Blog Subscriptions by Email - It Works!

My blogs have been a source of satisfaction and frustration to me.

They are satisfying in that, as blogger says, push-button publishing is possible.
They are frustrating in that, in the fine print, we learn: some assembly is required.

They are satisfying in that templates and more templates are only a mouse click away.
They are frustrating in that some template don't support some features.

Frustrating: I couldn't figure out how to let people subscribe by email.
Satisfying. I posted the email subscription to blogger question to the forum yesterday, and implemented the subscribe-by-email today (on my 2nd try but that's more satisfaction than frustration). THANK YOU FEEDBURNER / BLOGGER / GOOGLE :->


Satisfying. I can tell my story my way on my blog
Frustrating: I'm not that good at crafting stories.
Satisfying: I am going to take a course in story-telling focused on writing for blogs. I'm going to get a Black Belt in Blogging!

Blogging Software - Todays problems

I have a few problems with the current generation of blogging software. I wonder if my list is very different than most others.

1. Sticky. Most forums allow the moderator to mark a comment or thread "sticky". This means that this posting, even when it's not the most recent, stays at the top. I can't seem to find this feature in the blogger or wordpress, the two blogging systems that I use. I'm about to try Typepad so stay tuned..

2. Subscribe to updates by email. This elusive feature is one that I would really like. The comments section allows users (including the moderator) to get emails about new comments but I'm talking about having a simple subscription method to get emails about all updates to the blog. I gather that RSS would be better system but I don't seem to understand RSS and I'd really like it to be a simple email system. Even the feedburner addition to wordpress and blogger is lacking this.

3. More HTML functionality such as tables in blog posts. While it's cool to be able to post videos and images, I sometimes try to put some info on a blog post that is best done as a table. While I succeeded after laborious efforts, it should be simplified (by the way, I did figure out some of the bugs and workarounds in blogger for tables but I can't seem to find my write-up here. Maybe it's on another blog, maybe it's on a forum. Ask if you want to see it)

4. Integrated trackbacks, stats, and subscriptions. Basically, I like that google bought feedburner and is integrating them. I just want it done already plus, I'd like them to remember us mortal non-techie users and provide us simple emails subscriptions and de-emphasize the glitzy rss feeds that handle everything including podcasts (another technology that I've not yet gotten involved with).

5. Promotion. It would be nice if there was more automated pinging built into the blogs. Or, if there is more than I am aware of, more documentation on them. I tend to update my content and then to manually use:
www.pingomatic.com
www.pingoat.com
www.pingmyblog.com
www.autopinger.com
www.kping.com
But I can't tell if my efforts are useful or wasted. I do know that if I correctly join and participate in the blog communities, I do well.

Blogging Software - Incomplete out of the box

You would think that the leading blog software would be click and publish. But, it's not. Some of the basic features need to be added in by the users.

With blogger, the google-owned software for making blogs, you don't get trackbacks or subscriptions or any statistics. To get a subscription capability, you need to separately sign up for and install Feedburner. Feedburner also supplies visitor and subscription stats. If you want trackbacks, you can add halo but that seems to invite comment spam. BTW - Google bought Feedburner and I assume is trying to integrate it.

With WordPess, you also need to add Feedburner for subscriptions and stats. And halo for trackbacks.

Of course, with some templates and other modifications, Feedburner is incompatible.

And while Feedburner talks alot about chicklets and convenient RSS feeds, I'm having trouble finding out about the basic ability to subscribe to blog updates by email. I know it's a little simple but still, that's how most of us operate. I don't know what an RSS reader is and, just like news and other readers, I don't really have the time or energy to figure them out.

I'm about to try Typepad which I'm hoping, has some of these features integrated. Stay tuned.

Google Page rank - a contrarian view

Most SEO experts agree that:

The visible google page rank is a misleading short cut which we all use but which we shouldn't. It's a bad habit even glancing at that yellow bar.

I've said as much myself. But recently, I've developed a new view starting with the fact that page rank has recently been used by google is a novel way.

Google has dramatically dropped a number of people's page rank as a way of telling them that their site is breaking rules of conduct that google considers important. As Loren Baker explained:

In my opinion, by flipping the switch on changing the PageRank of some sites, Google is trying to send a message....

I think Google is trying to discourage sites from having an unfocused set of links on their site.

I've looked at a few of the sites that were penalized (admittedly, not as many as I would like) and surprisingly, I found them to be high quality sites. Where these sites seem to have run afoul of Google's sensitivities is by having links to sites in which Google could not find the relevance, the "common thread".

