Cheftonio on "Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!"

Hello everyone. Welcome to "Who Are The Bloggers In Your Neighborhood?" on "Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!"- this is where we get to meet some very interesting personalities in the local blogosphere.

Our first blogger is Cheftonio of cheftonio.blogspot.com. By day, Cheftonio has a regular job just like everyone else. As a marketing executive, he's online a lot- mostly, to corner the internet for orders. He currently works for Binalot and Potato Corner at the Puregold on the corner of Araneta Avenue and E. Rodriguez Avenue in Q.C.

For now, at least. Cheftonio says, "In the future, I will be working for more franchised/owned stores and offer them my services."

So between then and now, Cheftonio has been doing a lot of blogging- all because he likes to write. He's been at it for a year now, and has blogs on travel, gadgets and lifestyle among other things.

But his main blog- Cheftonio's B Log- is more about politics. Something he definitely feels passionate about. Check it out- it has some interesting reads. Paints you a good picture of local politics if you need some brushing up.

Cheftonio The Blogger.

While Cheftonio blogs on both his PC and his laptop, he moves around a lot, and so prefers his lightweight Twinhead laptop. When not blogging, he likes meeting people, doing business, researching, and reading.

Chef uses Multiply and Hukay.com a lot, and admits that he'd like to learn more on generating traffic, link-building and monetization. As for SEO- he chooses to focus on content: just keep coming up with interesting and helpful articles.

I asked him if he knew of good places with free wi-fi, and he directed me towards a gadget blog- after a quick review, I figured the whole topic deserves a totally separate blog entry- which you can read here. Thanks, Chef.

Blogger Advice from Cheftonio.

"Just write whatever you want," he tells his fellow bloggers. "Make sure to mention them (your sources) if you are copy-pasting," he adds.

True enough- sometimes, we do see some bits of an article we wrote posted verbatim with even the exact same format on another blog. Proper blog etiquette dictates that, at the very least, cite your source and provide a link to the original text.

Even better, email the source- ask permission. You even get their blessings that way- and you gain more through interaction.

"Who Are The Bloggers in Your Neighborhood?" is an effort on "Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!" to help educate amateur bloggers and those new to the blogging lifestyle by introducing them to the more established personages in the local blogging scene. Drop on in from time to time to check out who we're featuring.

Cheers, everyone!

Read more...

Fifty Posts and Counting. Now What?

This blog- "Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!" has already reached the fifty-post mark. Took me quite a while- probably about a month and a half of steady writing to build it up to this point.

Fifty posts should be sufficient enough content to somehow set the general tone for any given blog, as well as provide enough reading for any casual passerby curious about the work you've put together.

For me however, putting together fifty posts is really more of an exercise in discipline and structure. It's more of a habit-forming activity, and I'm glad that it had worked for me. In fact, when I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is log on to my Blogger account and put out a post or two- if not on this blog, at least on another upcoming piece of work.

So at this point, what's next?

Now that I feel that I have enough content, and now that generating content seems to take less of an effort- we can now focus our attention on marketing this blog.

That would entail reading up on Internet Marketing in general- and various blog-specific aspects of it- Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), directory submissions, link building, Social Media Optimization (SMO), and more importantly, perhaps- interaction with fellow bloggers.

So for the next few posts, you know what you'll be expecting- we'll be discussing more Internet Marketing strategies, while consolidating gains from the content-building phase of putting a blog together.

"Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!" will continue its direction as a blog-building resource for starting bloggers- an online source for tips and advice for anyone who wants to get into the blogging lifestyle. That has always been the grand plan.

Seems we still have a lot more work before us, so let's get to it, shall we?

Read more...

Diddling with Del.icio.us

I was playing around with my del.icio.us account the whole day today, mainly trying to figure out how to slap a del.icio.us script at the footer of each post, versus just having one at the side of my blog.

Del.icio.us is a free social software web service for sharing web bookmarks. See, there used to be a time when you'd bookmark your favorite websites from whatever PC you'd be using at the moment.

Del.icio.us takes all that bookmarking several steps further because, not only can you store all your personal bookmarks on an easy-to-use, easy-to-access online account, you can also share your bookmarks with other people, as well as check out what other people are bookmarking.

Read the rest of the post on my blog on The Blogging Lifestyle, "Renzie on Blogging".

Cheers, everyone!

Read more...

How Serious Is Your Blog?

I just came from a highly informative, highly entertaining workshop on professional blogging. Of course as the discussion went on, there were lots of questions forming in my head- mostly on wanting to know how my blogs currently stacked up against pro-bloggers (professional bloggers :)).

More like, I'd like to know how much more I have to work on before I can actually be considered a serious blogger of any sort. And, well, as to be expected, it seems like I have LOTS more to do.

Your blog has to have anywhere from 50 to 100 posts to be considered a serious piece of work. Wow, that certainly sets the casual bloggers apart from the passionate ones, huh?

