I’ve seen a lot of people posting big “u comment I follow” buttons all over the place, but I’ve yet to post one. Most of the ones that are out now are fairly bulky, so I whipped up a quick one using a button generator that simply reads “I follow”.

If you wish to show your support of removing the “nofollow” tag from links in your blog’s comments, please put this image on your blog. Oh, and please upload the image to your server, I don’t have unlimated bandwidth.

It seems like every time a PageRank update occurs novice and professional SEO experts alike say stupid comments like “Oh, wow now my rankings will get better!”

Just an FYI: The PageRank number for rankings is constantly updated, but the number that displays on the toolbar is only updated every 5 months or whatever. A toolbar PageRank update is not the same as an update of the actual PageRank number that affects your rankings (if that makes sense).

If you get a new link to your site Google will take that into account for the PageRank calculation. If you get another link the calculation will be done again. Your site’s real PageRank number is constantly being updated.

If your traffic shoots up when a toolbar update is occurring that is purely coincidence.

Some blogs are obviously splogs, but others are a bit harder to spot. Here are a few quick thoughts that should run through your head before linking or subscribing to a blog:

Is the layout lame?

More often than not sploggers will choose to use default layouts for their sites. I’d be wary if a blog you are visiting uses the default Kubrick theme for WordPress or an unmodified Blogger theme.

Wait, that’s my footer!

You can add some really neat things into your post’s footers for your RSS feed via FeedBurner. I think Nusuni.com is set to show a Digg-This link, add to del.icio.us, and a comment count link. Splogs will almost always pick up those extra things as well as the content, so the second I see them on some posts and not on others I know I’m dealing with a splog.

Nude chicks and SEO tips? This is my kinda site!

I recently had to deal with some splog that had stolen a article that had the word “Nude” in it once, and it added it to a page called nude.html with a bunch of porn as well. Needless to say seeing SEO articles on a page called nude.html is a bit iffy, wouldn’t you agree?

A bit too much Adsense…

The second I see more than 2 adsense blocks when I first open a page is the second I leave the site. Adsense should be spread out for best results, but sploggers toss them in one big pile.

Free-Mosothelioma-Information-Viagra-Vioxx-Porn-Warez-Info.biz

Although many keyword domains are owned by legit affiliate marketers, most (especially .info and .biz) are owned by sploggers. Some people don’t seem to understand domains like “free-viagra.biz” or “buy-mesothelioma-now.info” are something a spammer would use.

RSS Feed

A true blog will have an easy-to-find RSS feed. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but splogs almost never have them. Why? Current RSS advertising solutions suck - so they want people to always visit their splog.

Check The Comments… Not!

Oh wait, you can’t. Most non-Blogger splogs don’t allow them. And despite the fact something like 70% of blogger blogs are splogs, most splogs are not blogger blogs (try saying that 5 times fast).

A while back I wrote a post entitled “How To Redirect All Non-WWW Traffic To WWW“. I left out one important bit of info in that post for WordPress users.

If you update any info in the “General” options page, the redirection may no longer occur.

This happens because WordPress has a function called “flush_rules” which is called whenever you click Save in the General options page (not sure if it does it on other option pages). The function deletes the old rules then writes new ones in the .htaccess where your install is located. If you do what I did and made another htaccess there, it would simply be written over (and mucking around with permissions to prevent that is annoying and may not work, especially if your host runs PHP security extensions that run scripts under your user).

So, I looked around in the WordPress source and figured out how to prevent that from happening. The code is in the wp-includes/rewrite.php file. All I did was comment out the code inside the flush_rules() function by adding /* and */ before and after this code:

generate_page_uri_index();
delete_option('rewrite_rules');
$this->wp_rewrite_rules();
if ( function_exists('save_mod_rewrite_rules') )
save_mod_rewrite_rules();

Is now:

generate_page_uri_index();
delete_option('rewrite_rules');
$this->wp_rewrite_rules();
/*if ( function_exists('save_mod_rewrite_rules') )
save_mod_rewrite_rules();*/

I learned that you cannot comment out the first few lines, if you do you cannot create new pages, the last 2 lines are what save the data to .htaccess. Make sure you do not comment out the function declaration for flush_rules, or else you will get PHP errors.

This seemed to work perfectly for me, and now I don’t have to worry about WordPress’ “feature” becoming an annoyance.

Just a quick note: if you do this change and you want to change your blog’s URL, you should probably enable that code once more.

Search engine optimization is nothing more than changing your page around so crawler-based search engines, like Google, will rank it higher which will hopefully result in more sales, readers, etc. Search engine optimizers are the people that do that optimization. Both phrases are abbreviated as SEO, so make sure you look at the context in which the acronym is being used.

SEO is part of a larger field called SEM, or search engine marketing. Search engine marketing means you are using search engines to market your website via search engine optimization or search engine advertising. Just like with SEO, SEM can also refer to search engine marketers.

The different ways you can do search engine optimization is to do either on page or off page optimization:

On Page

On page optimization is stuff you do to your site. Using header and meta tags, making a title that uses lots of keywords, and writing good content are all examples of on page optimization. Generally speaking, most SEO services will do on page stuff, it costs a lot more to have them do off page changes as well…

Off Page

Off page optimization are changes you make outside of your website. You have less control with things that happen on other websites, but it is still possible to get good changes done. Getting links with keyword-rich anchor text and increasing PageRank are two of the more common forms of off-page optimization.

When Optimization Collides

There are times when On and Off page optimization collide, for example social media optimization. In case you have been living under a rock and you don’t know that it is, social media sites are places like MySpace, Digg, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon.

To get good at social media optimization you have to be good at writing good content, and you either have to be popular and submit stuff yourself or let someone else submit the content. Most people do social media marketing to get more links to their site, especially during its infancy.