What is Twitter?

What is Twitter? I think that this is a damn good question because the more I see of it the less I see that makes me think it is a useful addition to the internet. People in their millions are scrambling to jump on the Twitter juggernaut; not to be left out of this great new…I am not sure what……What is Twitter?

I have a Twitter account and I use it to network and to try and publicise my site. I have a Twit this button on this site and the main Pictures of Cats org site. The idea is that if people like the page or site they bookmark it, in effect, by automatically generating a Twitter post on their home page. If you click on the Twit this button it generates a Twitter post that says, “Reading…[followed the URL of the page you are reading]”. That, on the face of it should attract some visitors to your site if you have sufficient followers of your Twitter account (see Twitter Helps Blogger Traffic new window). But if you are going to generate lots of followers you are going to have to spend time on Twitter making those 140 letter posts and searching for other Twitterers and following them etc. That takes away from the core of site building, building the site (i.e. writing content).

So, is is worth doing? – Not sure. The jury is still out. One problem is that there is a lot of what I would call “white noise” on Twitter. There are millions and millions of these short posts that ticker tape through your home page. They are gone before they arrive. I just miss most of them and most of the ones I spot are posts by cat people that say, “Meow”, or [in cat language], “I’m going to the toilet”. How enlightening is that? I get a strong sense that most people who subscribe to Twitter are desperate to keep making these short posts but have run out of ideas so end up saying, “I’m getting up”.

Another gripe I have (I’m a grumpy old….) is that I question what you can say that is meaningful in 140 characters. The whole raison d’etre of Twitter is the 140 character limitation of each post. What is the concept behind that? It must be speed. The name gives the clue, “Twitter”. The definition of to twitter is, “To utter a succession of light chirping or tremulous sounds”. It is used for birds normally. If the word is used in reference to people it means the person is saying nothing of use, “Oh, he’s just twittering on about nothing..”. It means light and frothy, unsubstantial. And that is what Twitter is. Do we need more light unsubstantial white noise on the internet, further clogging up the process of finding the good stuff?

I sense that people are grappling with how to make Twitter useful. Some "Power Bloggers” are attacking the Twitter thing big time. They follow tens of thousands of people and get followed by tens of thousands of people. That means that they receive posts at a frightening rate. Think about it. If you are following say 20,000 people on Twitter you will receive their posts. That is the purpose of  following people. If each one makes just one post a day you will receive 20,000 messages a day! You’ll have to stay staring at the screen full-time. Forget your website and the rest. Obviously that is impractical, which seems to mean that the more successful Twitter becomes (for the owners of Twitter) the less useful it is for the customers. If that is the case the business is self-limiting and will level off and stop growing.

A lot of posts are links to other sites. It would seem that, in answer to the question, “What is Twitter?”, the answer is, a means to try and promote websites, which probably wasn’t intended. I think the intention was to create a social network type site. But I don’t think it works like that. Think about it. If we are networking in “real life” (Twitter is not real!) we would talk for a while with someone. We would have a conversation, exchange information with each other. With Twitter I don’t think this is easy to do. This is because:

1. The posts are very short
2. During an exchange of posts hundreds and thousands of other posts intervene and create white noise, muddying up the conversation.

There is probably a way of isolating out a particular thread but I haven’t seen that. And I sense that people would rarely use it way. The shortness of post engenders a very casual approach; make a post and move on. The post is history almost the second it hits the ground.

What is Twitter? A super light social networking site abused to promote websites and which blinds us with white noise.

From What is Twitter to Home Page

Search Engine Optimization Orlando

The phrase, “Search Engine Optimization Orlando” is a pretty good keyword and keywords are the start of search engine optimization. I suspect that people in or near Orlando search online using the above phrase. They are probably looking for someone nearby who they can visit to seek advice on getting their website noticed by the search engines. Perhaps they are looking to buy internet success (generally not possible). Google is the one to be noticed by as it has a good 50+% share of the search engine market.

