It’s been awhile since we’ve talked about Google+. As Facebook loses the interest of many users, Google+ appears to keep growing. For me, the visibility value of time spent on Google+ is far better than the same keystrokes or time on Facebook. From a pure business perspective, you might find that Google+ is the place to be. Continue reading “Is Google+ Where You Should Be?”
Tag: google+
Link Building: The Basics for Your Blog or Website
Link building is a method used to increase visibility and improve your search rankings. Without getting into a lot of mumble jumble, search engines examine the links to and from your site to assign it a certain ranking. Links aren’t everything in search engine optimization (SEO); however, it accounts for a large percentage of weighting in search results as shown in this survey by MOZ.
If you are interested in growing traffic to you blog or site, growing the link profile will gain attention, traction and traffic from search engines. In addition, the strength of the link plays a big role as well. Spam hits in your blog “comments” do not help in establishing links that matter (which is why you have a “nofollow” option in your settings.) Links acquired from your target community, such as indie writing or publishing, matter more than off topic links.
How do we go about link building? Here are the top ten basic methods to build links and improve your site’s visibility. Continue reading “Link Building: The Basics for Your Blog or Website”
Adding Google+ Comments to your Blogger Blog
The idea of having a blog is not just to sell books – although, hey, if someone’s moved to buy mine after reading one of my posts, I’m not going to stop them. But ideally, you’re blogging to offer your thoughts and ideas to the Universe, and maybe even get a dialogue going.
“Having a dialogue” implies that your readers are responding to your posts. And yet, one of the biggest problems I had when I began blogging on Blogger (also known as Blogspot) was that people had trouble leaving comments. Blogger’s native comments system had multiple quirks – the sign-in process was kind of crazy, and oftentimes it wouldn’t let people post replies at all. I ended up with comments about my posts on my Facebook page, on my Facebook timeline, on Google+ – everywhere but on the actual post. Makes it hard to get a dialogue going.
Blogger users, as well as Blogger itself, had come up with several workarounds. I tried a few, and they worked, more or less. But really, you shouldn’t need a workaround for something as basic as allowing a reader to comment on your blog. Continue reading “Adding Google+ Comments to your Blogger Blog”
A Screed on Copyright
Let’s imagine I’ve bought a CD and ripped it to my computer to get MP3s of each track. (You kids can imagine I bought the album from Amazon and downloaded it straight to my computer, if that makes it easier to picture.) Then I copy one of the MP3s to my smartphone and set it as the ringtone for when the Evil Mastermind calls. I copy them all to my Kindle Fire and my MP3 player, each of which I’ll use to play the songs in different situations. I also leave them on my desktop computer where I’ll listen to them at times like now when I’m working at my desk.
Next I post a review on my blog where I quote a few lines (maybe a full paragraph) from your book and post it a few days later (okay, maybe weeks) to Amazon. It’s a five star review and you especially like one line (the one where I call it “the best book ever written”). You add a quote of that line (with proper attribution) to the book description on Amazon (and every other retailer), in large red letters across the top of every page on your website, and tweet it every hour on the hour with a bit.ly link to the book’s Amazon page.
Have either of us done anything wrong here? We’ve both copied something for which we don’t have the copyright. We didn’t ask for or obtain permission from the copyright holder. Continue reading “A Screed on Copyright”