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Blog Marketing Journal wrote a great blog post about social bookmarking sites that use do follow links instead of no follow. At the risk of spoiling it for you, I’d like to let the cat out of the bag:

• Furl
• Digg
• Propeller
• Technorati
• Slashdot

I can vouch for these, but I’d also like to say that social bookmarking is not necessarily about the links. At least, not the links that you can get from the social bookmarking site.

Link popularity is one of the most important measurements that you can make as a website owner. Link popularity is defined as the aggregate number of inbound links your website has pointing to it as reported by the various search engines. Most link popularity reports focus on the Big Three: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Although MSN, for the last year, has been unreliable and may report its links, or not, from one month to the next. That leaves us with Google and Yahoo!

Yahoo! is much more liberal in its link reporting policy than Google is. In many ways, Google, the primary motivator in the development of link popularity as a website metric, has clamped down on inbound link credits in recent years. Google is very concerned with link quality whereas Yahoo! seems to be much more concerned about link relevance - the actual relationship in topical value between a linking website and its link partner.

When checking link popularity, you take what each of the search engines report for your inbound links and add them together. So if Yahoo! reports that you have 4,531 inbound links and Google reports 123 - a disparity that is not at all uncommon - then your link popularity will be 4,531 + 123, or 4,654. A website with at least 5,000 inbound links is just starting to gain some link notoriety. A website with at least 20,000 inbound links is well on its way to becoming a powerhouse and a noteworthy authority in its niche. That’s how important link popularity is.

Social Bookmarking’s Real Value
Social bookmarking has the potential to help you increase your link popularity. If you focused entirely on the sites that gave you link value for your inbound links then you’d only bookmark your website or blog posts at five social bookmarking sites, but that would be a huge error. I repeat, that would be an outstanding miscalculation on the scale of Coca Cola changing its formula.

The real value of social bookmarking comes in getting your bookmarked items noticed by a community of interested persons who like your content. One bookmark at a well trafficked website like Digg or Propeller - or even StumbleUpon or del.icio.us, both very popular sites that do not give you any direct link value - can boost your link popularity by thousands of links within a single month. The way that happens is by making your content popular enough that people share it with their friends. Each person that visits your website or blog is a potential blogger. Every blogger that likes your content enough not only to bookmark it but also to write about it on his or her own blog becomes a one-way link partner for you and assists you in developing your link popularity.

I had an article on my poetry website last month, for instance, that drew more than 2,000 visitors. Before that, my daily traffic count was in the 40-50 range. But I had one blog post, bookmarked at StumbleUpon, that drew thousands of visitors because of its topical subject matter. That one blog post subsequently attracted hundreds of inbound links from other poetry bloggers who linked to my blog post, giving me additional link popularity. Seeing as how there are only a couple of thousand poetry bloggers, that’s not a bad run for one blog post. Now multiply that by hundreds of blog posts over the course of a year or two.

Of course, not every blog post can be that popular. But one very popular blog post in the midst of hundreds of blog posts with average or moderate link and traffic attention can give you a huge edge over the competition.

Social bookmarking is the new article marketing. Article marketing has long been a great way to develop inbound links and gain new traffic to a website. Social bookmarking offers the same benefits on a much bigger, grander scale. It’s article marketing on viagra. You can get more links faster and watch your link popularity soar! I’ve seen it and so have the clients who use our social bookmarking service for their blog content. If you try it, I know you’ll it too.

Social bookmarking has taken on a life of its own. Thanks to Pligg and a couple of other open source platforms, social bookmarking sites are springing up all over the place. Just like article directories a few years ago, social bookmarking sites are a dime a dozen and now starting to gather in niches - just like articles directories in 2002.

The benefit to this is that blog marketers looking to expand their audiences now have the ability to do through so vertical marketing strategies that focus on building off site relationships that lead to on site relationships that lead to sales. Your social bookmarking initiatives can now be rolled into your marketing funnel, which allows you to caster a wider net. People will find your blog and website through a different avenue and it is likely that you will attract people to your blog and website that never would have found you otherwise - all because of a little social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking has two primary benefits: Link building and traffic generation. But keep in mind that many social bookmarking sites now use nofollow tags in their links and therefore you won’t get any Google juice out of them. But some, like Digg, do not. So you’ll get some link benefit out of social bookmarking, but the true value is in the traffic generation that can develop as a result of people seeing your articles and blog entries that might not encounter them any other way. If you aren’t using social bookmarking right now to drive new traffic to your website then you should start thinking about it.

