2009 April | WassupBlog

Subscribe To WassupBlog
There are many reasons why you should subscribe to my list, the most important one being you will never miss out on an important update. Then of course you have the added advantage of having your name and site listed on the MyList page and we all know how much Google loves one way links!

Also, if you subscribe to my LIST you will only get updates to new posts. You will never be spammed! Subscribe To WassupBlog's New Posts!

Archive for April, 2009

Blogging As A Source Of Information

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 2:49 am

Comments (20)

The good thing about being a blogger is that not only can you share your experiences with others you can also share theirs. This is all possible through interaction with those who visit your blog and by visiting the blogs of others. I believe that interaction through commenting is the key to a successful blog which is why a lot of my posts are dedicated to different facets of commenting.

Blogging is also a great way to discover new things which brings me to the crux of this post. In South Australia we have a phenomena known as the Whispering Wall which is a great little stopover when visiting the Barossa Valley, our premier wine region.

Work on the dam commenced in 1899 and was completed in 1903. The design was so new it even made the Yanks sit up and take notice. At a height of 36 meters and length of 144 meters it was remarkable for the time, but although the wall offers great views of the Barossa Reservoir and surrounding area that is not what makes it one of the most visited attraction in South Australia.

What makes The Whispering Wall so popular is its unique acoustic effects that allow you to whisper at one end, and have your friend hear your whisper 144 meters away. If you were to continue the dam it would form a perfect circle and it’s the perfect curve of the dam wall that bounces the sound waves, along the wall.

I believe that other phenomena exists in other parts of the world and I am asking you, my readers to enlighten me as to what they are and where they can be found. Perhaps, if you are a blogger, you may want to do a post about it and link back to this post. I will then add a link to your post within this post.

Just to finish off, a little poem that I put together.

The Whispering Wall
Stands strong and firm
For many years its waters held
Many a word it has heard

A lover’s promise
A villain’s curse
A child’s laughter
A bully’s boast

Yet careful you must be
What one end says
The other end hears
No secret does it hold dear

Follow this link if you would like to learn more about the Whispering Wall.

A Related Post Plugin For WordPress Makes Sense

Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 2:13 am

Comments (42)

There are many reasons for linking to posts within your own blog, the very least being that it may have some SEO advantages. Three that come to mind include;

It can tie in other posts that may be relevant to the one you are writing at the moment.
Resurrecting old posts so that it brings peoples attention back to those posts.
Keeps readers on your blog longer if they choose to follow your links

One blogger that does this well is Mitch and his post Top Three Do’s and Don’ts is a good example of how this is done. Take note that he also links to other blogs which some bloggers of note say is critical to blog growth.

The thing is that all this takes time and many bloggers will not take the time necessary to link between their own posts. Yep, I reckon I am one of them, which is why I was pretty happy to come across YARRP, Yet Another Relatated Posts Plugin. Once installed and configured this plugin will find other posts within your blog and place ‘Related Posts’ links at the end of your posts, a great way of introducing related articles to the readers of a blog.

EDIT: According to s couple of my blogging mates, Stratos, author of Blogger Buddy, and Donace, Of Nexus, YARRP is a little CPU hungry and I’ve learned in a previous post how using too much CPU can be detrimental to your WordPress Blog. Now I’ve learned before that on occasion, this being one of them, it pays to listen to your friends and so I’ve installed Microkid’s Related Posts plugin istead. I reckon even Mitch will like this plugin as it gives you complete control of which related posts you want to include. Like the author says;

This plugin makes it super easy to manually select related posts. You can search and select posts that fit your criteria, all from within the write/edit post screen.

So, thanks for the tip guys, I like this plugin a whole lot better, and sometime this century I will go over my old posts to find Related Posts but at least I will use it for all my new posts.

What Search Terms Are People Using To Find You

Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 1:50 am

Comments (24)

When people market their blogs or websites they usually target either a keyword or a set of keywords that they want to achieve a high ranking for in the search engines. The reason for this being, if done correctly, when a person types that particular keyword or string of keywords then their blog or website is listed right at the top of the search page if not somewhere on page one of any particular search engine.

Personally I couldn’t be bothered with all that as I find it boring and time consuming. Still, having said that I find it interesting, if not amusing, some of the terms that people use that lead them to my blogs. I just want to share some of them with you.