In fact, the top five search engines showing market share are (courtesy http://searchengineland.com):

1. Google: 53.6%
2. Yahoo: 19.9%
3. Microsoft: 12.9%
4. AOL: 5.6%
5. Ask: 1.7%

So how do we please Google? Well, personally, I wouldn’t go to a so called specialist (you know what is said about "experts") and spend your hard earned revenue. The reason I say that is because at its core, search engine optimization is relatively straightforward. And the more you understand it the more simple it looks and becomes. So people who are looking for a consultant could find all they need to know for free on the ‘net. In fact it may be the case that the fees charged by an SEO consultant work out more expensive than employing someone at their business to learn the ropes, do the SEO work and maintain the site. And if you are the type who is looking for a consultant you are probably a business making a profit employing people.

People searching for “Search Engine Optimization Orlando” either are about to build a new site or run a site that is not being found by the search engines. If the latter is the case it may simply be a question of waiting as at the outset it takes time for Google to recognize your site’s existence. It may take several months to get truly recognized. It is generally a slow process. So, patience and persistence count big time. However, if you have a site that is well established with a decent Alexa and PR (Page Rank) ranking your post should get seen earlier by Google.

Probably still the most important element of search engine optimization is choosing the right keyword. I have built some pages on keywords and optimizing a site generally so won’t repeat them here but link to them below. However, I would like to expand on the subject of choosing a keyword. And what better example than discussing the keyword for this post, “Search Engine Optimization Orlando”? A post in blog terms is a webpage. Every post is saved as a webpage. A website is a bundle of web pages linked together.

To find a suitable keyword to do with search engine optimization I used a piece of software. It is called Brainstorm It! It is based on a business called Wordtracker. But Brainstorm It! refines the information and presents it in a more useful manner, in my view. Brainstorm It! is one of the many tools offered by SBI to optimize your site. I asked the programme to find me keywords in relation to, “search engine optimization”. It found 800 keywords. That is a lot of keywords because it is a very popular subject and that means that there are a lot of websites competing against each to try and get noticed in providing information on the subject just as I am in this post.

Of the 800, I refined the list to just 21 keywords. How did I refine the list? I chose those keywords that had lots of demand and not much supply. This is the same as opening a business. If in your area of operation market research indicates a financially viable number of people are crying out for a certain product but the nearest supplier is 100 miles away then the demand is high but the supply in the area low.

This is a photograph of the top 5 of the 21 keywords in a printout:

You can just see that the top one is “Search Engine Optimization Orlando”. This is a form or market research because it tells me that there are not enough SEO consultants in Orlando. Keyword research is market research as well and both the customer (the person seeking the service) and the service provider can benefit from it. Although, commonsense dictates that we should not rely on it without some qualifications/discretion from us, the human brain. It is a bit like GPS navigation systems. We need to add some wise human thought to what the machine brings to us.

You can see that the top line has Value Demand as 3049 and Real Supply as 54. Brainstormer ranks the keywords usefulness under Profitability. If profitability is over 1000 I will take a serious look at the keyword. In this case it stands at 56463, a good number. This then is a good keyword with high demand and a low supply. Which should mean that this page has a reasonable chance to get listed on page one of a Google search. That, though, is not the whole picture but it is an important element in the whole.

The next stage is to produce good quality content that is useful to visitors. In other words the content is like a desirable product in a shop. The content is built around the chosen keyword; in this case, “Search Engine Optimization Orlando”.

For an overview of the other elements in search engine optimizing your website, please go to:

• Google Image Search Builds Traffic
• How To Get Traffic To Your Blog
• Twitter Helps Build Blogger Traffic

A word of caution. There are no quick fixes and instant, sustainable successes. Why should there be? Why should the internet be any different to on the ground? Sure there are sites that grow quickly to become very successful but these have often had millions of dollars or pounds invested in them which was earned somewhere else (the hard way).

From Search Engine Optimization Orlando to Home Page

SEO Blog Software

My blog gets up to 2,700 unique visitors daily (see below). Here is a review of a top listed (by Google) SEO Blog software website. I think that people search for this in order to find some sort of software that will search engine optimize their blog automatically. The whole tortuous thing done for you. That doesn’t sound right to me. People don’t and can’t do that. So although as far as I am concerned the truth is that there is no shortcut to getting your work listed by Google in search results at a position (first page) that makes it useful, I am reviewing Jeff Johnson Underground Training Lab, Free SEO Blog Software and Traffic-Getting Training Tutorials.