(Source) But the “select publishers” are not just mainstream media outlets, there’s also a good bit of content pulled from smaller sites like Make Magazine and WordPress blogs. Overall Buzz strikes a good balance between the big news sites and smaller sources.

Does this mean that bloggers will be allowed to submit stories to Yahoo! Buzz? I’m not sure if that is what it is saying or not. It does appear to be saying that Yahoo! will allow certain publishers that are not mainstream big news outlets submit their stories, but what will be the criteria for becoming one of those “select publishers?” That’s the question of the day.

This article does provide a good overview of the social news phenomenon. Propeller has achieved some moderate success, but nothing quite like Digg. Wired is certainly right about that. But Ask.com has also launched its own social news site, though it is still too new to know whether it will compete well with Digg and other sites. Yahoo! is more along the lines of Ask’s BigNews than anything else. It may be fun to vote up stories, but if I don’t get any benefit out of it as a webmaster then I don’t really have the time to kill. Good luck to Yahoo! Buzz.

I’m continually amazed at the level of thickheadedness off some people online. There are users who will flock to one service solely to ignore another service that is better, but bigger. It seems that some people are so averse to doing business with big that they’d rather be with an inferior service just because. Such is the case with Bloglines.

WebProNews ran a news story saying Bloglines didn’t update any of its blogs one day. Evidently, they’ve been having problems since February 12.

I use Google Reader as my web-based RSS reader because it works. Google Reader has never had a problem. It’s not the only RSS feed reader that is worth having, but it is one of the best web-based feed readers online. Bloglines is owned by Ask.com, fourth in the search engine wars. That’s why some people like it - it’s not Google. That’s fine, but if they can’t provide a useful service then it doesn’t matter that they’re not Google. That’s like driving a Ford because it isn’t a Chevy only to find that your Ford won’t start every other day. You might as well drive a Chevy.

But here’s the kicker: WebProNews writer Doug Caverly feels it necessary to point out that the Google Reader blog hasn’t been updated in 18 days, as if that’s going to make a difference. His article began by pointing out that Bloglines hasn’t issued a press release since June 2005. I want to know what either of these two facts have to do about the issue of an RSS aggregator not working properly? People don’t use the product because they’re being communicated with properly. They use the product because it delivers quality service - Google Reader does, Bloglines doesn’t. Communication is only necessary when the product doesn’t work properly - again, Google Reader does, Bloglines doesn’t. It sounds like Bloglines not only has a techical issue, but they have a PR issue as well. Google Reader has no issues. Why bring up the non-existent?

I’m a big fan of Feedburner, especially since I started using it back in November. According to this article at Mashable, they’re upgrading, and it looks to be a big upgrade.

According to the news, Feedburner is making itself more scalable by writing its code according to Google’s standards and integrating with the search giant. That means a few things for bloggers and one big thing for Feedburner. For Feedburner, it likely means increased profitability. For bloggers it means better services. Here’s how Feedburner can increase your ability to publish useful information for your readers:

• Better integration with Google Reader and Blogger.com
• Increased opportunities for income with Google AdSense
• URL-configurable leads (whatever that means)
• Better e-mail integration (which I’m looking forward to)
• And I’m guessing it will also lead to improved metrics

Feedburner is already good, but moving to Google standards means getting better and that’s going to increase every blogger’s ability to be a better publisher. It’s something that I’m really looking forward to.

BlogCatalog has announced that it will be introducing a new social marketing tool. They’re calling it the Social Dashboard. The idea is to aggregate users’ social networking and social bookmarking accounts.

I just logged into my account and was hit with the Dashboard face, which is pretty blank right now. But it looks like a good tool. Right away, I see the social aspects of it:

The first thing I see is the big red BlogCatlog box in the upper left corner of my browser. Then, below that is the Dashboard header and a little red Beta next to it. Good clue!

Below the two sentence introduction to the Dashboard there are five tabs labeled News Feed, Discussions, Groups, Broadcasts, and Neighborhoods. Below that are two links: “Try adding some friends” and “updating your subscriptions.”

