I keep reading more and more about the negative Digg effect - that increasing numbers of domains are being permanently blocked by the Digg admins and the users are digging down stories en masse.

Admittedly, the majority of complaints come from pro-bloggers and social media marketers. They all have very valid things to say in their respective fields, and personally I enjoy reading their posts and subscribe to a number of blogs in the area.

But the Digg users don’t want them.

Sad but true. A lot of these bloggers have got hooked on quick fix traffic off the back of Digg, and they’ve been writing about techniques to get on the Digg home page - optimal time of day to post, write about Digg, using the friends system, etc.

What’s worse is they all focussed on Digg and totally excluded other areas of social media. Where are the posts about Reddit, StumbleUpon, mag.nolia, NetScape and all the other (often better) communities out there?

A Message To Social Marketers & Pro-Bloggers

Rejection always hurts, but you have to move on.

The pro bloggers and SEO practitioners helped build the Digg userbase through their enthusiastic support for Digg. You can do it again. Choose another social bookmarking service and focus on it for a while. Write about it, promote it and analyse how to succeed with it.

The Digg userbase has spoken, and though many of you have loved the spikes in traffic, others have disdained the snide and insulting comments left by Digg visitors.

Too many bloggers have come to rely on Digg as a quick fix way of getting new visitors, but its been an eggs-in-one-basket scenario and it looks like Digg is no longer a friend to pro-bloggers and SEOs. Which is a shame, but there you go.

Now, let’s start the debate: Which social media platform should we use as an alternative to Digg?

I had my first visit to Search Engine Journal today, and their excellent 13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck.

NoFollow is an attribute you can add to any link on a website. Its usage tells search engines that the link is not endorsed by that site. As a result Google will not use the link in PageRank calculations.

The idea was to thwart the increase in blog spam and to prevent spammers gaining PageRank from a litter of links they’d left across the blogosphere.

For responsible bloggers, though, NoFollow means they get no credit for their comments and contributions to other blogs (which is a bit of a disincentive to leave a comment, really). But on the other hand, the less SEO-aware masses may let blogs go dormant or not bother checking their comments, therefore allowing spammers to amass links back to their sites with relative ease.

One of Loren’s points is that NoFollow is a mark of failure by the search engines to deal with the problem of blog spam, identify it and penalize it in the rankings:

No-follow is a poor search engine’s solution to conceal its own failure to rank websites appropriately. What’s next, No-linking?

Search engines should be able to develop a method of identifying and devaluing links to spam sites which were placed in blog comments. Why should everyone who posts in blog comments suffer from the actions of a greedy few spammers.

Which may be a valid point, but I still think it’s a good thing that Blogger, WordPress et all have NoFollow on by default. More savvy WordPress bloggers can disable NoFollow links with a plugin called DoFollow.

By the way, if you want to be able to tell what websites use NoFollow, grab the SEO for FireFox plugin. It has a feature that highlights NoFollow links in red (might be hard to read - I usually tone down the colour!). You’ll be surprised at how prevalent the NoFollow attribute is!

Oh, and here’s a few thoughts from Dougal Campbell on the implementation of NoFollow in WordPress.

I read a little while ago that Mark Boulton has shifted his blog off the Media Temple Grid Service. He cites the poor performance and unexpected overage costs as part of his reason for moving:

Why? Well, in addition to continuing connectivity issues MT are charging for GPU overage. Since they can’t give me more details as to why I’m going over to the tune of about £30 every month (so I can attempt to reduce it right?), then I’ve got myself one of their nice new DV dedicated machines (with a little help and guidance from Andy and Steve).

It’s a little disappointing to read this, because we were al lead to believe that the Grid Server (to quote mt) would be the last hosting plan we’d ever need. We had boasts of how you could run up to 100 sites off a gridserver account and talk of how you could easily withstand a Digg-ing.

I missed the bit of small print that mentioned GPU overages when I signed up.

