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Posted on January 17th, 2008 by Roberto W. Bell
If you are reasonably new to search engine optimization and coding blogs/sites, you may have heard about the “nofollow” code but you aren’t sure what it is. Well here is the explanation and how to use it.
Firstly, lets visit good ol’ Wikipedia to get their definition for what nofollow is all about:
nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of spamdexing, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.
So essentially, the no follow HTML code or attribute value to be exact tells search engine bots and spiders like Googlebot that the hyperlink should not be taken into account for your blog’s ranking in their search engine. You see certain search engines like Google, use algorithms and other criteria to determine a blog’s or site’s listing in their engines. What they are trying to do is to eliminate the old days where people created these sites called “linkfarms” which were essentially sites with no content except for links to other sites. In those days if you had a heap of these linkfarms all pointing to your site(s)/blog(s), the search engine bots and spiders would think that your site(s)/blog(s) were really popular and thus rank your site higher. This was a way that certain black hat marketers used to trick the search engines in order to get higher ranked.
Nowadays the search engine people have woken up to this and have started using algorithms that will penalize sites that have too many outbound links. This is a bid to eliminate these linkfarms and what is now known as the evil term SPAMdexing.
So, if you add a nofollow value to your hyperlinks, you are basically telling the search engine bot not to use this link in its “scoring” mechanism to determine page rank (side-note: this is not to be confused with telling an SE bot not to visit a page or folder on your blog at all, you do this using robots.txt).
Ok, so here is how you use this value in your HTML code. It sits within the values that you assign to a hyperlink - i.e. within your {a href=”http://www.google.com” rel=”nofollow”}
It should always go after the a href link to the site & before the closing >. For those using Wordpress’s visual posting template, once you have highlighted the words to link & clicked the hyperlink button & added the link, click over to the “Code” tab, look for the entered code & manually type in the rel=”nofollow” within the {a href} code.
So, Where Do You Use the NoFollow Attribute?
Well, obviously with any hyperlink that you do not want to affect your score. I essentially use it for all hyperlinks that point outside my blog unless its pointing to one of my own sites or blogs.
It’s a good idea that when you select a new theme on WP, to go through the theme editor and search for any external links like the ones that say “Powered by Wordpress” within the footer. If you decide to keep the external link, add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to these hyperlinks.
{a href=”http://bloggingworks.net” target=”_blank”>BloggingWorks features tips, hints, help, advice, information, tricks and resources for people interested in making money online through blogging.
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Filed under: Blog Coding
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Posted on January 16th, 2008 by Micheal Joness
People may admire your blog because the theme is stylish. But most will leave quickly if the text and links are not easy to read.
Your blog may not seem hard to read to you, because you already know what it says. But it may still make your visitors’ eyes tired. So they leave and may never return.
Looking at blogs these days, I find many are so hard to read that they make my eyes hurt. So I don’t read them—even when I’m interested in the subject.
There are millions of blogs. I just move on to another on the same topic.
Research shows that you have only 5 to 8 seconds to capture a potential reader. So I know other people are leaving without reading, too.
That’s sad, because many of these bloggers are good writers. They have something interesting and valuable to say, but they are unaware of their blog design problem. They already know what their blog says, so they don’t realize how hard it is for others to read it.
If you know just a few things about typography, you can make your blog or website much easier to read—and more appealing to your potential audience. So you can keep new readers and attract even more.
Typography is the art and science of designing and using typefaces—what most people call fonts. (Actually a font is one particular size and style of a typeface, such as or 9 pt Arial italics or 10 Times Roman.)
What does that have to do with blog design, since most people simply choose a ready made theme? A lot, if you want people to stay and read your blog.
It is important to choose a theme that is easy read. That has a lot to do with the typefaces that are part of the theme—not only which typefaces, but what sizes and what colors they are.
Doing just these few things can help make your blog easier to read:
1. Choose a theme that has black text on a white background. Not gray, not blue, not yellow orange or green or lavender—black! It may not seem as cool, but it will be read—and that’s what you want.
White or light colored text and links on a dark background are much harder to read. If you want people to read your blog, avoid them. If you do use them, the type has to be much bigger and bolder, or people won’t read it.
The current fad of light text and links on colored backgrounds is simply deadly if you want to keep readers.
2. Choose a theme with a sans serif typeface (such as Arial, Trebuchet, or Helvetica). It will be much easier to read on the screen. Luckily most themes already use san serif typefaces.
