Write for blogs

Writer's block deserves a good beating

2009-12-04T13:50:00.000-08:00

To write well you must train. Build up those skills and use them daily. Sometimes, though, your writing just seems listless, even puny. Happens to all of us.

Try this:

I sometimes play games with myself while writing. For example, in a piece about boxing movies, I used boxing-related verbs and nouns throughout, but for the most part not while referring to boxing. I talked about the camera circling the actors, but not the boxers circling each other.

A good half of the verbs in the piece had some connection to boxing. When writing about the fight scenes, I dodged the obvious and the cliches, saving those punchy words for the rest of the piece.

This made use of the related words (corner, ring, glove, knocks out, spars, punch, rope, feigns) more interesting and less obvious. A few readers picked up on the technique; most probably didn't. The game forced me into using some words I wouldn't normally use -- and turned off the author auto-pilot.

Another fun thing is to adopt a character's voice. Maybe someone you know who has an interesting way with words or maybe a generic voice, like a film noir narrator. If you're writing about President Obama, sneak in some of his typical phrasings or expressions. Don't overdo it, though -- this is just between you and you.

Anyone know any good games? Please leave them in the comments.

SEO Whiteboard: Thank god it's Friday

2009-10-02T16:49:00.000-07:00

I dig Fridays.

So what, don't we all?

Yeah, it's the end of the work week, but my solo gig demands seven-days-a-week production. Working for yourself does kill that weekend and holiday buzz.

I dig Whiteboard Fridays, to be specific.

The web site SEOmoz.com produces a short video every week, often going over traffic-building techniques both complicated and simple. Even if I know the stuff, it's interesting to see how they present it.

Check out this week's vid post, about Quality vs. Quantity in link building. The on-camera talent is Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.

My feeling about links is there's never a worthless one -- except for what Google calls "bad neighborhoods" (spam, scam, gambling, etc.) -- but getting a link from a high-traffic high-authority high-relevance site can do wonders. As in, you do a site about cars and land a red-hot link from the home page of Car and Driver.

The corollary is it sucks when they drop the link down the line, and you probably can't figure out why the traffic or Page Rank are down.

I experienced a drop in PR from 6 to 5 on the DVD blog about the time my friend left variety.com and her blog was discontinued, along with my high-authority incoming link. My DVD reviews blog has thousands of other links, but I mourn that one. Of course the drop could be due to a zillion other factors -- and Page Rank is only worth worrying about so much.

When I lose Page Rank, I point out that the measure (named for Google's Larry Page) doesn't matter all that much in terms of online traffic.

When I gain Page Rank, it's time to hail that great and flawless indicator of online success.

My Friday routine also involves opening the "Free Shirt" email blast from the online marketing guru Shoemoney. It's a picture of Shoe wearing some swag T-shirt. Unfortunately, his everyday posts have become about that informative --unless you care about his fame, his products, his travels. Too bad, Shoe used to be quite good and I learned a lot from him starting out.

So "Shoemoney -- Skills to Pay the Bills'" days are numbered on my poorly named list of "Top 10 newsletters for SEO, SEM, pro blogging."

In comes, what else, SEOmoz.com's daily blast.

How unique content builds Web sites

2009-07-06T16:39:00.000-07:00

You are a unique individual. No matter how high and mighty, no one is more unique than you. Not Angelina Jolie, not Barack Obama, not the Incredible Hulk.

Unique is an absolute, as most of us learned in high school English. Meaning there is no such thing as most unique, almost unique or any other shading.

That is unless you're a Google engineer.

Web search and traffic analytics operate with two "unique" concepts -- "unique visitors" and "unique content." Put simply, the more of these the better.

Unique visitors (aka absolute unique visitors) -- slanged down to "uniques" -- refers to the number of people who land on an Internet property in a given period, throwing out all repeat visits. Someone who calls up a site 10 times counts the same as another person who visits once.

The other major measure is total page views, a raw number that makes Web publishers happy because it's always higher. Both of these measurements come in and out of fashion with advertisers and others keeping score.

(If you publish a web site or blog, Google Analytics should be your traffic tracker. It's free and it's remarkable. Google now links AdSense with the Analytics, a vaguely creepy concept that makes the data even more robust.)

The other "unique" -- unique content -- represents a trickier concept. Google and the other search engines value original content over pretty much anything other than high-quality incoming links.

No one outside Google seems to know for sure, but the percentage of original content needed for a Web page to score as unique seems to be 65 percent to 70 percent. That gap allows for incidental repurposing of content such as blockquotes of cited passages or widely distributed quotes from press releases.

The flip side of this is duplicate content, sometimes a bad or very bad thing. At best, the publishing of duplicate content is no apparent help for those trying to lure traffic. Google and the other search engines seek to present content on its source page.

(Unfortunately, most people experienced in writing for the Web have horror stories about some scraper -- automated thief -- outranking them with their own work. There are remedies for content larceny, including contacting Google legal. I've done this successfully.)

My clients often struggle with the concept of unique content. Cutting and pasting material from several sources, for example, does not constitute original content. As the teacher used to say, you have to do your own work. And then present it in one place.

When clients send me text for a Web page or post, I always run a Yahoo! search on several of the sentences. Frequently, there are matches, meaning the content has been duplicated and thus already has been indexed in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

In general, this makes the "new" content worthless in terms of SEO. In extreme cases, copied content leads to search engine penalties. (Some SEOs say the duplicate content penalty is a myth.) Then there are the copyright violations, meaning possible legal problems. The Associated Press, for example, recently declared war on bloggers who dupe their news.

But the issue of duplication is not purely one of right and wrong -- even with permission from the creators, serial use of duplicate content can lead to wheel spinning or worse. Duplication of your own work remains duplication, even if the readers are being served. Remember that the Web revolves around links, not republishing.