Google seems to want us to use text links to other sites only as natural links which is a component of content, not in any commercial sense. Google wants text links to be "natural" content links (around which they can build their search engine). Google seems to be saying that unlike banner ads which is an acceptable form (for google) of paid advertising, text links should only be used as part of "natural" content so they should be in paragraphs and only go to sites with relevant content. If they aren't, they should be run by java script (like adsense) or have "no follow" tags.

Returning to my original point. All the SEO pundits have been saying that although this time the page rank is actually a communication tool for google, it is generally a misleading and useless indicator. I'd like to disagree and submit a contrarian view: the google PR number is a useful measure of what it measures.

The fact is that I've seen a very strong correlation over the last four years between my viewable page rank and my position in the search engines.

I know that the page rank is easily manipulated. As far as I can tell, Google Page Rank is a simple time-delayed count of incoming links and a summary of their page rank without any dampening effect due to numbers of outgoing links or relevance. So, in my case where I am terribly white hat and spend my efforts generating original content and genuine links, my rise in page rank and in the search engines has been synchronous. For me, the Google PR is useful as a judge of my progress.

Blogging, SEO, Adsense, Traffic, ROI

The vocabulary.co.il site pulls an enormous amount of traffic. Alot is repeat traffic, alot is from links from sites that recommend it, and some is from search engines. The good news is that the site does very well for terms such as vocabulary (#2 on the BigG), build vocabulary, and building vocabulary for standardized tests.

We are making an effort broaden the terms for which the site pulls traffic. We are doing this by providing a blog full of interesting relevant original articles such as:

Teaching With
Crossword Puzzles

What's New? 25 New Topics

Learning by Categories

Word Retrieval Therapy

Vocabulary Instruction in Early Learning

Reading Comprehension

Hangman

Of course, I'm also very interested in providing grade by grade information to potential online students for what they can learn from Time4Learning. Check it out:

Preschool
Kindergarten
First Grade
Second Grade
Third Grade
Fourth Grade
Fifth Grade
Sixth Grade
Seventh Grade
Eighth Grade

Firefox link checker says my links are forbidden!

I just installed the firefox link checker and ran it on my sitemap. It didn't seem to give much in the way of results. Then, I pulled down the menus: tools - web developer - information - display title attributes.

Yikes! I got a mess of "Title=forwarded or forbidden link" messages. But the links look fine to me. Anybody understand such things?

BBB Online - The Kids Privacy Seal

I have joined my local BBB (with an annual fee) so that I could be eligible and then join the BBBonline which made me eligible for the BBBOnline seal (with an annual fee) that you see on my home education site.

Although I mention the fees, I know that this has worked out well for me since when I added it to my shopping cart page, my shopping abandon rate dropped by around 5% (actually, there were other changes made at the same time). Since my shopping cart abandon rate at that time was 80% (which is very typical), this increased my conversion rate and sales rate by 25%! :->

I just got an answer from the BBB about the Kids Privacy seal which I thought was particularly cute (you can see a copy of one on Club Penguin's home page) and which I have long coveted for my site. And I quote:

"The BBB Kids Privacy Seal is being phased out. A small number of companies are being "grandfathered" in their use of it, but we aren't accepting new applications for it anymore. It had very limited acceptance in the marketplace (less than two dozen companies signed up for it in the 7 years it was available) and the larger Privacy seal program of which it was a part if also being phased out."

So I'm looking around for more ways to demonstrate our commitment to privacy, coppa compliance, and no-advertising policy for kids. Any ideas?

And I'm still looking for a vendor of ads (such as google adwords) that will deliver ONLY advertisements appropriate to children....Any ideas?

CoHosted Links Discounted by Google - Truth or Myth

Following up on my question as to whether google discounts links from sites that are hosted together, I've found a new release that suggests other people seem to feel the same way....(and I quote / paraphrase)

June 28, 2007 - SEO Hosting, a division of Host Gator web hosting, announced today .... a new service enables customers to optimize their web sites for search engines by hosting on multiple C classes.

The new service stemmed from customers regularly asking Host Gator for multiple C Class capabilities because of their belief that search engines will penalize sites that have the same C class and are linking to each other. With multiple C Class capabilities, customers no longer have to work with different hosting providers to overcome this problem and can consolidate all their sites on SEO Hosting.

Does this matter at my small size? For instance, I have four generators of links hosted at the same place:
Todays Learners
Parent Homeschooling Forum
SpellingCity
Learning Games

Jim Boykin - Is Google Googling me?

Jim Boykin,

We spoke a few years ago and it started me thinking a certain way and building my site and links a certain way. It's worked well for me (I run a small online educational business). I've collected a few old domains from others, nurtured my own, and advertised/promoted without while staying under the radar. I've a question.

