Technorati thinks we still care. (How cute.)
September 8, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors, News and Opinion
A couple of years ago, Technorati was vital to bloggers. It was the only good search engine really good at indexing blogs. Maintaining authoritiy and rank on Technorati.com was a great way to build a readership, and drive traffic to our blogs. Technorati was also a good way to keep track of who was linking to our blogs.
Well, a lot has changed in two years. Google has become so invasive that it crawls nearly virtual “inch” of the blogosphere now. Bloggers can easily see who is linking to them by going typing in link:domainname.com (e.g. link:forthardknox.com) into a Google search, and receive a list of websites that have linked to the blog, sorted any way they like (click on “options” at the top left of the browser).
Google Page Rank and the Alexa rating are a much better way to track relevance and traffic of a blog right now.
And yet, this morning, I received this from Technorati, as part of a newsletter update:
Why Your Technorati Authority May Have Changed, and What You Can Do About It
Changes in Technorati Authority numbers – there are several reasons these numbers have decreased recently:
As our intent is to measure the influence and attention received on an ongoing basis, we stopped counting static blogroll links, and these links have now aged out of the authority calculations.
Due to the vast number of blogging platforms and custom installations out there (and some bloggers who felt we were using too much of their data), we now rely more heavily on RSS and Atom feeds than in the past. Bloggers can control how much of their content they wish to syndicate via feeds. Many blogs only provide partial feeds, we are not always able to get link data from them. Thus, links from these blogs may no longer contribute to your authority.
Finally, to make sure we always know about your updates, please make sure you are pinging us. You can ping us manually from our Ping Page, or learn about configuring your system to ping us automatically on our Help Page. Many blogging services and platforms have a preconfigured option for pinging Technorati and other services.
If you find links to your blog that don’t appear on Technorati, you may want to check that the other blog:
- is claimed on Technorati
- has a full-content feed
- is pinging us with updates.
So, let’s get this straight. In light of its increasing irrelevance, Technorati is increasing the effort that bloggers must make (and the effort they must convince their blogging friends to make) in order to achieve “authority?” They’re making it harder to do something that happens automatically on other search engines?
Whatever…We’d love to want to help you, Technorati, but I’m afraid we’re just a little too busy blogging.
Also see: Tracking Incoming Links
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Wikipedia incorporates peer-review into it’s online editing process.
August 25, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
Wikipedia is perhaps the most well-known wiki, and increasingly popular method of determining what the “common wisdom” is on a topic, person, place, or event. As most of us were taught in school, encyclopedias should never be used a primary reference, but they are a good starting point, for research. Wikipedia is no exception – because it is populated almost totally with user-generated data which can change by the minute, it is generally not a credible reference for validating a point of fact, but it can be useful as a reference in an open discussion about trends or ideas.
Wikipedia has a Google Page Rank of 9/10 (very high), and can be a good way for a celebrity or public figure to establish his/her digital profile (online reputation). In cases, however, where there is controversy surrounding a public figure, movement, or concept, Wikipedia can become the battle ground for a wiki-war (aka “vandalism”), in which users on opposing sides of the controversy continuously battle for the most recent edit and update of a wiki page, trying to make their point of view the most prominent. Blogoscoped has some examples of famous wiki-wars in the early part of this decade, and Wikipedia itself has an updated list of its most vandalized pages. Page for most of the religions of the world have come under attack, as have many world leaders, a large number of celebrities.
Nigel Kendall, Technology Editor for the TimesOnline, explains a new trial Wikipedia is implementing to try to curb some of this “vandalism,” (See Wikipedia to end editing free-for-all). Edits by new members of the Wikipedia community will be held for approval by more experienced editors.
Will it work? We’ll see. Peer-review (i.e. “truth by concensus”) is a volitile concept.
WebWarrior: ‘Buffoon’ of D=S (Updated with new URL)
August 25, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
UPDATE: Buffoon’s new blog is at DequalsS.blogspot.com (Something about being tired of Wordpress updates…)
Last year I received the funniest e-mail.
A reader was writing to let me know that the Ft. Hard Knox logo we were using at the time looked all “pixely,” and that he’d taken it upon himself to create a new one for us.
Huh ?!
I didn’t even know what to think about that, but the sample logo he’d created was really good. I wrote back, and explained to him that we were working with a zero budget, and that we were all volunteers…he assured me he didn’t want to be paid. (Apparently, he just couldn’t stand looking at my stock photo modified in Microsoft Paint any longer.) Since then, he has worked back and forth with me many times to modify our various logoas as needed and to create the logo we’re using now, and has continued to help us with graphics that the project has needed as we’ve gone along. He’s kept us “looking good.”
