Tag Archives: Blogs

National Geographic Magazine Reminds Me of a Blog

Feb 28, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Blogging 2 Comments

National Geographic is one of the best-adapted magazines (to the blogosphere). They have plenty of web content to supplement what they put in their magazine, and the print magazine itself reminds me of a blog.

Their articles are very blog-like, in writing style, and in the way they grab your attention. The articles open with a couple introductory paragraphs that immediately grab your interest, and convince you to keep reading, much like the way bloggers do. There are also a lot of pictures, that, again, help to grab your attention, and to break-up the blocks of text. Surely you’ve seen blog posts that kick-off with a big attention-grabbing image? Yes, there definitely are a few similarities between blog posts and NG’s articles.� Luckily, though, the articles are not full of bulleted lists and “bolded” text!

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2007: Best Blogs About Blogging

Jan 10, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Blogging 6 Comments

I’ve read a lot of blogs in 2007. More than any other year probably. 2007 is the year I really got into blogging, and discovered social media sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. As a result, my list of subscribed RSS feeds has exploded and evolved.

My favorite blogs are about blogging, web design, and really anything about the internet. I also read some non-tech blogs (e.g. Harry Potter / fantasy blogs), but not as many as internet-blogs.

So what blogs about blogging did I enjoy the most this year?

Keep up the good work, everyone!

Permalink Optimization

Dec 30, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Featured, WordPress 8 Comments

If you’re reading this, you probably know what a permalink is. This article is about optimizing your permalinks for both search engines and your readers. That said, do not change your permalink structure if you can help it. If you’re starting a new blog, put a bit of thought into your permalink structure of choice. Otherwise, you should probably leave them alone. By changing your permalink structure, you’re basically killing off all of your search rankings and incoming links (kind of defeats the purpose). However, if you are an .htaccess expert (and feel like setting up a complex redirection scheme), you could update your permalink structure (though I’d still advise against it).

Some of the More Common Permalink Structures

WordPress’s default format for permalinks is http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=456. The number “456” is the numerical id for the post. If your permalinks look like this, then change them immediately. They’re not very user-friendly, and they won’t rank well in search engines. Even if you’ve been blogging for awhile, you can go ahead and change them. Doesn’t that contradict what I said earlier? No, because the default permalinks always work, and will just redirect people to the updated URL.

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PageRank and “Overall Site Metrics”

Oct 26, 2007 by Matt | Posted in General 2 Comments

People like to measure and compare things. Metrics affect decisions, like whether someone will buy an ad on your site.

Websites are measured in numerous ways. They’re given an “overall score” with PageRank; Feedburner counts the number of people who subscribe to their RSS feeds; and advertisers are forever obsessed with monthly pageviews.

Google’s PageRank is used by many to compare websites, though the fairness of the value is questionable. PageRank basically boils down to Links In – Links Out = PageRank. So if you have a lot of people linking to you, then you have a higher PageRank. Hording links, and by extension PageRank won’t get you anywhere either, as you have to link to get linked to.

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