Posts Tagged ‘google’
by Jonathan Bailey on September 5th, 2012
To be honest, last week was a pretty rough week for the city of New Orleans. The landfall of Hurricane Isaac bringing powerful winds, heavy rains and strong storm surge to the area, the city was, to put it simply, a disaster.
While it may not have been a catastrophe on par with Hurricane Katrina seven years ago, it was still a powerful storm and one that more people stayed for due to fact it wasn’t seen to be as great of a threat.
What resulted was a city roasting in a hot bayou summer without power, A/C or even adequate ice. Couple that with flooding issues around the city itself and an emergency response that was seen as less-than-swift, the city felt like a disaster zone, perhaps more than it actually was.
But in the middle of it all, I realized that my work as a blogger was serving me remarkably well during these trying days. When one usually thinks of disaster skills, they typically think of survivalists capable of living off of the land.
However, disasters, even extreme ones, don’t unfold the same way in the digital age as ones just a few years ago. Your skills with Google may be more useful than knowing how to desalinate water and, if you’re a blogger, you likely have many of the skills needed to help make any disaster more bearable and more survivable.
Here are just five examples of how. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense
Tags: cell phone, communication, disaster, google, hurricane, hurricane isaac, mobile, new orleans, outage, power, smartphone, technology, wifi
by BP Guest Blogger on May 31st, 2012
For many people, social networking can be summed up in one word: Facebook. While Facebook is undoubtedly a wildly successful social network, it is not the first such network to appear on the scene, nor will it be the last. Many additional players that have entered the social networks field; however, if any stands a realistic chance of unseating Facebook from the top of the social network food chain, it is Google Plus. Just as many people equate Facebook with social networking, many equate Google with the internet itself. What started out as a modest venture — a search engine — has turned into a multinational behemoth that includes such features as cloud storage, online document editing, an extensive affiliate advertising network — and now, of course, a social network. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense, General
Tags: google, Google Plus, social networking
by BP Guest Blogger on February 20th, 2012
So when Google forgot it’s very own motto – yes, the motto that they came up with way before becoming an IPO – “Don’t be evil” – social networking sites besides Google have come out with a tool that should sure remind Google that it focus must remain on the user. So, the engineers of various networking sites came together in the last weekend of Jan, this new year, and devised a perfect solution: The “Focus On The User” tool. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense, Blogging Tips
Tags: algorithms, google, search
by Jonathan Bailey on November 9th, 2011
It’s the golden road for bloggers, it’s how every great writer is supposed to make his millions (or at least thousands) off the Web. You start up an awesome blog, write great content, build a good audience, slap up a few Adsense ads and let the money come rolling in.
While it’s a system that works great for some bloggers, for a vast majority it’s a road to nowhere. A select few get rich, a few more get some spending money and the majority never even see a check.
For most blogs, advertising is a terrible business model. For them, it doesn’t work, it can’t work and it never will work. It’s that simple.
I learned this the hard way myself years ago and I cringe as I was other bloggers go down the same path, usually falling flat on their face.
Why is advertising such a terrible business model? The reasons are painfully obvious when one takes the time to look for them, but few, blinded by the promise of easy money, see the reasons until they’re staring at their paltry earnings report.
Still, for those who want to know why this is a bitter truth, I’ve outlined five reasons below. Read More
Categories: Blogging Sense
Tags: ad network, adsense, Advertising, adwords, business models, google
by James Dunaway on September 14th, 2011
Usability is one feature of a website that no designer can afford to overlook. Of course, some obvious rules apply such as underlined and highlighted links so they are easy to find and use. Also, using a sitemap for easy navigation and SEO optimization are other tools that help your website be as useable and visitor friendly as possible. It is true that these rules are not necessary for every website. However, understanding these rules so that you can choose the best ones for your website will help lead to more traffic, more return traffic, greater sales and happier visitors from the market you are trying to attract. Read More
Categories: Blog Design, Blogger Tools, Blogging Resources, Blogging Tips
Tags: google, Website, website usability
by Franky Branckaute on July 12th, 2011
Google+ has been very popular and the people who have signed up for the still closed Beta service, tend to like it. It is too early to say whether Google+ will stick and disrupt the social scene or even SERPs, but active designers have already released Google+ themes for WordPress.
Two free Google+ themes for WordPress have been released already.
WordPress +1 Theme by Hacktrix.
WordPress Google+ Theme by Tricksdaddy.
Both themes are very clean and reminiscent of the Google+ look.
Categories: Linking, WordPress Themes
Tags: google, Hacktrix, Themes, Tricksdaddy, wordpress, WordPress Design
by Franky Branckaute on July 8th, 2011
John Henson of PlusDevs developed a handy widget to display your Google+ profile to your WordPress site.
The widget is as simple as WordPress widgets come and only requires you to add your Google+ ID. Sadly there is no option in the GoogleCards to add someone to your Google+ Circles without leaving the site but we hope that this will be integrated to GoogleCards once the Google+ is launched officially and the Google+ API will be released.
Visit PlusDevs to download the plugin here
Categories: Linking, WordPress Plugins
Tags: google, Google+ Plugins, WordPress Widgets
by Darnell Clayton on May 13th, 2011
Blogger has been down for over 24 hours (rivaling Tumblr’s outage earlier), giving the service a black eye after previously boasting a perfect uptime record.
While BlogSpot blogs are still online, users logging into Blogger are greeted with this screen below:
Google is in the process of restoring posts and comments, although instead of fretting and cussing on Twitter (as that will only stress you out even more) here are a few things you can do until Google grants you access to your Blogger Blog. Read More
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Blogger, google
by Jonathan Bailey on May 11th, 2011
On the Internet, nothing happens in a vacuum. Your site, your traffic and your readers are being constantly impacted and affected by things that are going on elsewhere. If Google makes a change to their algorithm, for example, this can have a drastic impact on your traffic and the type of readers you get.
Likewise, what your readers are looking for and talking about will, inevitably, be affected by what other sites are discussing and what they’re seeing elsewhere.
The simple truth is that you don’t have a single reader who only views your site and nothing else on the Web. Everyone on the Web is reading other sites, emailing, IMing, using social networking and participating in the Web in countless other ways.
Because of this, you can’t try to make your site stand alone or treat it as if it’s the only place your readers need to be. Your readers’ interests are both varied and deep and, short of having the entire Library of Congress on your site, there’s no way you can be all things to them.
As such, the best thing you can do is not try and, instead, try to take advantage of this natural ebb and flow of the Web by using it as a means to both make your site more useful to your readers and, perhaps more importantly, gain even more traffic.
No site is an island unto itself and, even if it could be, it’s unlikely that you’d even want it that way. Read More
Categories: Marketing
Tags: blogging, google, linking, marketing, pingback, Search Engine, trackback
by Darnell Clayton on April 22nd, 2011
For those of you obsessed with all things SEO (at least from Google’s vantage point), the search engine giant has released a new plugin to help make it easier to verify your self hosted WordPress blog with Webmaster Tools.
For webmasters with self-hosted Wordpress [sic] blogs, there’s now a Webmaster Tools site verifcation plugin for WordPress [sic] that completely automates our verification process! [...]
With verified ownership of your site in Webmaster Tools, you can receive specific statistics and information (e.g. relevant search queries, malware notices) about your site directly from Google. (Google Webmaster Central Blog) Read More
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: google, wordpress, WordPress Plugins
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