So, who was this audacious reader? He goes by “Buffoon,” and has his own blog, Democrat = Socialist: Unhinged, Unashamed, Unfiltered, Right Wing Punditry (or D=S for short). The blog is not for readers with senstive ears (or eyes); there’s no question, however, about which side he’s on or what he (and his his “agitators“) stand for.
In the short period of time Buffoon’s been blogging, he’s already attained a Google Page Rank of 4/10, and a Technorati rating of 195 (excellent!), through aggressively and effectively using social networking techniques, and by posting original, entertaining blog content that other bloggers enjoy linking to.
We are very thankful for ‘Buffoon’s,’ (an amusing misnomer) help on the Ft. Hard Knox project, and for his contribution to the conservative right blogosphere. He is this week’s WebWarrior.
If you’d like to nominate a “WebWarrior” (a conservative using Web 2.0 effectively) e-mail Jenn.
Tracking Incoming Links
August 13, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
As we’ve discussed at length, here in the WebWarriors, incoming links are important to increasing “page rank,” in the search engines, especially Google, thus moving our stories closer to the top of search engine results.
But how do we track those incoming links?
A couple of years ago, Technorati was the ultimate blog search engine. Over the last several months, however, Technorati has been diminishing in value for tracking incoming links for bloggers. It only counts links from certain sources (usually only blogs indexed by Technorati), and only for the last six months, whereas the other search engine crawlers are a lot more extensive.
I’ve been experimenting with Domain-Pop.com, and so far, I like it. It provides a comprehensive breakdown, by domain, of links back to a specified domain, and a total of the number of currently-indexed domains, urls, and IP’s are linking back to a url (the stats appear to show all currently active links, regardless of post-date). It also provides information on how many indexed links and websites Google and Yahoo (not Bing, unfortunately) are counting. The developers are still working on the site, but I’m very impressed with what they’ve come up with so far.
Have you found a great back-link checker? Please share.
WebWarrior: Dr. Bill, the Ozark Guru
July 8, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under Arkansas, FHK WebWarriors
This week’s featured WebWarrior is Bill Smith, known as the “Ozark Guru,” by some, and “Dr. Bill” by others. I’ve had the honor of knowing Dr. Bill for over a year, and never cease to be amazed by his dedication and tireless energy in working to promote, as he writes on his blog, ARRA News Service:
“…God, family & country…the rights of citizens under the US Constitution, traditional family values, Republican principles/ideals, transparent & limited government, free markets, & individual freedom.”
Dr. Bill has been a strong supporter of the Ft. Hard Knox project, and we are so thankful. His blog, the ARRA News Service blog is a state blog that has gone national, and gained in popularity because of it’s frequent, well-written, well-documented informational and perspective posts. He has effectively used feeds, a newsletter, and various social networks to extend his influence, establish and grow his web presence and SEO, and bring traffic to his site. His hard work has earned him a Google Page Rank of 5/10 (very impressive for an individual state blogger!).
In between blog posts, Dr. Bill supports over 40 Ning Networks, including Sheridan Folger’s Sovereignty Alliance, which has been a huge promoter of the recent Tea Parties, and state sovereignty movements.
The Ozark Guru is also very active on Facebook, with nearly 1,200 Facebook friends, and on Twitter (@arra), with nearly 6,000 followers.
Dr. Bill is also the National Political Director for Conservative Solutions / Let’s Get this Right (also on Facebook, and on Twitter).
The Ozark Guru is also active in promoting conservatism many other places – online and offline – far too many to list here. We at Ft. Hard Knox wish to thank him for his continued service to our country, and for his enduring support of us and so many other conservatives. We also wish to honor him for his incredible work online.
Why You Need to Include your Keywords in Your Blog Post Titles
July 1, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
Keywords, according to DefineThat:
Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page (via a search engine). Keywords can simply be words included in the body text of the document, or added to the header using meta tags to increase the number of keywords. Selecting keywords, that match your target audiences’ use of the web is a critical marketing tactic.
Blogging is a natural transition from print media to the world wide web for many traditional writers of all stripes. While there are some writing skills that transition well, some do not. One of those is choosing titles for your posts is one technique that has changed dramatically.
Back in the old days (circa 2005), writers of all strips (creative writers, journalists, op-ed writers, etc.) would title their pieces very much the way music artists and movie producers choose their titles. The title would be something “catchy,” but the reader would have to read the piece before knowing how it related to the story.
