Well, i finally got round to the redesign of my weblog. I had been planning to redesign this blog for a long time and also had drawn a rough sketch of how I wanted the new design to look like but it was delayed due to many reasons. After i decided to comit to blogging professionally, i thought id was time that i invest the time in creating a unique design, and saught the advice and recommendations of the people who really mattered. Our Readers.

I took all of the recommendations into consideration, and worked on the new design for about a week and finished with it yesterday. I did extensive testing with it using Firefox, Opera, IE 6 and 7. Everything looks fine so far but I still have a few things to do like optimizing the CSS, removal of useless plugins and some other things to decrease page load time.

Some of the changes made in the new design

• Switched from a 2 column to a 3 column for neater look
• We are now making use of the popular and & recent posts plugin to highlight some of our best content
• We have installed the Do-Follow plugin to reward users for leaving a comment on our posts. This means that when you comment, search engines will recognise your link and give you credit for it in their algorithms.
• Installed MyAvatars plugin which will display an avatar next to your name when leaving comments. This only works if you are a MyBlogLog user and have an avatar uploaded to your account.
• The design as a whole is slightly wider, and has incorporated a ‘web 2.0′ look as this seems to be popular at the moment, and i love the whole web 2.0 look.

I would really appreciate your feedback and what you think about our new design. Are there any areas you think could be further improved? If you spot any errors, please let me know that as well.

Popularity: 19% [?]

One of the best ways to increase blog readership is to have other bloggers notice and link back to you. In fact, you can’t have a truly successful blog without having that critical cross-pollination from other bloggers. Luckily, with a little time and effort, you can become a part of the conversation. You just need to take care not to do it in a ham-handed fashion.

If your goal is to get noticed by bloggers, you’re not alone. Corporate clients and PR professionals frequently ask me “how can we pitch the bloggers?” I’m happy that traditional marketers have recognized the influence of the blogosphere, but i cringe every time that question is posed. The quick answer is that you don’t. Pitching is not the proper word for what needs to be done. A far more appropriate question is “how can I engage with the selected bloggers that our market trusts?”

This inappropriate focus on the “pitch” is one of the reasons that bloggers generally distrust the messages PR firms deliver. In a 2006 study conducted by Technorati, 1021 bloggers were asked how much they trust messages sent from PR firms, on a scale of 1 to 10. The average response? A dismal 4.1.

I’ve watched many organizations reach out to the blogosphere in a myriad of ways, and have a pretty good feel for what works and what doesn’t. Whether you’re trying to get bloggers interested in your products, or in your blogging efforts, here are few no-no’s:

• Don’t be indiscriminate. Carefully decide with whom you want to converse. It’s far better to target the top 10 bloggers in your arena for engagement than annoy 1000 bloggers that were on somebody’s email press list.
• Don’t send messages that aren’t tailored specifically to the blogger you’re reaching out to. Do not send a generic email blast. Take the time to refer to a post they’ve made, or mention a common associate or other linkage.
• Don’t send press releases. Most bloggers feel that being sent any marketing-speak whatsoever is an indicator of significant “cluelessness” on the part of the sender.
• Email is okay, but there are better options. Commenting on their blogs and writing your own blog posts that then link back to them creates open dialog, and resonates with bloggers. To do this just Start The Blogging Conversation.

If you take the time to consistently read the blogs that relate to your editorial or market arena, you’ll probably find many opportunities to respond intelligently. Agreeing, disagreeing, and expanding upon what’s been said by those with some influence is a terrific way to get noticed and be a part of the dialog.

A great way to expand on the dialog is to interview a knowledgeable blogger who has said something relevant to your space. For example, assuming that the solar energy market presents an opportunity for Acme Widgets, Acme might want to interview an expert who has blogged about the growth potential of solar energy, and may even probe the blogger to comment on why widgets might be relevant to this emerging power source. Recording and podcasting the interview can be an easy way to get the content up quickly, and you are almost certain to get an inbound link from the interviewee.

Reading, commenting, and blogging are the best ways to get the relevant bloggers to notice and link to you. Being a participant in the conversation and contributing valuable insights can reap rewards that far outweigh those of any calculated “outreach” campaign that the PR pros come up with.

Popularity: 9% [?]

This is a guest post written by Mark Knowles from Mark Knowles.

What is marketing? Is it selling, or something else?

