This article is written by Rhys Wynne – a six year blogger who also runs his own Webmaster Tips Newsletter at My Brand New Brand, Subscribe Today for free extras!

S.E.O.

Three letters that everybody is going crazy over on the internet. Do this, don’t do this, and people will come streaming in from search engines willing to throw cash and ladies at you.

Sorry, I don’t agree with it.

With blogs, whilst SEO is important, in the majority of niches you should really focus on your readers rather than search engine positions. Guys like John Chow rank nowhere in search engines. So how can he make $30,000 a month?

Simple, by writing for readers (or – in his terms – getting other people to write for his readers).

Here are some things I’ve noticed which you could be doing wrong. Well, they’re not wrong, but I find them offputting as it reads to me like you are putting search engine’s first.

Overly SEO’d titles
Titles shouldn’t be 3 or 4 lines explaining exactly what you are doing in the article. Titles should be brief, clever and eye catching. Whilst Titles are crucial for SEO purposes, a long title may not only appear offputting for readers, but also get you penalised in search engines.

Furthermore, if your page has more than 1 h1 tag on it, there’s a chance that the second one will be ignored. H2-H6 tags are there for a reason.*

Confusing Internal Backlink Structure
Everybody’s seen those blogs with random words linked for Search Engine Optimisation benefit. People will follow them, and Google will follow them. People will be confused, and google will give you a slight benefit. Sure, link to your own stuff, but it should either be a lead in (such as “I wrote about Search Engine Optimization here”), or even a simple “Click Here”. Just don’t confuse your readers.

Getting Rubbish Rank Instead of Real Readers From Forums
This is a lesson that I learnt recently whilst promoting Retro Garden. To aid promotion, I joined a bunch of video game and retro game forums to participate in discussions there. Immediately I put my forum signature as a keyword rich link. I didn’t see any benefit. I changed to an image based signature and – whilst losing on search engine traffic, I got more clickthroughs and readers.

Not all forums allow this, but if you see other people use images in footers, why not you use one too, especially if you contribute?

So it sounds like I don’t do any SEO on my blogs. You couldn’t be further from the truth, I do SEO on my blogs, but I’m not SEO for the sake of my readers.

You got any S.E.No-No’s to share with the group?

New month, new contests for your blog. Only the simplest ones for you all. Let’s start…

iPod Touch from Datepad

Your chance to win the new iPod Touch ($400): you only have to write a post about the new dating site Datepad (150 words minimum) including a link to the contest post. Each person can submit only two entries. The contest is open worldwide.
Ends on April 20th

Free Software from Ask the Admin

Win a free copy of Roxio Toast 9 Titanium (a CD/DVD burning suite from ROXIO) plus a Silver iPod Nano from Ask The Admin, a great site that offers free tech support. To enter complete these tasks: subscribe to his RSS feeds via mail, leave a comment on the contest post and write a post about this contest. Contact him telling what you have done.

Cash from Top Site Of The Day

Top Site Of The Day, an interesting site that offers a wide collection of the best sites online (you can also submit your own for FREE!), is having a contest with three cash prizes: $75.00 – $50.00 – $25.00
To enter gain your tickets by writing a review of the site, a post about the competition or by adding it to your blogroll.
Ends on April 28th.

And don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests, your daily source for the latest, simplest and greatest blog contests around the net!

I haven’t done a popular post total since the beginning of the year when I did our best posts for 2007. Here are a few posts that were popular in March.

Stumbleupon Now Using Captcha – This post was very popular on stumbleupon especially, getting about 2,000 uniques and tons of stumbles. Do you hate captcha as much as me?

23 Things I’ve Learned Blogging – One of my longest post, it took me a few days to put together. Look for a follow-up post on this (definitely not as long).

No Longer Promoting NeverblueAds – I am definitely happy with the supportive response I’ve received from this post. Still no response from Neverblueads. Oh well, this post ranks on page 1 in google for NeverblueAds.

6 Rules for Social Media – The basic rules for social media websites. Great ‘guide’ for users new to social media.

What were your best posts for March?

Welcome to another edition of Blogger Interviews. Our last interview was with Karthik.

Ian Parks is a loyal reader of BAYB and I thought would be great for an interview, especially since he has quit his job to become a full-time blogger. We asked Ian some blogging questions. Here is what he said:

What is your age? Where do you live?

I’m 26 and currently living in Montreal, QC but Original from London, England.

What do you do when your not blogging?

I have been pretty inactive socially, as it’s been winter but have been going to the gym, watching the odd movie and I’m becoming addicted to catching up on the show Lost.

I work full time as a blogger now and enjoy taking photos. Before I came to Canada last year I was a Freelance Graphic Designer / Artworker and I was most recently working in a kitchen as a line chef.