You see, there is a difference between print media and online media. In print media, the reader has already made somewhat of a committment to read an article, story, book, or chapter by purchasing the book, magazine or newspaper, and opening it. Online media, and especially blogging, doesn’t work that way. A handful of your readers will be regulars to your blog, but most will find you through their networks and through the search engines. A few of your readers are going to find your post via referrals from their friends on social networks. Some may have even visited your blog before and liked it enough to add your feed to their feed reader. But most of your blog readers are going to be people who don’t know or care who you are – they just found your post on a search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, or Ask.
Except for your fans (your regular blog readers), the majority of your potential audience will decide whether or not to even click on your post solely by the title that is displayed on the social network, feed, or search engine results page (SERP). Most of hundreds, or even thousands of blog titles to skim on a weekly basis, and they only have time to click on a few of those posts. Your title needs to tell them exactly what your post is about, so if that’s the information they’re looking for, they’ll click on it, (hopefully) read it, and (even more hopefully) forward it to others in their network.
Also, the search engines seem to be increasingly giving more page-rank weight to titles of posts, as opposed to tags, categories and text. SEOWizz.net has a posted some early research on this, entitled Bing SEO – How Does it Differ To Google? (Do you see what I did there? I took a blog post that had a great “title tag” because it had the keywords in the title, and then I helped SEOWizz.net with its page rank by making hyperlinking to that post using the same keywords.)
Here at Ft. Hard Knox, we’ve been noticing this trend for a while – posts which contain the terms most likely to be searched on the search engine in the title consistently get higher traffic than posts with “clever” titles that do not reveal the subject matter of the post.
So, give it a try: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to start including your keywords in your post titles, and let us know if you see any changes in your traffic sources. Good luck!
Wanted: “Do Follow” Bookmarking sites that actually do follow…Anyone, Anyone?
June 24, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about social networking sites that are great for “back-links,” on Google.
What’s a back-link? This happens when you post a link to your own blog on another site (usually a social bookmarking site, or the comment section of another blog), which has a Google Page Rank of 4/10 or better, and that site or blog actually links back to your blog without using rel=”nofollow”, preventing that link from “counting” on Technorati or Google. (For more info on why this is important, see Using [and Abusing] rel=”nofollow to Preserve Page Rank.) Note: There is no code for “do follow,” it just happens automatically if there are no “no follow” instructions.
How do you know if you’re getting back-links? They’ll show up as trackbacks or pings in your comments section. They’ll also show up as links on Technorati, and (eventually) under a reverse-search for your blog on Google. If they don’t it’s probably because the site that linked to you is using the rel=”nofollow” code.
So, as you can imagine, a lot of bloggers are anxious to know which social networking sites will give them good back-links. There are a lot of “lists” out there. Socializer.com has one (click on the “Do Follow” link), and there are numerous blogs on Google that have lists, most of which are splogs (”spam blogs”). Many of the lists are out-dated, and contain links to sites that used to be good for back-links but aren’t anymore. I’ve actually tested a good number of the social networking sites on these lists recently and have not been successful in gaining ANY back-links.
So, here’s my question: Has anyone out there been successful in gaining back-links from ANY social networking site in the last 60-90 days? If so, please leave a link to that site in the comment section below, and we’ll check it out. We’re hoping to develop a list of sites that are useful for this purpose. If we’re successful in compiling such a list, we’ll keep you updated.
Also see: Better Ways to Get some Link Love>
WebWarrior: Nick DeLeeuw, Right Michigan
June 17, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors, Michigan
This week’s WebWarrior is Nick DeLeeuw of Right Michigan. Nick was nominated by Melanie Hall (of The Michigan Tea Party Convention, who wrote:
…You really should check him out!! …He not only provides valuable info, but also resources for Michigan activists. He’s currently [as of May 22nd] running a contest for bloggers here, there’s a link on the home page. He’s also pretty active on twitter, and gets involved in panels and conferences on new media. Nick is a great guy and always willing to help out with conservative activities and events.
Well, we’re sorry we missed the contest, but glad that Melanie recommended Mr. DeLeeuw as a WebWarrior.
His site is part blog, part network for Michigan residents. He’s effectively using Twitter and Facebook to keep in touch with readers. His “In the Sphere” feature promotes fellow Michigan bloggers, and he stays involved in the local community by posting on employment rates (a big concern in Michigan currently), and promoting local charities, like the Alpha Center Women’s Life Walk.
His excellent online networking skills have earned him a 5/10 on Google Page rank and a Technorati authority rating of 208 (very good for a state-level blogger). His blog format and design in clean, professional, and easy to navigate and read.
Thanks to Melanie Hall of The Michigan Tea Party Convention for nominating this week’s WebWarrior.
