Xanga is useless. Write a weblog post and embed a link - it's nofollow! I never imaged it would be so, and ended up wasting time on not just one but two posts.
So is LiveJournal. Too bad. I was planning to speed-post a whole novel there.
Blogger, Squidoo, OnSugar, and Blog.com are OK. So is Blurty, though it does seem to be overrun by spam. I've created a new account at Blurty and will be using that for my Favorite Essentials series originally planned for Xanga.
Update. I found the blurty.com interface too 1990's for my tastes and decided to use Blurty for emergencies only. Meanwhile, zoomblog.com, sosblog.com, and freeflux.net were impossible to register with. freeflux.net is a Swiss scam which purports to accept free accounts but only processes paid accounts (or maybe it doesn't even process those). nireblog.com does not yet have an interface for English.
In the end, I put Favorite Essentials on Weebly. Weebly allows dofollow embedded links and in that respect is awesome, but despite the hoopla about being easy to use, I found many aspects to be counter-intuitive and some things I probably couldn't have figured out without my background in web development and engineering.
Today was not a good day. I spent about hours and hours struggling with uncooperative sites just to get up one lousy post on soap. I should have just gone to the beach instead.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Web 2.0 Communities Review
So far I've created a lens on Squidoo, a journal on LiveJournal, and blogs on blog.com and OnSugar.
It tends to be the case that large and successful sites have the worst interfaces. PayPal and ezinearticles are good examples. Web 2.0 communities are no exception. Squidoo and LiveJournal are the big fish in the pond, and their systems are truly atrocious.
For example, Squidoo kept haranguing me about content not being sufficient. Insufficient? I'd just typed up about 6,000 characters. To make Squidoo happy, I had to break it into several "modules".
LiveJournal, meanwhile, treat their users like preschoolers who have to state their name and favorite color. It's an insulting and degrading process. Their website is so slow I read not just one but two BBC articles while waiting for the sign-up form to load. It would be excusable if the design were worth waiting for but LiveJournal is the exact opposite of eye candy. The themes are eye cod-liver oil.
The web 2.0 campaign is proving successful, however, as Qirina is starting to get more traffic.
It tends to be the case that large and successful sites have the worst interfaces. PayPal and ezinearticles are good examples. Web 2.0 communities are no exception. Squidoo and LiveJournal are the big fish in the pond, and their systems are truly atrocious.
For example, Squidoo kept haranguing me about content not being sufficient. Insufficient? I'd just typed up about 6,000 characters. To make Squidoo happy, I had to break it into several "modules".
LiveJournal, meanwhile, treat their users like preschoolers who have to state their name and favorite color. It's an insulting and degrading process. Their website is so slow I read not just one but two BBC articles while waiting for the sign-up form to load. It would be excusable if the design were worth waiting for but LiveJournal is the exact opposite of eye candy. The themes are eye cod-liver oil.
The web 2.0 campaign is proving successful, however, as Qirina is starting to get more traffic.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Cross-Pollination on Web 2.0 for SEO
Web 2.0 communities are valuable resources for SEO. That much just about everybody in the SEO industry readily agrees on.
What is more contentious is how exactly to use these resources for the benefit of one's sites.
Some people try to exploit the web 2.0 sites by flooding the communities with sales pitches or blatant keyword spamming. These tactics don't accomplish much and end up ruining things for everyone as community administrators crack down with stricter rules. For instance, Squidoo disallowed all signups from one of the biggest ISP's in Asia. Helium did the same. Other admins may not resort to such blunt instruments, but still spend a lot of money fighting spam. This is money that could be used to develop new features.
The best way, of course, is actively engage the web 2.0 communities and build networks by following others. It takes time but can be very powerful, especially on a network like Digg. If you have enough of a history and network on a site like Digg, you can easily shoot qualified material to the front page of Digg, resulting in humongous traffic.
But building a network takes time. The third option is to contribute to the web 2.0 communities without necessarily building a network. The idea is to have a limited presence on a large number of communities. The contributions can then be interlinked, resulting in synergy.
For example, we posted a blog post on blog.com about cat personalities which riffed off a previous post at OnSugar about Enlightenment. This blog here further enhances the confluence of traffic and signicance by referencing both.