I haven’t been very active on BlogCatalog, but I may start being more active now. It looks like it could actually be a more effective tool for bloggers than Facebook, which is a bit more social than anything else. At least with BlogCatalog you can choose your friends based on whether or not their blog is in the same industry as yours. Facebook is a little more difficult as you have to select your friends based on a collection of interests or geographical location. Neither of those are really very helpful for business bloggers.

What I like about BlogCatalog is you can consolidate your friends and interests from various social sites like:

• Flickr
• Twitter
• MySpace
• StumbleUpon
• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Technorati
• MyBlogLog

Personally, I think the list is incomplete. There are other social sites out there could be rolled into BlogCatalog for greater effectiveness, but I do like that MyBlogLog, Flickr, Technorati, and StumbleUpon are included in the list. I think Facebook is more helpful than MySpace, and YouTube would be a nice addition.

Anyways, it does look like a useful application and I’m looking forward to playing around with it. Gotta go now. I’ve got a lot of BlogCatalog friends to make.

Some bloggers spend too much time worrying about scraping, a form of content theft. I prefer to call it what it is - plain and simple, it is theft.

Content scrapers typically subscribe to your RSS feeds then use automatic posting software to post your content on their blogs and websites alongside Google AdSense ads in hopes of profiting off of your content. Some of them actually make a pretty decent amount of money through this practice even though it is unethical and, technically, illegal. Because content scrapers have ways of maintaining their anonymity, it is virtually impossible to ever prove that someone stole your content and that makes suing them for damages next to impossible. Should you even worry about it?

There are two types of scrapers. Some scrapers take your articles from article directories and do not include a link back to your blog or website as is generally acceptable. In addition to attempting to profit from your content they do not even give you the credit for creating it, making them guilty of a double sin. Other content scrapers will take your content and at least link back to your website with an attribution link. They still include the AdSense ads next to the cotnent, but I find this kind of content scraper less of a threat because the search engines know that your content was on your site first and will give you the credit for that by indexing your content in their search engines. The content scraper is banking on you following the link from the back end of your blogging platform and clicking on an ad or approving their trackbacks and profiting off of your visitors clicking through to their websites from your blog.

I have a way of dealing with that second type of content scraper. I don’t approve their trackbacks. That effectively gives me an inbound link from their website (which won’t help me much if any at all because their website likely will not be crawled), but it also does not give them the reciprocal link they were hoping for and therefore cutting off the only hope of traffic that they may get. In order for them to profit from scraping my content then is to market that content themselves and they are not likely to put forth the time and energy to do that. Therefore, I kill their profits.

To me, it’s a waste of time to worry too much about content scrapers beyond that because I just end up eating away my time, which cuts down on my profits. If they make a little bit of money from my content then it’s no big deal. They are likely not getting rich from my content. They may make a few dollars each month and that’s about it. Content scrapers make their money through a numbers game by stealing thousands of web pages’ content and using AdSense to profit from the totality of their theft. I believe it’s just a matter of time before the search engines address the issue and stamp it out. I’m not all that worried about it.

What Is Content Aggregation?
On the positive side of things, content aggregators use RSS feeds from various sources to populate their web pages with content. They may or may not profit from this activity, but since it is considered legal and ethical it doesn’t matter if they do. Aggregators usually have the permission of the content owners whose feeds they aggregate. They may be niche oriented or general in nature, but content aggregators do not pose a problem for content creators. They always link back to the original source and give attribution where necessary. That is the difference between a content aggregator and a content scraper.

The content aggregator can be good for your business. It’s another way for you to market your content and attract new visitors to your website. The most popular blog aggregator online is Technorati. I am a member of a content aggregator that specializes in literary content as well. There may be content aggregators for your industry. I’d encourage you to find suitable content aggregators and join so that you can expand your reach into the online marketplace. And don’t spend too much time worrying about scrapers.

Some bloggers are married to Blogger.com and others swear by WordPress. Which is better?

There are good reasons for going with either one. To be sure, pros and cons abound on both sides, but I’m partial to WordPress for business blogs and there are several reasons why. But before I tell you what they are, let me just tout the virtues of Blogger.com:

• It’s owned by Google

There. That should do it.

Now, I’m not being sarcastic. Google has a lot of pull in terms of who is ranked in the search engines - particularly its own. And if you own the system then you can give it a little extra credit. And that’s the primary benefit of Blogger.com. You get extra credit for SEO with Google.

