Get your blog out there! 3 Sites To Help You Increase Traffic To Your Blog

On 06.20.08, In Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, By John Rockefeller

If you’ve just started your own blog or even if you’ve had one for a while but are always on the lookout to incrase your readers then take a few minutes to read this post. Included below are 3 sites that will help build readership  by making your blog more visible and more accessible by people reading (and other bloggers quoting) on the internet.

 

#1. Technorati

Technorati is one of the original and definietly one of the most respected blog catalogs available on the web. By adding your blog to their listings, Technorati will routinely “ping” your blog to look for new posts. Then, it’ll take those posts and make them available to all of its readers giving full credit to you and your blog.  Already there are over 112 million blogs in Technorati’s index!

Technorati also offers a few neat features including the ability for people to become “fans” of your blog as well as a ranking system called “Authority.” The Authority of your blog is determined by how many individual blogs (not just many posts on the same blog) link to yours. The idea is that the most popular blogs will be the ones that most people link to or quote from. Technorati also offers Top 100 blog lists and other ways to see how well you stack up to other bloggers.

 

#2. Blog Catalog

Blog Catalog is exactly what it says: An online directory of blogs. While that doesn’t sound terribly exciting off the top this site is definitely worth a look. They are quite large, with over 18 billion messages in their message forum and countless blogs listed and updated daily, there is a ton of stuff happening at Blog Catalog.

An interesting feature available on Blog Catalog is the widget you are able to place on your own blog that links your Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and YouTube (among others) accounts and place the updates you do on those sites directly on your blog. For an example of this, take a look to the right side of this blog where you’ll see a red square titled “Latest Updates.”

There are other widgets available too, including one that shows you other Blog Catalog users who have recently read your blog. This service really helps to promote the social aspect of blogging.

 

#3. Zimbio

Zimbio is a relative newcomer to the blog indexing lineup. An interesting feature that sets Zimbio apart from the other services are “Wikizenes”, which are a sort of dynamic magazine that include articles from similar blogs. There are thousands of Wikizenes available to read on the site and you are more than welcome to create your own for everyone else to read as well.

As an example, someone has created a Wikizene on Gordon Ramsay.

 

And Finally…

Last but not least, don’t forget to submit your blog (and your blog posts) to my social search engine and social bookmarking service: Jack of All Links.

I hope this helps you in your quest to promote your blog. I know that it’s helped me immensely with this blog as now all 3 of these services are pinging my blog daily. I’d appreciate any feedback you have, including additional services that are similar to these. If I receive enough I may post a follow-up. Thanks!

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Add Jack of All Links to Social Bookmarking Reloaded

On 06.15.08, In Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, By John Rockefeller

If you use the Wordpress plugin Social Bookmarking Reloaded then you can benefit from the addition of the Jack of All Links social search engine icon on your pages. For the uninitiated, check out the previous article I wrote about the service. Otherwise, follow these instructions to add Jack of All Links support to Social Bookmarking Reloaded:

 

1. Update your sites.xml file.

Add these lines to the bottom of your “sites.xml” file just before the </social_sites> tag. The file “sites.xml” is located in the “./wp-content/plugins/social-bookmarking-reloaded” directory.

<site>
 <name>Jack of All Links</name>
 <url>http://www.jackofalllinks.com/action/submit?url={link}</url>
 <img>jackofalllinks_mini.png</img>
 <key>jackofalllinks</key>
</site>

 

2. Grab the Jack of All Links mini icon.

Download this image to your Social Bookmarking Reloaded directory (“./wp-content/plugins/social-bookmarking-reloaded”).

 

 

3. Enjoy!

After you do these two simple steps, logging into your blog’s administration panel will give you the ability to select Jack of All Links as one of the icons to show in your “Bookmark to:” bottom bar on each of your posts. For an example, look at the “Bookmark to:” bar on this post!

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Top 5 Firefox Extensions for Web Developers

On 06.07.08, In Opinion, Search Engine Optimization, Top Lists, Web Development, By John Rockefeller

You might be a web developer. You might need to know what HTML element is under your cursor at any given time. You might need to know the hexadecimal value of a pixel is under your cursor at any time. You might have a mile-long CSS file inherited from multiple projects and wonder: “Which styles still apply and which are no longer used?”

Fear not my fellow web developers, web designers, programmers, whateverrers! These 5 Firefox Extensions will help you chop the time spent on any web development task so you can get back to reading blogs during the day. Or work. You choose.

Without further ado, here they are:

 

#1 – Web Developer Extension

I don’t think I’ve ever used a web browser-based tool as much as I have this one. It’s saved me so much time and helped me solve so many problems over the past year. It does practically everything. With tools like “Resize Window” which lets you resize your window to a certain pixel width and height and “View Generated Source” which lets you see the source code used in the website AFTER Javascript runs — Instead of showing function(var 1, var 2) it will actually show the variables that went into that function e.g., function(“john”, “rockefeller”). Cool huh?

Cool features:

  1. A ruler you can use to measure the size of tables, divs, or anything else on your page.
  2. Disable stylesheets to see what your site looks like without any styles whatsoever.
  3. Display alt tags, image file sizes, image paths, and more.
  4. “Outline Block Elements” will automatically outline divs, paragraphs, spans, and other elements on your site. Very handy.
  5. “Outline Current Element” will display the element id and name for any element underneath your cursor. Unbelievably handy.

Sample Screenshots:

Outline elementsMisc functions

 

#2 – ColorZilla

I’m sure we’ve all seen a cool color on a page, whether it’s an image or cell background, and said “Oh man I love that color. I could eat it. I wonder what the hex value is so I can use it on my site. Or in case I get hungry.” Well, you could always take a screenshot, load up The Gimp, use the Color Picker tool to determine the hex color value, but who needs to do that when you’ve got ColorZilla installed?

