scarborough Research study is naming our own Austin the bloggingest city in the nation, based on the percentage of residents who read or write blogs. (Photo: Flickr DanHerron)

Austin topped the stats with 15% of adults reading or writing blogs, edging out Portland, OR (14%), and the San Francisco Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose at 13%).

With that in mind, here’s a shout out to some of the great Austin blogs that are part of our network:

Another couple of honorable mentions to the Austinist, That Other Paper and do512 as great local blog-ish community resources.

We know we’re not mentioning all the great Austin blogs — note the ones we missed in our comments!

Blogger Profile: Matt Loede of “NFL Gridiron Gab”

Published by Tina on October 25, 2007 in Blogger Profiles. 0 Comments

Recently, our BlogBurst editors interviewed BlogBurst member, Matt Loede.

You can find his blog here: http://www.nflgridirongab.com/

Q: We’re halfway through the NFL season, any advice for Fantasy Football fans?

Right now I’d have to stick with the big guys - Tom Brady & Randy Moss, Ladainian Tomlinson, Peyton Manning and Joseph Addai. Look out for Adrian Peterson of the Vikings. He’s a special talent that will be a keeper for years to come!

Q- You joined BlogBurst in November and have since added two additional blogs Slam Dunk Central (an NBA blog) and The Game of Baseball (MLB) along with a handful of team specific NFL blogs, What percentage of your week is spent reading, watching or blogging about sports?

A: Wow, well, I start with about 30-60 minutes a day with reading newspaper columns, news and articles from all around the country. It really gives a great feel of what is going on in the sports. Of course stations like ESPN, NFL Network, NBA TV and games in general take up a lot of the TV time here at the house. With sports being a 24/7 business, the getting up to date really never ends.

Q-Are there specific challenges associated with blogging sports?

A: Being credible and not getting lost in the shuffle is very important to us. We have tried to create many relationships with people in the know and in the media and want to make sure to not just fling mud where it does not need to be flung. Of course we can share our opinions, but attacking players or teams is something we try and avoid.

Q- One of your posts,” Michael Vick Sued for $63 Billion and Accused of Allegiance to Al Qaeda,” produced record traffic. More than 10,000 post views. You’ve covered the Vick story extensively, why do you think this post drew such attention?

A: I think simply the outlandish nature of the headline drew such attention to it, plus the subject material as a whole was just so outrageous. Many people felt we simply made up the story, but that was not the case. We tussled with even posting it, but felt in the end people that were so entangled with the Vick case would enjoy reading it.

Q: What’s your preferred blogging platform and what are the likes/dislikes associated with it?

We prefer our own domain, and we use Wordpress, which we have liked with their updates and being able to do things like Podcasts, pictures and it is an easy system to use overall.

Q- The best blogs all shares these characteristics:

A: Entertaining, A good look to them, timely info, not too over the top

Q-Look into your crystal ball and tell me who’s in this year’s Super bowl?

A: gotta love what is going on in New England and Dallas right now…these two teams early on look like freight trains next to the other 30 teams in the league.

BlogBurst Enhances Coverage of California Wildfires

Published by Beth on October 23, 2007 in BlogBurst Success Stories. 0 Comments

One of the big values of using blogs to help cover a story is that publishers offer readers a wide range of perspectives. The BlogBurst team has been promoting posts covering the wildfires in California - and the mix of posts in our network offers a wide range of perspectives: a scientific look at Santa Ana winds, environmental commentary, posts from California residents, and social commentary on how the wealth of the area is impacting the resources dedicated to the disaster.

Some blogs that have been adding to the coverage include:

See how USA Today is using BlogBurst to add to its coverage of the story:

CA Wildfire

Writing for the Web: Readers Scan

Published by Tim on October 19, 2007 in Blog Writing. 0 Comments

We know that you, gentle blogger, already know how to write for the Web. (You do have a blog?)

Today’s post looks a little closer at why Web writing is different from those other kinds.

Flicker Flicker

First, consider the computer screen. Reading on a computer screen is a much harsher experience than reading on paper.

Why?

