Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 30th, 2007 in General
I’d like to do a little informal poll here. What do you use as your start page? I’ve tried different start pages over the years, and I’ve always migrated back to My Yahoo! because I get a nice mix of information - some that I can supply via RSS feeds, and some that is news chosen by editors who have a pretty good idea of what they think is important news of the day. In addition, I like the look and feel. I think that’s really the key to it for me. Although I can add my own personal touch to…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 29th, 2007 in General
There have been some rumblings today in the forum/blogosphere that perfectly match what’s going through my head recently. First there was Writing: Where Do You Get Your Ideas? and then Kim followed up with a blog post entitled Real Bloggers Get Tired. After that, I read Jennifer Laycock’s Blogging Isn’t Losing Steam, It’s Just Getting Easier.
In the forum thread, A.N.Onym said:
I feel I have a responsibility to post so that the subscribers won’t be let down by subscribing to my blog. Also, I don’t want to lose the minimal readership I have gained (ah, it’s still marketing, I guess) to make…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 27th, 2007 in SEO Tips
I don’t think I need to tell any of you that I love the Search Marketing Standard magazine. I’ve talked about it time and time again over the last couple of years. Well, speaking of 2 years, this edition marks the 2 year anniversary of the magazine that was designed just for us! In honor of the holidays and the anniversary of the magazine, I’ve been given a very special coupon code to pass along to you.
Typically, a yearly subscription to Search Marketing Standard starts at $15. However, you can get a 67% discount off the regular price –…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 26th, 2007 in Search Engine News
I’m not quite sure why metasearch engines aren’t more popular than they are. They are actually pretty darn useful much of the time, but they languish far down the list of popular search engines. Still, I don’t think it hurts to take a fresh look at them now and then, so today’s post is all about the metasearch engine.
First, let’s make sure everyone is clear on what a metasearch engine is. It is not a search engine that ranks sites based on meta tags. It is a search engine that grabs results from a multitude of search engines (and/or directories), and returns…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 24th, 2007 in General
Want an example of how to totally screw up an email campaign? Just tick off the people you send the email to by misidentifying them as someone else, and then make them laugh because your offer is ridiculous anyway. Check out this email (with URLs changed because I don’t want anyone getting any kind of credit for this, and with bolded sections to highlight the ridiculousness, or to add my own comments):
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Hello (this was left blank, so the automated software obviously didn’t have a name),
We are proud to let you know with great pleasure that your company
www25.zzzzzzzzzzzz.zzz/~seoorg/newsletter (not my site, btw) has…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 21st, 2007 in General

I’m taking a break for a few days to enjoy the holidays with my family. I hope you do the same.
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 20th, 2007 in SEO Tips
Key phrases on site
Relevant incoming links
S-E-O nutshell
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Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 19th, 2007 in SEO Theories
This weekend was a dream-filled weekend for me. Wait, let me clarify. I dream a lot, and I generally remember my dreams. But this weekend was special because the dreams were centered on SEO. In fact, they revolved around Google and Google’s intentions. The images are fuzzy in my mind, but the concepts keep ringing in my ears. Think I’m crazy? Hey, that’s ok, I would too, but I know from experience, that some of my dreams have significance - and I can pretty much always tell which ones do and which ones don’t. I can’t shake the feeling that…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 17th, 2007 in Search Engine News
About a month ago I told you I would be using Sproose for a month, and I would let you know more of my thoughts after using it for a while. Now’s that time. So, how is Sproose as a search engine? It’s…ok. Not bad. Maybe even…good.
The biggest issue I’ve had with it is the occasional slowdown or page not loading. However, I use satellite to connect to the Internet, so I am never 100% sure if it’s a site that’s slow, or if it’s my connection that’s bad.
I still like the social voting concept, although I didn’t use that aspect…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 16th, 2007 in SEO Theories

Autumn 2007 Google PageRank SlapDown Dates
Some days I just like to visualize things. This is one of those days.
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 15th, 2007 in SEO Theories
Motivation. Motivation is one of those slippery things. You can’t always grasp it. It often seems within reach, easily understandable, but in reality, someone’s motivation for his or her actions are very likely to be completely different than what you or I may think.
Bloggers are motivated by…what? The obvious answers would include things like fame, publicity, traffic, linkbait, ego, altruism, etc. We tend to jump to conclusions when assigning motivation to a blogger’s post. Hey, that’s human, I suppose, but that doesn’t necessarily make it “right”.
What is the motivation of a blogger who raises issues with Google? I’ve seen nearly all…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 14th, 2007 in Search Engine News
I was invited a while back to be a part of the testing of the new natural language search engine, Powerset. For a while now, I’ve had high hopes that this might be THE killer search engine we’ve all been waiting for. It might be…but at this point, it’s very difficult for me to know.
I’ve only played with a few of the the demo sets that they have available in the lab. I won’t go into details because frankly, I’m not sure what details I’m allowed to share. But I assume I’m safe to give general impressions.
It’s interesting. The concept…
Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 13th, 2007 in SEO Theories
Way back on August 17th, the first reports about MSN sending weird referrer spam, started trickling in. This referrer spam includes weird referral strings such as adult keywords, pharmaceutical keywords, etc. A few weeks later, msndude, made a statement about this saying they were official Microsoft quality check tests. Specifically, he said, “The traffic you are seeing is part of a quality check we run on selected pages. While we work on addressing your conerns, we would request that you do not actively block the IP addreses used by this quality check; blocking these IP addresses could prevent your site from…