Traffic for Pictures-of-Cats.org Blog -- Statcounter. 20-5-09.

Jeff Johnson’s website gets lots of traffic; a vast amount. A testament to the number of people who want to get their blog noticed. When you go to the site he tells you why he gives stuff away and then asks you to sign up. You confirm by email and then an email is sent to you, which purportedly contains the magic SEO Blog Software and tutorials.

In the email, he says that “Your” free software download link is below (in the email). But where the hell is it?! I am still looking. I am writing this at the same time that I signed up; it’s in real time. After about 15 lines of email in which he asks that we watch out for future emails he says,

“Here are your Free SEO Blog Software download instructions: Very Important! My Free SEO Blog Software is being replaced by my new SEO tool called "Traffic Getting SEO Plugin" for Wordpress.”

It is starting to look odd, already. He calls this, “Traffic Getting SEO Plugin^(TM) for Wordpress”. Further down the email there is a link to a “review” of this software. I didn’t click on this because I already don’t trust this. It is probably OK but I don’t use Wordpress and I am not sure that my computer is going to be alright afterwards.

“Reviewing” the software is the first stage. You then have to login to get the download. Jeff says,

“Use this login information to access the download page:”

Then below that is a link above which are the words,

“Download the Traffic Getting SEO Plugin here:”

So, do we have to login for the Wordpress software or can we get it from the email? I am confused but I am not going to click on the link. That is it for me. I couldn’t find the SEO Blog software that I was looking for and expected from the language used. If he had simply provided a link to the product he said he would deliver, I would have continued.

Frankly, there is a lot of “white noise” out there on the internet. By white noise I mean distracting information and get rich quick type schemes (it is the guys who run the schemes who get rich, if at all, not us). They all prey on people who are struggling to make some money on the blasted internet. We used to have a dream that you could make real money on the internet more easily than you could elsewhere. That dream has died. It is as tough on the internet. But it suites a lot of people to make a living on the internet.

However, if you use Google Blogger as free blog hosting then you have made a good choice in my opinion because Google will tend to list Blogger blog posts after about 2 months and provided that you make more than a few of them! It is all about quality and quantity of content; posting regularly but not too speedily that the quality suffers.

I have made several posts about improving your chances of getting your blog noticed:

1. How To Publicize Your Blog
2. Google Image Search Builds Traffic
3. How To Get Traffic To Your Blog
4. Twitter Helps Blogger Traffic

By the way I make about $1,000 (USD) per month on the internet so it can be done the old fashioned way!

From SEO Blog Software to Home Page

Is Site Sell Site Buildit a Scam?

Update Nov 28th, 2021: Evoy kicked me out of SiteSell. He told me to go and take my site elsewhere because I dared to ask some tough questions on his forum as to why Alexa rankings were diving. The reason? SiteSell sites were over-optimised for SEO and Evoy was openly critical of Google. He made enemies of Google and Google killed him for a long time. My advice now? Don't use SiteSell. They were shits to me.

Is Site Sell Site Buildit a Scam? I am writing this in response to the video arguments and text arguments of Allyn Hane: Master Of My Own Domain (this is the page). He says that SBI or Site Sell is bullshit. What he means is that you cannot succeed on the internet by being spoon feed “how to” information, as SBI do, and succeed in the long term. The only way to succeed in the long term is to know coding and internet marketing, the whole kibosh, the lot. After all, you wouldn’t go into any business without knowing a good deal about it and having the skills to perform, would you?

Normally I would say, yes, and agree that the internet business is no different to normal business. This is what Allyn Hane is saying. The truth, though, is that the internet business is not quite like any other business. For example, html code is only in existence to provide us with the means to put stuff on the internet. We don’t need to know all about it.

Sure it helps to know about it but by far the most important thing is how to express knowledge not how the internet works. And to put things on the internet at a simple level is relatively easy. There are many successful yet simple sites. Dr. Evoy advocates simplicity. His site Sitesell.com is a good example (at one time it had Alexa 500). So you don’t need to be an internet guru to succeed on the ‘net. This then supports the SBI model. They do the coding for you until (and this is important) you have found your feet and are ready to jump out of the box and do your own thing.

