Little disappointed to annouce we only have 6 members on the forum, but they are 6 great members! lol. I haven’t promoted the forum full fledge yet, or sent emails but that is soon to come. I am still testing the forum and looking to install a new template for the design. So you can consider it in Beta. The forum discussions however will not be affected, so please take a second and join us.

The Blog of the Year voting is almost complete. Remember the top 4 blog’s in each poll advance, with one wildcard blog to the finals. The voting for the first round ends at 12pm PST time. After that I will be making one final poll to vote on, and ask the 5 finalists for their paypal emails so they can receive their 5$ upon winning.

I am also considering putting together a blog of the month with the same concept. Leave me a comment if you’d participate in something like that.

Now that 2007 is here, it almost feels like a refreshing new start. I am excited to move forward with the year and cant wait to see what it brings.
Wishing everyone a Happy New Year with hopes that something exciting is coming your way this year as well.

It snowed where I live last night. It was very beautiful, but I am not much for cold weather and snow. So I am posting a calm, warm picture of when my husband and I went to Jamaica a couple of years ago. Ah, I can just feel the sun on my skin now!

See you around the blog!
http://www.worth-it-all.blogspot.com

Wow I can’t believe that 2007 has already started!!! And I’m excited to be the 100 post here!!!!

So with the new year comes a change for me and the way I blog – I’m going to try and not use the blog exchanges! They take up so much of my time right now and I don’t think I’m getting the return on the man hours which personally would be better spent posting in places like here or comments on other people’s blogs.

If the exchanges have a good deal going on where I can get a decent amount of credits fairly easily and see NEW blogs I’ll have a brief look but I’m not going to obsess over trying to get those credits up!

That being said I’m already cringing a little at the rant and if I see those numbers drop I just know I’m going to go crawling back. *sigh* I feel like I’m in a bad relationship!

Lee Sargent runs Sarge Design a freelance web design house that is slowly focusing purely on business blogging – he also writes the semi corporate/personal blog Quit Your Day Job. If you have a company or know of one that you’d like a little help (or a lot of help!) bringing it into the blogging world drop me a line!

Mike Perry was writing about keywords and how a phrase is better than a single keyword. Coincidentally, this month’s newsletter from Wordtracker, THE best keyword resource available, goes into detail about “tail end” keyword phrases.

The common mistake is to fight for first page recognition with a single keyword. If you sell wallets and you rely on “wallet”, you are faced with two obstacles on your road to riches. Firstly, the big spending sites will always be ahead of you in the results and secondly, “wallet”, or any single keyword, is normally of use only to people doing a first time search, or undertaking general research. ie you will attract visitors with little or no intention of taking any immediate action.

However, if you try to attract the people about to take a final step in the decision-making process ie appeal to those people who have done their general research and are ready to make a purchase, your keyphrase could be “pink wallet in Switzerland”. This will attract less traffic in total, but what you do get will be higher quality, and you will be yodelling all the way to the bank.

The other tip for applying this keyword strategy is to have lots of pages. Google likes pages, and this also enables you to have two nets laid to attract visitors. You use conventional keywords on most pages, ie “wallet” and use the more specific expanded keyword phrases on the rest.

Chicken and egg

This is The Pisstaker checking out and consoling myself that as a website with PR0, I have no chance of getting links to my site. Apparently the general wisdom is that you should only be interested in linking to sites with PR3 and above! Mike Perry’s 50 visitors a day minimum sounds far more practical and in the spirit of the internet.

I have a little announcement to make about blog of the year voting.

First off, great turnout! Congrats to all of those who are getting votes, and leading their categories. A little change, or stipulation. Since there are only 4 brackets, and not the intended 5, there will be 1 wild-card spot given to the leading vote getting, who did not win their bracket.

So if you have some pretty stiff competition, you still have a great shot to make it into the finals.

Every vote counts! Thanks.

Hello, this is just a quick word about one of my blogs: Blog-Op.

Blog-Op is a contributory blog, which contains a whole range of information on making your blog better. Improving the layout, increasing traffic, optimizing for search engines and even making a little money are all topics covered by this blog.

I don’t pretend to be an expert, which is why I’ll happily accept contributions from anyone with something interesting to share. All submitted posts are fully credited to you, and you will gain at least 2 permanent links back to your blog.

So please come & have a read, and learn something useful – or contribute and earn some links & new readers. Feel free to email me contributions (plain text please) to blogop@gmail.com, or have a look at the How To Contribute page.

Thanks.

No one I know ever likes going to the dentist. Would it make you feel a little more comfortable going to a well known dentist? Of course. How about one that has won awards for quality care? I would feel a little more comfortable with that as well.

Charles Brown dds pc has a perfect dental ‘record’ with no complaints ever in his 10+ years of dentistry. On top of that, Charles Brown DDS is listed as one of the regions top dentists by the Washington Area Consumer Council. Quite a resume for a dentist.

How does one seemingly become so respected among dentists? Ask Charles Brown.