What are your favorite blogs? What type of blogs do you usually read?

Garry Conn provides me with a wealth of blogging tips, tricks and ideas and he is a bloody nice guy.

Bush Mackel as he is kind of at the same level as me when it comes to blogging but gives out great ideas and fun posts.

Vegan Momma is close to being a freelance writing and business guru and I like to see what she is up to. She always inspires me with her energy and enthusiasm.

What do you enjoy most about blogging?

I like the freedom to express myself, the challenge to make it my full time career and the chance to constantly try and keep up with better writers than myself.

How many blogs do you have?

At present I run 3 main blogs and have a few that I have just started working on.
The Random Forest is my flagship blog and
TheRandomForest.info is my shameless blog. I make almost all my money from here.
The Condom Monologues is a new project in conjunction with my partner.

What is the best feature on your blog?

I don’t really have any feature heavy blogs but I think I like writing posts about animals mostly and people seem to like reading them.

Why do you blog?

Right now, to make a non geographically constrained living and work on my own terms. I also love reading other blogs and enjoy the communal aspects.

Any upcoming projects?

New and Reviewed is an experiment in progress, I want to try and make money using affiliates and search engine traffic only and then report the results back on The Random Forest.

Amazing Arcades will be finding new games and arcade websites. It’s a simple website that will be somewhere between an arcade site and a blog.

I have a ton of other ideas, just no time right now and need to concentrate on the things I have.

Why did you start blogging?

Initially I wanted to see if I could make a few pennies and see if I had what it took to make money from writing reviews and articles.

Why did you choose your topic?

I had no clue what to write about, so I made it random.

What are your blogging goals?

To be earning enough to allow me to embark on some charitable projects.

Where do you get the majority of your traffic?

It seems that recently the majority comes from Google and recently I have been using Micro Niche Finder to choose post titles. This has really been helping getting people to come visit.

Opinions of BAYB, anything you’d like to share?

I like BAYB very much and visit whenever I get a chance and enjoy the tips you offer me. I don’t think there is anything I would really change! Maybe I would make the green into a nice blue, but that’s solely because I like blue!

Definitely an exhausting day for us. We spent all day at a wedding. I’m ready to doze off, but first, Comment Friday!

If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 200 entrecard credits.

After putting together the Bloggers Guide to SEO, I noticed a lot of bloggers hadn’t really started optimizing their blog for search engines. What steps have you taken to improve your blogs SEO?

Every now and then I get negative comments on this blog or the social media articles that were submitted. Some users go a little too far. That’s why I put together Dealing with Negative Criticism of Your Blog. Now there is another way to deal with the criticism, to add to the list.

Cyber Creeps

This is an interesting idea where you can sort of “fight back” against Cyber Creeps. CyberCreeps is basically a social media voting site for those who have abused you on social media websites. When you find a “cyber creep” is include write about the incident and include their profile.

I can understand getting negative reviews or thumbs down, but some users go way too far.

CyberCreeps isn’t as active as I would like, but I decided to put up my “creeps” anyways.

My Submissions

I got two thumbs down for yesterdays article, Bloggers Guide to SEO. I wrote this for bloggers for all kinds and many have already found it useful.

Arleas wrote a comment stating, “Quit disguising blogs as marketing BS and then posting it under the heading of blogs. FU and your SEO BS.” Of course I cleaned up the language a bit.

Vote for him at CyberCreeps.

The other thumb down was by someone named Joe. His response to my SEO article was that it was a steaming pile of dog —-.

Vote for him at CyberCreeps.

Finally, the most disturbed of them all, ThungurKnifer. He left a crazy review of me and just about every other blogger on his profile. I can’t write here what was said about me, but you can see it at CyberCreeps.

Vote for him at CyberCreeps.

Who are your Cyber Creeps? 

It has been WAY too long since I’ve posted here. So I thought I’d get back into the swing of things by posting a collection of April Fool’s jokes that have made their way to the Web today.

I must admit that ever since I saw last year’s April Fool’s jokes by Google, April 1st couldn’t get here fast enough for me so that I could try my hand at a little fun.

Here are just a few that I’ve come across. If you’ve found some, don’t be shy and post them in the comments.

MeAndMyDrum – Google Announces The G-String iPhone Accessory
Darn Good Reviews – Frog Soap That Washes Away Fat?
Google – Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes
Garry Conn dot com – I Got Banned From Google Adsense!
Chris Pirillo – Chris Pirillo Gets In Fight With Wife and Quits His Job
Google – Gmail Custom Time
John Chow – John Chow Cola – The Official Blogger Drink
Freelance Writing Gigs – Men with Pens Expands with Freelance Writing Gigs