Many writers build their site's authority and traffic by syndicating content on the Web. This is almost never a problem, even if you repeat the content on your own site. Google and the rest recognize this as a legitimate form of content distribution. Just don't count on your site getting credit for the work in the SERPs -- and don't be surprised if the ranking goes to another site.

Another point: Unique content does not mean unique topics, ideas or conclusions. Facts cannot be copyrighted. This is basically a matter of original wording, presentation and style.

Experts in search engine optimization universally agree that relevant unique content is the No. 1 element leading to success in terms of traffic, readership loyalty and ad dollars.

Unique content is king.

Anyone up for a lava party?

2009-06-09T00:06:00.000-07:00

Just finished a new web site that says aloha to people planning trips to the Big Island of Hawaii.

Specifically, it's a visitors guide to Hilo and the Volcanoes National Park -- the area on the east side of the island of Hawaii.

Please check it out, especially if you're unfamiliar with this unique part of Hawaii. The big draws are active volcanoes that rule over the lush ancient lands and the powerful observatories built upon the mountains.

The site -- bigislandeast.com -- uses City, a WordPress theme from the retired Revolution premium line. Revolution now is known as StudioPress. Only developers who bought licenses from the company before 2008 have access to these cool "oldie goldie" themes. I like both the old and new designs, and so do my clients.

The logo was done by Hawaiian/L.A. artist Kristie Kosmides.

The Flash-style gallery is actually a Javascript-based WP plugin known as Featured Content Gallery. That plugin has undergone a major rewrite since the City theme came out, so I did the update and all is well. Themes can live for a long time if you keep up with the updates and upgrades. I have another one that is almost ancient, but I love the look and it still gets the job done, many versions of WP down the road.

Big Island East is typical of hybrid blogs/web sites that seek to capitalize on the best of both formats. Visitors to this site, for example, can comment on almost all of the articles, even though they're not blog posts in the way most people think of them. But the look and feel of Big Island East would never be confused wih your basic Blogger/TypePad/WP theme.

(The closest current Studio Press theme is Lifestyle, which has just been updated to make it easier for average users.)

It's always a rush to finally finish a web site, especially one as content rich as this one. Kind of feels like the kid is leaving home. You're a wee bit sad to see the site leave the nest (always more stuff to fiddle with), but you're doubly glad to have it take flight and get out of your hair.

Stand by for WordPress 2.8. Or jump in now.

2009-05-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

The workhorses at WordPress.org have uploaded Version 2.8 as a beta, available to all.

There are more than 100 upgrades and fixes in this iteration, so you might want to jump on board when it's released. I am in the habit of waiting for a .1 version after a major update -- letting others deal with the release bugs -- but this time I'm going in on official release day. Easy to get a feel for the severity of problems in the release in the WP forums.

WordPress made updating a lot easier with 2.7, so this will be the first big test of that one-step process via the dashboard. Anyone who's been on WP for more than five months remembers the risks and pains of updating the old-fashioned way. There also is the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plug-in that has never failed me.

For the brave, foolhardy or public-service-minded, switching to the 2.8 beta is now an option.

Here are some of the promising new features in WordPress 2.8:

A new routine for theme installations. (Not that the old one was hard.)

A "custom header" for menu text. (Whatever that means).

A documentation lookup for the theme and plug-in editors. (How about a universal code string search?)

An end to notifying the author of his own comments.

Improved widget interface. (Thank God.)

Allow editing of all plug-ins.

An option to use plug-ins on individual pages.

The ability to run several galleries on a single page.

Improved database performance. (Always an adventure when the DB comes into play.

More subject options for tag clouds (such as show categories instead).

Blogging for money: a bankrupt concept

2009-04-24T03:24:00.000-07:00

The best way to make money blogging is to blog about how to make money blogging. No secret there.

How many people actually succeed financially at blogging? Recent estimates say maybe 2% of bloggers make a modest living, with the sweet spot somewhere about 100,000 page views a month.

"Brazen Careerist" Penelope Trunk, with 400,000 page views a month, says don't bother trying. Unless you already have a large and loyal audience, work for big media or are incredibly talented -- such as the alpa-female blogger Heather Armstong of Dooce.com.

Proceed directly to Trunk's straight-no-chaser post, "Reality Check: You're Not Going to Make Money From Your Blog."

Let me contribute this ugly sidebar: The amount of time it would take most of us to reach 100,000 page views -- via the obsessive link building that Google's search system pretty much demands these days -- leaves no time for actually producing content. That catch-22 drives most seasoned bloggers to the brink. Or the want ads.

Still, lots of bloggers are trying and some are succeeding, as Mark Penn of Burson-Marsteller reports in the Wall Street Journal: "Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters," he says. The columnist has taken some fire for his informal blogger census, and later issued a call for more reliable counts.

Penn's post remains must reading: "America's Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire."

Hat tip to ProBlogger Darren Rowse, whose roundup post on blogging and money completes this downbeat trilogy.

Oh and ... This blog makes no money; I don't really try. The best techniques I know are to work multiple streams of income across numerous Internet properties. Some of the projects can be time-consuming flagships, but most should not require much updating. Read the ProBlogger post for various approaches to monetization.

7 things I learned at OMMA Global

2009-03-23T23:39:00.000-07:00

This real-estate web site guy and I engaged in some useless networking today at the online marketing conference in Hollywood.

First came the quick check of name badges. He read mine; I read his. No apparent help. Then a few minutes of what-do-you-do? Zip. We had nothing to offer each other, really, standing there awkwardly in the hotel's Grand Ballroom -- but it sure beat paying attention to the ad panelists as they droned on from the stage. Something about performance and ROI.

Real estate guy and I quickly agreed on one thing: Subscribe to the right feeds and you'll learn more from opening your morning email than from any of these multi-day online conferences.