WebWarrior: Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs
May 27, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
Last week, we asked for members of our FHK Facebook Group to nominate “WebWarriors,” who are politically conservative and effectively using Web 2.0. The first response we received was from Dan Schmucker, who nominated Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs, saying:
“She takes needed and courageous stands consistently against national governments lacking insight and the spineless media’s complicity in Islamofacism.”
Indeed.
Pamela is in the top 2,000 blogs on Technorati (under atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com), and has a Google Page Rank of 6/10 (under atlasshrugs.com), demonstrating that she is effectively using outgoing and internal links and categories effectively, and that her content is fresh and original, so that she’s had nearly 10,000 links to her site in the last six month, from over 1,100 blogs and websites.
Creative use of RSS feeds (via FeedBlitz) lets Pamela’s readers keep updated daily through e-mail, VOIP, IM or Twitter.
A quick Google search under “Pamela Geller” also reveals that Pamela has used effective online profile management through social networking and her contacts in the mainstream media.
Thank you, to Pamela Geller, for being our WebWarrior of the Week, and to Dan Schmucker (visit Dan on Facebook) for nominating her. As Pamela says:
“Western civilization hangs in the balance. This blog is part of the solution. Get your heads out of the sand and fight the Great Fight. The Jew may be the canary in the coal mine, but you my friends will be next. Changing the World one Word at a time…Citizen Journalist, Citizen Soldier” – Pamela Geller
Why You Need to Google Yourself
May 6, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
Daniel J. Solove, of Concurring Opinions, has been following and commenting on an interaction between a law professor and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about internet privacy laws.
Basically Scalia is against furthering the government’s role in regulating the free exchange of ideas online. So, to challenge that idea, the law professor, Professor Joel Reidenberg of Fordham University, decided to challenge that by making Justice Scalia this semester’s object lesson in his course on Information Privacy Law. Their assignment was to dig up every bit of personal information they could locate online about Scalia (and his family) online, and then show Justice Scalia what they had found, to see how the Supreme Court Justice would respond when he saw all of the details of his and his family’s life together in one dossier that is online, (but not yet public).
Scalia responded by explaining to the professor and his class that just because something is legal to do doesn’t make it a good idea (paraphrase). To read the details of this interaction, visit Concurring Opinions, and follow the links provided there.
This brings us to an important question, however. What if someone wanted to just see what information they could dig up about you online…What would they find? Do you know? You might be surprised. For the most part, everything that you’ve ever done on the internet is public knowledge, and most of it probably isn’t interesting to anyone but yourself – or is it?
A good way to find out is to Google yourself. (Just go to Google.com, and search for your current name, any previous names, and any user ID’s or profile names that you have used. It might be a good idea to check on your family members, as well. Be sure to check using the “web,” “images,” and “videos” tabs at the top of your browser.) Also, check other search engines, especially 123People.com, and Dogpile.com.
What if you don’t like what you’re seeing?
- In some cases, you can request the site owners to take down the material. They may or may not comply, since they are not obligated to do so under the law, if the information is true. If it is not true, you may be able to get legal help in having it removed, particularly if the site the information is on is a for-profit site.
- Remember that most of the search engines other than Google order their search results with the most recent information appearing first in the results. So, you can proactively use social networking and other internet activity such as blogging and book reviews to help push that older, undesirable information to the “back” of the search engine results.
For more resources on Ft. Hard Knox, see:
- Online Profile Management, and “TMI”
- What Links Rank Highest on my Online Profile?
- Guide for Bloggers and Non-Profit Organizations About Writing With Libel in Mind
- Why Page Rank is Important
- Stop Big Brother from Snooping on You, Online
(Hat-Tip: TechDirt)
Better Ways to get some Link Love
April 22, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
Those of you who are weary of my anti-blogroll rants (sorry, Ben!) will be happy to know that I’ve decided to take a more positive, user-friendly, happy, less-angry approach to encouraging my fellow bloggers to attract links without the silly mile-long list of blogs in the sidebar.
We all know links are necessary to build page rank. (We all DO know that, right? Of course we do.) And hopefully, we know by now that scripted blogrolls are not the way to do that effectively (see Why Blogrolling is Useless, and Using [and Abusing?] rel=”nofollow” to Preserve Page Rank.
S,o what are some better ways to attract linksthat are also search-engine friendly (Word for the day: in the SEO world, these are called “white hat” techniques, as opposed to “black hat” techniques that will only work until search engines like Google find a way to block them)?
- Writing great original content that other bloggers and websites want to link to is always a good option (and the preferred one), then use your social networking skills to draw readers and bloggers to your content.
- E-Mail other bloggers, with links to your best stories, and ask them to link to you. You might suggest a link exchange, in which you also link to one of their pillar posts, or a recent post.