Now, the downside is it’s a free web-based blogging platform. And you might ask, “Well, why is that a downside?” It’s a downside because if it’s free then everyone can use it, and everyone will - including spammers. Spammers love Blogger.com because it’s free and easy to use. They don’t have to buy a domain name or install any software and there is no commitment to maintain anything. And because of this, Blogger.com is the biggest spam neighborhood on the Internet. That alone is reason not to use it for your business blog.

This blog post from a Blogger.com advocate confirms what I’m saying:

Yes, WordPress is a “must have” for a serious blogger, especially if their topic is “making money” or “blogging” but, in many circumstances, Blogger is a superior platform and here are 3 reasons why.

And what does this blogger say are the three reasons that Blogger.com is superior?

• It’s free
• The user interface is simple to use
• No SEO needed

OK. Fabulous. WordPress is free and the user interface is simple to use. But you do need to optimize it and think about SEO when you write your posts. It doesn’t have the advantage of being owned by Google. Blogger.com does, and I’ve seen non-SEOd Blogger blogs rank highly simply because they use a Blogger.com interface. It’s the only advantage that you have with Blogger.com. Still, I reiterate it’s huge negative: Big-time spam neighborhood!

WordPress, O WordPress, Wherefore Art
Thou WordPress?
There are some technical challenges to overcome with WordPress. If you aren’t familiar with FTP, you’ll be lost. If you’ve never installed software on a website, CMS, or other blogger software then there is a learning curve. But that’s no reason not to do it. You can hire someone to do that for you or learn to do it yourself - it really isn’t hard once you get past the learning curve.

After the technical challenges, you can build a great blog with WordPress. You have more flexibility in terms of design with free access to unlimited plug-ins and widgets, your pick of free templates, or you can hire a designer to design your own unique template, you can have your own domain name, and with excellent writing and SEO abilities you can have a darn good blog within your niche.

There is no advantage to being with a platform where no SEO is necessary to rank. It’s like having a job because you are the business owner’s son. The other employees know you have no skills to offer. You’re just there to take up space because you can’t go out on your own. WordPress allows you to prove your independence.

It almost always better to own the real estate than to rent it. With Blogger.com, you are a renter, which means you can be evicted any time. With WordPress, you are an owner. the only thing that will get you evicted is not maintaining your financial obligations. For $10/year you can have your very own domain name. Pay your bill, it’s yours forever, and if you can’t afford $10/year then you shouldn’t have a blog any way. WordPress is free, easy to install, and with the proper SEO will help you brand your business long term. There really is no reason not to use WordPress as your blog platform.

Would you recognize a spam link if you saw it? They’re not that hard to notice really. I can spot one from a mile away.

Typically, bloggers who write blogs for popular search terms will receive an e-mail that goes something like this:

Hi,

Thanks for replying. I am interested in permanent placement of paragraphs on specific pages of your website. Paragraphs will be custom written and according to the content of your site.

So, I can offer you: USD 15 for each of the following pages.

This is a verbatim message I received from a spam link buyer for a website that I personally own. Below these paragraphs were a set of links to the pages this link buyer wanted to place his links on followed by, in case I couldn’t do the math, a total that he would pay for those links. I found it interesting that three of those links were for pages that I wouldn’t consider selling links for under any circumstances no matter what the price - I figured that would be obvious by the content.

1. The first page was to my e-zine opt-in page. Now why would any idiot sell links on a page where he wants to take opt-ins for his newsletter? That would defeat the entire purpose for that page. And the spam link buyer wanted his links on that page permanently. Yeah, I’m a moron. NOT!
2. The second page was a sales letter for a book that I wrote. This is a no-brainer. What used car salesman is going to take $50 to tell every customer he meets, “Go across the street; they sell more cars than we do?” Again, do I have Stupid written all over my website? Nope. Hit the next guy, Chump!
3. The third page the spam link buyer wanted me to pimp out was to a book review page. This is a page I use to write book reviews for books I like. After I praise or trash the book, I tell my readers where they can go to purchase the book. Obviously, the desired result is that they will purchase the books. Though I don’t make any money on some of them, there are books that I review where I get a commission from each sale because I’m a member of an affiliate program. Why would I lead potential customers to another website for a one-time sale?

