Blogging Sueblimely

Welcome to Blogging Sueblimely. To keep up with my posts you can subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger has declared today an unofficial Blogger Appreciation Day with the aim of spreading acts of random kindness and encouragement amongst bloggers. Darren was prompted to start this initiative because of messages he had received from bloggers who were feeling disheartened.

I often talk of social networking and its value in bringing us visitors, backlinks and increasing our rankings. Certainly an increase in subscriber count, visitor numbers or pagerank can be encouraging and a boost to the ego but I can get that from the static websites I build. The beauty of blogging for me is being able to enjoy the more personal benefits of a network of blogging friends. Without those people who have offered me their help, support, encouragement and kindness I am sure I would not be blogging today. I am going to show my appreciation by updating my blogroll which is very much out of date.

We can all show our gratitude on an ongoing basis by making an effort to visit our friend’s blogs regularly and leaving comments and help them out where we can - which can range from praise for a good post, giving them some link love in our own blogs and helping them promote their sites with Stumbles, Diggs or whatever is their favorite favoriting site.

Thanks Darren, it is good to be reminded to take care of the important things in life, with busy schedules it is too easy to neglect showing appreciation for the people in our lives.

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“Ask yourself the secret of YOUR success. Listen to your answer, and practice it.”- Richard Bach

While I was sitting on a page rank of 0, until the recent Google updates, I started changing tack in my attitude towards PR, deciding that I wanted to be able to run this blog with less of the restrictions this was placing on me. . You may have noticed that I have been writing more posts with links to other sites; far more than are coming my way. The SEO gurus would probably shake their heads at this. I get a pagerank of 2 in the recent updates as compared to 4 with my old blog but I have already got more subscriptions than I had before. Posts where I have included links to resources or to other bloggers have been my most successful.

Provide a more complete resource

• Giving value and a complete picture often requires links to other sites. It is impossible to cover every aspect of a topic yourself.
• Why cover topics that others have already written about unless you want to particularly highlight them or add more information?
• There are experts in certain areas who know far more about a subject. Linking to them allows those interested to delve further.

Providing a more complete resource, even if this means a plethora of external links, should bring you return readers.

Practical Considerations

• If your current regular readers have not come your way via search engines why concentrate your efforts on pagerank.
• Because of time constraints, efforts should be concentrated on places which do bring you readers.
• If you blog in a niche area, why worry about ‘advertising’ to the whole world via search engines. Participating in social networking sites where you will find people interested in your subjects is much more fruitful.
• Social Networking sites have become hugely popular over the last few years. Search engine ranking alone is not as important as it was but old habits die hard.. Use social networking and bookmarking sites can lead to you having a higher position in search engines albeit in an indirect way.

Blogging Ethics

• Give credit where credit is due.
• Be honest and do not claim kudos for yourself for someone else’s efforts.
• Support and help promote your friends with links to their site and posts.

I am not saying that pagerank is not of any importance, but that putting too much emphasis on it can be counter productive; on your time as well as your results. Pagerank can look after itself if you are using methods of getting your site known that are more targetted at your own subjects and own blogging community of readers and friends.. Providing quality content is far more important in bringing you readers, developing blogging friends and contacts. Concentrate on providing what readers want not what Google wants.

You may have guessed that I am not such a fan of Google these days. The fact that I use the term search engine and Google interchangeably is a concern too. It always makes me wonder what I may be missing out on by relying so much on this one resource, their one method of doing things and a perhaps natural bias towards themselves. I am looking forward to the Firefox type alternative; which broke my reliance on IE.

This was intended to be an introduction to what is becoming a weekly reading list of links to other sites but it ended up being an insight into my thought processes as I pondered the ways which I do not wish to be a slave to the search engines.

As with my post on Carnivals I am intending to provide lists of resources which will include masses of links to other sites. Please give me ideas of what you are interested in the most. I have taken my blog description off here for a while, trying to come up with something less general and more representive. Maybe I should have a slogan that says “Blogging for readers, not Google”?
Thanks to Saboma of Maryannasville for leading me to find Richard Bach quotes in her post Jonathan Livingston Seagull and her StumbleUpon shout to this YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mves3140dK0

Isn’t this so serene and peaceful?

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Reading the condolence messages for Benazir Bhutto led me to search further for information that would fill in the glaring gaps in my knowledge on current day Pakistan. Reading newspapers gives me some (hopefully) factual information but this does not tell me how people live, feel and think in countries where the overall culture is different to mine.

My natural reaction, since starting blogging myself, is to search for blogs that will give me this sort of insight. I started writing this with a heavy heart, having read posts by people trying to go about ordinary daily life in countries torn by civil strife, people with the same daily routines, hopes and aspirations for life that are typical world wide. I was inclined to stop reading and go on to something more pleasant, things that made me feel better. The truth is, that this is what I normally do; after all there is nothing I can do about it is there? I do not normally comment on such blogs, feeling I have nothing worthy to contribute, and move on to something that makes me feel more comfortable. I wonder if I am unusual in this? I wonder if I bury my head in the sand more than others?