As background, we know that Google discounts the value of links from related sites. Well, to be more precise, they probably discount the value of large numbers of links from related sites. Google figures that two sites that share an IP address are probably related. So they would discount those links.

Do you think Mr. Google also considers the following as indicating that sites are related and so they are discounting the value of the links?

a Registered to the same person.
b Registered to people at the same address (physical or email).
c Sharing the same webmaster account
d Sharing the same adwords account
e Sharing the same adsense account
f From blogs that are part of the same google account.
g From blogs, adsense, adwords, and websites that share a common google account?

In short, how much research or googling is Mr. Google doing to value or discount links along these lines?

PS - Jim, I'm a big user and fan of your free tools. Especially the cool tool. Thanks.

Test Preparation - Advertising

Test preparation -would advertisements for preparing for tests be of higher value than advertisements for just generally building vocabulary skills?

At Vocabulary.co.il, we are engaged in a great google-adsense experiment. We're trying to find how we can adjust our page so that ads of more value per click appear.

We've been stuck in the $.09 basement for awhile with adsense touting vocabulary games, vocabulary activities, and free word games. By changing the title and building a few incoming links with words like test preparation or SAT preparation, will the ads change?

It seems to be that preparation for the standardized high stake tests merits maybe $.12 clicks which would be a 30% increase in revenue (which we would like :->)!

Online Marketing & SEO Consultants

I am a small company trying to build a good profitable stable niche. When I started, I need nothing about online marketing and couldn't have told you what PPC or SEO stood for. I was in a hurry so I used consultants to get educated. It was clearly not the only way. I could (probably should) have gone to the "boot camps" for a few days of intensive online marketing training that are often offered around the seo and other conferences.

I started with a consultant who ran some marketing tests on ppc on yahoo and google. I learned the basics of how it worked and spent some money running tests on moving traffic around. I found that there was alot of traffic and concluded (along with some other research) that I should launch.

After I'd been in business for half a year, I hired Ten Golden Rules (Jay Berkowitz and Maria et al) to help me improve my online marketing. They were good in that they had the capability inhouse to work on several types of project so we refined and rebuilt my sales funnel, created a new template for my webpages, and created ten pages designed for SEO purposes. I learned alot from working with them, paid them promptly, and asked them more questions that they could answer. It was a six month project.

I've used consultants intermittently since then. I had the "copy surgeon" work on some copy for me at one point. I had Ken help with some projects (get a domain transfered over to me) and I've worked with Juliana of Infineight Web Design intermittently for four years now.

I use lots of outside writers to help generate articles, web pages, or newsletters. I tend more towards people with real subject matter expertise (reading skills, homeschooling, math, educational curriculum etc) rather than marketing people.

I recently used the Hits Doctor to update my Google PPC campaign recently. He found that it was hard to improve on the performance since it was very well-tuned already but he did add Yahoo & MSN. Most importantly, he took a fresh look at the sales funnel and got us back to working on how to refine it.

Overall, the consulting firms are a little too pricy for me. I am basically a marketing firm living on a tight margin so we need to cost-effectively do our marketing.

For instance, adding a $1500 monthly marketing management fee on to a $4000 a month PPC budget means moving our cost per customer from $36 to $50. It would make sense if they could do alot more than we could but instead, I spent the money on some training sessions for our staff inhouse and now, on a much more cost effective basis, we're up and running.

Wikis and educational wikis and spelling wikis

We have been looking at some of the technologies and so I have joined some educational wikis. They're interesting in that they seem to be alot like forums in terms of building a community but they're different too.

The difference is that in addition to threaded discussions, there's an ability to collaborate and create a nice set of documents. Other than that, with the threads and profiles, it's a very similiar collaborative tool.

Has anyone created an spelling wiki? More specifically, a wiki on teaching spelling? I think that would be an interesting approach to encouraging collaboration on SpellingCity.com. I start by creating a spelling course which we encourage everyone to give input to.

But, spellingcity.com - if it ever becomes operational - is joomla based. Is there a joomla wiki technology?

Alternative Spellings & SEO

I wrote once before about using "typos" to pull traffic. I think I called the article typos and SEO and dealt with the fact that I could pull almost as much traffic by spelling kindergarden incorrectly as kindergarten correctly.

I will now admit to a pair of out of control hobbies: blogging and karate. In fact, I've brought the two together in site on my experiences at the Lavallee Karate dojo in Ft Lauderdale.

In doing so, I've been struggling how best to help people find it and I found that I was the only site listed if they googled "bugo kumatae", which is our term for our sparring. Unfortunately, it turns out that one of the reasons that my site showed up first was that I was spelling it incorrectly.