I get this. If the whole point of the exercise is to create a positive online experience for a reader- or just anyone casually dropping in on your blog- you really want to have enough stuff for your readers to sift through. Can't have 'em going through an empty blog now, can we?

That should also be enough material to establish the tone and pattern of your blog, show off some personality, and give you enough to showcase your knowledge and expertise on a particular topic.

While possibly daunting at first, 50 to 100 posts really is a good thing. It shows the amount of time, thought and effort you've put in to your blog. It gives the readers a better idea of what your blog is all about- and can therefore make it more likely for them to link to you, and keep coming back for something new and interesting. It allows you to market your blog, if you so wish, for ads, and more interestingly, for some cash.

50-100 posts should equate to just a few weeks, if you blog at least one post a day. And if a habit is supposedly formed in 21 days, by the time you've hit your 50 posts, you're so much into the blogging habit that it's totally effortless for you to put up a post or two.

So keep going at it. Keep churning out content. Good content- stuff you know people would like to read and stuff people will keep coming back for. Forget about the money, or carving out a niche for yourself, or building up rep- this one is all about making your blog a worthwhile labor of love more than anything else.

Let's get to it then!

Read more...

One at a Time...

I suppose I've realized it's one of my failings. I always try to get into too many things at any given time.

Take for example blogging. See, I know it's probably a good thing to just have ONE MAIN BLOG. You know, stick to what you're really passionate about and come up with an all-encompassing theme and just focus on JUST THAT.

After an inspiring workshop with Abe (last October 20, with Money Talks), it was supposed to be all clear- have a focus. If you want to have a blog working well for you, have a clear focus (aside from other useful tips he so generously shared).

Okay, so maybe I've gone a little over-enthusiastic and came up with, like, ten or twelve blogs or so. Could be more- who's keeping track anyway?

I got one for pretty much every single facet of my 30-something lifestyle- writing, music, business, cats (lasercats!), pc gaming, tv & movies, stress management, radio, marketing- well, you get the idea.

Perhaps the best way to go about it is to consolidate the little blogs into a certain interest-group blog, and then those into one main blog.

Yikes! More blogs!

There's no problem, I suppose, with having 50 million blogs. But you can only dedicate so much time to churning out content- which you can only post on a finite number of blogs- unless you have an entire army of keyboard monkeys on a constant mindlink to your brain at your disposal. Which is rather unlikely in most cases.

Let's think of it now as a restructuring of sorts. Pretty much in the same way as we re-evaluate our lives every so often, the so do we re-evaluate our online lifestyle. Has to be done, right?

Good God, maybe it's just me. Over-obsessive-at-times little ol' me.

But what the heck. It starts today, with this blog :) More later.

Read more...

The SEO Notebook: Renzie Dabbles In Search Engine Optimization, Pt. 2

Welcome to my series of notebooks on Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. No, I am no expert- I'm just a regular dude trying to understand this entirely new craft. These notebooks are for fellow "newbies" at SEO. I've compiled these notes, partially from what I do at work (developing content and optimizing sites for an Australian-based online retailer), but more from personal research, and to a lesser extent, what I have observed thus far.

Comments and questions are welcome. I will do my best to answer them, or at least point you to where you can get your answers.

Our previous post dealt with a brief overview on Search Engine Optimization. This is Part 2 of the ongoing SEO Notebook Project, which will cover a brief history of SEO, and SEO as a marketing tool.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

A Short History of SEO

It used to be that webmasters submit their pages or URL's to various search engines, which would then send a spider to "crawl" the page, then come back with the information and get everything indexed.
After a while, site owners then recognized the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible. So in order to boost visibility and to gain better placement in search engine results pages, white hat and black hat SEO practitioners were then employed.
Now you have to remember that back then, search algorithms mostly relied on webmaster-provided information (meta tags), so many early SEO practitioners abused this particular dependence to artificially increase page impressions (and therefore increase ad revenue). But now, search engines have become a lot more sophisticated, developing ranking algorithms that take into account other things that webmasters can't readily manipulate.
Then came the concept of page rank: an algorithm that rates the prominence of web pages based on the quantity and strength of inbound links: links coming into your site from other sites. It is all about discoverability- the likelihood of some surfer randomly surfing the web to check out your site, because he followed links from some other site.
Google entered the picture, considering not just PageRank and hyperlink analysis, but also other on-page factors. In fact, the true formula to coming up with the page rank can change from time to time, and usually without the knowledge of the general public, even SEO practitioners.
In any case, Google, Yahoo and MSN Live don't fully disclose any of these other considerations and on-page factors, so schemes like link farms don't have much of an impact anymore.
If you want to read up on notable SEO's, you may want to look up these guys: Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen. Look them up, and check out their forums and blogs.