In fairness to Mark, he’s stuck with Media Temple, just upgraded to a dedicated server. Presumably that’s the pain-free route to take, as (hopefully) the Media Temple staff will help out with migration.

My own experience with the Grid service has been less than happy. We get regular database outages which knock our sites for six as they’re all WordPress driven.

Darren mentioned this the other day, and it’s taken me this long to have a look at Nik Cubrilovic’s original post.

Nik’s argument is that to make real money online, bloggers need to move away from AdSense-based models and investigate other ways of making money online. He cites Guy Kawasaki’s blog as a popular site that made a pittance from AdSense.

The basic intelligence is that AdSense doesn’t pay out big dividends, because your readers become blind to the ads and don’t click through. The problem is that the alternatives are quite difficult to get into unless you’ve got a hyper-popular website.

An increasingly attractive notion is selling advertising space directly. I’ve tried this, and it’s not easy. You’ve got to be prepared for frequent rejections, especially if you target companies who think blogs are small-time or amateur - you won’t get anywhere fast!

For instance, I run a blog that receives between 3-400,000 hits per month. That’s great exposure for a canny advertiser, but it’s harder to sell that space, so I’m still relying on AdSense. It’s bringing in a reasonable amount of money (~$600 per month), but my feeling is that it could be doing better with another solution in place.

I’ve looked at other services, like Federated Media. They seem really good, but turned my blog down because it was UK-based and they didn’t have the advertisers relevant to the region.

I wonder what other successful revenue models bloggers are using as alternatives (or supplements to) AdSense?

Savvy bloggers use press releases as a method of getting exposure for their blogs in the mainstream media.

We’ve used it recently with our reality TV website and had good coverage with local press and media. In fact, word has it that the BBC spotted my wife on a rival channel and tried frantically to get in touch, even ringing people with the same surname in the village! We must’ve forgotten to send them the press release!

Aaron Shear, who I’ve been reading for the last few weeks has some useful pointers if you’re considering press releases as a marketing strategy for your blog.

Firstly, Aaron recommends using an internet wire service, presumably PR Leap or PR Web. This is your best bet anyway, although we’re trying to amass a database of relevant journalists and publications that we can contact directly also.

Another important point is to include hyperlinks in the document to specific pages in your site. You should also target the link text for appropriate keywords, because if your release is used, you will receive very well targetted backlinks!

Probably the strongest suggestion Aaron puts forward is to publish press releases on your website. This is an approach I hadn’t considered before, but it would be useful to have an archive of press releases available for journalists to look back at prior developments.

With our reality TV blog, I try to write a thought-provoking piece on a topical show (say the recent race controversy in Celebrity Big Brother) or perhaps start a campaign to support a particular contestant. I’ll then create a press release linking to that piece and stating our opinions.

The most important thing - if you’re going to use press releases frequently - is to document the process: publishing a newsworthy piece (in my case), writing an interesting press release and then releasing it. You’ll be sending to targetted people as well as general services like PR Leap, so get a spreadsheet or database of contacts and use this every time. Add to it as other sources come up.

By documenting the process, you’ll be able to carry out a press release campaign with military precision every time.

Joy of joys, Drupal 5 has been released today! This truly is a reason to celebrate, as one of the most complex content management/blog platforms has had a decent usability makeover, and has a hot new default theme as well.

I’ve had an itch to work with Drupal for a long time. Perhaps the biggest barrier to entry is how dense the interface is. Lots of options with no explanation as to how it worked or how the pieces fitted together.

That’s all changed. Virtually everything in the admin area has a short descriptive paragraph next to it. They’ve also reorganised the admin area so that things are more logically grouped together. They’ve even ditched the term “taxonomy” for “categories”!

Another new (as far as I know) feature is the ability to have a separate theme for the backend. This really helps you to work out what the public can see and what they can’t.

