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By all means, it’s your space, it’s your site. As long as you are not doing anything illegal or immoral, we have no problem with what you use the space for.

Examples of Personal Blogs

Guy McLaren

Yesterday we talked about backlinks from forums. Today I want to tell you how to get backlinks by blogging. There are many free blogging sites on the web. Today I want to talk to you about Tumblr.com Tumblr is a micro blogging site. You can use Tumblr as a full blog but I would not do that. Tumblr do not like spammers be warned. If they deem you to be a spammer they will delete first and ask questions later.

MicroBlogging vs Blogging

Micro blogs are blogs that basically are used to do quick short articles. I use Tumblr because it gives me the advantage of a Tumblr this toolbar. When I find something interesting about my chosen field I tumbl it. I copy a section that really grabs me and I post it to Tumblr. I post random stuff from other peoples blogs and websites to my Tumblr and they get backlinks from my efforts.

Share the backlink love

I also use Tumblr to write articles that point back to my website. The reason I add other peoples stuff to my Tumblr is for two reasons. I share the love and my Tumblr does not look like it is purely to promote myself. My tumblr site will get good traffic from people interested in the subject because I am adding regular good content, yet they will see my links back to my site and best of all Google likes Tumblr and I have seen Tumblr Site ranking higher than the site they promote.

More Blogging sites

Mweb is a smallish blogging community, They have a lot of sparkly brain dead bloggers with a few worth reading. Blogging here allows you to add backlinks to your blogs but expect complaints if your blog is purely commercial. If you blog here keep copies of all your posts. You have been warned.

24Blogs is another small community, Staying under the radar is easier here than most as most pages don’t stay on the front page for extended periods. If you blog here keep copies of all your posts. You have been warned. These guys are owned by the same people that own MWEB.

WordPress Do what you want here, I have not yet heard of anyone being banned or having their blogs deleted for commercial activity.

Blogger Googles blogspace, I have seen some pretty offensive blogs and know that they don’t often get censured.

Hubpages differs from the traditional blog in many respects. A Hub page is more like a wikipedia entry. You have a number of categories that you need to add content to and each hubpage is a stand alone information pack about the chosen subject.

Squidoo like hub pages is not a traditional blog site. Each lense is a stand alone info pack about the chosen subject.

If you know of more like this please add them to the comments.

Guy McLaren is an SEO and webdesign fundi. He has been doing this since 1996. If you need help with your website visit his website about Search Engine optimisation here.

Back in the good old days all links were followed. Thanks to Google and spammers the nofollow link was born. Fact are that spammers need to be stopped. Facts are that bloggers need your link juice. The problems here are that leaving comments is no longer a profitable source of backlinks. The facts are that the nofollow link is destroying communities.

WordPress Anti-spam plugins

The tools however are available to help your community grow. The tools are available to kill spam. Used judiciously your community can grow. I have a few rules for my site. I moderate every single first post. A combination of Aksimet and my moderation should weed out most spammers. Some are brighter and will get past Aksimet, Some may even get past my first post rule. But Aksimet remains as a tool to blacklist the spammers if they abuse my hospitality. Aksimet is a standard plugin on WordPress, Just activate it and add the key and you have an anti spam tool that solves most of the issues.

Another tool in my arsenal against spammers is Bad Behaviour. Bad behaviour is a plugin that weeds out Spammers based on their known sources. This tool has removed a pile of that annoying bot spam. Bad Behaviour records the bots, their locations and ips and just disallows them from commenting.

A few other anti spam tools I have found but have not tested are

Spam Karma looks impressive

Defensio and Peters Anti spam plugin are more anti spam plugins

NoFollow to DoFollow

I start by installing Lucias Link Love, Lucias Link Love allows me to decide how soon I follow links, As spam is a problem, I use lucias link love as a method of excluding casual visitors from gaining link juice. Spammers are far more likely to be casual visitors than regular posters. I set the plugin to give all regular posters link love. I consider anyone to have posted 5 comments or more that I havent banned for spamming a regular poster. Get involved in the conversation and you get Link Juice.

Alternatives to Lucias link love which I have not tested are

Do Follow from semiologic.com

DoFollow(WPress) fom Kimmo

Remove NoFollow from seopedia.org

Another Tool which interests me is SezWho, This tool takes it one step further and allows bloggers to create a profile which is linked to from their comments. So not only are you allowing your community to add to the conversation on your blog, you can track their conversations through other blogs.

Adding CommentLuv gets your commentors last post found and published on your site. What a great way to reward your visitors when they leave comments.

This morning I was chatting to a client and he said: “What is WordPress?” I was flabbergasted. What? he did not know what WordPress was. He said the following, “You assume we all know as much about computers as you do, and then you talk over our heads”.

I listened to Keith and suddenly realised that many of my clients were not asking the right questions because they did not know the right questions. They did not know where to start at all. Many were afraid to admit their lack of knowledge because they did not want to be labelled stupid or ignorant.

Rather than be labeled they just did not do the work, Many pretending to be too busy to find time to do this. I was with Gary the other day and showed him Flock, Twitter and Stumble Upon. All of these things were as foreign to him as well lets say engineering drawings are to me. Put a blueprint of a set of gears in front of me and I am likely to be totally lost.

I realised that it is not they at fault but me. I need to change the methods I use to teach. I know however that I get really frustrated when I attend training where stuff I already know gets explained tediously for those that have not done this before.

What I am going to do is create a series of Basics videos for my Noob users. This is being done so as to allow them to catch up to those that are already semi literate or even literate. I have created the first video this morning. As soon as it completes uploading to Zoopy I will link it here.

The topic, What is WordPress?