Then it occurred to me, I often leave comments purely to offer support, as a thank you for a good post. I give link love by mentioning posts here, to create backlinks for blogs I want to help promote, so that they get more exposure and more readers. I develop friendships with people worldwide. I may not be able to offer words of wisdom, or solutions to problems that those far far wiser than me have tried to solve, but I can do this. As a29th December resolution (I don’t see why they should be restricted to New Year) I am going to take more advantage of the world that blogging has opened up; to learn and understand and try to get to know those of different cultures and lifestyles, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and dreams, their daily routines.

My mood brightened then, realizing that I am not so powerless after all; blogging means we have the privilege of being able to reach out to people world wide. I do not have to read all sad stories, those that cast a heavy shadow over me. Delving further into the blogs I looked at showed me that they were far from sad, even though my initial search had landed me on stories of that nature. This has taught me that I should not read a blog ‘by its cover’ but delve deeper to find the richness within.

Now I am going off to find some more really wonderful and inspiring reading. I will keep you informed of what I found but would appreciate your input here too, to point me in the right direction.

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I am always really interested in reading of blogs that are running activities aimed at building blogging communities, giving new bloggers some exposure or generally helping out other bloggers. Here are a few that I have read about this week:

Snoskred is asking for guest posts from bloggers who want to Get out of their Niche and write posts on any topic they like. I sometimes think it would be good to write about matters other than blogging and wonder about starting a more personal sort of blog. Then I see sense, knowing that I am busy enough as it is. Opportunities like this are an excellent way of satisfying this need.

Lightening is asking if anyone would like to join her in posting ‘Smiley Saturday‘ posts. The only criteria is that you post about something that made you smile or might make your readers smile. I enjoyed reading this weeks entries. I would be inclined to join in but as I write about blogging I am not sure I would be able to come up with enough funny things to sustain a weekly post. I tried it once but my posts just petered out after a while.

Liz Strauss invites everyone to Tuesday Open Comment Night. You can find details of the most recent at The Mic is On: We’re Talking about December Travel. I had a look at the transcripts of some of the past comment nights and laughed so hard at this one  - Aliens leave behind the Link Leak Virus. I thought the comments were brilliant. I am not sure how I have not come across this before as I often visit Liz. I value her blogging values. She believes that the strength of the blogosphere comes from “relationships, interconnectedness, and community” and I thoroughly agree with that. Her SOB program is one of the ways she encourages this. This is an acroynm based on her blog name Successful and Outstanding Blogger. I could not do this with my own blog as it recently occurred to me that it forms the rather unfortunate acronym of BS. Some of you may think that apt

If anyone knows of other blogs who are running such community building activities, please let me know so that I can post about them here. I would like to make this a regular feature.

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Interested in discovering the impact of the upcoming festive season on the blogging world, I jumped on my sleigh and did a quick circumvent of the blogging world to find that the Christmas spirit is indeed coming alive. Blogs are decking their themes with Christmas images and posts, new ones are popping up dedicated to the event and Christmas memes abound.

My search was delayed a while when I became engrossed in the preparations going on at the North Pole on Santa Claus Blog

Imaginif is running a competition with an important theme Christmas Competition: Child Safety Tips. Prize money equals AU$1 for each entry in the Child Safety Tip competition. Entry is by way of leaving your safety tip in a comment to the post.

ChristmasMaps.com is running a series of contests between now and Christmas: So far they are:

• “ChristmasMaps.com loves Bloggers” runs until December 15th. Entering the contest involves commenting on their Santa’s Blog.
• ChristmasMaps.com Winner Take All - The blogger who can convince the most number of people to visit their site wins a gift card from an online retailer.

Details of the contests and prizes, including more ways to qualify for entry, can be found on the contest page.

Please let me know if there are other blogs with Christmas content of interest.

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Have you noticed that Blogger has changed its comment form so that you have to either sign in with a gmail address or as anonymous? If the blog owner does not allow anonymous comments you cannot comment at all; unless you have a gmail address. A link to a gmail address not attached to a Blogger account leads to a ‘Profile Not Found’ page with the message “The Blogger Profile you requested cannot be displayed. Many Blogger users have not yet elected to publicly share their Profile“. This mistakenly assumes that all those who comment are bloggers themselves!

More significantly for bloggers:

Unless you use blogspot Blogger, your blog url is not linked to. This is in addition to the fact that blogspot default linking is set to nofollow; which means that links were not counted for pagerank purposes anyway. Google is penalizing bloggers once again, after so recently downgrading pagerank for those using paid for links. I am really peeved that my freedom in using the internet is being eroded once again and do not like to be controlled in this way.

This move goes against the basic nature of blogging, that of bloggers linking to each other in the spirit of give and take and community building. How can you build up a relationship with another blogger if you do not know where to find them. This move is bound to reduce the amount of commenting on Blogger blogs. Therefore ALL bloggers are being disadvantaged - both blogspot and non blogspot users.

