Digg this … B.S!

A few days ago, a story from cracked.com hit digg’s front page. That article was about some cheats that will helpstop.jpg you gather more votes for your submissions.

They were saying that if you put “Digg this:” in front of the article’s title when submitting it, you might get a few more votes. Oh please, I always bury stories like that. Yes, it’s true, the title of the story from cracked.com that hit the front page was “Digg this!: 7 cheats for hitting the front page of Digg” and it got about 4000+ diggs.

I don’t say that this technique doesn’t work! Not at all, but don’t abuse! After reading that “cheats”, many and many new digg users tried them, especially this technique. They put in front of their submissions the “Digg this:” structure, although they were submitting crappy stories. I asked another active digger what he thinks about this, his nickname being: diggboss. This is what he said: “Never put digg this in front of the title, looks spammy. You never do that“.

I also asked world reknown copywriter, Trevor ‘ToeCracker’ Crook who is also a high profile digger his opinion and he said while he agrees with the cracked story and where using Digg in the title is relevant, the main problem is, people will abuse putting digg in nearly every title and is will lose impact.

It’s the same as when everyone puts ‘Breaking’ or Breaking News in the title. When you do this too often, nobody will take any notice.

When it comes title’s - ToeCracker says he changes the original title in approx. 95% of the time when submitting as each word is critical to getting your story voted.

Getting your title correct can be the difference between you getting a front page story.

So, folks, stop doing that! There are different ways to attract more attention with your submissions. Title and description help a lot, but don’t do it the bad way. Here’s a great article I found that gives good advice regarding this: “How a good title and description can make or break your social media submission“.

Author:
Alex
Category:
Social media optimization
Comments

Google keywords research tool - analysis

Hooray! I took a break for a couple of days and in the meantime the best keyword research tool was launched!

Finally, AdWords keyword tools give us better statistics for the keywords that we would like to rank for. Now, Google made available for everyone the exact number of search volumes for certain keywords.

You don’t have to be a genius to use Google AdWords keywoard tool, actually it’s quite simple. First, you are asked to choose between two methods of generating keyword ideas: Descriptive words or phrases or Website content. I personally prefer the second one. Here’s a screenshot of the first step:

google-keyword-research-step1.png

After you did that, hit “Get keyword ideas”, wait a little and the results will show up:

google-keyword-research-step2.png

As you can see, Google found the keywords that fit best for my blog, and I am shown the search volume of them. Now, I just need to get back to work and try my SEO powers.

There are pros and cons regarding this keyword research tool. Yes, it is great that we, the SEOs have some concrete numbers and we don’t have to bother anymore searching for keywords that will send us some traffic.

On Google.com I tried to rank with my automotive blog for the “concept cars reviews” structure. I thought that it may send me some traffic. I did pretty well, I am on the third place and there are about 6,000,000 results but, that structure sends me almost 0 traffic.

About the cons, imagine that everyone has access to this tool and the competition for certain keywords may grow up and it will become harder to rank for them.

Author:
Alex
Category:
Search engine optimization
Comments

Popular websites in 1996 and now

This is called progress! Here is a comparison between some popular websites, there is a big difference between the way they look in 1996 and the way they look now, wow! For full size click on the pictures.

  • Yahoo

- In 1996:

yahoo-19961.jpg

Read the rest of this entry »

Author:
Alex
Category:
The Mighty Internet
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Respect your friends from the social networks

A very important aspect of socializing is to respect your friends from the social networks. This is like an unwritten rule that you should know.

When I said that you should respect them I didn’t mean that you should treat them with “hello sir”. From time to time, take a look at your friend’s profile, especially at his favorites and if you like what you see, vote / comment!

The how many friends you have number is insignificant if you don’t have a good relationship with that friends. Don’t understand that I promote the votes exchange. No way, but I consider normal to check out your friend’s profile from time to time to see what are his new discoveries. If he will see that you are interested in his profile, then, he’ll check yours too.

It’s just like in real life ( I like to make comparisons between blogging and real life because is easier for you to understand what I mean ). If you have a very good friend but you won’t give him a call anymore to ask what’s new or something and if you don’t appear to be interested about him, that friend may get upset and you will have a surprise. Same thing here on the social networks.

Author:
Alex
Category:
Social media optimization
Comments

Google and web 2.0 democracy

Warner Todd Huston blames Google for freezing the anti-Obama blogs that were made on the “Bloggbarack-obama.jpger” platform.

It’s official, Google decided to be for Barack Obama, so the guys from this company thought that their best contribution would be to close all the anti-Obama blogs that contain different rude posts, blogs that were made on the Google’s blogging platform called “Blogger“.

What do I think about this? To be sincere with you, I don’t really agree with the Google’s decision of taking down the anti-Obama blogs because we live in a free world and I am sure that there will always appear pros and cons, no matter what subject would be.

If you ask me, I would recommend Google to start a nice, friendly campaign on AdWords for Obama’s official site.

Author:
Alex
Category:
Google
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Free advice for everyone

From now on I will help you with your blogs for free. You can ask me whatever you want about blogging, monetizing, search engine optimization or social media optimization, all for nothing (Though I won’t say no to a beer or a coffee).

Why pay hundreds of dollars to ask a so called “expert” if you can ask me for free? I guarantee that I can help you no matter the problem you have.

Ok, so if you have any problems, feel free to ask me. To do that you have to go onto the “Free advice” page and complete the form which can be found there.

I will get back to you within 24 hours and weekly all the questions and answers will be posted here (or most of them).

Author:
Alex
Category:
Blogging
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