While not as effective as having a zillion followers on Digg, cross-pollination on diverse Web 2.0 sites is nonetheless a valid method of extending the reach of a website's presence.
What is more contentious is how exactly to use these resources for the benefit of one's sites.
Some people try to exploit the web 2.0 sites by flooding the communities with sales pitches or blatant keyword spamming. These tactics don't accomplish much and end up ruining things for everyone as community administrators crack down with stricter rules. For instance, Squidoo disallowed all signups from one of the biggest ISP's in Asia. Helium did the same. Other admins may not resort to such blunt instruments, but still spend a lot of money fighting spam. This is money that could be used to develop new features.
The best way, of course, is actively engage the web 2.0 communities and build networks by following others. It takes time but can be very powerful, especially on a network like Digg. If you have enough of a history and network on a site like Digg, you can easily shoot qualified material to the front page of Digg, resulting in humongous traffic.
But building a network takes time. The third option is to contribute to the web 2.0 communities without necessarily building a network. The idea is to have a limited presence on a large number of communities. The contributions can then be interlinked, resulting in synergy.
For example, we posted a blog post on blog.com about cat personalities which riffed off a previous post at OnSugar about Enlightenment. This blog here further enhances the confluence of traffic and signicance by referencing both.
While not as effective as having a zillion followers on Digg, cross-pollination on diverse Web 2.0 sites is nonetheless a valid method of extending the reach of a website's presence.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Web 2.0 and SEO
There are, essentially, 5 techniques for white-hat linkbuilding: articles, guest posts, comments, forums, and web 2.0.
Web 2.0 is the hardest of these to master.
Web 2.0 refers to becoming a member of community sites, and harnessing the power of the community or the site hosting the community.
Web 2.0 can be very powerful. If you have a strong position amongst a large community of active users, you can isntantly transform a site's performance. This would make it seem an efficient way of getting the word out.
But to get to that point, you need to have spent months if not years building your network of followers. This time-consuming laborious process means that in the end Web 2.0 is actually far less efficient as a web promotion method than the other methods.
However, it is possible to leverage low-level community involvement as a complement to the wider linkbuilding effort.
Here's an example. The site being promoted is Qirina, an SEO aid. We posted a short post about a philosophical topic at OnSugar. The post had absolutely nothing to do with SEO. However, we did include a link to the site being optimized. We are now posting to that post from this blog here at blogspot.com.
More posts will be added to this series of posts about the philosophical topic from diverse Web 2.0 sites. Not a wheel per se, but interlinked and with variegated anchor, this can have some effect.
Of course, the posts have to be readable, unique, and make a modicum of sense to prevent being flagged as spam. If you're not into philosophy, you can discuss any topic that is interesting and complex enough to merit being broken down into a 4-5 part series.
Incidentally, if you've never heard of OnSugar, it's a female-oriented pop culture community. The Qirina analysis for it is here.
Web 2.0 is the hardest of these to master.
Web 2.0 refers to becoming a member of community sites, and harnessing the power of the community or the site hosting the community.
Web 2.0 can be very powerful. If you have a strong position amongst a large community of active users, you can isntantly transform a site's performance. This would make it seem an efficient way of getting the word out.
But to get to that point, you need to have spent months if not years building your network of followers. This time-consuming laborious process means that in the end Web 2.0 is actually far less efficient as a web promotion method than the other methods.
However, it is possible to leverage low-level community involvement as a complement to the wider linkbuilding effort.
Here's an example. The site being promoted is Qirina, an SEO aid. We posted a short post about a philosophical topic at OnSugar. The post had absolutely nothing to do with SEO. However, we did include a link to the site being optimized. We are now posting to that post from this blog here at blogspot.com.
More posts will be added to this series of posts about the philosophical topic from diverse Web 2.0 sites. Not a wheel per se, but interlinked and with variegated anchor, this can have some effect.
Of course, the posts have to be readable, unique, and make a modicum of sense to prevent being flagged as spam. If you're not into philosophy, you can discuss any topic that is interesting and complex enough to merit being broken down into a 4-5 part series.
Incidentally, if you've never heard of OnSugar, it's a female-oriented pop culture community. The Qirina analysis for it is here.
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