I know this lady in the video above, not personally but as a person who has succeeded using SBI. She's smart. And yes you need to be smart to really succeed with SBI.....

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Note: Dr. Evoy, the founder of SiteSell.com would be dismayed to hear people calling his product a scam or, in this case, bullsh*t. He plays it very straight. There are scammers out there but he and SBI are not one of them, believe me. You have to work hard etc. and do your bit but with SBI supporting you it works.

 Note: If you found a bad review of SBI!, it was most likely part of a group of unscrupulous competitors who recently wrote and published a bunch of fake reviews about Site Build It! (Include link where you see fit).

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One of the great barriers to succeeding on the internet is to get off the ground. It is a complete mystery, still, to a vast number of people. And a good proportion of these people have lots to give. They just don’t have the means to do it and Site Sell or SBI gives them the launch pad, the means to get on the internet, progress and learn until they can stand on their own two feet. You cannot find this anywhere else, as far as I know.

I know that the founder and chief executive, Dr. Evoy, (now a consultant by the way) also founded one of the great affiliate schemes on the internet (5 Pillar Club) in which SBI people sell the SBI products on the websites that they build with the help of SBI (neat that) but few of them sell the product to any great extent, if one is honest.

It is a slightly clunky product when compared to Google Blogger for example - no doubt about it. It needs modernisation, I think (update: they have introduced new templates). But I am sure that the board of directors have decided that they must keep the $299 yearly subscription frozen under the barrage from Google Blogger and the other free website hosting businesses. The gorilla Google (I actually love Google) is hurting Sitesell and SBI. SBI sites are a little unsophisticated compared to Blogger sites. But, and this is one of the keys, it doesn’t matter if a site is a bit clunky (it may actually help if it is not too slick). The overriding factor is content, what you say and what images or videos you put up on the internet. Simplicity is all and Allyn Hane knows that because his site is simple and effective.

He succeeds on the back of what he says. One of Dr. Evoy’s mantras is to keep it simple and say what you know (on the basis that you know something worth passing on to the public) in your voice while leaving all the distracting bits and pieces, the mechanics and the "white noise" (distracting information on SEO) to him and Site Sell. This is very appealing to women stuck at home with a bit of time on their hands, for example. Yet, I agree that the selling and persuasive powers of Dr. Evoy are so good that the vast majority of new starters think that they can make a viable amount of money by following SBI tutorials and building 30+ pages.

This will never work. Most, almost all in my view, make an amount of money that is so small as to make it of no real consequence in their lives. But they live in hope. I am being brutally honest and some will disagree with that. But some go on and develop, using SBI’s great tutorials, to learn the basics and then to experiment and in effect they are learning on the job. That is invaluable. I am one of those people. When I started I knew next to nothing. I learned from SBI. I experimented and did my own thing and realized late in the day that it is better to stick to SBI methods and to keep it simple (I made mistakes, of course).

There is a mass of “white noise” out there, distracting information that pulls you off the straight and narrow SBI model. I am still learning. I have a long way to go. This site is a subdomain of my main site, www.pictures-of-cats.org. It is very easy to set up a subdomain using SBI tools. Another little advantage of SBI. There are numerous support tools and they all free us up to produce content. SBI would drive a computer geek to distraction because it is designed for people who know nothing about html and the internet but who have knowledge or a skill on other topics that are just as valuable. It allows them to express themselves on the internet. And you know, a lot of computer savvy people have very little to give the world other than their computer knowledge and even that knowledge they have difficulty in disseminating.

It is quite rare to find someone who knows the mechanics of html and another interesting and useful subject as well. SBI and Site Sell overcomes that obstacle. You only have to know one element of that double act. You can ignore the html bit and still succeed. This is very valuable for many people who are excluded from disseminating their knowledge on the internet. It opens doors to many people. A very important point that is often missed however is that not only does Site Sell SBI give people access to a world wide audience who would otherwise be excluded, it optimises the page for you.