Your computer screen refreshes 72 times per second. Your large human brain sees this flashing as a “page” of info, but your brainyness has tricked you out of realizing that you might as well be looking into a strobe light. Hello headache!

Moreover, the computer screen is also relatively low-resolution, at 72 dots per square inch: fuzzy.

Paper, on the other hand, does not flash. Paper uses reflected light bouncing off the dark words, which makes for a calmer experience (I’m waiting for the BlogBurst Research Labs to get back to me on the science here…), and print on paper has a much higher resolution — 300 dots per square inch: crisp.

Which is why you can read “War and Peace” on paper, but sometimes it’s hard to get to the bottom of a Perez Hilton post. (One reason.)

Readers Scan

The flicker flicker syndrome is why Web readers don’t read word by word, they scan. Studies have even been done. (Here’s an interesting post from useit.com on how readers scan Web pages.)

That’s why many successful blogs:

  • keep it brief and focused
  • use short sections with clear titles and other clearly scannable levels of information
  • keep long dense documents deeper in the site and link to them from the blog
  • use words that anyone can understand

…Except When They Don’t

Now that I’ve beaten you over the head with the importance of brevity and scannability, here’s the bus-sized caveat: Unless your audience likes it some other way.

Some topics invite incredibly long boring dense posts about the finer details of a random topic. One of my faves, The Becker-Posner Blog can spin 2,000 words on Globalization and Inequality, and that’s great because their audience is full of dorks like me who like reading things like that.

But in general: scannable; short; snappy.

Keep Funky Characters Out Of Your Blog

Published by Tim on October 18, 2007 in Troubleshooting. 0 Comments

Did you ever write a brilliant blog post, hit “Publish” and then recoil in horror because maybe the word don’t came out looking like don’t ? Or little square boxes appeared blended among your carefully chosen words?

These are what we (the royal we) call funky characters.

Sly & the Family StoneFunky characters are great in B-movies and in the band Sly & the Family Stone (photo from Wikipedia), but funky characters do NOT belong in your blog.
But where, you ask, do they come from? And how, you persist, do you rid them from your life? Here is my 30-second lesson on all of the above.

The Why & The Fix

Nine times out of ten, funky characters are caused by pasting text you’ve written in a Microsoft Word document into your blog’s entry form. Word is a smart program — so smart that it likes to get tricky and include lots of hidden formatting information, which confuses your blog.

(A related problem: you paste an entry from Word and it comes out in a different font and size than you expect. The fix is the same.)

There are two key steps to the fix. First, in Microsoft Word turn off “smart quotes.” These are Word’s way of making quotation marks and apostrophes fancy (also known as curly quotes), but you don’t want fancy. You want to get the funk out.

How to turn off smart quotes:

Second, remember how Word hides all kinds of formatting information? All your blog needs is plain text. The best way to convert Word text to plain text is to cut it from Word and paste it into a plain text editor before then pasting it into your blog. There are lots of good free plain text editors, including Notepad ++ for Windows and TextWrangler for the Mac.

In Rainbows and the RIAA

Published by Eric on October 12, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

Hello, Eric again.

Like most people who live in Austin, I dabble a bit in the music. I have bands and guitars and cds and a modest desire to rock. Also, like most people in Austin, I have had to sustain my desire to rock with a constant supply of day jobs. Most of my day jobs have been with start-ups or my own companies, and so I have developed a smidgin of business awareness.
I have been following the two big stories regarding music and the internets - Radiohead’s big breakaway from “the suits” and the RIAA lawyers’ successful prosecution of the lady in Minnesota — with more than casual fancy. I thought I should take this opportunity to highlight a few of our network bloggers weighing in on the subject.

New Music Strategies has a nice little piece regarding some of the label PR that is going around.

The Red Ferret Journal asks Are we witnessing the death throes of the music industry?

The Legal Scoop wonders whether we should revamp the royalty structure more generally.

iPlot says radiohead has become a verb.

The Daily Galaxy says that technology is evolving faster than the law.

Paul Stamatiou is taking bets on how much longer DRM can last.

BlogCritics weighs in with Thoughts About the Business Models of Radiohead, Oasis

Medialoper concludes Change is good. I like change.

