May 10 While reading Rory’s post on hamelife.com (which I enjoyed because it was very interesting plus my blog got a mention!) I continued surfing and happened upon this post about nofollow links.
I doubt that many of you would want to read the wikipedia article explaining what I’m talking about so I will briefly explain. Search engines (Google among them) have an algorithm that uses the amount of links to your website as a part of how to determine the important of your website (this is called your PageRank in the end). This is, in part, what is used to determine how high you are when searches are done.
However to combat people abusing the system, they started to allow you to add an attribute relationship in the links like
goingthewongway
This would then be disregarded in the algorithm to calculate your PageRank. The bottom line is that any links that have that attribute are worth nothing for search engines.
Why is this important?
As a blogger, being read is what’s important! Search engines allow your site to be listed as “more relevant” which could allow more people to find your site and read your content. I don’t write on this blog to understand myself. I write because I like to share my thoughts and get feedback from others. So after reading the article and thinking about it myself, I realized that it definitely encourages more feedback if commenters can get something back. The big popular sites like to do fancy giveaways, but I’m not a big popular site. However, I realized that the least that I could do would be to give anyone who commented a backlink! This helps them because it ever so minutely increases their importance in the eyes of the search engine. And it would hopefully help commenters to have another incentive to leave their thoughts.
Anyways suffice to say I installed the ever so easy to use DoFollow plugin for Wordpress which removes the nofollow attribute for all user-input links (like the website that you list when you leave a comment). Happy nofollow commenting!
May 8 Let us rewind back to the days of our youth. Let us go to health class. Ah the fight or flight response.
A novel stimulus (which could include a perception of danger or an environmental stresser signal such as elevated sound levels or over-illumination), once perceived, is relayed from the sensory cortex of the brain through the thalamus to the brain stem. That route of signaling increases the rate of noradrenergic activity in the locus ceruleus, and the person becomes alert and attentive to the environment. -Wikipedia article
Does this happen in your life? Of course it does! Everyday it happens! When that person cuts you off and then stares you down because they think that you got too close to them, what happens? When a bully starts to belittle you, how do you react?
When you go to get the mail, open the door, and realize that there is a Dolichovespula arenaria right next to your hand, what happens? You flight!
When you wake up in the morning, realize that there was a spider in your dream, proceed to wake up and get ready for the day, calmly do your morning stretches as you read a magazine, and a Pholcus phalangioides walks right in front of you while you’re sitting on the ground, what happens? You fight!
Yes, I lived it. Yes, you might also. The lesson to be learned is that sometimes you fight and sometimes you flight. It’s not always good to have a headstrong attitude in whatever you do. And it definitely doesn’t pay off to always be a sissy. It depends on the situation.
May 7 When one is surfing the Internet, one does enjoy a way by which to navigate the wild wild Internet. One might see content that is intriguing. One would then want to peruse more of said content. Well one is in luck!
Sphere.com is a site whose goal is connecting people to related content. From their site:
Sphere is a startup from a handful of people passionate about connecting mainstream and conversational media content
Anyways, a little while ago I added a cool Sphere widget to the bottom of each post. Click on it (it won’t redirect you away from the page unless you click again) and you’ll see some (hopefully) related content. And then this site will be just another stone in your stepping. Anyways, hope that this is useful to you!
May 7 [ad-ij]
Definition:
Proverb, saying learned by experience
Example of usage:
At work when the boss wasn’t in, we were all a little less productive. I guess it’s just like the old adage goes, “When the cat is away, the mice will play.”
For some reason whenever I think of this word, I think that the word “old” should be prepended to it. It’s just another way to say “proverb.” Of course that is good because if you’re using this word then you probably know some proverb. And that would mean that you’re wise.
May 5 I happened on a site for Career Development a little while back (I believe from the Yahoo! homepage). It caught my eye because they had an article on helping with your resume. Now granted I already have a job, but I still remember what a pain it was to be searching for a job. At the time, I didn’t have time to read the article on doing a resume makeover, but I bookmarked the page to read at a later time. Boy am I glad that I did.
This site is run be a couple of people who have experience in corporate America. They give both their thoughts as well as their advice on topics that might be of use to those of us who are also working in some way. This ranges anywhere from the entrepreneurs to the low man on the totem pole. They have tips on resume writing, on interviewing, as well as a myriad of other topics. All of the posts are well thought out and fairly to the point (often consisting of lists). It’s especially useful reading for those looking for a job. Although the site as a whole reaches out to all of those of us who are working, individual posts aren’t always applicable. But I suppose that wide spectrum of people in the audience dictates that as necessary.
Anyways, days after initially bookmarking the page I added the site to my RSS reader. And as they say, I haven’t looked back since.
A few of my favorite posts thus far:
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Simple Resume Tips
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Resume Tips For Seasoned Professionals
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Money Saving Tips
They’re having a promotion where you link to their site as well as write a review. This essentially raises your online profile by providing their readers with a link to your site, and it also raises their ranking in search engines that use backlinks as a method by which to calculate “importance.” This is fairly beneficial for both parties involved. And even though they might have gotten the idea from a certain site about how to make money online by blogging ( ;-) ), I still think it’s a useful endeavor because this site is useful for nearly everyone out there!