Rudd is bullshit: Funny enough if someone uses the word bullshit in their search string it usually points to my Load Of Bullshit Blog. This particular term ranked 4 on Google and lead to Kevin Rudd Wants The dead To Stimulate The Economy
Microword Corporation: No.1 on Google and points to my Microword Corporations Sweepstake Promotion post.
Chinatown Adelaide: Ranked no. 4 and leads to Adelaide’s Very Own Chinatown
wordpress “better than thesis“: Pointed to FlexSqueeze Putting The Squeeze On Thesis and was ranked at no.2
melbourne mayor 2009: This actually ranked as no.4 and points to my Melbourne Mayor Is Full Of Shit Post, which I find amusing because it seems that the only way this poor excuse for a mayor can get noticed is by slagging off at other cities.
mastering thesis theme: This one actually made it to n0.2 and the word that helped it to get to those heights was ‘mastering’ so it just goes to show how important it is to pick the right word. Before I forget it pointed to my My First Impression Of The Thesis Theme.
cool blog links: Still ranked no.1 and every time this search term is used it leads straight to my Cool Blog Links site which may be a good reason to join, don’t you think?
themes/flexisqueeze: Believe it or not this actually got ranked second and because of a typo. Still, that doesn’t mean that you should stop proof reading your posts. See if you can find the typoFlexSqueeze Putting The Squeeze On Thesis | WassupBlog
london bridge before collapse: The Collapse Of The Great London Bridge ranked no.4 and shows the importance posting more than just photos on your photo blog. Think about it for a bit, if all you post is a photo how are the search engines going to find you. The title alone probably won’t be enough.
bullshit.com: I was pretty disappointed when I found out that someone beat me to the bullshit.com domain, but it’s not all that bad as my blog still ranks as no.4 even for that search term.

So, what does all this prove? That keywords are important and that by using them in your title as well as your post will usually improve your SERP rankings. I say usually because you never know what Google is going to do.

Obama Girl’s Stimulating The Stimulus Package

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

Comments (30)

My intention for Wassup Blog has always been to inform and to entertain in the hope that if I achieve this more and more people will return to see what new content I’ve come up with. This has never been a niche blog and was never intended as such. I have posted on a variety of subjects from blogging tips to making money with a few of my own short stories thrown in. I think that I have been succeeding as I’ve noticed a definite increase in Wassup’s readership.

This post falls into the entertainment category. It’s a video from the Barely Political Series featuring the sexy Obama Girl. The video was produced as a fun reaction to Obama Barack’s stimulus package. I’ve seen a few of these and I must say that this is definitely one of the better ones.

Happy Easter To All My Blogging Mates And Getting Original Articles

Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 5:02 am

Comments (35)

Hey guys, changing my blog theme to represent the different holiday season, whether it be Christmas, Halloween, Easter or whatever is something that I always wanted to do but never did because it was all too damn hard. Not with the FlexSqueeze Theme, once I had picked the banner and background images it only took me five minutes.

The best thing is that I know I can restore the blog to it’s previous setup with the click of the mouse. The reason it is so simple is because the FlexSqueeze Theme admin page allows me to save my previous setup as a CSV file, which I called Wassupblog.csv, so when Easter is over I just import that file and the blog is restored to it’s original setting. Pretty neat huh? I can have a separate CSV file for absolutely any occasion, that I can tweak to my hearts content and incorporate as simple as 1,2,3.

Anyway, while I’ve got your attention, I may as well write about something that bloggers do when the need arises. Bloggers as a whole stick together and when we see a mate who is promoting something worthwhile, whether its a service or perhaps an easier more profitable way of doing things, we help them by letting others know what that service or need is. We do this by linking to their blog.

I know that there are many bloggers who for one reason or another are finding it hard to keep up with their posting regime. When you’ve worked hard to build up a decent readership base the last thing that you want is to lose it just because of some unsuspected circumstance that have taken you away from maintaining your normal posting routine.

It’s important to keep your blogs updated because the moment you start to slack off people become disappointed and begin to unsubscribe and you start to lose your hard fought for readership. Once lost it can become difficult to get them back.

Now I will get to the part on how I am going to help my mate Mitch who is offering a very important and useful service that will help bloggers in this situation. Mitch, for a very reasonable price will write original articles for anyone in need. Just by reading Mitch’s blog you will see what a proficient writer he is, and not making use of his talent and letting your blog lose traction would be a terrible shame.