Only a fool runs into a swarm of "experts" and comes away empty-handed, though. Here are some things I picked up at OMMA Global Hollywood just before fleeing the scene:

Great expression: "It's just new sprinkles on the same old cupcake." Man, I miss those corporate sayings of the week, spread on the wings of hipster salesmen.

Instant web traffic-builder. Work the word "Twitter" into all of your blog's headlines.

Analytic anality: "Metrics are useless if you can't act on them." The corollary being most second-tier metrics are useless unless you seek to kill time.

What to say to SEO clients: "If you build it, they will not necessarily come. You have to go out there and find them."

SEO tip of the day: "Build your keywords for conversions, not traffic."

Resistance is futile: "If you are going to be an online publisher, you are going to be invested in different distribution channels."

New definition of online video: A power point with some guy doing a low-fi voice-over.

Apologies to OMMA, which does put on a good show. I believe that if you go to any industry conference and have your mind expanded, you're either 22 or in the wrong business. Wish I could put names to these quotes from panelists, but I was in sloppy mode.

WordPress says let's go to the video (tutorial)

2009-02-20T23:38:00.000-08:00

I love online video tutorials for tech-related tasks. Not for resolving those hair-pulling, silent-scream problems, but for the minor mysteries.

In addition to the obvious show-and-tell benefits -- you watch the cursor do its thing in the code or CMS environment -- you also get to fast-forward past the obvious stuff.

I'm always multitasking until the teacher gets to whatever is throwing me. Maybe just sort-of listening with the video screen buried under the usual sea of open windows.

WordPress.org (the self-hosted platform) has more than its share of mysteries, so stand by for good news: the how-to archive WordPress TV is now on the air.

So far, most of the topics seem geared to WP newbies and the citizens over on wordpress.com, but no doubt you'll find something interesting in the tutorial directories. There's one section for WordPress.org and another for the plug-and-play WordPress.com, although some topics apply to both formats. In some cases, there are videos on the same topic for each "flavor."

Here are some of the basic videos in the WordPress.org category :

Adding a widget to your sidebar.

Adding an About Me or other page.

Publishing a post at a later time.

Here are a few of the more advanced topics:

SEO and optimization for WordPress ( a lecture)

The Gravatar plugin setup.

Add a PayPal button.

Change www to non-www via redirect

2009-02-13T15:12:00.000-08:00

If users can call up your blog using both www and non-www URLs, it's time to select a preferred domain and perform a 301 redirect.

You want all users to access your site the same way. Or at least Google does.

There are many variables at work here, so I suggest a search for redirect www and non-www and redirect non-www to www.

Confused? You might want to start with this squidoo page on 301 redirects.

You might also check the High Rankings forum for redirects or any number of other web forums, including Google's.

My knowledge of server-side is basic, so please read all you can about this issue, including Google's page on 301s. If your host is helpful with code, count your blessings and see if the support guys will check your work.

This code worked for me in changing www to non-www -- on a GoDaddy-hosted Apache/Linux set-up.

www to non-www

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

and for the reverse, non-www to www

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Don't forget to change "example.com" to your name.

I'm posting these because there are quite a few bad examples out there.

If you don't know what to do with these blocks, please don't try. Dig into the information linked above and learn all you can before acting. WordPress, in particular, has a complicated set of concerns about all this.

Good luck ... let's be careful out there.

Redirect update: Google and the other major search engines released a new "link" tag that is supposed to resolve issues of duplicate content on the same site. The links go on the duplicate pages and point to the canonical URL, meaning the one you want the search engines to serve up. Sounds like a good thing. Now if they can get Webmaster Tools to work ... )

Starting a blog? Start here.

2009-01-29T13:55:00.000-08:00

I love it when people do my job for me. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger just posted a best-of series of links for beginning bloggers.

Written for first-time bloggers but not for dummies. ProBlogger remains high on my top 10 list of email/RSS resources for blogging and search optimization.

Here's a vital question the blogging guru asks right away:

"Does (your blog) topic excite you? Are you motivated enough to write about it for the long term? ... Be brutally honest about this because as I found, we can sometimes fool ourselves into thinking we are interested in a topic when we are not. ... If you’re not interested in your topic your potential readers will sense this and the chances of success will fall."

Almost always true. I have had the experience of starting a blog that's off-topic for me, only to find I've later become fascinated with the subject. (That blog covers the national debate over driving laws for cell phones and text messaging).

And then Rowse hits this major, major point:

"If you’re wanting to develop a serious blog and have aspirations for it to be used on a professional sort of level (whether as a business or corporate blog, as a blog to build your own profile or a blog to earn income from advertising) I’d recommend you go in the direction of a stand alone blog."

You may be a mere babe in the blogging world, but these are grownup decisions that can make or break any project.

By stand-alone blog the ProBlogger basically means WordPress, the self-hosted CMS system found at wordpress.org (not wordpress.com). Rowse goes on to recommend simple hosted platforms (such as Blogger or TypePad) for people who are in it for fun.

Once again, if you're serious, I urge you not to go with a one of these prefab blogging solutions. I made this error on my first blog, DVD Spin Doctor, which is on TypePad. This led to innumerable headaches, including serial problems with Google that forced me to do reverse-SEO on the site. Going with TypePad for a content-heavy blog with commercial aspirations was the biggest error I've made in this business (so far).

With self-hosted blogging, your URLs do not have some Net publishing company's name included. And you're not looking at a nightmare when you want to move the blog.

Here is a blog built on WordPress(.org), the home video review blog DVD Gift Guide. Try doing that on TypePad or Blogger or WordPress' separate prefab blogging platform.

Of course, I'm hosted on Blogger here, for this straightforward writing project. Aha! Is that the mask of hypocrisy we see? Nah. Having a presence on Blogger has helped me understand the platform and help clients. No biggie. The price is right. Probably will move it to WP at some point.

