Blog a Living ← Professional blogging tips and tricks

Going Google Free: Clicky for site analytics

Nov

2011

In my quest to stop sending Google so much data, I replaced Analytics with Clicky, a paid service. I looked into and trialed quite a few services, including some free ones you install on your own server. Clicky won the day for me. What Clicky excels at is showing you precisely what your visitors are ...

Going Google Free

Oct

2011

I’ve talked about getting rid of all my free Google services before, but this time I’m serious. The only exception will be Google Affiliate Manager, which forces me to keep an Adsense account open (really, Google?). Everything else is going, going, gone. And so far, I’m surprised to find I’m not at all missing it. ...

Yes, Senators, Google’s cooking the results right now

Sep

2011

Check out the results from a Google News search for “google antitrust hearing”: Irish Times reports “Senate questioning fails to rattle Google chief.” Why is Irish Times first? This is not a #1 kind of article by any algo standards I’m aware of. It’s flattering to Google, who has offices in Ireland… hmm, wonder which ...

Forget Google, focus on your visitors

Aug

2011

There’s been a sea change in Google ever since Panda started up. Panda has kept webmasters jumping from one foot to the other, as they try to figure out what it is Google wants from their sites. There are several competing theories, but those aren’t what I’m going to talk about. The bigger picture Is ...

How to merge WordPress blogs together 1

Apr

2011

Maybe you will never, ever decide to merge the posts from one of your WordPress blogs into another. But if you do, as I once did, you might find this list of instructions helpful. Terminology check: “merging” blog refers to the blog that’s going to have all its posts moved into another one, and the ...

Creating a portal for organizational purposes

Mar

2011

If you want to get anywhere online, organization is important. And it’s easier than you might think. Some people use applications on their home computer and keep their organizational tools offline. That’s fine, if that works for you. But I like being able to work from more than one computer, so that means I need ...

Robots.txt versus .htaccess

Mar

2011

The robots.txt file seems so simple, but you can screw things up ever so slightly and end up with a serious problem. The good news is, once you figure out the problem, the SEs generally pick it up pretty quickly. The .htaccess file is similar, except that it’s more powerful and therefore more confusing to ...

Coming up with new blog posts

Mar

2011

Coming up with ideas for blog posts is one of the toughest challenges a blogger faces. We’ve talked before about using a feedreader to speed up your blog writing. That may be all you need if most of your posts involve linking to someone else’s and then offering insights of your own. It can also ...

Sales tax on Amazon and other retailers

Mar

2011

There’s been a lot of uproar in recent months (okay, years) about US states passing laws that force Amazon to collect sales tax or, um, something. There also seems to be a lot of confusion about this, based on comment threads I’ve been reading. Some people don’t seem to understand how sales tax actually works. ...

How to debug CSS in Firebug

Mar

2011

One day, you decide it would be nice if the link lists in the sidebars didn’t have a disc by each item. You go into your stylesheet and insert a rule to get rid of that disc. The disc stays right there. You flush your cache, thinking maybe somehow (even though you have it set ...

Defining content farms

Mar

2011

You’ve probably already heard that Google’s on the warpath against “content farms” and changing its algorithm to bump them down a notch. Many people were surprised to see eHow come cheerfully out on top in recent algo updates, given that competing search engine Blekko had defined it as a content farm and banned it from ...

Mastering XHTML for compliance

Mar

2011

If you’re a blogger, you may think it’s not important for you to understand XHTML. It’s true that you can install blogging software, get everything up and running, and even theme and tweak your blog to your heart’s content without knowing anything about it. You might even end up with XHTML Strict compliance if you ...

Thesis theme and Analytics stats

Mar

2011

I recently switched one of my WordPress sites over to the Thesis theme. Immediately, that site experienced a small but significant drop-off in visitors per day, according to Analytics, as soon as I switched. But I dismissed it as a coincidence because I’d had a surge of extra traffic about a month earlier, and that ...

Google Alternatives: NewsBlur instead of Reader 4

Mar

2011

I recently shared a great alternative to Gmail and my reasons for switching away from all products Google. My issue with Google Reader was not just Google’s privacy policy: I also just didn’t like it. It was too much like processing email, so after maybe thirty minutes I’d feel overwhelmed and have to stop reading. ...

Google Alternatives: Zoho Mail instead of Gmail 7

Mar

2011

I recently decided it was time to get rid of Gmail and Google Reader once and for all. My reason was Google’s privacy policy, which says that they will indefinitely store all the information they get about you from all their services you use. I guess that’s fair enough since they’re providing awesomely reliable services ...

Zoho Notebook and Zoho apps

Mar

2011

I found Zoho back in 2007 when I was looking for an online notebook app, and I think it’s time to update the review I wrote then. Zoho’s come a long way in the past three years. It’s now my go-to app for working in the cloud. I should mention a few personal rules I ...

Speeding up websites with image optimization 1

Mar

2011

How fast your websites load has always been crucial. I don’t think many people realize just how quickly a lot of potential readers will back away from a site because it’s not loading fast enough. Every second you can shave off means a few more people sticking around. But Google has said it will be ...

WordPress 406 errors "Not acceptable…" 3

Feb

2011

My first encounter with a WordPress 406 “Not Acceptable…” error was back when I upgraded to WordPress 2.1. It wouldn’t let me post, edit posts, access options, etc. I searched extensively online at the time, and found that the error has something to do with a host using mod_security. The general recommendation was to turn ...

Keyword density versus natural writing

Feb

2011

Keywords are important, whether you’re writing a thesis paper for a high school English course or a blog. In any form of non-fiction writing it’s “best practice” to include phrases and tie in with your title and subject. This has nothing to do with search engines. Human beings need to see clearly that your article ...

Redirect a subdomain to totally different URL 2

Feb

2011

Htaccess redirecting is a powerful and somewhat frightening tool. After all, one typo and your domain is pointing nowhere in an infinite loop. It’s okay, though, because you can always get back in through FTP or Cpanel to fix it. As long as you kept a backup copy before making your changes. And that’s exactly ...