Well, OK Blogland. I have finished listening to In Rainbows, and so I am going to close up this post. In closing I would like to take you back to a day, not too long ago, when risk in the music industry was not just some fiscal paradigm, but real genuine risk to life and limb.

Photo (and other rich media) posts

Published by Eric on October 11, 2007 in General. 2 Comments

Hello, Eric Roach, your incandescent blog recruiter here.

Since I don’t get to post much, I thought I would start by saying a general thank you to all the blogburst members. It is such an honor to work with and on behalf of you all.

If you’re like me, you spend each day reading the internet. I usually print out a hard copy while I am brewing my morning coffee, and then settle down with my badtz-maru clipboard and a freebie hi-liter from some conference or other. Actually I guess it’s more of my firefox clipboard, and my del.icio.us hi-liter, but you get the picture…

Anyways, one of my very favorite aspects of the internet (and the blogs that I sift through each day) is the proclivity of images - images that describe the text, images that set moods, and indeed images that just blow your mind. I love photo posts and cartoon posts and canhazcheeseburger posts.

As I am a human, I immediately categorize and file away for my own memories the effect of those images. Unfortunately, BlogBurst is not human. In order for BlogBurst to help bring these images to the top of a search for content, BlogBurst needs some descriptive text
to help the various widget-y searches and human editors find just the right posts.

Sure, we know there is image searching technology right on the horizon, but for now if you have discovered just the right image that you want to share with the world, please take an extra minute or so to plug in a little written context for the image (or song or video or whatnot). It’ll make it easier to find - not just for us, but for all of searchdom.

Call for posts 2 - sports!

Published by Tina on October 3, 2007 in General. 4 Comments

Hello again!

Across the country, the weather is approaching the perfect pitch of sunshine and temperature, dryness of air and length of shadow. October is undoubtedly here, and that means a changing of the guard for sports seasons… and great opportunities for bloggers!

NBA bloggers have a great opportunity for exposure, especially those devoted to a particular team. Do you think your team has what it takes to unseat the mighty San Antonio Spurs?* I’m not sure, folks. To convince me, you’re going to have to pop out some blog posts to make your case! Whether you’re cringing in Cleveland or distraught in Detroit, bring the blog! We will be able to highlight your work quite soon.

We also want rugby blogs. Here’s your chance to shine… please tell us about the latest developments in the rough and tumble rugby world! Team dynamics, rumors, highlights, and maybe even pain management techniques! Those guys play for keeps! Tell the world why you love rugby.

Finally, in the “sport without a season” department, we have tennis. Sure, the big tournos are over with, but tennis players don’t have a team to fall back on. These rugged individualists, male and female, slug it out in one-on-one and couples competition the world over, all year long. If there’s a venue, they’ll show up. Tell us about your favorite players, your favorite tournaments - keep us up to date on what’s happening on the ash, grass and clay! Tennis bloggers are very much in demand right now, so pony up! We need you.

Thanks again!

*Disclosure: I’m writing this from central Texas, hence the ever-so-slight bias…

Call for posts

Published by Tina on October 2, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

Hello bloggers!

Today I’d like to fish for content a little bit - the seasons are clearly changing, and naturally that brings opportunities for new content!

Called “generation X’s favorite holiday,” Halloween is waiting for us on the other side of the month! Our publishing partners will, no doubt, want to prominently feature some truly great posts from our blogs. Now is the time to start thinking about this, and it’s never too early to start blogging about it!

There is a rich vein of material to work with too - Halloween brings us seasonal recipes, costume ideas and crafting, a wide-open scope of possibilities regarding decoration, and even safety tips to ensure a safe and successful round of trick-or-treating! Creativity always runs high at this time of year. The academically minded among you could even look into the origins of the holiday, and perhaps even the psychology behind GenX attraction to this holiday in particular. Have fun!

We also have heard from our publishers, and they are hungry for blogs from India and the UK. So, if you know of anyone who has a really great blog based in the UK or India, and who blogs in English, then we would love to have them submit their blogs to Blogburst!