Back to ProBlogger's incredibly useful post. Rowse goes through almost all of the issues a first-time blogger should consider. I agree with pretty much all of it. Thanks, man.

Top 10 reasons to do top 10 lists

2009-01-18T00:17:00.000-08:00

"The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of 'Ten Best,' " the writer and humorist H. Allen Smith observed way back when.

Here in the future, the Web and its social media sites prove Smith right minute-by-minute. An infinite number of top 5, top 10, top 20 lists are out there burning electrons.

Nowadays, these lists of no importance often are referred to as "link bait" -- the easiest path to getting noticed in the Blogosphere and on content-aggregating sites such as Digg.

And so we have "Top 10 Ways to Triple Your Google Traffic," "Top 5 Redneck Movie Villains," "20 Most Horrific Fashion Victims" ... the beat goes on.

Give top 10 lists a try on your blog -- almost any topic provides plenty of opportunities. Hit the right keywords and the Google traffic flows right in. Be sure to include both "Top" and "Best" in your headlines and title tags. Some traffic-minded web publishers break the lists onto multiple pages, with No. 1 at the end. Like those old Burma Shave highway signs. Annoying but effective.

Editors often spend time arguing the merits of these lists, unless they work at USA Today. But everyone in the media biz agrees there's one time when the lists reign supreme: the end of the year. Here's my friend Jonathan, a trainer, right on top of that with weight loss tips for the new year.

Like Christmas shopping ads, top 10 lists for the year keep appearing earlier and earlier. I actually saw a mainstream reviewer's list of last year's "best movies" in late October.

I'm plenty guilty, having done an annual list of the top DVDs since 2001, first for the Hollywood Reporter and then for my DVD blog. Check out the "Best DVDs of 2008." Google keeps sending readers to my 2007 list, but I hear they're really into archives these days. Jeeze.

Three years ago, I started up a top 10 for horror videos, in time for Halloween. Walk this way for the "Top 10 Horror Movie DVDs of 2008."

Next I'll probably add a top 10 for romance movies keyed to Valentine's Day. Insidious, these lists.

Of course, no one knows which are the best DVDs, movies, TV shows, whatever. We're all guessing and inflicting our opinions on the masses. The film Academy uses its rat's-nest voting system to produce the one and only Best Picture of the year, an even more ridiculous proposition than a top 10, no matter who's doing the voting.

I hate the Oscars, but grudgingly admit it's the way everybody keeps score. This year, the best picture hardware goes to "Slumdog Millionaire." Promise.

Hmm. How about "10 Times the Oscars Actually Got It Right"?

Star time for Google's 'Did you mean'

2008-12-17T21:33:00.000-08:00

Google is fooling with one of its best features: the excellent misspeller's aid "Did you mean."

I've no idea how many people use this trick, but it's a good one: To see if you've correctly spelled a dodgy word, do a Google for that spelling. If the word is botched, up comes the red "Did you mean:" type, suggesting what is usually the correct spelling. No need to go hunting; Google provides a 3-second source.

This bit of dictionary duty really comes in handy when you can only offer a wild guess as to how a word is spelled. Say, type in onamatopeia and Google helpfully comes back with onomatopoeia. (Phonetic spellings often work.)

So now, Google is trial-ballooning a "Did you mean" with a couple of search engine results to make itself clear. Followed by the mess that your lowly misspelled word conjured up. Feel free to visit the web sites of your fellow language butchers.

Of course, all computers are dumb machines at heart. So this new approach should lead to even more search-page clutter, even when we're perfectly in the right.

Did Google mean to screw up a good thing?

(Hat tip to Danny Sullivan, who reviews several new Google search features.)

Welcome DVD Gift Guide, a seedling

2008-12-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

Starting a new web site is much like planting a spring garden. The creator envisions many wonderful things, some of which might even come true. A see-saw of successes and disappointments awaits, in most cases.

But for that one day when the web site is shiny and new, you get to savor pure potential and possibility. Nice. Then it's back to work, building traffic and pounding out content.

My latest site is DVD Gift Guide, an offshoot of the home video blog DVD Spin Doctor. The new site is much better looking than the blog, which shows its age and the many limitations of TypePad.

The Gift Guide is by definition a commercial enterprise, set up for an audience of Google searchers in search of a product tips and reviews. The revenue will come from Google AdSense and Amazon affiliate links. This business plan is unlikely to bring riches -- a statement that seems pessimistic, but is just facing reality. I plan to create as many worthwhile sites and blogs as I can, relying on strength in numbers.

Look at it this way: If you have 60 sites/blogs averaging only $20 a week, my lousy math says you bring in $4,800 a month. (Good luck managing all that.)

There exist some synergies from the site and blog. For example, I wrote a short review of "Hancock" for the Gift Guide, then expanded it into a full-blown "Hancock" Blu-ray review on Spin Doc.

DVD Gift Guide comes to market via a bloggers platform. It's built on WordPress, based on a template from Brian at Revolution 2. I configured the guide as a web site that takes advantage of a blog's assets such as reader comments, auto-pings, spam control and easy-to-deal-with RSS. (A lot of the web's design and development talent flows to WordPress these days.)

If you're planning a new site, I recommend looking into my approach. Who knows -- your site/blog just might yield a bumper crop.

Google knows best, for bloggers

2008-11-25T23:04:00.000-08:00

Dunno how long it's been up, but Google recently posted a best-practices guide for bloggers.

The content will seem familiar to those who've checked out the search giant's SEO guidelines. A lot of the information is shot-off-the-shovel basic. Still, the post should help bloggers just starting out. And it never hurts to see if you've covered the bases.

