I make money online by sharing how I make money online with blogging and internet marketing

Speeding Links for Search For Blogging Readers - Week 1

Mert Erkal — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:48:28 +0000

A thought-provoking and inspirational post by Seth Godin:10,000 hours
Another great post from Chris Brogan: 27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community
Let’s talk about music: Music Blog Zeitgeist
Twitter Gone Phishing
This one is a real eye opener for blog designers:10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design in 2009
Who else wants to read some free ebooks on blogging?Top 10 Free E-books For Bloggers
An amazing presentation titled Lost Way of Marketing by Tugce Esener
Do you know What’s Next After Web 2.0?

Never Miss A Word with The Pulse Smart Pen

Mert Erkal — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:44:06 +0000

Keeping a blog diary can help you improve as a blogger. However, not many of the bloggers are so keen on opening a notebook every now and then to write in, so if you’re such a person then Livescribe’s the Pulse Smart Pen is for you.

It writes on special notebook paper. At the same time it records sound from your immediate area. The good thing is the Pulse Smart Pen coordinates what you write with what it hears. Best of all, you can save and share the content with your readers. The smartpen has a speaker, a display area and a microphone , along with either a 1 GB or 2 GB memory. See a good example of practical usage by Ed Dale: Livescribe Pulse Pen In Action

If you can afford pay $149.95 for the 1 GB memory version, and never miss a word again!

The Future of Blogging - Predictions for 2009 - Update

Mert Erkal — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:51:37 +0000

On 29th December I published The Future of Blogging - Predictions for 2009, and shared my predictions for 2009. On the same post I asked my readers about their predictions for 2009. You may find the answers herebelow:

Rangoo:

“As you have rightly pointed out videos will play a major role. Reading is not favored by many. So audio, video content and images in blogs will be used to make blogs sticky.

Micro blogging will gain ground and videos in micro bits of focused information will become popular.

Instead of running around social sites bloggers will convert their blogs into social hubs. The biggest crowd pullers will be profitable. New ways of getting visitors to the blogs and helping them hang out longer will have to be thought of.

New rules of SEO optimization are being set which web designers and WordPress bloggers will have to keep in mind.

Webinars will take the place of physical seminars and teleseminars. To cut the cost in this economic downtime more and more people will turn to webinars. Webinars with integrated VOIP are increasingly being preferred over teleseminars.”

Sherry Balcom:

“I agree with you, I feel blogging is going to increase by thousands. With so many needing help to pay bills and things people are going to turn to the internet. I also feel it will be a year that people will strife to get a handle on their finances. That is why I love the tool that I offer. The company that produces this tool moto is to get every American out of debts that wants to be debt free. I think 2009 we will see most Americans trying to get a handle on their finances and an increase in people needing help.”

Miguel Wickert:

“Mert, First, nice evaluation and expectations of the blogosphere. Second, thanks for the mention in your article.

Companies discovering blogging and so on; I also see this happening, I’m sure some all ready are in the grind but others are slow at adjusting or taking new trends in technology because many of their employees are older, not willing to learn and outdated. Has anyone seen a company effectively use a blog or social networking site? I mean, a big experienced company not a recent start up.

As far as blogging rules, people hate pop-ups but use them for whatever reason. Why do we insist on putting others through hurdles we ourselves despise? Stumbled and reviewed! -Mig”

amr rezk:

“Hi Mert,

I think in 2009 blogs will be categorized more, there will be text blogs, image blogs, and video blogs, which will help end users choose what kind of content they want to encounter.”

aniroy1986:

“people are using micro blogs like twitter to popularize their blogs. how can we say that blogging is dead “

The Last Google PR Update of 2008

Mert Erkal — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:54:12 +0000

As I mentioned on my previous post About The Next Google PageRank Update, with a few days delay Google completed the last PageRank update for 2008. The next one will probably be in March 2009. It is like a never ending game.

My blog’s PR was 0 for the last few updates. So early in December, I took some serious action. Even though I do believe that PageRank has nothing to do with good quality and reliable content, most of the first time readers and sponsors still take PR into consideration at first look.

So what did I try to get my PR back?

You might think that I requested reconsideration using Google Webmaster Tools. I knew that it was useless unless your blog or website was completely banned by Google.

Instead, I got partnered with a SEO expert, and the Seo Tools Shop was born. It is just another story, which I will mention later in a separate post. Lets focus on the things I did to get my PR back:

I completely changed the permalink structure of my blog. See The 5 Basic Steps Of SEO For Your Blog - Part 1 for more details. In other words my blog became a brand new blog, or considered as brand new by Google. If you follow the same step, don’t forget to update your Sitemap too. This will ping major search engines about the permalink structure change.
At that time I had around 300 posts. I spent one whole week to add convenient tags into each and every blog post.
I started using Platinum SEO plugin. Take a look at this post for more details: The 5 Basic Steps Of SEO For Your Blog - Part 3
My SEO expert partner did a very deep link analysis for my blog. We found out that the problem was not a big one. Majority of the links pointing to my blog were coming from PR0 blogs. On the other hand, my Alexa was around 64,000. Probably Google bot thought that I was using scripts to manipulate their system to increase Alexa ranking of my blog, with too little backlinks from the blogs with high pagerank.
I removed my blog from sites like ReviewMe, TextLinkAds, Linkworth, etc. They are all PR killers!

So guess what happened during the last update? Nothing happened in terms of PR!

It was the last lesson I learned. When you do a permalink structure change in your blog, it takes more than one month to see the reflection on PR. But now I do know that if I keep on writing at this pace (ideally one post everyday!), and focus on SEO of my blog (both on-site and off-site), I will have a good PR on 2009 March update.

But the indexing rate of my blog tripled in 3 weeks. Type “site:www.searchforblogging.com” in Google, and see my blog’s indexing rate. As your blog’s indexing rate increases, your organic search engine traffic also increases.

I wanted to share this if you are in similar position. Don’t spend your time begging Google for reconsideration. No matter what others say, follow above mentioned steps. You will not see the positive reflection on PR immediately, but your search engine traffic will increase significantly.

I make money online by sharing how I make money online with blogging and internet marketing

Speeding Links for Search For Blogging Readers - Week 1

Never Miss A Word with The Pulse Smart Pen

The Future of Blogging - Predictions for 2009 - Update

Popular Posts From 2008

The Last Google PR Update of 2008