If for some reason you must use a serif face (such as Times New Roman or Palatino), remember that it will have to be larger than a sans serif face to be equally readable (easy to read). So choose a theme that has larger type.
Do not use a typewriter-style typeface like Courier on a blog or website. Ever. They are just too awfully hard to read on the screen.
3. Make sure the subheadings and links are in dark colors. Yes, they need to be in color to show that they are links. For that, a medium dark blue is best. Not yellow, not pale blue or yellow green, not orange, and certainly not gray.
4. Chose a soft color or black if you use a colored background outside the text area. Too bright a color along the sides of the text area is distracting. Patterns are worse.
I’ve seen some that are so bright and busy that they make my eyes water. That tires the eyes, too. It’s annoying. And it makes readers want to leave. So we do.
5. Choose a theme that has large-enough type in proportion to the column width. This is something you might never have thought about, but if you read enough blogs in different themes, you will see what I mean.
Research shows that if the column of text is too wide compared to the size of the text, the reader’s eyes get lost trying to find the beginning of the next line. The result, again, is tired eyes—and an annoyed reader who quits reading sooner.
6. Take time choosing your blog’s theme. With hundreds of themes available, it sounds simple to find a good one, but it isn’t. It takes a bit of care and thought.
There are not so many good themes. And when it comes to selecting one for a new blog, most people are more concerned about the color and overall stylishness than about how easy or hard the text and links are to read.
So picture this: Two blogs cover the same topic. One has light gray text and pale blue links on a pale gray background. The other has crisp black text on a white background and bright, clear links that are easy to read.
If you only have time to read one of them, which will it be?
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Filed under: Blog Theme
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Posted on January 16th, 2008 by Micheal Joness
These days, you’re just not “with the program” if you’re not involved with social bookmarking. Recently I have been trying to increase my Plug-in Profit Site’s traffic numbers to a certain daily level, and one way to do that is by getting into one of the newer internet trends - social bookmarking.
Social bookmarking is a neat way of saving websites, articles, and blog posts that you consider your favorites. Then you can easily get back to these posts, share these same sites with others on the web, add other saved sites to your list of saved sites, or subscribe to someone’s blog for example.
Usually we bookmark pages we like on our own computers, but social bookmarking allows us to save them on the web for others to see as well. The way we do this is by creating a title, description, and tags (which are the keywords we are targeting) for the pages we want to save. This should generate some new traffic for you fairly quickly from others who use social bookmarking sites and are looking for articles based on the tags you have chosen.
If you own a Plug-in Profit Site, it’s easy to start using social bookmarking sites. If you do a Google search for “social bookmarking sites” for example, you will find a list of the top social bookmarking sites. One of the most famous ones is called “del.icio.us”, and other popular ones are “Digg”, “Yahoo”, and “Furl”.
It doesn’t take long to set these up. But first you have to go to those social bookmarking sites, and create a free account with a username. Once you’ve done that, you are free to use the service to find topics that interest you, or post your own favorite pages.
When you set up an account, you will likely be given a choice of buttons you can add to your toolbar that you can simply copy and paste. Then when you visit a site you want to bookmark publicly, you can simply click on that button on your toolbar, type in a title, description, and tags for that page, and voila! You have saved a page that others can also access!
On your Plug-in Profit Site, there are a few ways to get more traffic using social bookmarking sites. One way is to write quality, original content on your blog, such as posting your own article. On your social bookmarking service, you should be able to find a piece of code to add to your Plug-in Profit Site’s HTML code which will be like the button on your toolbar for the different services.
For example, on my blog, I have four buttons at the end of each blog post which I added to my blog’s template code. These four buttons would lead a reader who like my post to Digg, Furl, Yahoo, and del.icio.us, where they can add a title, description, and tags to submit my post and bring me more traffic.
The nice thing for Plug-in Profit Sites, or any website for that matter is that it’s okay to do this for your own article posts, as long as you do not spam the social bookmarking services.
You don’t really want to send each and every post you make to your blog to one of these services in the attempt to get more traffic when maybe not all your posts are fantastically written, original content. You want to provide something of value to your readers just as you would do in the discussion forums you frequent, and not over-do it.
Some article directory sites now are allowing you to “Digg” your own articles. Again, if you do it slowly and in moderation, you won’t likely be accused of spamming. Be careful because if you do go overboard, some people have been known to get their websites banned from services like Digg.