Here are some of the best practices. Google's tips are in boldface; my take follows:

Write well and often: Easier said than done, as readers of this glacial blog can attest. I've experimented with different posting rates on my blogs and can report a strong connection between frequency of site updates and Google traffic. One problem -- if you like to write long and strong, all that hard work gets pushed "below the fold" (down the page) before a lot of readers see it.

Categorize your posts: True, but don't get carried away. Google says it doesn't penalize for duplicate content these days, but avoid having one post appear in more than a couple of categories. I try to use one category per post, with a tag or two.

Create descriptive titles for each of your post. That means headlines, not necessary what appears in the title bar. If you're using WordPress, I recommend the All in One SEO Pack plugin, which allows for separate post titles (headlines) and browser title bar wording. Use targeted keywords in both.

If necessary, limit comment spam. The problem isn't going away. Spammers love bloggers who don't moderate their comments and pings. Be sure to pre-approve them if you're seeing a lot of generic complements such as "Expert, I was just thinking about that the other day ..." I don't approve a comment if it doesn't address the post's content in a way that a generic message couldn't. For WordPress, turn to the Askimet plugin. (Yeah, I'm solidly in the WordPress camp these days.*)

Publish a feed of your content. Absolutely. That's RSS, as in Really Simple Syndication. If you go through the user-friendly Feedburner, you can add email as a delivery option, which appeals to older readers. Feedburner is now owned by Google, so stand by for a transition at some point. Bloggers new to Feedburner should read every setup page carefully. (Learn from my recent mistake -- never lose your password. Those auto-email with password reminders are, in fact, part of a cruel joke and never arrive.)

* I no longer recommend TypePad because of its time-wasting text editor, its SEO-related problems with Google search, and its costs. If you need help with WordPress, I offer a reasonable deal on setup and coaching. Just send me an email.

Way back mashing: Google search in 2001

2008-10-09T16:24:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, Google wasn't much. These days, of course, the company enjoys a near-monopoly, with increasingly spooky power over commerce and conversation on the Net.

Look at it this way: When was the last time you ran a search on Yahoo just because you thought its index would do a good job?

Google's decade-long rise to absolute power is nothing compared with YouTube's supersonic ascension of just a couple of years. So, you never know, we may yet see a killer app that guts Google. Or at least a viable option or two.

Until then, people who seek a broad audience on the Web will continue to read the tea leaves in Google's official communications and follow the teachings of professional nice guy Matt Cutts. (He runs Google's spam patrol.)

For me, as for most bloggers and web site pros, it's that old love-hate dynamic. The Google juice tastes a lot like Kool-Aid, and we're all drinking it.

So it's fun to be reminded of a time when Google was an option, not an imperative.

The world's default home page has been offering a look into Google's past with an option to explore its search index from 2001. From the Google blog:

We dusted (the index) off and took it for a spin, gobsmacked to see how different the web was in early 2001. "iPod" did not refer to a music player, "youtube" was nonsense, and if you were looking for "Michael Phelps," chances are you meant the scientist, not the swimmer.

I think of myself as having had a reasonably high profile in that Kubrickian year, but the evidence proves otherwise. A couple of crappy credits associated with the Hollywood Reporter and something I said in a speech. That's it.

These days, I'm all over the place on Google, for better or worse. More importantly, so are my Internet properties.

Maybe I'll have another glass of that fruity stuff after all.

The authority song and dance, from Google

2008-08-16T20:42:00.000-07:00

Those in authority get served the biggest glasses of Google juice. Authority always wins, as the man sings.

Sounds sinister, but it's not. When it comes to blogs and web sites, Google uses a concept called "authority" to help determine rankings for content to be displayed in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Everyone's the world's leading authority on something, right? Perhaps you're No. 1 when it comes to your sister's astounding repertoire of nervous tics.

Authority in this sense, though, proves more of a popularity contest.

One important component for Google's algorithms is the number of incoming "deep links" pointing to a site. Deep links point to pages other than the index page, typically those with rich content. (The permalink page for a blog post qualifies.)

If enough of those links come from relevant sites with their own authority, good things will follow.

Other elements adding to site authority seem to be:

Age of the site. Younger sites tend to be sandboxed (another delightful Google-related term that basically means on probation).

Quality and depth of content, which are almost impossible to fake.

Freshness of content (although it's possible to rank high with great static content).

Quality of incoming links. Sites tagged .edu and .gov tend to have authority to spare.

Relevancy of links. If you're writing about football and espn.com links to you, that's golden.

High-quality directory listings, dmoz being the obvious example. This factor is on the wane.

Competent execution of site basics, and the absence of spam-like behaviors.

As for Google juice, that's simply the authority that can be passed from one page (or site) to another. (An anchor link is a vote for the target page/site.) Sites/blogs have a certain amount of juice to pass on to other locations, again based on their authority. (Here is a breakdown of how Page Rank works, with nifty charts that sure look authoritative.)

SEO-related toolbars for browsers can give guesstimates on any site's Page Rank, ranging from 0/10 (a new or crappy site) to 10/10 (Google). This blog ranks a 4/10, good but not great. My DVD blog ranks 5/10.

Controlling the flow of that good Google juice is one of the techniques used by SEOs (search engine optimizers). The nofollow link is used to cut off the flow to a specific page. An example would be when you link to your contact page off the home page. Why waste that precious juice on a service page?

If your Google Page Rank (named after Larry Page) hits, say, 4/10, you should think twice about reciprocal linking to a 1/10 blog unless it's really good and relevant.

Webmaster World, a forum with lots of authority, offers advanced reading on site authority and the juice.

While you're pondering all this, you might want to check out the terrific new album from the guy who wrote "The Authority Song," John Mellencamp. "Life, Death, Love and Freedom" has been getting great reviews, as most of his albums tend to do.

Mellencamp has matured into a fine American rootsy artist. (Yeah, I hate that Chevy ad, too.) He's chronically underrated by the listening public, based on the number of terrific albums he has in the cut-out bins.

