I’ve visited a few blogs since I started blogging and over the last year my blog has grown in popularity and 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 imagine 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 and does it make a difference in the SEO of your blog and help with the loading time with Google.

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

I was talking to a friend the other day and we came up on the subject of blogging and their response was “blogs are just about tech, making money and website stuff like SEO etc! What is SEO anyway?”

So after explaining that blogs are much, much more, I decided to knock up a post, for those of you out there in computer land that when they hear the word “blog” it sends shivers down their spines.

OK. Blogs are much more than just for writing about how to make money and how to get loads of hits to your blog to enable you to get more money, yes I know I have been guilty in the past of blogging about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), but, I don’t bang on about it every single post.

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Something that probably didn’t occur to most business owners when they first started their business was; how many people would search online for my Brand?  Generally speaking the answer would be none (if you are a new business).  So should you do some research online first to see if there is a pot hole in the mainstream online world that you could fill in?

This is a possibility that could soon be effecting how companies brand themselves, and gives new entrepreneurial business owners a way in to compete with larger Brands.  Google is a strange beast; with its search engine algorithm changing and being “beefed” up all the time.  Currently there are about 200 ranking factors that Google uses to identify where websites should be ranked in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Page).  Each one of these has a set amount of weight that identifies how important it is, so some are more important than others.

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Get paid to share your links!

Hi I wanted to Thank Karen for letting write a post about why I always like to add videos to my post. Now right off the bat you may think about increasing your bounce rate and I never really knew or cared about how long someone stays on the site  but it does seem like an easy way to increase the time someone is on your site. But what I like about it is maybe I think I haven’t really got my message across or I’m trying to cast a certain mood on the post. Videos let me add one more dimension to my message , it hopefully adds to the emotional impact I’m trying to have people reach.

Sometimes if I’m pumped up I will add a song from youtube that I just heard on the radio, this is cool because you often get to add videos that just came out and people haven’t seen yet . I like vodpod because it’s easy to grab the code off there especially when the  song has been blackedout on youtube.

I also recently noticed vodpod gave me my own little video vault . I don’t spend much time on there and all that but Vodpod does have a community on there of mostly young hip music buffs. Karen is down with the music scene so vodpod seems like a great spot to launch a video to get feedback on. Check it out Vodpod ‘s a cool site.

The main point I’m trying to get at is  I found adding the right video especially if it’s a song that inspired me to write the post adds some extra flavor and hey if it helps your bounce rate all the better.

Ideally videos that YOU made using camtasia uploaded to youtube with your links in the sidebar then used tubemogul would be better but adding music videos has worked for me so  give it a shot Thanks everyone

John Sullivan

PS now this post may seem silly and common sense but the reason I wrote it is because I don’t see many people doing it

Peace

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 »

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.