It’s been a fantastic year on Blazing Minds and since I started my blog there have been some fantastic comments coming from a vast amount of people and I’ve met some new friends via the comments and also met new friends who have been willing enough to spend a little time writing some great guest posts on the blog, so I would like to bring to you the guest posts that have been written here on Blazing minds in a range of different subjects including blogging tips, website seo, poetry and more. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve visited a few blogs over the last months and lately this blog has grown in popularity with it’s comments, but the question is, is there a right or wrong way to display comments?

For those who are not sure what I mean by displaying your comments on your blog I shall try to explain…

On a Wordpress set up you have several options for your comments, one is that you can display your comments as the most recent comment at the top of the comments list or most recent at the bottom,  another option which is useful for Website SEO is the option to split comments over pages, for example image you’ve got 40 comments on one post, imaging how big that page would look! So you can spread the comments over so many pages.

So now it’s over to my readers ….

• Do you prefer to have the comments with the latest at the top or the bottom of the comment list?
• How many comments per page do you think is just enough?

It will be interesting to see everyone’s responses about this

Now many users of the EntreCard system have said that is a long time coming, but according to the latest blog post on the EntreCard blog they are to “take action against bounce rates”

So before I get on to this, I’ll just give you a quick bit of info about bounce rates, a Bounce Rate is when a visitor lands on your blog and then leaves straight away without spending time looking around your blog and EntreCard is a terrible culprit for making you have a high percentage on your bounce rates….

So as mentioned by EntreCard they intend to implement a system that will decide if the dropper is a “drop and run” visitor, this is someone who is only there to drop on your ECard and then zip off to another blog, to get in as many drops as they can in the day without even reading your blog, shame on them! As mentioned in the EntreCard Blog:

Up until now, we’ve always allowed the “drop and run” phenomenon to take place. We figured if someone was interesting to the visitor, they’d stop and read, and it was best to let everyone go at their own pace. But now we are taking a slightly different approach, in an ongoing effort to increase the quality of Entrecard traffic across the board.

My problem with the drop and run phenomenon is that you are spending time writing an interesting post only for someone to stop by, drop on the ECard and bugger off! I write these posts not just for me you know but for others to read and show some interest by posting comments, not visit and say, “ok I’ve dropped, I’m off!”

So what will EntreCard be doing about this, well this is what they have said on their official blog:

Starting soon, “dropping and running” will no longer give you credit. We are developing a proprietary algorithm to determine whether or not you engaged in the blog you visitied in some way. If you did not engage in the blog, you will not get credit. We won’t be disclosing exactly the algorithm we use, so that people can’t game it easily.

So it seems that something is been done, but will this cut the amount of view to a blog showing the EntreCard widget? Probably, but isn’t it better to get a few less visits and gain visitors that actually appreciate your blogging, only time will tell when the new system is finally implemented.

I was going through my bookmarks recently on FireFox and noticed some handy sites that I would like to share with all my readers, you may already know about some of these already, but, for those that haven’t seen these sites then they are certainly worth checking out and may even help with your future endeavours with your websites SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Firstly a great little website, but not to take to seriously is PageRank Prediction the title says it all really, it’s a simple pagerank checker, just enter your website address and the site will try to give you your pagerank on the next Google PageRank update, I’ve found it to be around 80% accurate though, so give it a whirl!

Next is the first in the “Graders” websites, the Website Grader measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

The second “Grader” is one which is quite fun and is the Twitter Grader, will give you a grade out of 100, show followers, following, Summary of the Twitter, history and tweet cloud, all good fun and useful tool to see what a new follow is really doing!

Finally a website tool for those of you trying to improve your websites keywords, the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, is a must, just type in the keywords that you would like to improve on and Google will search through it’s database and try to give you a good selection of keywords that may help improve your keyword on your post or website, I do find this very useful for some posts and it has improved my posts in the past, it may even help you with Google Adsense, but it is trial and error, so give it a go.

I bet the title certainly grabbed your attention didn’t it, but this is what you find on the internet these days, people claiming that they have made millions from sitting at home and blogging their proverbial backsides off!

Well, is it possible, I would like to say yes, but, I have to say NO! I have worked hard with my blog with it’s SEO and keyword related tips n tricks and I can quite honestly say that I’m not a millionaire, far from it, my blog bring in a small amount every month with Google Adsense and affiliates such as TradeDoubler, Amazon, iTunes etc bring in minuscule amounts.

So really if you want to quit your real job to make “millions” from just blogging then you’ll have to work all hours.

Don’t get me wrong I do know a few bloggers that have had some success with a work from home venture, but, I don’t think any of them would say that it has made them a millionare, but hey, I may be wrong…

Now I have been using EntreCard for a long time now and I must be one of the few “Droppers” that actually visits a site, stays for a while and even leaves a comment if the posts interest me, but the problem is those “Droppers” that speed drop!

The trouble with speed droppers is that they land on your site hit drop and then bugger off! Which is not really good for your blogs bounce rate, ok, I may be sending this right over people heads right now, so I would recommend reading the Wiki about Bounce Rate to find out what it is, but to cut a story short, bounce rate is the amount of time a visitor stays on your blog before moving onto another site etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, my apology to those of you that stop by for the Saturday Six yesterday and for my lack of posting since Wednesday.

This was all due to my very busy schedule, I have been working on the SEO and website design of the Remergence website and the release of a Best Of album, so this has taken up a lot of my valuable time, the SEO work is now complete and now it’s just a wait for fans to choose their favourite tracks.

So hopefully now I can get back to my usually blogging, the Saturday Six will be back next week, so remember to suggest a them via my Twitter and if you are an a EntreCard user then the chosen EC user of the selected theme will get 200 ECs.