And such are the SEO skills of Dr. Evoy and his team that the pages that a novice produces are search engine optimised to a very high degree. This is a hidden benefit but the most important part of the SBI process. This is what makes SBI sites more successful than other sites. I am sure that a novice building a web page with SBI in the most simplistic of ways (using what SBI calls, “blockbuilder”) is better optimised in a way that allows it to be found and listed by the search engines than many a page produced by computer and internet geeks. SBIers are, after all taping into the formidable SEO skills of one of the best in the business, Dr. Evoy.

There are many useful features but one, for me, stands out. Site Sell, SBI call it C2 (content version 2). It is a form that is designed for visitors to fill in to allow the site to be built in part them (see an example in action). The trouble is this; precious few use it. I have over 7,000 uniques daily, some days at the moment, and I only get 1 to 2 submissions daily. This is to be expected because few visitors are motivated to give you something. Most people are out to receive something; information etc. But so effective is this form that I use it myself and to great effect as pages automatically produced by it are routinely listed by Google on page one of a search and not infrequently in the top 5. And this applies to Google.com and Google.co.uk searches. This gives a clue as to the effectiveness of SiteSell's SEO abilities. So having achieved an Alexa rank currently of 103,000 (at June 2009 it is 94,000) after less than 2 years building the site and making about $1,000 (USD) a month I am pleased with SBI (the site is not yet optimised in terms of making money, by the way and I made $1,200+ in May of 2009) .

The annual SBI fee of $299 (2009) can be recovered in a fraction of a single month. The SEO facility alone makes the money well spent. I know there are aspects of SBI that are outdated and clunky as I said but at its core it is still highly effective and provides a service that is perhaps unique and especially attractive for people who are stuck at home and who want to work while caring for children as a good example.

I think that the kind of remarks made by Allyn Hane when he says that Site Sell and SBI are a scam and bullsh*t are from a person who has not (with respect to him) fully grasped the benefits of the process. He is falling into that trap of being obliged to write a webpage (to produce content) without having fully read about it or, better still, having experienced it. He won’t mind because all he is really doing is bringing in traffic to his site. He is being deliberately provocative but at another person's expense it should be said. Whether his post is accurate or not is secondary to provoking reaction in the public. And that is OK.

I can understand that. But SBI needs defending from these slightly misleading articles. Update late August: I am one of the people who has benefited from SBI. I would not have succeeded without the knowledge I gained through working with them. This site is a subdomain. The Alexa ranking is around 80,000 (at June 2010 the Alexa ranking is 55,000). I owe a lot of that to SBI Sitesell. I really do and I am not just selling SBI. The site makes about 2,000 USD per month undermonetized.

I am a 60 year man with no previous experience of website building and within 2 years I am in the top 80,000 sites in the world. There are hundreds of millions of sites. And a lot of sites that are doing worse than mine have a team of geeks working on the site. I work entirely alone! And being 60 it keeps me alive! I need to do something and be focused. My site and SBI give me that. One great thing about SBI is that you can walk away if it doesn't work out for you at no cost as far as I remember. And you can change the website domain once and restart without charge. I did that because my first two month attempt I decided would not work. SBI are very helpful but best of all is they teach you as you work how to get your site noticed by Google and the other search engines and that is so very important.

1. Some more information in a video.
2. From Is Site Sell Site Buildit a Scam to Home Page

How to Publicize Your Blog

How to publicize your blog. A comprehensive list of things to do. The Google Blogger help team tells you a lot of what you need to know to publicize your blog or promote it - call it what you like. There are a number of options that need to be considered and selected and we tend not to get involved in these because at first it is all a bit confusing or boring. Here is a list of things you should do to publicize your blog.

Note: this was written in 2009! A lot of it still holds true but things have moved on. The ultimate way of publicising your blog is to get good Google search result rankings and that means writing lots of excellent articles and at least one a day for ever!! (but see pink update below!) You have to persist and be disciplined. You might write more 💕. It helps to produce original thought which is hard. At 2024 this blog has been on the internet for 16 years. The average lifespan of a website is around 2.6 years!!

