This is the third time that I’ve been invited to conduct a seminar-workshop on blogging by the Department of Trade & Industry. This time it’s for DTI - Tagum City. Apparently, one of the participants in the 2nd seminar is from Davao del Norte Province, so now they want their own.
As before, I’ve invited Ria to partner with me in conducting the seminar in Tagum. So tomorrow early morning we’re going on a one-hour bus ride to the north.
Read on»
I’d like to share with you a recent discovery I’ve made: Website Grader. It’s one of those finds that brings a smile to the lips of bloggers and webmasters. This online tool will help you analyze your site’s SEO health. While Website Grader works for all websites, it includes reports that are blog-specific.
When using Website Grader, you will input your site’s URL and keywords. Optionally, you may submit your competitor sites’ URLs as well, for comparison. After submission, WG will output an SEO score for your site. (This blog got a 92 out of 100.) Below that will be an exhaustive report on your site’s SEO preparedness. Read on»
BEFORE the recently-concluded You Got Blogged! Review-a-Blog Competition was over, I received a strange inquiry from a blogger who had wanted to participate. Let’s call him “Manny”. Manny asked me if he could link to the contest sponsors with a nofollow attribute within the link tags. I told him if he did that, it would invalidate his entry. He didn’t participate.
The reason for Manny’s wanting to use the nofollow attribute was his fear of a possible “retaliation” by Google on his blog’s PageRank. He said he was afraid Google might penalize him for providing links. Read on»
As I’m not deeply into SEO and such, I kept mum when the hullabaloo over the see-sawing of Google’s PageRank system washed over the blogosphere late last month. This blog — after having been pinned with a PR4 from 0 in May — suddenly went one notch down, and then back up again after a few days, and then is now at PR2. Same thing happened with my IT talks! blog.
Ang Dabawenyo suffered one point, after landing a PR5 in just 3 months of existence in May. Mindanao Bloggers enjoyed the same leap from 0 to 5 as my I-love-Davao blog, in just as many months from site launch. The Davao Blogspace is still at PR4.
What’s curious is Google’s ranking of the DVO Bloggers Network blog, which runs on Google Apps. It’s fairly new (started only in 6 July 2007), and it doesn’t have very many incoming links, and still has only a few feed subscribers — probably because the posts are erratic and far between. But it got a PR4 from scratch. Read on»
My co-conspirator in The Usual Suspects, Andrew, blogged about Google’s mathematical and financial problem-solving functionalities awhile back. The Google search bar doesn’t only return results of keyword queries, it also spits out sums, quotients, differences, even forex conversions.
My own preferred use of Google’s extended facility is as a look-up tool for vocabulary. That’s right, Google provides an online dictionary service. Try this out for size: the define: operator. Type a word or phrase after that operator, hit the search button, and Google comes back with word meanings, synonyms, actual usage.
I wish, though, that the Did you mean…? function also worked in case you misspelled a word. Read on»
I’m very pleased with myself right now. For one, I’ve been able to force myself to revive a dying blog of mine, Mission: 6-Pack Abs (http://sixpack.robilloblog.com). For months I’d neglected it (my last post was in late May), and it could’ve gone the way of the dodo, had I not decided to effect a major revamp.
Like Oprah or the Fab Five giving away home makeovers, a redesign is a sure way of rekindling your own interest in maintaining a blog. After a looong time procrastinating, I made myself face the hundreds of WordPress themes available and choose a new one for Mission: 6-Pack Abs. Fortunately, one sprung out and caught my eye. If you take a look at it, it is rather red all over… but I like it. And that’s the important part. You should like your own blog, or you just might get tired of it. So, after several hours (non-continuous, though) of tweaking and manipulating the codes and scripts — voilà! A blog reborn. Read on»
Last night’s blogger and SEO get-together at 51 Coffee Shop with Aileen Apolo (Google country consultant) gave us a chance to meet up with a few new faces in the Davao blogosphere. We were hoping to get more people to show up, but I guess the rain was one culprit why many didn’t make it. Hmmm… why is it that each time we hold a bloggers’ meet-up here, it rains…. But Andrew, Jun, Marc, Migs and Ria were present, of course — The Usual Suspects are always where the action is, come hell or high water. 
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Today I woke up to a text message from my friend, Janette, congratulating me for my blogs’ new PageRank numbers. Woohoo!!! Finally, the Big G’s gotten ’round to ranking my sites! All of them are new blogs, created only this year (well, the first two below are actually much older blogs, but since I got my own domains for them, Google considers them new sites). I’m in the mood for a little showing off… just humor me.
Read on»