Seth Godin suggests that marketing is making a promise and keeping it. How often do you come across a broken promise in the world of marketing? Speaking from personal experience – ALL THE TIME !

Here’s an example - Getting your oil changed. The last time I had the oil changed in my car (in the US), I went to a national chain of oil change specialists who were marketing their services with an enormous banner offering “Oil changes - $29.99” I went in, told the guy behind the counter which car I had, asked him how much it would cost and was told $29.99. Fine. I took the car through, had the oil changed and was presented with a bill. For $42.

After much arguing, shouting and generally being pissed off, the manager was called to deal with me and agreed to charge me the promised $29.99.

This is breaking a promise. They promised to change my oil for $29.99 and then refused to do so. I eventually got what I wanted, but, I can tell you – I would never use “SpeeDee” ever again.

This one is a funny example – 25% off:

Unfortunately, it’s not really funny because it’s too true. It’s all too easy to break a marketing promise online. Many’s the time I have been directed to a web page because I entered a particular search term. But when I get there, it turns out that the company who owns the page are not offering whatever it was I was looking for. No – they had gone to the trouble of adding a bunch of tags to their page, doing a lot of keyword research and managed to fool the search engines that they had whatever it is I was looking for. And now I am there, they manage to fool my pop up blocker and advertise something completely different in the hope I will click on it so they can get their PPC pennies (or dollars in some cases) What’s the point? Andy suggests you should avoid keyword stuffing. This is another reason why.

I have said it before – 99% of the internet is garbage.

Are you adding to the garbage, or do you make a positive contribution?

Answers on a postcard or in the comment box please.

This is a guest post written by Mark Knowles from Mark Knowles.

Popularity: 6% [?]

It would seem that picking out the right keywords and then employing them in keyword advertisements would be an easy enough task. But don’t let the simplicity of the concept fool you. There is much to learn about how to use your keywords effectively to draw traffic to your web site. Today we are looking at the dangers of keyword stuffing on your web page.

As you’re maximizing the value and return of the keywords that you’ve selected, you should be aware of one danger: keyword stuffing. This is the practice of overloading your web pages with keywords. The problem is, it’s hard to know exactly how many times to use a word on a web page.

Search engines don’t publish the maximum allowable number of keywords or keyword appearances on a page, so you’re left to determine how many times you should include keywords in your tags, titles, text, links, and headings.

Keyword stuffing, purposely or not, occurs in several ways on web pages. The first is when the writer includes on the web page (usually at the bottom, but it can be anywhere) a block of text that is nothing more than a repetition of the chosen keyword, like this:

AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding
AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding
AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding
AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding

Sometimes, this block of text is shown in the same font that other text on the page is shown; however, it’s not at all unusual for a block of text like this to be colored the same color as the page background so that it’s invisible to visitors, but perfectly readable by search engine crawlers. When it’s invisible to visitors, it’s called invisible keyword stuffing.

You also run the risk of accidentally falling victim to keyword stuffing on your page. This can happen when you’re placing too many keywords into tags, text, and other elements of your web page. As a general rule, you’ll want to keep the occurrence of keywords (called keyword density) at seven to ten percent of the words on your web page.

Keep in mind that seven to ten percent keyword density isn’t a hard and fast rule. It’s more a guideline that you should try to stay close to. Some search engines will allow a little higher keyword density before flagging your site as a spam site, whereas others might allow less than 10 percent. It’s a game that you’ll have to experiment with to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Tip: SEOChat has a cool keyword density tool which helps with determining the density of keywords on your pages.

One way to ensure that you’re not overdoing it with your keywords is to use several on each page that are unique to that page. These keywords should come from the topic of the page they will appear on. Many webmasters make the mistake of creating some general keywords which relate to the whole of their website, and then using those keywords on every page. This is the wrong approach; to get the best results, tailor the keywords on each page, to the topic of the page they will reside on.

Keywords are still one of the least expensive methods of advertising your web site. However, they’re not a simple select-and-forget-it solution. You’ll have to put plenty of effort and experimentation into learning what works and what doesn’t with your PPC ad and keyword placement. Keep the efforts consistent and regular, though, and you’ll eventually find the right combination that will not only provide the increased traffic and conversions you’re looking for, but will also do it within the confines of your budget.

Popularity: 13% [?]