Winning the Battle Over Comment Spam: Akismet and Search Engines?

Brian Turner asks “Should search engines use Akismet?”, a fascinating question and one that could revolutionize the revolution against spammers. …The aim of the automated form spammers is to increase their search engine rankings – by forcing sites to unwittingly publish links which may be used by search engines to improve a sites ranking on […]

One Year Anniversary Review: Searching and Search Engines

Over the past year, I’ve written a lot about search engines. In many ways, they are the holy grail, the impossible dream, and the unsolved mystery. We are totally dependent upon them. In order to find anything on the web, we must go through a portal of a search engine. It is the epitome of […]

SEO Secret: Exploring How Search Engines Explore

Search Engine Optimization, aka SEO, is the technique of cleaning up your web page code to maximize your “search engine friendliness” and search engine coverage. The core purpose of search engine optimization is: Help search engines search your entire website or blog. Provide key words and phrases to help a search engine determine how to […]

The Changing Face of Search Engines: Try Not Searching Google for a Change

Abhijit Nadgouda has written another awesome article, “The Changing Face Of Search Engines”, explaining why you should consider trying a non-Google search engine for a change. Still, lot of quests end in frustration and dissatisfaction, sometimes because of the user’s mistakes or sometimes because the expected information is either never thrown up or are buried […]

Affiliate Links May Be Penalized By Search Engines

I need to research this more, but I thought I’d give you a heads up. I just got this information from an affiliate (advertiser) I work with on one of my full WordPress sites: If it hasn’t happened already, it appears that some of the search engines may start penalizing affiliate links, categorizing them as […]

See What Search Engines See When They Visit Your Website

As part of your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts, take time to run your website or blog through a few tests to see how a search engine sees your website or blog when they visit. It’s a good learning experience. Things to look for are: What is seen first, second, and third. When the “meat” […]

Beauty is Only Skin Deep: Designing Blogs For Feeds, Search Engines and Audience

Crabby Night Owl’s post, “Substance Not Style is King”, caught my attention: About 20% of the hits CNO gets come via the newsfeeds, and I wanted to see what those feeds looked like when they’re read. What I saw was plain, unformatted text, devoid of any style that I may have imparted to it on […]

Good Instructions for Submissions to Search Engines

Here is another interesting set of instructions for submitting your site or blog to search engines from Rank for Sales. There are still a lot of people that wrongly believe they should submit their website on a regular monthly or weekly basis, in order to “maintain�? their site in the search engines! Unless there has […]

How Search Engines See, Search, and Visit Your Website

There are several kinds of search engines. Some collect their own data through “robots” or “spiders”, software that crawls through the web, tracking the various links between pages and sites, gathering data which the search engine filters and adds to its database. These include Google and Yahoo. Some rely upon individuals and businesses to enter […]

New Search Engines Help Users Find Blogs

The Wall Street Journal’s article, “New Search Engines Help Users Find Blogs” tells of blog directories competing directly with major search engines, and in many respects, beating them to the punch when it comes to tracking and helping users find information on blogs. Blogs, compared to websites, are updated faster and contain more gossip, news, […]

Blog Exercises: Awesome by Association

In “Two WordPress.com Experts and One Series of Blog Work,” Kinna Reads featured myself and my friend, timethief of one cool site (lowercase intentional). I’m honored and grateful, but more importantly, I’m awesome by association. My friend, timethief, started blogging in 2005. When she switched to WordPress.com, her life changed as did mine and hundreds […]

Blog Exercises: Making Lists

Got a list? Today’s blog exercise is a technical one. We’re looking at making lists in your blog posts. You would think that something like a bullet or numbered list would be simple. No discussion or training involved. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as you would think. In the blog exercise on making a weekly […]

WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

Blog Exercises: Increase Your Thank You Ratio

As a teacher, trainer, social media expert, and advice giver on many blogs, I don’t want to hear your excuses in response to my advice. “Well, if I only had the money…” Really? Since WordPress, the tools I recommend, and the advice I offer is free. What does money have to do with anything I […]

Blog Exercises: How to Add Headings to Your Post Articles

I’ve mentioned using headings in your post articles throughout these Blog Exercises. Let’s look closer at these HTML tags that help you structure and increase the readability of your blog posts. Headings are HTML tags used to set the section or subsection titles within your blog posts. They divide your content into sections, but they […]