Because this brave spam link buyer was batting .500, which isn’t bad for a major leaguer, I decided to offer him the courtesy of a response. So I told him under what circumstances I’d consider selling a link. (I really have no problem selling links, but I HAVE A BIG PROBLEM with selling spam links, as you will soon see).

My response to the Mr. Spam Link Buyer went like this:

William,

I appreciate your offer, but there are several problems with the way you have presented this. No. 1, links on three of those pages are not for sell at all. A careful review of the (Page 1), (Page 2), and (Page 3) pages will show that it would be counterproductive for me to sell links on those pages.

Secondly, I believe I could sell links on my website for much more than $15 permanent placement. It is likely that I could get $5-$10 per month per page on those pages for the right website. Then you would have to be clear about what the benefits are that you are paying for. If you are looking for PageRank transference, it is out of the question. Links would have to be nofollow links. The traffic alone would be worth it to you.

Thirdly, the links on your pages look spammy (he had the nerve to include examples of what he was talking about with his paid link scheme). I won’t involve myself in that at all. I don’t encourage more than one link per paragraph in most online content and I only link out from my website if there is a clear value to my visitors in me doing so. I would have to evaluate the content on the pages you want to link to in order to see if it would provide any value to my readers.

Finally, I would feel more comfortable with the arrangement if you provided me your anchor text and let me write the content. If I like the pages you are linking to then I will write the content to encourage my visitors to link to your site. If I don’t like it then the deal is off. I won’t recommend something just to make a dollar. I have over 20 years writing experience including academic writing, journalism, sales material, and I currently work full-time as an Internet marketer, blog ghostwriter, article writer, and SEO content writer so I can back up what I say.

Alternatively, if you want to work something out for my (deleted) blog at (deleted) then I might be more amenable to that. The price would be less there because it doesn’t have the same level of traffic as the website. But some of the same demands would be in place (though I’ll be more flexible in certain ways). Again, if I like your content then I can
offer you other benefits. But if I wouldn’t freely link to your content without you paying for it then I likely wouldn’t link to it if you do pay. That’s how I see paid link value and if you are still interested then let me know what pages you want me to link to and your anchor text then we’ll go from there.

I thought that was pretty straightforward and doggone clear. Mr. Spam Link Buyer, however, didn’t respond to any of the points. Instead, he simply responded

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. I can adjust the travel keyword link vacations with informative and non spammy links, if you think you can go ahead with this just let me know.

In other words, he wanted to put travel links on my non-travel related website. Why?

The idea behind paid links is to get additional traffic and inbound links with PageRank value (though Google frowns on the practice for the purpose of PR value). I think traffic value is a lot better than PR value even if you have a PR of 8 or 9. If your PR is that high then you probably have lots of traffic as well. But that’s why I won’t sell links for PR. I will sell them for traffic. But that is a digression.

In order to make paid links work to their best advantage for you and for your customer, the links should be to a site that is relevant in terms of content. In other words, travel sites should link to travel sites, real estate sites to real estate sites, etc. Why put travel links on your real estate site? Unless the travel site you are linking to is local to you and provides real benefit to your website visitors it just doesn’t make sense.

If a reader can go to your website and tell a marked difference in the tone, voice, quality of writing, and subject matter from one paragraph to another on the same page then you have a credibility problem. How much is it worth to you to ruin your credibility? Well, that’s what spam links do for you.

Perhaps the most important aspect of your blog design is whether or not your template meets the SEO test. WordPress has thousands of ready-made templates that you can use for your blog. You simply install the one you want and start blogging. It’s fairly easy.

But not all WordPress templates are created equal. These templates are mostly created by independent web designers and individuals just tinkering on their own. Anyone can create a template. That doesn’t mean that all templates should be used. It may mean that the template you choose for your business blog is not optimized well for search. If that is the case then you’ll be doing yourself a grave disservice by using that template.

Some of the common problems encountered among WordPress template designs include:

• Bad code
• Ineffective php files
• Broken pages
• No 404 error pages/or 404 error pages that don’t load well
• Templates with too much code

If your WordPress template is not getting crawled by search engine bots then your pages will not be indexed by the search engines. You’ll know in a matter of weeks, sometimes days, if that is the case. If it is then you’ll want to exchange your template before you get too committed. You’re better off going with a template that is not your first choice than getting the best looking template design that isn’t crawlable.