Further update Aug 2024: Google search is f**k*d. It is not just me saying this. Check out the internet. Sorry Google but you have to change and fast. They incorporate AI and Google has an agenda but remain resolutely opaque about what they are doing. It is horrible. Google has destroyed hundreds of thousands of websites as their traffic has declined by 90%. All you can do it write great articles well illustrated and pray that things change. But AI is a website killer. Right now I would not recommend starting a website. No way. Unless you have a brilliant and entirely novel idea. 😱😎😒

Firstly, on a fundamental level you have to be prepared to write a lot of good posts that are well focused and which are more than a weak duplication of what someone else has done. The posts have to be of reasonable length. Any post I have made bar one (out of over a 1000 posts) that was less than about 200 words did not show up on a Google search. My most successful posts have usually been the longer ones and the better prepared ones; the posts that have been prepared with some care and a little more than the normal amount of attention. 

But not all long ones are successful. In fact, Google say that the posts should be both “succinct” and put out “pertinent new information”. This is not an exact science; even Google admit that. The reason why I mention this is because the best way to publicize your blog is to get your posts listed in search results. A Google search listing on the first page, preferably in the top 5 is pretty much essential and if you can get top spot the traffic will increase noticeably overnight. Google is the best publicity tool that we all have.

On the basis that you are posting decent length quality posts and doing it reasonably frequently, it is also worth paying attention to “the rules” about keywords. The use of keywords in blogs will enhance the chances of the post being picked up. Read about keyword use: How To Get Traffic to Your Blog. With these basics out of the way what about the fiddly bits at the back of the blog, the settings etc.? In this regard I would just follow Blogger’s recommendations and common sense. I expand of them below.

Note: As at the date of this post the following are valid and effective but Google constantly upgrades Blogger so things change.

The first thing is to set your blog settings so that your blog sends “pings” (messages in my language). Doing this creates the possibility of your work being listed and shown in lists. For example, Blogger runs things such as Blogger Play and the “Next Blog” feature. You should participate in these. Every little thing helps. Blogger Play (update: this has changed to Reader Play or some such thing) is a webpage that receives feeds of pictures from the millions of Blogger blogs (and profile pages) and presents them as a slide show. While “Next Blog” is the Navbar feature that allows bloggers to click on and be taken randomly to the next blog. This can publicize your blog as it could be your blog that is picked by Blogger. In order to benefit from these features you will need to go to the “Settings” page and select “Basic”. If you scroll down you should see these options and the settings should be as indicated in this photo:

Note: these screenshots are out of date as the settings on Blogger have changed. I've decided to leave them nonetheless.



Another thing that Blogger suggests that you do is to activate the Navbar. This is not a Navbar as I know it but it is useful. It is the bar at the top of the page running across the page. It has a button, about in the middle that reads, “Next Blog”. Click this and you go to randomly selected blog (or is it random? - not sure as the better blogs may come up more frequently than the others). Many bloggers like to remove the Navbar as they want their blog to look completely different to a Blogger site, which is possible, but the Navbar is a very useful tool and why throw away a useful tool for appearance sake? Believe me content is far more important than appearance. Just look at the Google Blogger help pages. The colour of the Navbar can be changed, incidentally.

Next, it is advisable to ensure that each post that you create is stored as a separate page so that it can be found months and years later as your blog gets better known! You should turn on “Post Pages” by going to “Settings” and then selecting, “Archiving”. Scroll down to “Enable Post Pages?”. You will see the settings as indicated below:



Just going off track for a minute, the Blogger team select what they call a “Blog of Note” each month. Over 700 hundred blogs have been chosen and are now archived by month on this page – also see blogs of note(new window). If you have the time and inclination, it may reward you to have a look at the blogs and decide if there is a common thread. Blogs listed here can get a traffic boost.

Back to the boring but essential stuff. Oh, before I forget, pictures. I discuss the power of Google image search here: Google Image Search Builds Traffic. An article on how to publicize your blog mustn’t overlook how you use images as this is a powerful tool.

The next “back room” administrative tool is the email post link. You get to this by going to “Settings” and then “Basic” and scrolling down. This should be turned on to enable visitors who like the post to email it to other people. And if we are lucky it will then be forwarded on to other people by email and so on. Sounds great that. It isn’t quite like that but all these little factors should be incorporated. This is how the setting looks like when selected:



On the blog this facility shows up as an icon of an envelope at the base of the blog post.