I'm still not entirely sure how to spell it correctly (or if there is a correct spelling). I've asked alot of people how they would spell it and so far, I rarely get the same answer twice. (You see, our karate school has been primarily an oral tradition until I tried to record it). I think the most likely spelling (two instructors suggested it) is bugo kum ite. In any case, I'm now involved in trying to optimize the site for these terms no matter how you spell them.

Here is the current footer that I have on a post and almost daily, I add a new variation...

PS - A note on the term bugo kum ite - Is it bugo kum ta? Bugokumite? bugokumtai?bugokumatai? bugokumathai? bu go ku matai? bugo kuma thai? Bugo kuma tae? Bugo kumatae? bugo kumatae? bugokumatae? boogo cuma tae? boogokumatai? boog go ku matai? boogo koom tae, bugo koom a tai? bugo koom tae, boog koom tai, buggo kum tae. boogo kuma tai, boog go kum tai. Why this long list? I've told people they could find this site by googling "bugo kuma tai" but sadly, no two people seem to have the same idea of how to spell it. So if I add enough permutations, I'll cover the possibilities. bugg okum atai? boogg ocuma tai? bugokumite bugo kumite?

How to embed .mpg files in a blogger posting

How do you embed a .mpg file into a blogger.com blog?

This is the question I Googled when attempting to embed an .mpg file into a blog. I got no real answers from that search. There are several different ways to do it but I was looking for a way to use HTML code to embed the file. It didn't seem to want to be done that way.

Turns out there's a very simple way to do it......

Starting a Green Business Online- free advice

I had breakfast with a friend who mentioned that his wife has started a great new business, importing a novel "green" product which I think should have strong appeal in the US marketplace. Being an overly enthusiastic techie, business-guy, and "save-the-earth" type, I gave him an earful of free unsolicited advice.

Here's the thoughts that I had.

1. Pick your domain very carefully and with an eye on search engine optimization, a second eye on people and their ability to correctly type in URLs, and a third eye on messaging (fortunately, the toxins in our environment means many of us have mutated to three eyed beasts). The choice of domains will do more to determine your search engine success and messaging than anything else. If you are Amazon, you can afford to educate the public who you are. Otherwise, pick a domain that has your keywords in it and which messages somehow. BTW - Time4Learning is only a partial success on this count. Say an A-. Some of my favorites sites and blogs in terms of naming are: Web-Home-School, Todays Learners, Learning Games for Kids, Reading Skills Pyramid, Parenting in an electronic age and SpellingCity .

2. Don't spend much money up front on a website. Instead, blog it. Install wordpress (it comes on many sites ready to install with a click) or use blogger (which can be positioned onto your domain easily). The process is simple. A - Pick and register your domain (I use namebargain.com or godaddy.com for this - under $10 and easy). B - Get some pictures and key messages and topics ready. C- have a webdesigner with blog experience and in 3 hours together, pick and install a template, customize it, and get trained on how to post. Be sure to get the mods on wordpress that make the page name & URL reflect your articles topic, not just the site name and some codes (This is key for SEO). In fact, I would just use blogger to avoid this complexity.

3. Write blog articles to cover the key issues. Fill in the profile with how you want to be contacted Don't use your home number - use a line that can be turned off!). Write a blog article with your pricing. Write another on product issues. Write another on Green stuff. Etc etc . Write articles on when you first got interested in the environment. Write about stylish clothes. Basically, write a post every few days. Or every day. Keep them short, professional, on or around the topic etc

4. Revisit the blog structure monthly. By this, I mean the menus and key message. Easy navigation to key sections is critical. To get a sense of this, look at how we keep moving these two blogs around. Karate at 50 and Moms Homeschooling. Nobody gets it right at first. Just adjust it slightly every month based on what you're learning.

5. Socialize and promote online. Alot. Find forums that are relevant and join them and participate. It's your signature line with your key message and a link that is your marketing. Find communities and blogs of people with similiar interests and get to know them. Write about them. Spend $1K on promotion getting people to blog about your products. Think about using the blog to market.

6. Once you get going, learn to track your traffic (thru your hoster or feedburner or google's webmaster tools or google analytics).

7. When you get going, learn to use the social bookmarks (technorati, delicious) and social networks (linked in, myspace, etc).

8 Keep building you understanding about keyword mechanics, SEO onpage issues, keyword volumes that are relevant to you, and the leading sites in your sectors. Build relationships with them. I, for one, have an intimate relationship with the keyword "homeschool curriculum". I know who it likes best and why. I have relationships with the other leading sites. And homeschool curriculum likes me too!!!! ;->

9 Someday, build a regular website. Or don't. Blogs are flexible and powerful as content mgt systems that there's no reason to keep looking.