Apologies for the delays in any decent posts - had a million things on lately so haven’t really got round to blogging much anywhere, but planning on getting back to it soon. Also apologies for any comments that were held in moderation for too long - the spam queues are getting bigger each day and I didn’t have much time to sort them out. All up to date now! 
Cheers
Scott
By ScottB, Filed under: Blogged Out on November 30th, 2007 | No Comments »
The latest Adsense incarnation - rounded corners - nice! :) About time Google got out of the dark ages and realised that angular ad placements are sooooo last decade! 
Not exactly groundbreaking, but I do like the change - the whole Adsense-badly-implemented-and-looking-crap thing wasn’t doing it for me. I think these will help ads stand out a little better and help with click throughs.
I realise this has been out for a few months new, but I don’t really use Adsense that much and I confess - I just discovered it! :) It got me thinking - what other hidden gems have I been missing out on?
Anyone care to share there most useful titbit of 2007 so far?
Scott
By ScottB, Filed under: Blog Revenue on October 11th, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Entirely my fault - been busy with work so the transfer took a little longer than anticipated, but it’s all done now.
Soooo….I’m Scott, 28 from Edinburgh and as Darren mentioned in his last post, I’m an SEO and have been for 6 years now. I started off in SEO when I setup a small site of my own and fell into a job with a SEO agency and haven’t looked back since. 2 years ago I left a job with a different agency to freelance and work on my projects and here we are!
I’d love to hear from everyone who visits Blogged Out regularly - what do you do, what would you like to see here?
Being an SEO, I’ll be focusing some posts on SEO for blogs, but I’m hoping to keep things a little more general than focus too much on SEO, so I’ll also be covering some other areas.
So just a quick hi from me - looking forward to hearing from you all!
Scott
By ScottB, Filed under: Blogged Out on October 10th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Well, after a lot of deliberation, I decided to sell Blogged Out, and I have found a buyer who will take the blog on to the next level, which is something I can’t do unfortunately, due to the lack of time, running my travel business and blog.
I have sold the blog to Scott Boyd, who is the man behind eFlaunt, a UK SEO agency, and Fused Nation, an SEO blog, so he is very knowledgeable about the topic of blogging and search engine optimisation and I am sure you will all welcome him.
During the move, you might find Blogged Out is down for a short time, but don’t panic, service will resume as normal soon.
I’d like to thank everyone who has helped contribute by leaving comments, writing guest posts, and generally being there helping me promote Blogged Out.
Happy Blogging,
Darren
By admin, Filed under: Blogged Out on September 12th, 2007 | No Comments »
I’m helping market a friend’s blog, and when I took the project on over 90% of the blog posts were showing in Google as supplemental pages. This was frustrating for him because as quick as he was writing the posts, Google were indexing them, and moving them into the supplemental index.
The solution for this Wordpress blog was very simple – all I did was download the Sitemap generator plugin and activated it, played around with the settings, and within a week the posts started to appear back in the search results, and three weeks later, all 650 posts are out of supplemental and his traffic has increased considerably.
Now he thinks I’m a genius – if he only knew the truth.
By admin, Filed under: Search Engine Optimisation on August 2nd, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Call me cynical, but sites like Blogging to the Bank just attract gullible people who think that they can earn thousands of pounds by following ‘hidden truths’ to make money on their blog. I found this site within Google Adwords, and had a good giggle.
Quotes like “The One Technique No One Else Is Telling You about on How to Build a Multi Million Dollar Blogging Empire†and “Earn six figure sums from my underground techniques†just make me laugh, and unfortunately people buy into this crap.
All of the testimonials are from people who are promoting similar ‘I’ll make you a millionaire’ type schemes, and none that I could see are from genuine bloggers who have bought this resource and have earnt the kind of money it raves about.
Personally, I’d save your money and read blogs like ProBlogger, and Daily Blog Tips [plus Blogged Out of course!] which to be honest is probably where most of this content comes from because from my experience in blogging, there’s certainly no underground hidden secrets.
Sites like this piss me off, and will probably just promote splogs, where some lowlife, creates a blog, and then steals all of your content, and includes Google Adwords and other advertising revenues to earn money from your hard work.
By admin, Filed under: Blogged Out on August 2nd, 2007 | 3 Comments »
It seems ridiculous but I have to turn away advertisers from my travel blog, simply because I don’t have enough advertising space, and I don’t want the blog appear to be swamped with ads.
So a lesson I have learnt is plan your advertising space before you choose or design your blog theme, and offer different forms of advertising from RSS, content and different sized banner advertising. I have seen a number of blogs that have adverts within the middle of content and as a reader that drives me mad.
If you plan all this before you launch your blog, it saves you from having to redesign your blog, which is what I have to do on the travel blog.
By admin, Filed under: Blog Promotion Tips on August 1st, 2007 | No Comments »
Search engine optimisation can be frustrating if you’ve spent four weeks optimising your blog for search terms which drive very little traffic from search engines.
My advice would be to use a few keyword tools like Keyword Discovery and Google to find which keywords are more popular with searchers.
To test these keywords out you could sign up for Google Adwords, and create a few ads for these targeted keywords on Google sponsored ads. Set yourself a daily budget and monitor which keywords attract more impressions and clicks.
Once you’re happy with your keyword list, start to optimise your blog by entering the keywords within your content, on the title and description tags, within alt tags on images, and get links pointing to your blog using these keywords. By playing around with Adwords you can save yourself a lot of time and effort.
By admin, Filed under: Search Engine Optimisation on August 1st, 2007 | No Comments »
Today, I read an article on the BBC about how thieves are using sites like Facebook to burgle houses. I was shocked when I read the article because I never realised how easy it was for people to use this as a crime tool, but if you have your address on Facebook, don’t tell people your on holiday!
The same could apply to a blog, and because I write on a travel blog, I always blog that I am going away on my travels, and if I had my address on my blog or on another place on the internet, people could use this. Thankfully, I don’t publish my home address on the internet, but I think it’s worth thinking about before telling the world you’re away.
By admin, Filed under: Blogged Out on July 24th, 2007 | 4 Comments »
At last someone agrees with me regarding sponsored themes – before I carry on, just let me say that I don’t mind 1 or 2 links to the designers sites.
I think this is at least what we should offer someone who has given up their time for free, and without these designers, we’d all have boring looking blogs.
What is a sponsored link?
It’s a paid link that the designer has sold and placed on the theme – initially we saw just 1 or 2 sponsored links, now we are seeing themes, with 5 or 6 links, which is crazy. Anyone who reads Matt Cutt’s blog will know that Google frowns against paid links as this is tricking the system as such.
I’ve ranted how I disagree with adding sponsored links on themes, anyway I read the weblogtoolscollection.com blog today, and was surprised but pleased to read they will no longer be promoting Wordpress themes that carry sponsored links.
What’s your opinion on this subject?
Edit: Interesting post on Lorelle’s Wordpress blog, confirming that Wordpress will be removing all themes with sponsored links by the end of July from it’s official theme viewer.
By admin, Filed under: Blogged Out, Wordpress News on July 12th, 2007 | 7 Comments »
