Blogging

Solving The SUPPLEMENTAL Problem

Image Highlighting A Supplemental Result

There is quite a bit of discussion going on across the net about this SUPPLEMENTAL INDEXING problem that so many people seem to be having. In this article, HowToSpoter explains what their particular situation is and describes the steps they took to put their supplemental pages back into the original Google index.

What is a Supplemental Result?
Supplemental results are generally pages that Google has determined to be secondary to other, more relevant pages that Google has indexed on your website. In effect, supplementary results are actually a secondary database of results that are only called upon when the most obscure queries force Google to check all its indexed resources.

It’s definitely a good read, especially if your dealing with this problem yourself. I have heard through the grapevine that Google is planning to get rid of their supplemental index, but I have yet to confirm this rumor. At any rate, I tried to find a supplemental result for HowToSpoter.com and apparently, they have fixed their problem as I couldn’t find any.

*TIP* To see if any of your sites pages are listed in the supplemental index, type site:www.mydomain.com *** into Google. Replace MYDOMAIN with your actual domain name. Let us know how many results you find by leaving a comment.

Participate In A Forum Within Your Niche

V7network LogoProblogger is doing their blogging tips for the month of August and the tip for August 3rd centered around joining and then participating in forums that are part of your niche. Taking this tip to heart, I typed a search string into Google and a few minutes later, I discovered the v7n Webmaster Forum. This forum contains topics that I’m interested in such as SEO, Blogging, Marketing, Graphic design, ect. Because these topics are directly related to the content that I post regularly on this site, participating in this forum should be a piece of cake.

I’m participating in a forum not only for the extra boost in traffic to this site, but also to create new relationships. Relationships are one of the most powerful tools a blogger can posses as in most times, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Using this forum, I can gain a new level of knowledge of the topics I discuss which will help me out when I am suffering from writers block. The forum also provides me an avenue of sharing information that I have learned which is one way in which I can give back to the community.

So do yourself a favor. Look for a forum that relates to what you blog about and participate in it. In the long run, you’ll be glad you did.

If you happen to join this same forum, be sure to look me up as my handle is Jeffro2pt0.

Don’t Blog As Administrator

Display Name As Seen In WordPress

Donncha has posted a WordPress blogging tip which in my opinion, should be common sense by now. Don’t blog as administrator or at least don’t let your display name show up on your blog as administrator. Not only does it send a red flag to potential hackers but it also looks pretty unprofessional too see a bunch of posts on a blog posted by administrator.

To alleviate this problem, log in to your WordPress admin panel and click on USERS. Edit your usernames profile and change the display name to something besides administrator, for example, your real name.

Don’t Blog As Administrator

Display Name As Seen In WordPress

Donncha has posted a WordPress blogging tip which in my opinion, should be common sense by now. Don’t blog as administrator or at least don’t let your display name show up on your blog as administrator. Not only does it send a red flag to potential hackers but it also looks pretty unprofessional too see a bunch of posts on a blog posted by administrator.

To alleviate this problem, log in to your WordPress admin panel and click on USERS. Edit your usernames profile and change the display name to something besides administrator, for example, your real name.

Target Equals Blank Or No

Browsing around the web, I came across a post on Problogger.net which discusses a topic that I have been wondering about for quite some time. That is, Should links open in a new window or not? The question is an interesting one and after tallying up the totals, Problogger discovered that about %54 of their commentary preferred links to open in new windows versus the %46 that believes users should be able to decide as to what sort of behavior the link performs.

Over the years, I have been trained to always implement the target=”blank” component of a link as it allowed browsers to visit that page without having to leave my own. I generally don’t use the target statement if the link is for something within the same site. After reading that post and the associated commentary, I am beginning to rethink my linking strategy.

Considering IE 7, Opera and Firefox, not sure about Safari all support tabbed browsing, I would have to think that surfers are using tabs more than they are using new/seperate windows. So if I were to place the target attribute into a link, chances are, that link will open up in a new tab vs a new window but I don’t have any stats to back this statement up, it’s only my opinion.

Because of the advent of tabs, I think I will still maintain my linking strategy. If the link is for something within the site, it shouldn’t open in a new tab or new window. However, if the link is to some place other than my own site, I am going to force that link to open in a new window/tab.

SEO At Word Camp

Word Camp is over with for 2007 but during the conference, one of the talking points of discussion revolved around SEO. Some of the tips that were highlighted during this meeting include:

Don’t put blog at root of domain

  • What if you want something besides a blog?
  • People link to a main pageand a main blog page so you get extra links

Name Directory Blog (not wordpress)

  • Case you change
  • If you upgrade.

SEO Tips

various keyword tools: AdWords, Overture/Yahoo

Use a variant of the word in post slug verses title.

use categories that are good keywords

  • dashes are best
  • next best is underscores
  • no spaces are worst
  1. Keep it simple, and search engines will like it.
  2. Don’t change your site, its not worth the hassle.
  3. Use alt tags on your images, 3-4 relevant words
  4. Don’t forget image search and video search.
  5. Full sentence verses a few words? the scoring algorithms don’t mind unless it actually notices the spam.
  6. Question marks or Hashmarks? They get truncated.

Check out all of the other great tips that were covered at the conference by visiting the WordCamp Info Blog.

Everyday Weekender

This post is a bit off topic but I wanted to let everyone know about a blog I discovered called Everyday Weekender. Everyday Weekender is a blog devoted to those who love to celebrate the weekend. Those who work regular 9-5 jobs will appreciate the content spread amongst this site which consists of cottage living, food, and do it yourself activities which are a ton of fun. While your at your cubicle, at least take a visit to this blog to stare at the header image which is as relaxing as can be. If your interested in owning a cottage or want to know more about cottage style living, this is the blog for you. On a side note, if you would like to increase your page rank, please visit this link

The WordCamp Report

The WordCamp Report

If you are a WordPress user, you are definitely going to want to bookmark this site. The WordCamp Report is specifically reporting on everything going on at WordCamp. I can’t attend because I live in Ohio but the WordCamp Report blog should keep me informed as if I were there. Special thanks to the blogs authors, Patrick Havens and Charles Stricklin for keeping those who couldn’t attend up to date.

Look At All That Spam

The Akismet blog has posted some statistics involving the amount of spam being blocked. The figures are as follows:

Notice the last stat compared with the previous stat. Indeed, spam is growing. Akismet has put together a detailed chart which highlights the increase in spam from 2006-04 to 2007-07. As you would expect, the graph looks like the side of Mt. Everest. I don’t think we will ever see the graph enter a downward state. How has Akismet worked out for you?

Click on the image to see the full version