What can we bloggers do about this? I have some suggestions:

• Non blogspot bloggers can leave their blog url in the nickname field of the Blogger comments form. The usual nickname could be used to sign off the comment itself. I prefer this solution to leaving the url in the body of the comment as, under normal circumstances, this is considered spammy.
• Blogspot bloggers can change their comment form message, suggesting that non blogspot users leave their url as their nickname or in the body of the message. To do this go into the Settings/Comments area of your dashboard. Add your message to the ‘Comments Form Message’ section. Example:

• Use Haloscan , which replaces the blogspot comment system. Haloscan allows external linking as well as having a trackback feature which is missing from Blogger. This is not an ideal solution as older comments are not retained by Haloscan but it is better than nothing.
• All bloggers, whether Blogger users or not, contact blogspot using their suggestion form and ask them to allow users to leave their blog url in the comments form once again.
• If like me you have left blogspot for another blogging platform, sign up for another gmail account in case you want to leave messages on blogs that do not allow anonymous comments. This will prevent your email address leaving a link back to your old bloggger blog.
• Blogspot users could move to another blogging platform. Wordpress.com for example allows you to import all your posts and comments from blogspot. Either that or consider using your own domain. There are many other reasons to move away from blogspot. You can see my own reasons here Reasons I moved from blogspot Blogger.
• Set up a Blogger blog with one post which links to your non blogger blog. I am sure spammers will be doing this - is Google encouraging spam?? If you have a blogspot address that you do not want to link to, sign up for a new gmail account and new blogspot address to match. Consider using an email address such as yourwebname.dotcom@gmail.com to further publicize your blog name. You can divert any mail to this account to your email address of choice in gmail Settings/Forwarding and POP/IMAP/Forward a copy of incoming mail to .. This will save you having to login to this gmail account to retrieve your mail.
• Post about this issue yourself to register your disapproval.

If anyone is now considering a move to Wordpress and need more help and information than I have given so far in this blog, please leave a comment or contact me via my comment form. I will either write posts myself or point you in the right direction to find clear instructions.

Google’s power is starting to concern me and I am going to find alternatives to their services, even though this may not be so convenient. Do you think I am overreacting here or justified in my concern?

If anyone can think of any other solutions to this recent violation of our rights as bloggers, please let me know.

Update:

Blogger users could use the Intense Debate comment system to replace Blogger’s. I have seen this in place on a couple of blogs and the option is still there to enter a blog url when leaving a comment.

Related Posts:

• Using your own Blog URL as your OpenID
• What is an OpenID

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While I was writing a recent post it occurred to me that although the content was not specific to other bloggers, references in it made it appear that it was. I am now going to try to be much more aware that not all my blog readers are bloggers themselves, although, because of my subject area, the majority are.

We often acknowledge and thank other bloggers by creating links to their blogs, adding them to blogrolls, subscribing to their community pages…. You can give your non-blogging readers some recognition from time to time too.. You could for example include something in a post about a comment they have made, thanking them for feedback, ideas, suggestions etc. If they are a member of such sites as Flickr or YouTube you could link there, as they may be trying to develop friends and a community in this way. If they run ordinary websites you could link to those.

Although we may not get reciprocal linking or social networking kudos from non-bloggers they are as important a part of our personal blogging communities as our blogging mates. Such recognition may even encourage non-bloggers to return to your site and to leave comments!

With this in mind I would like to thank the following people for their support in my blogging efforts:

• David my parter who is always supportive in whatever I do, (and despite what I do at times too). His business site, not yet complete is at DC PC Solutions - I promise to finish the web site very soon, David.
• My daughter who’s intelligence, determination and intrepid nature is just about to see her head off to work in various, often remote, places around Australia. If you are looking at weather reports for Western Australia the information may well have come from her. Please don’t blame her if she is wrong though Her fascination with sunsets and clouds set her off on the path of being a Meteorologist from the age of about 12. She does not have a public blog but you can see her puppy at Introducing Amos. He is a few months older now and has been living here for a few weeks. Despite him eating my furniture, insisting on sleeping across my chest, licking me continually and chasing the cat, I will miss him when he goes on Friday.
• My elder son who puts up with the time I spend blogging and does not complain, although I know he would like to! As a Software Engineering/Commerce Uni student his knowledge comes in handy. His honesty and down to earth opinions help me see my blogging and web building more objectively. He has been YouTubing some of our visiting dog’s antics. The cat gets her revenge- Amos and Pearl as do our curtains - Revenge of the Drapes
• My younger son who is so impressed by my awards - because of suffering from Fragile X Syndrome he cannot read my posts, but as with all things in life he has a positive cheerful attitude and does not let this phase him. I have learned a lot from him on how to have a positive attitude to life.
• Keef whose sense of humor and travel experiences, as an international coach driver, would make fascinating blog reading but I have not yet convinced him to give it a go. I will give a plug here to a website I created but was Keef’s idea. An organization that he is an active member of, as a coastwatch volunteer and committee member. Ingoldmells Point National Coastwatch . This site was created with a Content Management System called Joomla which I am planning on writing about soon.
• To those who have left comments on my site with just a name and no indication of whether you blog or not. I thank you.

If any of you reading this are not bloggers yourselves please remember that leaving comments on blogs are welcomed. We bloggers enjoy getting feedback and like to build a community of readers..

Oh I feel a meme coming on! On second thoughts I am going to wait until my blog is active on my own domain

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