Blogger announced yesterday the release of two new gadgets that should prove to be popular with its users, "Popular Posts" and "Blog Stats".

Both gadgets utilize data collected by Blogger's new internally-tracked stats.


The Popular Posts gadget will automatically find and display blog posts that have the most pageviews. You can choose whether to display image thumbnails or post snippets in addition to the post title. You can also choose the time window to be used for calculating pageviews and the number of posts you’d like to display.

The Blog Stats gadget lets you show off pageview data, with a handful of configuration options that are easily controlled. You can choose from a variety of styles and display options. There's also an option to let you select the time window to be used for calculating pageviews.

Read more about it at Blogger Buzz.  ✓

Yesterday I published an article explaining how posting comments on other peoples' blogs can help or not help your PageRank.

Today, I'm going to tell you how other people commenting on your blog will hurt your PageRank.

And it has to do with the rel="nofollow" attribute. Specifically, blog comments hurt your PageRank only when they include a link, either a link in the text of the comments, or a link in the Name field of the comments.

Will blog commenting help your PageRank, if you include your link in those comments? The short is answer is no. For SEO purposes, it's a waste of time.

Commenting on other blogs is a practice that has long been suggested by SEO experts as a way to improve your rankings on Google. But these days, the SEO is value is no more. That's because most blogs include the rel="nofollow" tag, which effectively blocks PageRank from passing through to your website. Blogger automatically does this on all blogs, as does WordPress and TypePad.

However, there are hacks and plugins that allow webmasters to change this over to "dofollow". Nonetheless, perhaps 90% of the blogs out there are "no follow blogs" and make blog commenting worthless as far as SEO is concerned.

But that doesn't mean blog commenting is totally worthless. It's still a good practice for a few reasons...

Marc LeVine, a social media consultant, writes in his blog about how a neighborhood locksmith company launched a You Tube channel, and produced some short humorous videos to create some viral marketing...

Indeed, Fidelity Locksmiths has an active social (media) life on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, where they have created some very funny and memorable short commercials to capture their audience’s imagination along with their business.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXzT5APbUnw&feature=mfu_channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw0U2sYOmq4&feature=mfu_channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmIMChrzIW0&feature=player_embedded

Was browsing around the Digital Point forums and read about this rather clever method of getting a million people to "like" your Facebook page.

It works like this...

1. Make a bunch of fake Facebook log-in accounts (100 or more)


2. Get people to friend each account. You can get tons of friends by joining the Mob Wars, Mafia Wars, Farmville pages and groups where people need more friends to reach higher levels. Shoot for a 1,000+ friends per account.


3. Now set up a page, start posting some content.


4. Use 10 of your fake Facebook accounts to "like" this page. Every 4-5 days add another 5-6 fake accounts. This keeps the page under the highlights on your Facebook friends wall more often.


5. With each fake Facebook account, send out page suggestions to its respective friends.


6. As these friends "like" your page, a status update will publish to their wall which their friends can see.

Scott Roberts, who writes a blog about spicy food, submits an article entitled, "8 Ways to Have an Unsuccessful Food Blog".

Scott and I were co-judges in a recent beef jerky contest, so I've been following his stuff.

While his article might be focused on food blogs, some of the things he points out are applicable to any niche.

But being the publisher of a beef jerky blog, I have some things to add to this...

Is it necessary to have an attractive, professional looking website to earn more advertising income, better conversions, more leads?

Generally speaking, no. But it doesn't hurt.

Think of it like a girlfriend or boyfriend. Initially you're attracted by their looks, but eventually what really matters is the substance. If they're loyal, make you dinner, and make your life better overall, the good looks is just icing on the cake.

Five years ago I wrote a similar article on this blog, "Does It Help to Have a Great Looking Website?" I thought I'd revisit that article because today I redesigned this blog to make it look more pretty and more professional.

The commenters on your blog is something your advertisers will evaluate when choosing to buy advertising placements from you.

Where comments tend to consist mostly of bashing, cursing, flaming, advertisers are not going to do business with you. Advertisers don't want their products and services associated with immature commenters.

All of us publishers start out small, and we start out monetizing our traffic with marketing networks like Google AdSense, Commission Junction, ValueClick, et al, where the publisher does not have to interface with another human being.

Five years ago I posted an article on this blog entitled, "Where Do You See Yourself Five Years From Now?"

In that article I did not state where I would see myself. My intent was to make you think about this.

I mean, we as publishers tend to just stay in a groove, writing posts, commenting on others, checking our stats, eating dinner, going to sleep, and then doing it all over again the next day. You should instead have a plan to work towards. That is, eventually you should get to a point where your websites make money automatically, and you can run away for months at a time, and only logging into to check stats and e-mail.

So now that it's five years from that earlier post, where am I today?

It appears that Google Instant will change the SEO landscape.

Google Instant launched yesterday. It displays search results as you type. It only works when you search from Google's search page, and right now only for USA users.

I typically conduct my Google searches from the address field of Chrome browser, and Google Instant doesn't work from there. I'm not sure sure if it works from Google's toolbar (the one that integrates into IE and Firefox), and I'm not sure if it works from co-branded portal pages from companies like Compaq, Sony, and Verizon.

Anyways, I tested out several search queries.

I'm starting to gain some good traction with the eBay affiliate program lately, or more correctly named eBay Partner Network. On my beef jerky blog, it's become my second best revenue stream, second only to direct advertising sales.

If you're not using eBay's affiliate program, it's worth your while to explore.

http://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com

They pay a per click fee that varies based on the quality of traffic you refer. Quality is defined as the long term value of each person you refer, including the purchases they make, the stuff they sell, how often they use PayPal, and other factors.

I was reading a post by Jim Kukral entitled, "Are You Thinking Like Google", in which he tries to explain why Google has become so successful. He offers up the same easy answer that so many other Internet analysts have offered up, which is that Google offers the most quality search results...

So why does Google win? Because Google is the world's biggest, and best, problem solver....

...The truth is, Google (and your business) has to solve problems for their (your) customers, the Internet searcher. If they (you) can't do that, they (you) lose customers. It's that black and white.

Would you buy SEO & Marketing services from a company that can't even spell "Marketing"?

Marketing is misspelled in the ad banner at the top

Just as it was about to succumb to the fiery depths of Hell, I decided to keep my old AdSense blog and make another go at trying to earn a buck-a-month off of it...

http://www.moneywithadsense.com/

I just posted an article on there (here's the direct link) about why I'm putting it back online, and why I stopped writing it in the first place.  ✓