Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 31st, 2007 in SEO Tips
I almost hate talking about this one because I’m not sure I want the competition. Luckily, every niche or industry is different, so you’ll only be competing with me if we serve the same niche. While this method is nothing new, it is very tried and true. The one thing that consistently brings in large amounts of traffic and garners backlinks in the process is the creation of a good tutorial. Make sure the tutorial is somehow related to your niche. Even the most boring of niches can come up with some kind of interesting tutorial. Then do the following:
- Use…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 29th, 2007 in Search Engine News
I secretly filmed Matt Cutts when I caught him zapping a search engine spammer into oblivion! Check it out!
I’d love to see all SEOs put together some of these so that we can all share in the fun. Go make your own at Blabberize.com.
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 27th, 2007 in Other (NonSEO) Tools
Because I’ve had issues installing other social bookmark plugins, I’m currently using Social Bookmarking Reloaded, and thought I’d see if I could add Sphinn to it. Luckily, it was easy, so my goal was accomplished. I’ve packaged the plugin up so you can have the revised version as well. Just click here to grab the revised version. See the original creator’s site for any help or info you may need about the plugin.
(See the little icons right under this post? That’s this plugin in action).
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 25th, 2007 in SEO Lingo
Let me start out by saying that I am extremely non-political, so if I get my political definitions a little wrong, well, just forgive me. Recently, an SEO called a friend of mine a spammer and the guy obviously knows nothing about my friend. My friend is not even close to being a spammer. Nevertheless, the fervor with which this guy and his cronies lambasted my friend without having any facts whatsoever reminded me of extremism, which then made me think of politics. So I thought maybe we should dump the old white hat / black hat / whatever color…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 24th, 2007 in SEO Tips
Way back in 1993, long before any of us were optimizing sites, Robert Cialdini published a book titled “Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion”. This book broke ground by explaining that the magic of persuasion was really more “science” than magic. His premise was that by understanding six persuasion principles, any of us can LEARN to persuade others to do what we wish them to do…link to us, buy from us, etc. At every step of our search marketing strategy, our goal is to get someone to do something. So I thought it would be interesting to take each of these six…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 23rd, 2007 in General
My computer bit the dust this weekend, so now that I’ve got my new computer up and running, am I working? Oh no, I’m playing with Simpsonize Me. I’ll try to get back into the whole work thing soon, but until then, here’s what I’d look like as a Simpsons character.
Go on, you know you want your own. 
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 19th, 2007 in SEO Tools
A couple of months ago, I told you that Bad Neighborhood was going to be rolling out some new tools. One has just been rolled out, and I’ve been waiting for it for a long time. It checks the ranking keyword phrase in several Google datacenters. Yes, there are other tools out there that also do this, but this one does it better, if only because it doesn’t have the erroring out problems of the most popular one. It is called the Google Multiple Datacenter Keyword Rank Checker (whew, what a mouthful), and it is both visually easy on the eyes,…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 18th, 2007 in Search Engine News
I was going to research and analyze the various companies that the search engines have acquired over the years, creating some pretty charts along the way. I still may do some analysis, but of course, midway through my research I found a much nicer chart than I could ever hope to build. So, instead of creating one, I’ll just pass along some link love to whoever created this awesome timeline chart. It’s interactive, in that you can use your mouse to scroll through the time line. Below is a reduced screenshot, with each colored dot representing one of the big…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 16th, 2007 in General
I have been training/mentoring someone recently and I have come to the conclusion that I am no longer an SEO. That saddens me in a way. I liked being an SEO. But after going through the process of teaching someone the ins and outs of what I do, I realized that I just cannot call myself that anymore.
The problem is, I don’t know what to call myself. I create sites, so I might be a coder or a programmer or a web developer. I design those sites, so I might be a web designer, but since I’m not terribly…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 14th, 2007 in General
Rumor has it* that Dotster may be in financial trouble. If so, it may be wise to move your domains to another registrar. Each registrar likely has its own process for transferring domains from one registrar to another, but I thought I’d document the process of moving domains from Dotster to GoDaddy in case anyone needs to know how to do so.
- Go to Dotster and make sure your administrative email address is valid, and that you can receive email at that address. If not, fix that. Unlock the domains you wish to transfer. (My domains didn’t need to be unlocked because…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 12th, 2007 in SEO Tips
How creative are you? On a scale of 1-10, I’d guess I’m a 6 or maybe a 7 when it comes to being creative. But I’m not that creative all the time. Some days, my creativity level is more of a 2 or 3. However, I’m certain I’d be within the 8-10 range on the nose to the grindstone, crank out the work product scale on any given day.
You can find search success via many avenues, but they don’t always have to involve creativity. Nor do they need to involve some big, hidden, secret SEO knowledge. Granted, the more you know,…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 10th, 2007 in General
If you’ve ever owned a community-oriented site, you probably know that there are both pros and cons associated with them. From an SEO standpoint, they can be wonderful for creating rich, long-tail content, and building large sites based off the backs of the users themselves. However, administrating, managing, and maintaining community sites can be quite a challenge. Forums, for example, are rife with feuding members who must constantly be patrolled and cajoled into playing nice. It can start to feel like you are the parent of thousands of bickering children, rather than a webmaster.
I own a forum that has had…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 9th, 2007 in General
A few days ago, I got an invitation to try out GrandCentral from Reuben Yau. With the invitation came the ability for me to give out 5 invitations. I used the opportunity in the same way Reuben did - by offering them up in trade for backlinks on my DazzlinDonna blog. I gave away the last invite today, but guess what? I now have another 5 invitations to give out. Woohoo!
So this time, I’m offering up these 5 invitations to my loyal SEO Scoop readers. This isn’t being offered to anyone new who has never registered and commented before. Only…
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