A Note On Webmasters and Search Engines

There seems to be a developing relationship between Search engines and the SEO industry, with a push towards more responsible optimization activity. In fact, some search engines have already provided information and guidelines to help with site optimization.
Check Google's Sitemaps Program. Also, Yahoo! Site Explorer lets webmasters submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.


SEO as a Marketing Strategy

Fact: Researchers scan a SERP from top to bottom, and left to right. So placement is key.
But the number of search engine referrals does not guarantee sales. In fact, SEO might not be an appropriate strategy for every website, so other Internet Marketing strategies may actually be more effective- depending on your goals.
Successful Internet Marketing campaign uses a mix of organic results + paid advertising on search engines/other pages + high quality content + keeping tech issues to a minimum + good analytics program.
In addition to generating traffic and boosting page rank for your site, there must be an effort to always improve your site's conversion rate- so it really is all about being able to engage your incoming traffic into getting them to do what you want them to do: sign up for a service, purchase something, leave a few posts, click on a few links, etc.
Website operators should liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic (because many do), because in reality, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.


SEO and International Markets

Take note: While Google, Yahoo and MSN may be your top 3 search engines, other search engines could actually be better in some regions in the world.
We all know that Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007, with more than 75% of all searches. But did you know that...

• In Russia, Yandex controls 50% of the paid advertising revenue.
• In China, Baidu leads in market share.

When tapping international markets, you may consider translation of web pages, registration of a domain name (with a top level domain in the target market), and web hosting that provides a local IP address.
Otherwise, the fundamental elements of SEO are essentially the same, regardless of language.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More SEO topics for discussion later on. Part 3 of the ongoing SEO Notebook Project will cover SEO basics, or How To Improve Your Page Ranking.

Cheers!

Read more...

The SEO Notebook: Renzie Dabbles Into Search Engine Optimization, Pt. 1

Welcome to my series of notebooks on Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. No, I am no expert- I'm just a regular dude trying to understand this entirely new craft. These notebooks are for fellow "newbies" at SEO. I've compiled these notes, partially from what I do at work (developing content and optimizing sites for an Australian-based online retailer), but more from personal research, and to a lesser extent, what I have observed thus far.

Comments and questions are welcome. I will do my best to answer them, or at least point you to where you can get your answers.

That being said, let's all learn some SEO, shall we?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Search Engine Optimization is defined by Wikipedia as:

The science and art of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a particular web site from search engines via natural search results.

Natural (or organic) search results are the ones to the left of a search engine results page, or SERP. These are pure, unadulterated search results based on what people are actually typing into their search engine windows on Google, Yahoo, or whatever search engine then have, as opposed to paid ad results on the right of a SERP.

SEO is but a part of internet marketing (which we'll probably review more of later on). Among other things, SEO considers:

• how search algorithms work; or simply, what people actually search for
• a site's coding, presentation and structure
• possible issues that could prevent search engines from fully spidering (meaning, browsing and indexing for searchers to see) a site.
• new content, which is easily indexed (or spidered!)

Effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, therefore affecting web site development and design as well. We'll deal more of this later on.

The goal of any SEO practitioner is to go "search-engine friendly". This applies not only to website designs, but to menus, content management systems and shopping carts as well. As early as now, I'd like to point out: try to avoid Black Hat SEO or spamdexing. It 's really more like dabbling in the dark side of SEO. This practice uses link farms and keyword stuffing techniques that bloats your results. More sophisticated search engines already consider this! Plus, it may ruin long-term customer satisfaction.

You want to do the exact opposite: set your site up so it can create a positive experience for your customers, thus encouraging return traffic, better word-of-mouth and linkage, and better interactivity.

White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO

I personally advocate sticking to White Hat SEO. It produces results that last a long time, as I have mentioned above. So create content for users, not for search engines. Conform to search engines' guidelines; make your content easily accessible to spiders, rather than toying with the search algorithm. And more importantly: no misrepresentations!

-----------------------------------------------------------------
More SEO topics for discussion later on. Part 2 of the ongoing SEO Notebook Project will cover a brief history of SEO, and SEO as a marketing tool.

Cheers!

Read more...

Checked out Facebook yet?

Holy crap! If you guys haven't tried out Facebook yet, maybe you should give it a whirl. I just spent an entire Sunday morning trying out all the cool apps on it: you could make your very own Simpsons and Southpark avatars, load a couple of widgets on your favorite shows, take some personality tests, share files, and a whole lot of other great stuff.
I've been using Facebook these days to keep in touch with my relatives (Mom's side, anyway). Yeah you could make new friends too, look for new business contacts, or just plain network away to your hearts content. Compared to the other online social networking sites, Facebook sure is choc-full of fun, but for some reason (I may have just missed it though), I couldn't seem to find a way to customize the URL to make it more 'me'.
In any case, you may want to check it out. Look me up, add me to your 'Friends' list. Should be awesome.

Read more...