And so here's a Google juice toast to Mr. John Mellencamp.

Bukowski: Straight, no chaser

2008-07-19T23:26:00.000-07:00

So you want to be a writer
By Charles Bukowski

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

* * *

This poem seems to be everywhere in the blogosphere. Tough love. It comes from the poetry collection "Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way" by the great literary lowlife Charles Bukowski.

When I started out, a couple of older writers told me the same. Basically, if you don't have to write, don't.

My first college writing teacher read through my clips as a favor. I wanted to know if I should continue as a writer.

I respected the guy and had decided to stay in or get out based on what he said. The professor handed back the articles, looked at me real screwy and said, "What else would you do?" As in, do you really think you have a choice?

I got to use that line a few times while I was teaching.

Bukowski died in 1994, so he never read a blog. If the old madman were still kicking he'd surely have one.

I think most bloggers could benefit from reading Bukowski, whose booze-fueled writing typically was barroom conversational, unfiltered, short and punchy, profane and usually a lot of fun -- although he could break your heart just like that. A poor man's Hemingway, perhaps. They both have about the same number of posthumous books, anyway.

When I started in with Bukowski about 30 years ago, he wasn't much of a name anywhere but in the underground. You had to buy these cool indie Black Sparrow books that felt like smuggled-in editions of "The Tropic of Cancer" or "Lolita." The ink came off on your hands and the words would rattle around in your brain.

Check out Bukowski via the following books, or just pick another one with a cool title:

South of No North: Stories of the Buried Life

The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses

Post Office: A Novel

Hollywood

Imelda Marcos and the Templates of Doom

2008-07-07T17:29:00.000-07:00

I collect blog themes and web site templates and store them in mass quantities, convinced you can never have too many options.

Of course, every time I need a theme, I go out there shopping again, stocking up on everything that glistens for future generations of clients and my personal projects. I'm the Imelda Marcos of templates.

I've paid for templates only once -- a package deal for the Revolution family of themes from Brian Gardner. If you want one a la carte, it'll run about $80 last time I checked his site.

Check out this simple site/blog that I just put together using Brian's Revolution Business: HandsFreeInfo.com

HandsFreeInfo.com tracks the latest laws and legislation related to driving and cell phones. It also offers up some cell phone safety advice for drivers, as well as tips on buying hands-free devices.

Rev Biz is among the least ambitious of Brian's themes, most of which are built for people who want their blogs to look/act like web sites. The typical customer needs to wrangle a good amount of news- or magazine-style content. I didn't change much on the HandsFreeInfo template, but even the simplest of these jobs require some knowledge of xhtml and CSS. Brian and his forum moderators are quite helpful, usually.

Brian also has some free templates, including Vertigo, which I still like for my blog featuring online video news, Download Movies 101. Vertigo became overexposed back in its day, just as the Revolution themes seem to be everywhere these days. There's a reason for that -- they're among the best templates out there. Solution: customize like crazy. Check out the multiple-use templates package.

I also like the work of Andreas Viklund, a 28-year old web designer from Jokkmokk, Sweden. His templates are free and he asks only for a link back. Andreas' templates are super easy to work with if you know some basic CSS. (Or learn from using the templates, why wait.) Check out this template, andreas00, in action on the web site for Sherman Oaks area chiropractor George Kosmides.

Andreas has been quite active in past months. Just today he bowed Daleri Structure, a specialty item. I just discovered another designer from that part of the world; will report back after I've worked with his designs.

I've had templates on the brain because I'm about to go up with my long-promised psychedelic music site, which you can preview as I build it. (Nothing much there today but a cool video.)

Also, ProBlogger just asked its web-savvy readers for their picks for top WordPress designs. I trolled that that long comments thread and just had to pick up a theme or two -- or three or four or ... well, hell, I grabbed them all.

(Advanced readers will note that I've used the links in this post to support some of my ongoing interests, using targeted keywords and an affil link. Didn't write the post to do that, not at all, it just comes second-nature these days.)

Top 10 newsletters for SEO, SEM, pro blogging

2008-06-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

My email inbox probably looks like your email inbox, so I'm always looking to ditch regular transmissions from publications, blogs and such.

A few months ago, I decided to shift most of the subscription email to RSS, retaining only 10 regular email products.

Here are the 10 that remain. (Linkbait disclosure: Yes, it's a top 10 list.)

Subscribe to these -- via email or RSS -- read what comes in every day, and I guarantee you'll be up to speed on pro blogging, search engine optimization, Internet tech, social media and the like. I'm always amazed at how much is going on.

The newsletters list will change, as I add and subtract to stay at a perfect 10. I'll post the coming and goings on this writing blog -- why I added this and why I hit delete on that.

1. Dosh Dosh -- First on this list because it was the first pro-blogging site I tracked after quitting my day job. Maki, a philosophy student from Toronto, uses the graphic concept of marking each post with a piece of anime art. A while back, he shifted from quick tips and news to in-depth articles such as “How to Build a Better Content Model for Your Site: Understanding News Consumption Patterns” and “Publishing for Profit and Influence: It’s All About the Passion.” A class act. Highly recommended for beginners and intermediates.

2. SEO Design Solutions -- A relative newcomer to my inbox of the elite. This Chicago-based search engine optimization outfit writes a mean blog that’s mostly instructional. The target audience appears to be wanna-be SEOs and people who handles web sites for their business. These posts help me find new ways of communicating complicated concepts to clients. Recent topics include “Creating Synergy With Your Content” and “20 Practical SEO Tips to Supercharge Your WordPress Blog.”

