Should You Stop Blogging? A Great Article by Chris Crum

I read an article today by Chris Crum at Web Pro News. He mentioned an article posted by Wired "Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004" which has created quite a stir.
Chris says:

"I would even go so far as to say that they're just getting started. Yes, there is plenty of worthless content out there. I would personally say the same thing about television, but do I think television is dead as a medium? No (Granted, I do think there is some big change coming for TV courtesy of the online video revolution, but that's another discussion entirely). "

He goes on to say:

"One reason why blogs are in no danger of extinction, is that their content is entirely "on demand" - meaning if you don't like a blog, you don't have to read it, and you can move on to another one that you do like. You can subscribe to the ones you enjoy and get all the content you want, and if you don't like the content from one of those at any point, you can simply unsubscribe and stop reading it. If you have any complaints about a blog, then you have the choice to go elsewhere. Why is that a problem? Why would that signal the extinction? Because "elsewhere" could be Twitter or Facebook? I don't think so."

To read the full post and the many comments here is the link http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/10/21/should-you-stop-blogging

Webmaster Tools Update - This Is Very Helpful!

Matt Cutts has a post on his blog about an update on their webmaster tools that will be very helpful for folks who work web sites and for folks working their own site.

Before I send you off to his blog to read about this I have to tell you that this information helped me to find some issues with my site that I did not realize were issues. So, if you do not deal with this directly have your web master check it out for you - it is worth it.

Here's Matt :)

A brief from his blog:

"I can’t believe a new feature from Google isn’t getting more notice, because it converts already-existing links to your site into much higher quality links, for free.

When someone comes to your site’s webserver and asks for a page that doesn’t exist , most web servers are configured to return an HTTP status code of 404, which means that the page was “Not Found.” If someone links to a page on your site that doesn’t exist, most webservers give a pretty sucky experience: visitors usually land on a pretty useless page, and search engines might not give you full credit for those 404 errors. "

Read more here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/free-direct-text-links/

I just touched on this briefly today so will get back to you.

Jan

Google Analytics - Set-up For Your Client - Blow Yours Off!

Ok so the title may sound a bit strange but let me tell you what happened.

First, anyone that works in my field no doubt has set-up Google Analytics for clients and put coding on their pages. Usually they sign-up and give you their account information so you can enter the domains and inset the code - right. That's normally what happens with me.

A couple of weeks ago a client wanted me to set-up his analytics. He wanted me to do this through his Adwords account. In order for me to do this I had to get admin privileges. That was fine and I set up his sites and put the coding in. No problem, all worked fine. Except when I went to check my own Google Analytics for my sites. Guess what happened - yep!

I went to sign into what I thought was my account and instead I was now signed into his. No sign of my sites. Nada.

Luckily my partner had originally hooked up the account so I could get in and check to make sure everything was working. It appears to be, though many of my pages now have no bar and even my overall page rank has dropped. Does this 'mix-up' have anything to do with that, I don't know, not yet.

I have signed up for a new Google account and have permissions on my own analytics now. I also have a support ticket into Google.

The moral of the story - if you are going to set up Google Analytics for a client always use THEIR login and password information - not yours.

I'll keep you posted on what Google says.

A bit wiser this Friday...

Jan