Another way to boost your Plug-in Profit Site traffic with social bookmarking sites is to actually get yourself involved with these services and use them the way they are intended to be used - don’t just “Digg” your own posts. Find other posts that you like and add a comment, or save them in your own archived lists.
Last but not least, whenever you write an article or blog post for your Plug-in Profit Site business, be sure to use Technorati or other tags in your author bio-box at the end that link back to your main website. Look up information on “tag and ping” to find out the correct format and you will get more traffic quickly!
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Filed under: Blog Plug-In
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Posted on January 16th, 2008 by Sarah Baltic
Weblogs, or “blogs” were introduced in 1997. As with most new technology the initial users of blogs were those gifted in the field of technology.
The growth of blogging began as the user interface became more simplified requiring no knowledge of HTML or other specialized coding.
Today blogging is used for personal as well as business applications. In the domain of business blogging (B-Blogging) many businesses are seeing the value of a b-blog and are allowing key personnel to blog on company time. The reasons are varied, but a b-blog is useful in presenting the face behind the brand.
The best b-blogs do not look at this format of information sharing as simply a means to say whatever comes to mind. A helpful b-blog for business is one that provides customers with the following.
1) INFORMATION - Customers are interested in the latest news on the products you offer and they may be very interested in the benefits your product or service has to offer.
2) ANNOUNCEMENTS - By providing important new offerings or staff changes, your client may feel more connected to your firm.
3) CONTESTS - In keeping with the fun nature of a b-blog, contests can be conducted through a blog that can supply visitors with a chance to receive promotional products.
4) SALES - If you will be conducting a sale on your products a b-blog can provide an easy way to pass that information along to people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
5) JUST THE FAQ’S - A b-blog is an effective way to solicit questions and then respond to them in your blog.
One of the key functions of a b-blog is to raise awareness and trust for your products and/or services while keeping things light, informal and highly personable.
B-blogs can be updated as often as you need to and your posts do not need to be exceptionally long. You should say what needs to be said and sign off. By making your comments short and to the point you will likely discover your visitors will respond better than if you insist on drawing things out.
Unlike email, customers who regularly visit b-blogs indicate it is a bonus to see the personality behind the company name. At the end of the day if you have encouraged a customer to remain a customer or if you find new prospects visiting your blog then your goodwill gesture has actually moved from a nice idea to a valuable marketing tool. Isn’t that what you wanted in the first place?
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Filed under: General Blog
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Posted on January 16th, 2008 by Sarah Baltic
Blogging has truly taken the world by storm. The act has become increasingly popular among online businesses, organizations, and web users who want to make their voices heard. As you are learning to blog, there are a variety of platforms from which to choose, but the free platform is definitely a favorite among mainstream bloggers. Choosing a free blogging platform that is right for your purposes and goals simply takes a little research. This article is going to make your life easier by addressing some of the primary issues that should influence you as your choose a free blogging platform.
If it is important to you to create and post a blog that is totally free, a goal should be to find a site that provides the platform as well as domain name and hosting at no cost. Some examples of these hosted blog platforms include Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, okayblog.net, and more. A “hosted” blog means the platform will host your blog on their domain, giving you a web address that is typically a combo of your blog name and their URL.
Although there are many platforms to choose from, Wordpress and Blogger tend to be the most popular. Users preferences vary, but most tend to label Blogger as being easier to understand and use while the Wordpress blog is considered more flexible and adaptable, offering more options to individualize your blog. As one of the most basic blogging platforms, Blogger does not offer a lot of advanced features, which may be ideal for the beginning blogger.
Blogger was once considered a slower version compared to Wordpress, however, changes to the system have brought up the page generation speed. To simplify things, Blogger has fewer settings for configurations than Wordpress, but Wordpress makes it easier to up team blogs by assigning different roles to different members enhancing user participation.
Ultimately, the Wordpress blog is considered the professional blogger’s preference. In order to use Wordpress, it helps to have knowledge of basic html coding. So for those unfamiliar with html, Wordpress may offer some challenges.
Similar features of each blog format include the ability for visitors to post comments, and both sites offer the user access to moderate these comments as well as fight spam.
The best tactic when choosing a free blogging platform is to visit each site and view some of their blogs. By considering your own blogging goals and checking out blogs you like, you will be on your way to joining the booming blogosphere.
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Filed under: Web Hosts
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