3. High Rankings Advisor -- From another web-traffic shop, this one run by SEO queen Jill Whalen. The newsletter comes twice a month -- not nearly enough -- and it would be nice if there were more content -- but it’s a must-read. Free advice from a woman whose services come at a small fortune per hour. Recent topics include “Will Linkbait Ruin the Internet?” and “Do We Need SEO Standards?”

4. Andy Beard -- Another of my early blogging blogs. Andy writes some pretty high-end stuff -- think grad school for webmasters and SEOs. That’s when he’s not railing against the crums and bullies of the Web, which is pretty much most of the time. He carries the banner for bloggers from overseas who have to deal at a distance with U.S. outfits such as Google.

5. ProBlogger -- Darren Rouse says: “This site is dedicated to helping other bloggers learn the skills of blogging, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium.” A bit understated, but OK. The blog serves people who want to make money from blogging, no easy trick. Rouse, an Aussie, shares information on how much he makes, where it comes from and which strategies are working for him now. Recent topics include: “How I Make Money Blogging” and “What’s a Blog Post Worth.” Essential.

6. Search Engine Land -- The RSS/email service “SearchCap: The Day in Search” delivers pretty much all the news that matters to the blog/SEO/SEM community -- which is more content than you’d expect. From Danny Sullivan, an industry star. Categories include “Link Building,” “Paid Search and Contextual,” “SEO and SEM” and “Social Media.” A lot of the content comes from mothership Search Engine Journal, but any source will do in the name of totality.

7. Silicon Alley Insider -- The Wall Street Journal for digital business. Everything boils down to money, so of course I love it. The information proves useful in my editorial ventures and in my investing life. Lively writing and plenty of exclusives. Only a year old, but you'd never be able to tell.

8. Search Engine Roundtable -- When buzz is building on the SEO/SEM forums, you’ll get a heads-up from these guys. News and notes put together by reps from the leading search engine marketing-related forums. A typical item points to a thread in the DigitalPoint Forums or Webmaster World (both recommended). Some items are kind of pointless bitching or just open-ended questions, but that’s life in the forums for you.

9. Shoemoney -- Jeremy Schoemaker became famous with a simple bit of inspired marketing: He posted a picture of himself holding up a check from Google AdSense for $133,000. The blog is all about making money, operating on the Internet and … Jeremy Schoemaker. Oh, and mixed marital arts fighting and whatever else the host is into. On Fridays he emails you a picture of himself wearing someone’s logo T-shirt and calls it a day. And still, I subscribe.

10. Tech Crunch -- “A weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.” Michael Arrington’s blog (with many contributors) knows what’s what with aps and gadgets and handy new web tools. If something’s going on in web tech, you’ll read it here. A financial site, mostly. Essential reading for blog pros and anyone else trolling for a living on the web. Here’s the place to track the next Twitter or iSomething.

Recent evictions:

johnchow.com -- all john, all the time
copyblogger.com -- too obvious and too frequently wrong

Incredibly, Write for Blogs didn't make the top 10. Subscribe to my email/RSS anyway -- it's above average and guaranteed to never clog your inbox.

SEO books for bloggers: required reading

2008-05-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

If you're serious about blogging, you also have to be serious about search engine optimization.

True, you can hire someone like me to do your basic SEO set-up work, but SEO is a process and you'll have to apply its golden rules day in, day out. Things like knowing how to word anchor links (never ever a "click here!") and how to do alt tags on images.

So, I make the case that blogging and SEO are strongly linked for anyone seeking to become a successful online writer.

There are some good SEO basics books (and some not-so-good SEO books). Here are two I recommend:

Search Engine Optimization For Dummies, Second Edition by Peter Kent. Yes, I'm serious. Good book. OK for intermediates as well as beginners.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible by Jerri L. Ledford. Easy to follow. For beginners.

I'll also point to a good book on xhtml (html) and CSS (cascading style sheets), because it helps to speak the language (er, code):

HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition by Elizabeth Castro. Easy to understand, but far from dumbed down. If I needed to learn something complicated, I'd want Castro explaining it to me.

Books are, of course, old media, nasty as that sounds. If you want to keep up with SEO (a fast-moving serpentine target) and the latest tricks of the trade from "pro bloggers," you'll be using new media.

The next post on Write for Blogs will cover my top 10 SEO/blogger newsletters -- the ones I read whenever they hit my mailbox. Call it continuing education. School's out, for now.

Bad language, good blogs -- WTF

2008-05-02T22:08:00.000-07:00

I used to work for an entertainment industry trade publication, written for people in the industry. For a fairly conservative paper, it had a liberal commonsense policy on swearing:

If the word occurs naturally, use it. If the quote includes the word fuck, use it. If there is no good reason to swear in print, don't.

"It's not a family newspaper," was the saying on the copydesk.

This worked out well. I think I set that policy ages ago, and I continue with it on my own blogs. I swear most days in my real life; not much while writing.

Certainly, curse words flow on TV these days. I believe I've heard the F-bomb dropped by announcers on CNBC and Fox Sports. Of course swear words are always flying around on HBO and Showtime. The "asshole" barrier fell years ago on network TV, by one of the cop shows.

But the news media keep things pretty clean. One reason: Cursing in publication or in a post often comes across as juvenile, even to readers who swear. Something about putting down the words in black and white. It feels off, like when some bozo uses all CAPS in an email. This, to me, is the problem with using "bad language." Of course, there are publications that swear to be hip, like the laddie magazine Maxim, which pulls it off.

I do think you can swear occasionally on a blog without becoming offensive to a general audience. The work will be judged in context and as a whole, at least by smart readers. Forget the middle ground: The hyphens in f--k don't accomplish a fucking thing.

This policy wouldn't apply on sites/blogs intended for younger readers, of course, but if you're writing for the big kids, WTF.

Here's another take on blogging and swearing.

Bad jokes and bloggers: Don't be an April fool

2008-04-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

Coming home from a nice vacation always feels a bit weird. Among the reasons to be bummed is the inevitable avalanche of unopened email.

