Today is my first day ranked as an Alexa top 100,000 site. When I started blogging, I didn’t really know much about what all the rankings meant, but I knew that I wanted to get my Alexa Rank in the top 100,000 because that was their cutoff for caring about your site.
I have read several articles about how Alexa ranking was useless, but never took it to heart. While I don’t hold Alexa in the same high esteem as I did when I first started, I still believe Alexa ranking provides great information about the type of traffic you have… Click to continue...
Tweeter has been the center of a ton of attention the last year. It’s explosive growth and strength as a real time organic search engine, instant breaking news resource, and marketing tool provide people using it an amazing advantage over those who don’t.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about 5 Twitter Newbie Mistakes To Avoid which was a great hit and some basic information about Twitter Lists. The success of those articles has made me do a lot of thinking about how to get the most out of Twitter.
Five Reasons To Use Twitter
If you’re like me, you use Twitter for 5 reasons: To find… Click to continue...
A lot has been going on this week here in Props Blog land. Today is my first anniversary with my beautiful wife Leah! We also signed disclosure papers on a house and expect to finish closing by the end of the month. Last but not least, we’re expecting in June! (Talk about being busy)
You’ll also notice a lot has changed here at Props blog in the last month. I’ve been completely changing up the theme to make it more attractive and easier to navigate (hopefully it has helped).
I have noticed a steady increase in both traffic and RSS subscribers. I finally manned up and signed… Click to continue...
Webpage design is critical to effectively capturing your reader’s attention and keeping them on your page. If a reader arrive and nothing catches their eye, they are likely to bounce right away. When there is too much going on, a reader might not know where to start, get frustrated, and leave too. Finally, if the reader’s attention is drawn to unimportant parts of your page, they won’t end up reading the information you think is important.
Use Feng Shui for Graphic User Interface Eye Tracking
One of the best ways to increase the impact your site has on a new visitor is to optimize the design of your site… Click to continue...
Most content marketers (bloggers) know branding is one of the most important aspects of building trust, authority, and a following. Without a strong brand, it is easy to be forgotten.
While the writing style of an author or the quality of a product are huge aspects in branding, there is nothing more important to branding than the name.
When you hear John Chow, you think of Make Money Online (or evil blogger depending on how long you’ve known him). When you hear Nike you think sports apparel. When you hear Twitter you think of spam… errr.. I mean social media.
The point is, without a strong brand name, your product will be hard to recognize. Having… Click to continue...
**We interrupt your normally scheduled post with a Twitter List update**
About a two weeks ago, I was reading ShoutMeLoud.com and came across an article about the Beta for Twitter Lists. I wondered how exactly Twitter decided who to invite and hoped to be included.
Then about 30 minutes ago, I was looking at my secondary Twitter profile which I recently started (more of a mix of personal and blog instead of just blog) and saw that I was on 1 list.
I thought to myself “hmm, how am I on a list with my BlakeWaddill account, but not my Propsblog account.” The… Click to continue...
Ever since I started using computers, I’ve always been interested in ASCII art. I remember how cool I thought I was as a 10 year old making faces like };^> (the devil). When I found the internet the level of ASCII art stepped it up a few notches. Being able to draw crazy pictures in IRC using macros once again made me feel cool.
I’m more grown up now. I only laugh half the time when people burp or say the word “penis” (haha!). ASCII art no longer strikes me with awe as much as it once did, but there are still actually a couple of fun uses for it.
Three Fun Uses for… Click to continue...
At this point I think it’s safe to say that 99.9% of bloggers who have any interest in making money online currently have or once had Google Adsense on their page. It’s fast and easy to setup, and there are no requirements for getting started.
Pay Per Click Ads Are Frustrating
Pay Per Click ads are somewhat frustrating by nature. You spend hours optimizing your site to have just the right number of ads in the right places, so you don’t look like a tool just trying to make money (even if that is what you are).
Each morning you check your Adsense. So far today, you might have 2 clicks each worth $1.50 each. Not a bad average depending on your keywords (I have heard $5+ in some… Click to continue...
If you have a blog or a product webpage, SEO is something you’re probably concerned about. Who wouldn’t want to end up on the front page of Google?
There are countless theories behind what helps your SERP rank. In my opinion, anything that changes the way you write isn’t worth trying because if you aren’t putting your readers first, there is no point in blogging.
So how can you optimize your SEO if you don’t change the way you write?
Website Grader by HubSpot
When I first saw a Website Grader badge, I assumed it was silly ranking that had little to no relevance to the site like an Alexa… Click to continue...
If you have been on twitter at all in the last 3 days you would have noticed a new trending topic called Google Wave. When I first saw it, I figured it some goofy Twitter trending topic like #ChrisBrownsBowTie. I wasn’t ready for what I was about to find out…
Yesterday, I was browsing Lifehacker and came across their First Look at Google Wave where one of the writers lucky enough to get invited to the Wave demonstrated the power of Google Wave with a screan shot fill review. I promptly proceeded to devour that article followed by watching the 1 hour and 20 min Google Wave developer preview video.
What Is Google Wave… Click to continue...
