BlogPaws

Upping your blog traffic

by Yvonne DiVita

With a head's up to The Daily SEO Blog for their 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic, I wanted to share a few of my thoughts and encourage you to add yours in our comments section.

More blog traffic is a key wish for many of our bloggers. I'd say "all" but some of us aren't as concerned about more traffic as we are with great traffic. They are not the same thing.

More traffic is increasing your monthly pageviews - from 10,000 to 50,000 for instance. That involves getting more eyeballs to your blog via search engines, referrals, and other means (sharing on Facebook or Twitter, for instance).

Friday Freebies for your Blog: Photos from the U.S. Army's Photostream on Flickr

By Tom Collins

This week's resource is a BIG one that I'll come back to often for specific examples and links: images created by the government.

The photo here comes from The U.S. Army's Photostream on Flickr, with the caption, "Homeless dogs help healing troops." When you click through to the individual image, they've provided a nice little summary of the story behind the photo:

2012 - The Year To Take Charge

by Yvonne DiVita

From reports online and offline, this year is the year of the small business. A particularly interesting focus is on social media, which we're all about, as regular readers know.

Biz Report notes that "SMB Social Media Use Set To Explode" in an article showing these stats:

Borrell's "Main Street Goes Social" studyfound that SMBs will spend $2billion in 2012 on social marketing activity, up from $1.1billion in 2011.

Additionally, they note that "Social marketing expenditure by SMBs is expected to reach $3.9 billion in 2013." So, be prepared!

Banished! Words We Wish Would Go Away

by Yvonne DiVita

According to this page on the Lake Superior State University 2012 list of Banished Words, pet parent needs to 'go away.'

Personally, I object to the objection. Here's what Lynn Ouellette had to say about the term pet parent:

"Can a human being truly be a parent to a different species? Do pet 'owners' not love their pets as much pet 'parents' do? Are we equating pet ownership with slave holding? This cloyingly correct term is capable of raising my blood sugar. Lynn Ouellette, Buffalo, New York

Yes, Ms. Ouellette, pet owners do love their pets as much as you love your kids. Even those of us with kids love our pets as much. But then, we love most living, breathing creatures. Not just dogs and cats and kids. So, in my house, 'pet parent' stays. It's what I am - a parent. To my kids and my pets.

Delete that Spam!

by Yvonne DiVita

Oh for the days when spam was spam and your blog tool deleted it for you! Not so much, anymore. Spammers have evolved - they are as likely to be real people, as robots. When they are real people, they tend to bypass your spam-tools because they write intelligent sentences (well, intelligent to a 'robot' or software tool...not so much to a real person). 

These days, in the four blogs I write in, spam is prevalent to a high degree. If I do not check these blogs on a daily basis, the spammers have a field day adding inappropriate or just off-topic content, often overpowering the real comments. A lot of spam seems to come from Ugg boots - although, I'm pretty sure the company is not sending that spam. It's a popular term - hence, the spammers use it to try and fool people into thinking it's legitimate content, and fool the spam tools by using a legititmate word/phrase.