Most of us have spent hours wading through these aging e-messages. I go overseas for a month now and then, and upon return always set aside at least a day to sort it all out. This time, we were gone for only a week up in Big Sur -- but the email queues still were plenty scary.

I get a lot of SEO-related email, as requested from the top bloggers in that business. RSS is OK, but I do prefer email, perhaps just out of habit. I use a Yahoo email account for those subscriptions.

What struck me this time out was the amount of time-wasting material that flowed in from these "pro" bloggers. Taken day-to-day it's no big deal, but in a lump you can really get annoyed.

Our road trip coincided with April Fool's Day. Five days later, all that "fun" prank copy stunk like the beached dead fish we tried not to squash while hiking the coast.

Yeah, I'm a grouch and, yeah, everyone means well, but I'm not a big fan of wasting your readers' time.

One blogger devoted something like three screens' worth of copy to telling readers how to get along with Google. Stuff like, phoning the search engine engineers directly, stuffing a blog with keywords, linking out to bad neighborhoods and buying links in bulk. Readers got the joke in graf 2.

Goodwill goes a long way, of course. Shoemoney, the popular Net marketing guru, writes about wrestling now and then (yawn), and regularly posts pictures of himself wearing some company's T-shirts. I'm not complaining -- the guy gives away a lot of decent content. I do think off-topic posts are bad news when they're the blog's only entries of the day, though.

If you're writing for the public, be respectful of people's time, especially in the business arena. Injecting personality into a pro blog helps build audience loyalty -- lord knows I could use some more flare here -- but always keep in mind that goodwill is a finite resource.

That's this post's message, but if you have some time to kill, read on ...

Back to April Fool's Day: One clown decided to blog that Darren Rowse, who writes the excellent ProBlogger, had gone bankrupt and never had made more than $1,000 a month from blogging. Rowse then saw the libelous content on the Wikipedia page about him. An employee wanted to know if he'd be paid; a lot of people were confused. To make matters worse, the bogus post was time-stamped March 31.

Rowse reluctantly wrote about the incident today, also addressing spoofs in general:

"While it might be blatantly obvious to you and 99% of your readers that you’re not serious - you will fool someone. Perhaps they just read the title, perhaps the skim the post and don’t see the clues or perhaps they just believe it without question. As a result I tend to only play jokes that use my own name or reputation -- or would advise that if you’re going to involve someone else that you might want to check with them first."

Rowse isn't suing, apparently, making one joker a very lucky man. Also burned by this thing was fellow pro blogger Jeremy Shoemoney, who was falsely reported as arrested for riding a bike while intoxicated. Hic.

Rowse, for the record, has never wasted my time. Read him and learn.

And by the way ... thanks for your time.

Death provides lively copy for bloggers

2008-03-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

Death doesn't faze newsrooms. For editors, the order of the day, every day, is gallows humor -- whistling past the old graveyard.

Newspapers, in fact, love death. Funeral notices -- aka "fun notices" in the biz -- are a profit center for papers small and mighty. Craig's List won't be taking that niche away soon.

Death also keeps readers coming back. Obituaries are among the most-read features for older readers, many of whom begin their day by viewing the parade to the grave of their age's leading personalities.

I've made a habit of reading all of the New York Times' obituaries and recommend them to you. The Times obits editors are notoriously picky about whom they include -- basically, the subjects must have changed the world in some way. The Times' obituaries are little history lessons, famously accurate and routinely compelling. You can learn about a lot about the world.

I bring this up because the truism that death makes good copy applies to blogs as well. There is nothing morbid about this, unless you make it so. A well-written appreciation of someone's life can be a shared experience for you and your readers.

On my DVD blog, I'd been looking for a good reason to weigh in on the Stanley Kubrick DVDs that were released as a pack late last fall. The Kubrick films made their Blu-ray debut at a busy time for DVD releases, and I only got around to "Eyes Wide Shut."

The news of Arthur C. Clarke's death sent me straight to the keyboard. I know little about the man or his writings aside from "2001: A Space Odyssey." Still, my DVD blog was able to connect with a story that had people talking -- and I provided something of value by quoting the man several times in a review of his most famous work.

So did you hear the one about the dying futurist and the sexy alien ... ?

Just started blogging? Be a rock 'n' roller

2008-03-11T03:46:00.000-07:00

Unless you're famous or incredibly well connected, it's lonely work starting a blog. Especially before the search engines know you're there. The traffic comes in single digits, no one comments and there are only a couple of posts to show for all your efforts.

The temptation is to slide and wait for the action. It could be a long wait.

I think in the early stages it's important that new bloggers write as if they had a large enthusiastic audience.

We've all seen blog entries with something like, "What does it matter, no one reads this blog anyway." Ugh.

Story time: I remember seeing the rock band Dash Rip Rock long ago in a downtown L.A. club. They had to play after the headliner. Everyone in the audience left but five or six of us. Felt sorry for the boys. But that band played as if they were rocking Madison Square Garden.

Be like Dash Rip Rock.

Second opinion. Here is some advice from another angle, written by Maki of the blog Dosh Dosh: "The most important thing to do is to blog as if no one else was reading you." I highly recommend this blog for bloggers, which was incredibly useful to me in the early days and remains a favorite read.

It's time to do some work on your blog

2008-03-03T03:24:00.000-08:00

When it comes to blogging, what a difference a day makes -- especially if it's the first one of the month.

I've adopted the policy of updating all of my blogs come the start of each new month. The previous post may be only a day old -- maybe even a few hours old -- but that item sinks into fish-wrap waters the second the month rolls over.

Maybe readers don't care. I'm betting they do. At the very least, it's good motivation to update -- and lord knows we all need that.

Don't have an idea? You'll think of something. I just did.