Darren has written one of the most important blog strategy posts you’ll ever read:

How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines

The post includes how to garner incoming links of good value, how to optimize your content, focusing your content, and much more. It’s a very comprehensive post with many links to read up on for more.

Great work Darren!

Tags: seo, blog seo, search engine strategy

Seth Godin’s taken on a great post by Joel on Software about the Windows Vista UI. He takes what is a great post and breaks it down - why is it a great post?

Seth’s advice to others:

1. Use an appropriate image/illustration
2. Make the topic useful and easily broad to a number of people
3. Use simple clear language, no jargon
4. Make it not too long
5. Focus on areas previously taken for granted that causes the "light bulb" emotional response
6. Cause the reader to think

I think the last two are optional. Depending on audience. I would say an emotional response is crucial, but not all posts should require "thinking" as the end result. The result may be pleasure, humor, or maybe the urge to shop. I suppose all are thoughtful responses, but not all are thought-intensive.

Good advice for good blog posts.

Tags: writing, blog posts, blogging, writing tips

Feeds have re-refreshed and Google News is full with read items again.

Perhaps it was a temporary bug in Bloglines that was overwriting the other bugs. Or something. Dammit.

Guess it’s back to trying new options :)

Tags: bloglines, rss readers

Ironically, on the day when I had Google Reader open in a tab and NewsFire on my desktop, Bloglines comes back to life.

That’s right, I think Bloglines is back in action.

After months of feeds not showing up as new, feeds refreshing, and constantly renewing Google News feeds, all seems to be resolved.

All of a sudden I was wondering why the news was so quiet. And realized hey, it’s because my Google News feeds haven’t refreshed. No inflated reference for "new" news. Interesting.

Then I noticed my b5 folder was quiet. Nothing had refreshed. Bonus.

And 5 minutes ago, my "Tracking" folder, which has all my ego feeds, reappeared as new. Hadn’t seen that in a long time.

All at once, Bloglines is back. And perhaps has kept me as a user, with only minutes to spare.

If you are still on Bloglines, have you also experienced improvements?

And to those of you who have switched, are these improvements enough to entice you back as a user? Or are they just fixing problems that took too long to be addressed, without really adding anything new?

Tags: bloglines, rss reader, news reader, aggregator

A couple of months ago, we relaunched/rebranded a site we’ve had for quite some time as "the lingerie gals."

The Lingerie Gals is written by myself and a good friend, Gloria. We both love lingerie and writing it together has been a ton of fun. Especially when we get free samples ;)

Today was an exhaustive day in the lingerie world, with the release of the first pictures of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2006. As amazing as always.

So, pop by and say hi and if you have a favorite piece of lingerie, or lingerie news, drop us a line and we’ll write about it.

Tags: lingerie, the lingerie gals, lingerie blog

Blogging Help has gotten a facelift. It’s a long time coming. Our version of Wordpress was quite old and stodgy, and the site was giving me a dark, unloved feeling. So, Ianiv gave it a rehaul this weekend.

The new design is simple. The logo draws from the standard Blogaholics theme, and embraces my love of white space. I’d love to stick a search bar and some feed buttons up in the header area, but it’s a start.

This blog has been really quiet lately as well. I take blame on that one. With my work pro blogging and with b5 as a channel editor, as well as my multitude of health issues, I’ve found it hard to teach as I want to teach on this site.

So, it’s time for a content rehaul too. I want to increase my post volume, but slightly differently. I will be including more references to posts I read elsewhere, in a link-blog manner, but with commentary. I think this will make me more efficient in showing you the best content for blogging - as a pro, a beginner or a business - with my professional opinion on top. This manner is very similar to just regular posting, but my manner of posting will be more efficient.

So, welcome to our renewal of Blogging Help. If there is something you need help on, toss me an email and I’ll try to help out.

There is a new pay-to-blog/pay-to-review service announced today, via Text Link Ads (aff), which promises to pay bloggers to review products. It’s called ReviewMe.

The concept is similar to the much debated Payperpost service, but seems to offer better incentives:

• Existing Text Link Ads customers can be automatically accepted into ReviewMe
• It is not limited to the US alone
• You can choose to decline a review
• Your price is predetermined by your blog’s success
• Payout is quite high per review ($20-$200)
• You earn 50% of the review price
• Your review does not need to be positive

They have started off very well. The interface is excellent, one of the best I’ve seen yet, and they’ve kicked off with a very ambitious marketing plan - a giveaway of $25,000 for reviews of their service. Plus, so you get the swing of things, the review of their service is paid at your going rate (but my review content has not been biased by that). Now, my marketing self is quite impressed with this.

So, this is my first shot at testing out their service. I don’t know yet what kind of advertisers sit behind the screen, so when I do, I will report back. It’s the first service in a while that I’ve tried that has something different to offer.

Tags: reviewme, advertising, blogs, pro blogging, blogging, pay per post