I will still write for 451 Press at Wiirally.com and Msstate-college.com. Come by and visit when you can.

First of all, if you are banking on your friends’ diggs to help you out, then you need a lot of friends. Making the front page of Digg will take a lot of diggs. Here are some numbers from a week’s worth of Digg’s most popular stories with the first number representing the popular stories of the day and the second being the least amount of diggs for a story:

March 27 - 105 diggs, least digg - 240
March 26 - 78 -least diggs - 266
march 25 - 95 -least 332
March 24 - 71 - least 277
march 23 - 61 - least 350
march 22 -42 - least 302
march 21 - 76 least 263
March 20 - 89 least 204

So, just like in high school, there is a small percentage of stories that actually become popular on Digg. While a popular story will bring you a lot of traffic, it will take either a lot of work or sheer luck to have it make the popular list.

And no, this isn’t an April Fools Prank. As of March 27, they no longer use Google to conduct searches. Now search results through Blingo are a mash of Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com.

If you haven’t heard about Blingo, it’s from Publisher’s Clearing House. You conduct searches like normal but with each seach, you have a chance to win a prize like a $5 Amazon gift card. The $5 prizes are the most common but some prizes do have a higher value. Get your friends to sign up, and everytime they win, you win, too.

Now those clean, search results are garbled with ads that bleed into the actual search results. Sponsored results are mingled in between actual results and look very much like a normal search hit except it says ‘Sponsored by’ in front of the web address. Many people seemed displeased with the change since Google offers clean results and clearly marked sponsored ads. I conducted a search for ‘casual games’ on Blingo today, and sponsored ads definitely blend in with regular results. I do like that it is marked which search engine the result came from.

Searches now might offer a wider variety of result options now that three search engines findings are displayed. Either people will get used to it or they will might find move on to another win and search engine since apparently there are several of them out there.

If you don’t want to be bombarded with comments, emails, and backlash, then make sure to make it clear after April 1st that it was indeed a joke. This way when people find it six months from now, they will know that it was all in jest. Remember on the Internet information is always fresh. That’s why I still receive email forwards that first surfaced in the 1990s. New people will find it, take it for fact, and then act accordingly. Sure, everyone loves a good joke. It’s just harder to make sure everyone ‘gets it’ through this new media.

April 1st has already begun in some parts of the world. Several bloggers have posted their pranks and many have fallen for it. Some have even blogged their response to their “news” only to have to later retract everything. Jokes are fun but just remember that the audience will be reading it long after April 1st, so make sure that after April Fools has past to edit your article.

There are a lot of people that will tell you that linking to your own articles in a blog post is a good thing. It will help to garner views for your other posts. But too much of it can be a turn-off to some readers. Here’s why.

A lot of readers look to weblinks in stories as reference citations. It’s like proof of the idea you are talking about. If you constantly link to your website as proof, then you can lose credibility with some readers. We’ve all known people who will give their opinion as fact. If they only cite themselves, then they can possibly lose readership since some will not respond well to that.

We can apply the saying, “everything in moderation” when it comes to linking to your past stories. A little self-promotion is fine but going overboard might send the wrong impression.

Are you twittering yet? I have been playing on Twitter for the past week and really see how this can be an effective promotional and, more importantly, networking tool.

Twitter is like any other social networking outlet. The more time you put into it, the better chance you have at reaping rewards. There are many folks who are using Twitter who have shared their thoughts and opinions:

Twitter vs Facebook Kinda (video post)

Reasons I’m not following you on Twitter

Twitter Guide Talking in < 140 spaces

There are plenty articles on Twitter as it seems bloggers are very fond of Twitter. And bloggers tend to blog what they know. If you’d like to follow me on Twitter, add me. I like to follow back.

I’m not following that many people right now. Mainly those that I’ve either heard of through message boards or the Internet in general. A few are some recognized names in the world of blogging like Darren Rowse and Robert Scoble. It’s a lot of information and quite frankly hard to process it all. But with each day, or even hour, there is new content and new opinions to read. I love it but it makes it hard when you run across a great idea or something you want to explore a little more to have time to do it.

I can’t count the number of ideas I’ve had for my blogs this past year or even just this past week. Sometimes I’m on fire with ideas. The sad part is that at least half never make it out of my head.

The really good ideas, though, always come back. Most fall by the wayside but those that stay with me are the ones I develop into content. I think this same philosophy can be applied to SEO practices. You have to vigorously pursue those methods that feel right to you. Using keywords might not be a talent you have. Keywords aren’t everything when it comes to SEO. Find those traffic building and promotional methods that really set you a blaze and pursue them to the fullest. Let those other great ideas of the moment fall by the wayside. If an idea stays with you for a few days, then take notes because it could be something big and well worth doing.

Back in November, Google apparently smacked several blogs and websites for that had paid links. Many lost all of their PR while others reported losing as much as 2. Has Google forgiven those of their past transgressions and have become to restore their lost PageRank?

Many are reporting that their PageRank has returned with the latest Google dance. Apparently it is not full Page Rank it was prior to November, but it’s a start. But is the return of PageRank to some websites a a peace offering from Google or just a fluke?

I doubt Google has changed their stance when it comes to paid links that do not use the nofollow tag. Here are my thoughts. When Google took away PR, that they might have just reset it to zero, so naturally after a few months and a couple of PR updates, those websites will organically gain back PR. I’m not sure if that is their plan or if Google will just reset it back to zero. I guess time will tell.

Something just struck me as I just finished a post on another blog. I finished the post with a question, which hopefully some readers will feel inclined to answer in comments. It made me think that when I read a post with a question, I feel the need to answer even if I don’t normally comment on the blog.

Some bloggers thrive on comments while others don’t really care about them. If you are wanting to see more comments on your blog, then engage your reader. Leave them with a question. They have come to your post to read. Now leave them with something to think about.

By ending your post with a question, then the reader will hopefully want to start a conversation through comments. It at least works on me, and I’m willing to guess that other feel more like posting comments when asked a question.

Ask.com has decided to stop trying to compete with Google. They will retool their website to appeal to married women. Women will be able to find a recipe, find help with their children’s homework, and other related topics. Ask.com will be returning to its original idea of answering questions that are relevant to women’s issues.

In 1996, Ask established itself as a search engine that people could ask questions and find relevant results. Ask would display a list of questions to help narrow down search results and display only relevant results.

Ask will lay off 40 people, about 8% of its workforce.

I believe this to be a good move for Ask.com. What made them unique was their natural-language search engine, where people could ask questions and find exactly what they are looking for. I was coming around to the new Ask.com since their relaunch last year. It is a good search engine service but for plain search results, it’s hard to beat Google. Sadly, that’s what most people are looking for - just search results - not related content or songs they might be interested in because of their search.

Being 5th when it comes to search engines, this restructure of Ask.com seems like a wise move. To be able to focus on one area could possibly generate more loyal users. Moms are always busy. To have a search engine that can find what information they need without having to sort through pages of search results should be quite popular. Now if only Ask.com will bring back Jeeves.