Next, that mysterious thing RSS Feeds. This is a powerful tool and a must. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. (see Wikipedia explanation)(new window). This is perhaps the most important feature in how to publicize your blog other than preparing good content. It is simply a piece of software that picks up your blog post and presents the most recent post on blog feeds that people have subscribed to. For example, you can use feeds to present recent posts from your own blog or someone else's on your iGoogle desktop. And there is Google Reader (new window) and Google Alerts (new window) and many other feed services. Google Reader is Google’s version of the receiving end of RSS feeds. And with Google Alerts you can specify that Google picks up feeds about cat news, for example, (my area of interest). The information can be sent to you in an email. That is RSS from the customer end of the process. From the blog end it means that someone somewhere may be getting your blog post fed to their computer automatically all the time. This spreads the word and is a great way to publicize your blog.

Just make sure the facility is activated by going to “Settings” and then “Site Feed”. The setting should show like this (“Full”):



You can add a feed widget to your blog (a device which visitors can select to get your blog feeds) by clicking on, “Add a Gadget” and selecting, “Feed”:



Here are some more things to do to publicize your blog:

1. Embed YouTube videos and Flickr videos and photos - update: Google likes embedded Flickr videos in my opinion.  As at June 2011 video is increasingly important to the internet - consider doing something on video. I believe these increase the chances of your blog getting a better Page Rank (PR) and the better the PR the better the chance of being listed high up by the search engines. I believe this because YouTube is owned by Google and Google, although providing lots of free public services of great quality, is a business and it wants us to use its products. It, therefore, gives a reward - better page rank. Which in turn means the videos are seen more on pages that are found more frequently. This means YouTube becomes more used and powerful and so does Google. As to Flickr, the new algorithm appears to be favoring Flickr pages. I would use that to your advantage.
   
2. Link exchange; obtain an agreement from another blogger whose blog has a decent PR to exchange links with you. And leave links to your blog in the comments of other blogs where allowed and where appropriate. Inbound links improves PR (see above).
3. Try and get your blog listed in the directories. Some people do this for you but beware. This once again gives your blog inbound links improving PR and then Google will list you higher; the best kind of publicity. I have managed to get my website listed in the Yahoo directory. This cost an up front $299 with no guarantee of acceptance! But if accepted it definitely helps Google search rankings. The effect is almost immediate. The Yahoo directory has status because the listed sites are hand selected. Google knows that and rewards accordingly. You pay the $299 yearly too.
4. I have never done the next one but Google Blogger recommend it: put a link to your blog at the base of your emails, your email signature. This might help to spread the word.
5. As at the date of this post Twitter is all the rage. You can use Twitter to publicize your blog but I wouldn’t overdo it. See: Twitter Helps Blog Traffic. Update Jan 2011: Facebook and Twitter are good social networking sites to promote your blog. The question is, "do you have the time to write the blog daily and social network sufficiently to make these sites work for you?" YouTube is another site that can spread the word and make Adsense revenue but once again it takes time to create quality videos. I have a YouTube channel and am a YouTube partner: broadsurf. Regarding Facebook I have a contributor who spreads the word for me on Facebook. You can see from the upstream clickstream (see chart below) that some visitors come from Facebook.
6. One last point – the obvious really, word of mouth. It pays to get around and meet people on the ground. The old fashioned way. This is for serious bloggers. But if you are active, on the ground, in the sphere of the subject matter of your blog it will publicize the blog by word of mouth.

Facebook contributes.

How to publicize your blog? Of all the above the most powerful is persistently writing high quality content over a period of time. If everything that I have mentioned were ignored, yet the content was good and there was lots of it, your blog would succeed.

Update 29-10-09: I have a couple of great tips that no one uses to improve SERs (search engine rankings). They were discovered by both thought and trial and error. If someone wants to know them you'll have to give me something in return and that will be at least a 15-line contribution of decent quality on my website: Pictures of cats org. You can see all the input forms here. When you use the form leave an email and I'll tell you the tip of the decade!! Well not quite but very useful tip that I have not seen mentioned anywhere.

One last point: Please be patient and persistent. This is a slow grind

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