June 23, 2005
Blogging
All Things Blog
I'm loving Wikipedia at the moment. Here are some great links on blogs. Helpful if you want to know what they're all about...
- What is a blog and where did blogs come from?
- What kind of blog software is available for running a blog?
- Using a blog client to post entries (optional).
- Reading blogs with a news aggregator.
- Finding a news aggregator.
If you're interested in starting a blog, don't forget to check out web syndication and Creative Commons as well. Of course the Creative Commons website is also a good place to go. :-)
Posted by Adam Boddington at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
Blogging | Movable Type
Syndicate Me
Atom and RSS feeds for this blog have always been available, but for those folks who aren't using a browser that can automatically detect them (like, ahem, Firefox or Opera), I've finally created direct links to them. See the links? Just over there to the right... down a bit... under the heading Syndication. :-)
For those of you new to blogging (like me), here is a really good definition of web syndication and an explanation of what Atom and RSS feeds are all about. While my Atom and RSS feeds could be used for a variety of (license compliant) purposes (Movable Type automatically includes my Creative Commons license in the feeds), I've mostly provided them for the majority of blog readers out there that use some form of aggregator. Let's face it, I don't blog every day, so why not make it easy for folks to automatically get my content when I finally do write something? It can be a pain clicking on a website several times a week just to find nothing new has been posted.
Posted by Adam Boddington at 04:26 PM | Comments (1)
Search Engine Optimisation
Google's Secrets
Some of Google's secrets are out -- and some of them are very interesting reading. For example, the relative high ranking of my Optimising Movable Type for Google post could be in some part thanks to my five year registration of www.adamboddington.com. Who would have thunk it? I didn't expect that, but I suppose it makes sense if the majority of search engine spammers take up one year registrations.
(Did I mention that my Optimising Movable Type for Google post is back in the rankings? Probably not, since I decided I wouldn't blog about that stuff anymore. I don't know what's changed, but it's up there.)
The full analysis is interesting reading, but in the end it mostly confirms what we already know about search engine optimisation. Organic growth of good content will lead to high quality links, which in turn will lead to a handy search engine ranking. The optimisation tips help, but good content is much more important.
The article points out a couple of pitfalls though. One is the length of the domain name registration as already mentioned. The other (well known one) is knowing who is sharing your hosting server. If you neighbour is engaged in dodgy search engine spam tactics, your shared IP address might be banned. Could be a case for getting your own IP block whether you're sharing a server or not.
Thanks to Craig for sending me this link.
Update: 23 June, 2005
There is some interesting discussion on the Google patent here. The actual patent application can be found here.
Posted by Adam Boddington at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)