- Post an open invitation for bloggers to exchange links on a specific topic. For a good example of this in action, see Careerealism.
- Create images or content with basic html code that for other bloggers to embed in their websites. One of the most well-known examples of this in action is ICanHazCheezburger.com
Do you have other ideas? We’d love to hear them!
www.Wednesday: The Washington Times Copies the AP – Starts Charging Bloggers to Quote Them
April 8, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
I was a sent a lead today by a publishing agent to an article published by one of his clients. In the process of researching to see if I wanted to write about the article, I noticed that the Washington Times is now using a system that is very similar to the one used by the Associated Press, whereby it is charging bloggers to quote from its stories.
If you want to check it out, click on the “Click here for reprint permissions!” link at the bottom of their stories. Basically, you can use the story for a month but then it has to be taken down, or you have to pay at least $300. Bloggers usually don’t take stories down after a period of time, because we rely on links to and from those stories to help us build page rank in the search engines.
For more information on the mainstream media’s war on new media, check out the latest attempt by the Associated Press to intimidate bloggers, HERE.
What does this mean for bloggers, citizen journalists, members of the new media? It simply means that we need to do what we should have been doing all along – know our rights under the fair use laws, do our own research, link to each other, and refuse to allow anyone to monopolize the free flow of information.
Trackbacks: Win-Win for Bloggers
September 9, 2008 by Jenn Sierra
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
As political conservatives, we’ve learned the importance of linking to other conservative bloggers, to promote conservatism online. Exchanging links helps us increase our own, and other bloggers page rank.
There’s another advantage to linking to other bloggers. If the blogger you’re linking to has “trackbacks” enabled, a link will be posted in that blogger’s comment section, and readers who are interested in related stories will be directed back to your blog.
Some bloggers, such as Ft. Hard Knox, Michelle Malkin, and Patrick Ruffini have featured trackback sections, and other bloggers show the trackbacks as comments. Either way, readers who are researching for information on the topic of your article are able to find you from the blog you have linked to.
Also see:
- Enough Already! We’re Blog UNRolling
- Why Blogrolling is Useless
- Using (and Abusing) rel=”nofollow” to Preserve Page Rank
Ask not what Digg can do for you…
July 17, 2008 by Jenn Sierra
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
…The truth is that if you’re a political conservative online, Digg isn’t going to do anything to help you. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. News articles and blog posts that become popular on Digg, the largest social driven site on the web, also tend to hit the front page of Google, the most popular search engine on the web.
Scott Cleland of Precursor, shared with me that studies have been done which indicate that students have an increasing tendency to believe that what comes up in a Google search is the truth (a couple of good studies are Maryam Moayeri: Lost in Cyberspace: Where to Go? What to Believe? and Educause: Google Jockeying).
To illustrate my point, I ran four random searches last night off two “Top Ten” lists on Digg. I’ve shown below the stories, then the searches I ran, which have the search words highlighted. Every time I do one of these experiments, I actually hope it won’t work, because that would mean that Digg’s influence on public information was waning, but the results of these spot-checks were quite predictable. Read more
Why Page Rank is Important
June 10, 2008 by Jenn Sierra
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
FHK’s TXPoet had an article that did really well today, in terms of traffic – most of that traffic was from the search engines. He posted the entire text of Krazy Kucinich’s attempt to impeach our President.
He had a very good scoop, obviously, because he was the first blogger to post the entire text, but another reason the article did so well is that FHK, through trial and error (a LOT of both), has been working very hard on increasing our Google Page Rank score. On a Google Search, as of the time of this writing, FHK is the second result under the search: Kucinich articles of impeachment text (right behind Rep Kucinich’s website). Earlier today, we were second only behind another blogger, that did not have the entire text.
How did we get Page Rank? You get that when other blogs link to you, and when you link within your own blogs to “pillar posts.” It’s also important, as we discussed here, not to leak page rank by linking to blogs that won’t link back or to blogs that Google considers spam…it dilutes your page rank, and lowers your page rank score.
There’s actually a whole career field dedicated to the study of this, called “SEO,” (Search Engine Optimization). The problem, of course, is about the time we figure out how to be successful in this game, Google and the other search engines seem to move the goal posts. It’s almost as if there is an agenda somewhere regarding what information is “legit,” and what isn’t…?
That’s why we need to get more right-thinking people active in this business. If we have the numbers, we’ll be able to influence what information is considered “important,” and “worthy.” Right now, we’re at the mercy of an industry that is not just “social,” in nature, but “socialist.”
Also see: Why Conservatives Need to Geek-Up: Download