ColorZilla will display the hex color and RGB value of any color under your cursor. Very, very handy.

 

#3 -SearchStatus

This handy little extension will show you the Google PageRank of whatever site you are on as well as the less-important-but-for-some-reason-still-used Alexa Ranking.

PageRank Plugin

 

#4 – Dust-Me Selectors

This handy little Firefox Extension will tell you which CSS styles are not found on your pages. It works per domain, so surf all of the pages of your site and a comprehensive collection of unused styles will be shown which you can then promptly delete from your stylesheet, thereby increasing the performance of your site.

Very very, cool.

 

#5 – Firebug

No Web Developer’s tool-belt would be complete without the illustrious Firebug. The list of features here is incredibly long, but so is the list of Web Developers who have saved hours of work using it. Their own website explains it better than I would but you’ve got to ask yourself one question: What kind of web developer are you if you aren’t already using this??

I hope you’ve enjoyed this list and found some of the links useful. If you’ve got something to say about these tools or even have a list of handy tools you use that might think others would find useful, please post a comment with a few links. Thanks!

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Increase your website traffic with Jack of All Links – Social Search

On 05.22.08, In Search Engine Optimization, By John Rockefeller

If you’re looking for a good way to increase traffic to your website, increase your website’s search engine rankings, and increase your website’s Google PageRank then you need to take a look at Jack of All Links.

Jack of All Links is a social search engine developed earlier this year by me that allows webmasters and content producers to publicize their work and sites in a dynamic web directory (also known as a social search engine.) It’s very simple: You create your website, blog post, news article, or blog, copy the address URL and paste it in Jack of All Links. Then, your site will be listed immediately in our web directory, which is then searched and voted upon by our users.

The system has enjoyed success with almost zero marketing thus far and after some new features (messaging, bookmarking, among others) are launched this summer, it should really begin to pick up even more.

The idea originated while I was working on NetBoardz, which was a free forum hosting service I ran between December 2006 and January 2008. NetBoardz had a lot of users, but unless money waas going into advertising through programs like Yahoo Marketing and Google Adsense, the influx of new users would stop. Instead, I looked for free ways to create publicity for NetBoardz.

There were a number of options, but the one that stuck out was the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org). It seemed like such a good idea but done so poorly. With their service, you submit your site to a moderator, who is a member of the general public or may not even exist (as there are many more sites submitted and categories than people moderating) and who may actually be your competitor, and then hope that he or she adds your site to the listing.

Google and other search engines use dmoz.org extensively to create their search results, so it’s not entirely useless. But, at the time I was used to the instant feedback, Web 2.0 world. I wanted to know immediately if my site had been listed. After waiting more than 6 weeks, I finally found that my site had not been accepted.

“Why does this take so long?”, “Why can’t it be automatic and moderated by the community?”, “Why can’t I submit more than one page on my site to the service?” were questions I was asking. Finally I decided to begin developing the underlying architecture of my own web directory.

When you submit a site to Jack of All Links, it immediately appears in search results on the service as well as in the ever-changing Top 20 Links Leaderboard. In fact, Jack of All Links is aimed at not only becoming a large directory of sites put forth by the content creators or publishers, but in fact a full-fledged search engine that people will come to use daily, as all of the search results are rated and commented on by actual users. This is true, Web 2.0 user collaboration.

When you submit your site to Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, or the Open Directory Project, they ask that you only submit the original address URL, and not each page. Then, they scan your site for each of your pages and determine the search engine keywords automatically. With Jack of All Links, you can submit as many pages as you want (it is recommended to submit everything your site has to offer – more pages = more opportunity for showing up at the top of search results), you can write your own description and keywords for each page, and those pages are voted on by the community. Indeed, Jack of All Links puts the power of controlling the listings in our search engine back in your hands as the content producer.

An added benefit of all of this is that the Search Engine Optimization for Jack of All Links is very strong, so as we increase in popularity, so do you. All of our search results and top links are displayed and scanned by major search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, and others. Your links on Jack of All Links will show up in the Google search results, which will also bring you more traffic!

If you’d like to sign up at Jack of All Links and increase your site’s traffic today, registration is completely free. Register now.

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Google PageRank and SEO Tools

On 05.11.08, In Search Engine Optimization, By John Rockefeller

If you’ve got a website and you want more traffic you need to read this: http://pr.efactory.de/e-pagerank-algorithm.shtml

The premise is simple: Google’s search results are based off of a ranking system known as PageRank. The score for your website will be between 0 and 10, with 10 being the highest you can achieve. The higher your PageRank, the higher the chances of being at the top of search results when customers look for you.

In order to achieve a high PageRank, it is important to have, among other things, as many high-profile (or high ranking) sites link to yours as you can. When high ranking sites link to yours, a bit of their PageRank gets rubbed off onto your site. It’s similar to a high ranking official recommending you for a job.

Conversely, you can also achieve a high PageRank through the number of sites that are linked to yours. I used to run a free forum hosting company called NetBoardz. On the footer of every post, on every page, there was a link to NetBoardz. Over time, my PageRank grew for that page to 3/10 with no high profile pages linking to it at all. It was the sheer volume of pages with a link to my main site that did it.

A handy tool you can use to check your PageRank is the SearchStatus Firefox extension located here. At the bottom right of your Firefox or Mozilla window it will show you the PageRank of every site you visit. For an example, view the image below:

SearchStatus PageRank Image

There are many ways to track and improve your ranking in the search engines, many of which will be dealt with at a later time. Hopefully this gives you some insight as to how Google search results work and leads you in the right direction for improving your PageRank!

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