Everyday a fiercely competitive battle takes place online over capturing the attention of millions of readers. As a result the blogosphere constantly changes shape and different players thrust forward as content kings for the day. Lately I have been trying to find out what forces control this volatile scene. I have been looking for recurring themes and hoping to find useful correlations. ...

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The Foolproof Method for Great Blogging Don’t become an expert by acting like one - This might sound counter-intuitive, but it really does make sense. Many inexperienced bloggers try to make their work sound important and reputable even when it is not. This is an easy mistake to make because emulating the industry leaders is a logical path to success. Don’t be fooled. Real success comes from distinguishing oneself in a useful way, not by pretending to be something one is not.

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I'm getting to like this series :-) (see #1 and #2). This week, I thought I'd talk about a tip that might cause mild concussions if you haven't been doing it. That's right, it's the ultra-simple "research before you post" technique for bloggers. The basic tenet goes something like this - if your blog has any reasonable quantity of link equity and ranking ability, chances are t...

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The number of subscribers is the main metrics of its popularity (well, I am pretty sure everyone knows that but I needed an introductory sentence:)). Recently, I've been exploring and experimenting with some creative looking blog RSS buttons and came to an interesting conclusion: no matter how unique and prominent it looks, people still tend to prefer that standard little Feedburne...

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I remember the first time I heard about someone ending a relationship via email. It was a long time ago (like, in the nineties) and possibly in the days before I had an email account of my own. Everyone was shocked at how someone could bring themselves to do something like that online. Now, such a break-up would constitute a gross lack of inventiveness. Why not edit your ...

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I know exactly what you should do with your blog because it isn't mine, I don't have to implement any of the changes and if my advice is crap, I don't have to live with the consequences. This said, I've been poking around inside my favourite social networking site and I've...

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I hope you were not offended by the titular transaction of breasts. A little blog humor goes a long way and wordplay has always been a shortcut to a humorous headline.

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One of the daily tasks that either myself or Rebecca take care of is moderating YOUmoz submissions. Everyone who has ever submitted a YOUmoz entry will know the process: you compose your piece, hit submit, and wait around for an SEOmoz staff member to publish it. If a piece is original (that is, it doesn't show up in Google when we search for a snippet of its text), is coherent, on-topic and gener...

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While I was in the Detroit airport earlier this week, I picked up a copy of the current issue of Wired. August's issue focused on a series of "How To's", one of them being "How to Rule the Blogosphere." I was interested in reading what tips they had to offer, only to find out that their ...

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Despite being 10 days old (a lifetime in the blogosphere), I felt obligated to take an alternate position to Joel Spolsky & Dave Winer on the topic of blog comments. Here's Dave: ...

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Plaxo, a "smart address book" service provider, recently published their second Connected Index, which is a list of which job titles have the most connections based on the average number of contacts in their address book. 15 million Plaxo members' address books were used for the study. Unsurprisingly, talent agents were reported to be the most connecte...

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I got tagged with a blog meme about why I blog by Andy, but rather than simply ennumerate my personal reasons, I decided to go bigger and describe all the reasons, personal and professional, that should encourage you to start a blog (or continue to update the one you write). Codify Your Thoughts Build Name/Brand Recognition Prepare for a Book ...

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A few months back I wrote a post about female bloggers, and how I don't get shaken up or outraged about the imbalance between female bloggers and male bloggers in the tech/SEO sphere. For the most part, I still stand by what I wrote, but today I'm going to (sort of) eat my words and talk about Kathy Sierra's un...

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If you're a new writer, just entering the blogosphere, you'll find an overwhelming amount of advice telling how to blog, how to monetize your site, what rules to follow for search engines, how to create passionate readers, and how to boost your traffic. One element that's often missing is the all-important subject of what to blog about in the first place. Let me urge you to follow this simple f...

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Let's take this from the point of view of a normal person who is just wading around the internet looking for something to read on a specific subject.  We'll call this guy Bob. Bob heads over to Yahoo (It could be Google or some other search engine) and types in 'how to make waffles'.  Here's what he sees: ...

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