Archive | Google RSS feed for this section

Blogging While Brown 2010 Where I Learned How to Make My Blog Suck Less

By on July 6, 2010 in Blogging, Google

The funnest and funniest presentation by far this year was given by blogger extraordinaire Scott Hanselman. I don’t know if Scott is a Toastmaster but he definitely knows how to use humor effectively.

These are a few key points from his presentation “32 Ways to Make Your Blog Suck Less” that stood out to me:

  • People read blogs around 9:00 AM Eastern time on Mondays. Nobody reads them on Saturdays.
  • Nothing will lower your readership more quickly than writing about politics if that’s not your main topic. That also goes for anything else significantly off topic from what you usually write.
  • Integrate search into your blog site (Google or Bing for example).
  • Don’t just reply to an e-mail for help back to that one person. Write a post on the subject and e-mail the link to them instead.

Fortunately Scott distributed the presentation and you can take a look for yourself to pick up a few tips to apply to your site.

Another great part was getting to know Scott on a personal level. Myself and a handful of other bloggers hung out with him the night before his presentation and he had us cracking up the entire time. He is one of those folks who is the same guy on stage and off. Nothing inaccessible about him.

If you ever get to hear Scott in person you should definitely do so. In the mean time get to work on making your blog suck less.

Comments { 0 }

Inbound Marketing University Class 2

By on June 30, 2010 in Blogging, General Interest, Google, Google Analytics, SEO

SEO Crash Course to Get Found

Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing was the leader of this class. The homework assignment this time was to “Write a blog article that explains why a marketer would want to include SEO in his or her web marketing”. Since it worked so well for me on the first assignment I’ll stick to the three-takeaways format. The presentation was loaded with great Search Engine Optimization tips but here is what I settled on.

  • When it comes to ensuring that your posts are found and indexed by Google’s search spiders text is the key. Search engines look for words not images so you don’t want your site too picture or Flash heavy if automated ranking is important to you. Don’t restrict yourself to word of mouth only and bells and whistles to grow your blog readership. Consistently writing solid keyword intensive content is still the key.
  • Inbound links also help elevate your blog’s position on search engine results pages. Mores specifically, links from authoritative sites are the key here. Good content again is how you make that happen. Be a thought leader that people want to save and fave.
  • And key point number three for me involves search analytics. Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics are must haves. The Webmaster Tools help optimize your site. The analytics code helps you track and analize readership traffic on your site. HubSpot has an analytics tool that Lee recommends as well. It also has a bunch of other tools that I wasn’t aware of. I will definitely begin incorporating more of each into my blogging and social media repertoire.

Here’s the lecture from class number 2. Take a look and listen for yourself and see what else you may find useful.

Comments { 0 }

How to Embed A Google Map

By on March 31, 2010 in Blogging, Google, Programming/Coding

Easy as pie. When you go to Google Maps and plug in the address you want to share or you see one on a blog/web site that you want to share, here’s how you plug it into the site you’re editing.

At the top right corner of the map you will see three options, Print, Send and Link. Click on Link and it generates two sets of code. The first gives you the option to post a web link into an email or IM (text message). The second creates the HTML embed code you can add to your web site or to a particular blog post that you’re writing.


View Larger Map

Copy and paste the code and you’ll get a Google map like I have above. It will be fully functional with the usual capabilities to zoom in or out for greater or lesser surrounding geographic detail, the travel to or from address feature and the nearby search link.

Comments { 0 }

Startup Multiple Home Page Tabs In Internet Explorer

By on January 26, 2010 in Google

Wow, I was wondering if this was possible when resetting my start up functions at work yesterday. I Googled it this morning and found a grade school simple solution from the folks at Tech-Recipes a nice technical tutorials site that I’m saving as new favorite.

In the section where you enter your default homepage just hit enter and type in as many URL’s as you like under each other.

I’ll show them some link love and let you read the directions on their site but also remember this last step as mentioned by one of the commenters to complete the set up. Tools > Internet Options > In the Tabs section where it reads “Change how webpages are displayed in tabs”, click the Settings button. Be sure to uncheck “Open only the first home page when Internet Explorer starts”.

I’m not sure how this works on other browsers as IE is the standard on the job but I’ll do some more searching over the next few days and share those with you too.

Comments { 0 }

How Does Google Analytics Work?

By on January 22, 2010 in General Interest, Google, Google Analytics

Let’s go to the source. Google has a 6-step informational video that shows you how. It’s free so create a Google account today and add the Analytics application to your profile.

Google Analytics Logo

Comments { 2 }

Use Cascading Style Sheets to Position Images In WordPress

By on January 15, 2010 in Blogging, Cascading Style Sheets, General Interest, Google, Programming/Coding, WordPress Tips

Google is just the most darned amazing tutorial service in human history. A few years ago when I adopted WordPress for my blogging platform the WordPress forums for getting questions answered were so convoluted I just wanted to scream in frustration. Thank goodness, Google has expanded it’s indexing to cover pretty much every subject. And fortunately more people are contributing helpful hints on all subjects especially those of us in the realms of blogging, web design, software engineering and animation.

I found a few great links that are helping me learn some quick Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) formatting tips using a few fundamental HTML commands. It’s been a good refresher as I now know how to center an image or shift it left or right, and how to wrap text around a picture. In these examples I’ll use the Blacks Gone Geek icon to illustrate the examples.

Here’s how it looks using straight HTML.

bgg.jpg

Using the old fashioned centering closed pair method

<center>Image file HTML goes here</center>

When I use the new CSS method that WordPress has incorporated I shouldn’t see any difference than when I use the traditional HTML method above.

bgg.jpg
Using the CSS centering method

<div class="cent">
<strong>Image file HTML goes here</strong>
</div>

Success! Of course more text between images always keeps things neatly spaced even when a style sheet is helping the alignment in the background.

bgg1.jpg

But what I really want to accomplish is lining up an image to the right or left as I please. To begin, here’s my effort to align an image to the right by adding the right alignment command. The picture has been repositioned to the right and the text now wraps around the left side of it. As I continue to type the text should wrap around the bottom of the picture and continue. So Let’s just see if that really is the case as I continue from this point to type nonsensical sentences just to fill up the space to test the programming technique behind the scenes in the WordPress editing panel. Ah, success again!

bgg1.jpg
So aligning an image to the left would be slightly different, merely changing the align command to left, rather than right. And as you might imagine if you were typing nonsenical gobbledygook (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) to test a programming concept you would allow your fingers to ramble across the keyboard just as I’m doing now. And were we succesful? Yes a third time.

So there’s a hint of what you can do with good CSS scripting. It’s literally custom made to control the layout design of your page and it applies to much more than the images you use. To learn more about it I also encourage you to read “HTML, XHTML, and CSS” by Rob Huddleston which I have found to be immensely helpful in getting me up to speed on all things CSS related. Hope you found this helpful and if so share the post with a friend.

Comments { 0 }