The best new feature by far is the Garland theme, the new default theme for Drupal. Not only is Garland gorgeous to look at straight out of the box, but thanks to some PHP genius, you can reconfigure the color scheme with a color picker and it will regenerate the CSS and graphics on the fly. In truth, I tried this on my personal site, but got a message back from the server saying that there wasn’t enough memory available to PHP to complete the operation. There’s probably a way to fix this, but I’ve not spent much time with it so far.

If you’ve been watching the Drupal platform, check out the what’s new video clip for an overview.

Mani Sheriar has written an interesting post on the Vitamin website about her experiences with XHTML and CSS web design.

Though Mani touches upon the basic benefits of streamlined CSS/XHTML design, like improved accessibility, page loading and search engine friendliness, she focuses mostly on the long-term benefits of the Standards-based approach.

How easy is it to approach a redesign in the future?

Well, Mani suggests approaching the XHTML structure first, regardless of what the final design will look like - Let’s code our XHTML as if we plan to have 10 different designers apply their own unique layouts to it. If we can do it that way, then we will be able to execute minor or even major design overhauls without touching a single page in the site.

The logic of this idea is carefully explained through experience of several site designs and subsequent realigns, which were achieved with virtually the same XHTML structure.

I must say, this idea appeals as a designer. The closest I have come to this in the real world is through adapting the Sandbox theme for WordPress.

Sandbox is an incredibly complex and powerful WordPress theme that makes the best possible use of semantic XHTML, even implementing Microformats where they can be identified.

The idea behind Sandbox is that it can be skinned completely through CSS, and is flexible enough that you can move containers around in the CSS rather than constantly change your XHTML.

Essentially the whole idea harks back to the ethos behind the CSSZenGarden site: one well-formed XHTML document can be styled in unlimited ways with the right creative input. Very good article and a reminder that we should be striving to improve the art of web standards, not merely resting on our laurels!

Via SearchEngineLand, Google have finally cleared up the issue surrounding image placement next to AdSense ads. In a nutshell, it’s a no.

We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn’t actually being offered. That’s not a good experience for users or advertisers.

I’ve always felt uncomfortable looking at Google Ads with images placed next to them (especially prevalent on Photoshop sites). It smacks of tricking your visitors, and I’ve never employed that practice for that reason alone. I have to wonder though, if they’ll enforce this policy whenever instances are reported. From my experience of reporting splogs I’ve come across, Google aren’t very prompt about taking action.

There’s been much speculation and debate surrounding Google lately. Much more than usual. And more negative than usual too.

The Search Tips Controversy

First, there’s been the hoo-hah about Google displaying tips in search results advertising their other services. No biggie, as far as I’m concerned, they’ve done this before, suggesting image search when you do a search that includes ‘photo’, ‘picture’ or ‘image’ in the search string.

It’s Google’s perogative to cross promote their products. Do you cross-promote your blogs? I do. OK, I’m not Google, does this mean that cross-promoting doesn’t scale? If I get a couple of million more visitors will the Unofficial Internet Ethics Committee shut me down?

If there’s one positive in all this, it’s that they’re promoting core products instead of further watering down their offerings. Remember when we complained that Google had its finger in too many pies?

And let’s face it, Picasa, Blogger et al are hardly top quality products, are they? Picasa is a long way off being a Flickr-killer, and it’ll take a lot before Blogger can beat a standalone WordPress installation. Big deal.

Replacing Google?

The one big rumble I’ve been hearing about this last year is people trying out Google alternatives. Interestingly, Jon Henshaw at Sitening has decided to give this a whirl after Google withdrew their SOAP API.

Google never gave their SOAP Search API a chance and misled developers along the way. They scared away smarter developers because of its continuous shoddy performance and refused to consider commercial (fee-based) licenses that would offer the ability for developers to run more queries and charge for their services…They’ve lost my trust and loyalty, something that didn’t have to happen if they had just shown a little respect to their customers and developers.

Now, Jon’s approach is something I’ve thought about myself over the last year. As someone who’s enthusiastic about search engines, I spend a lot of time focussing on just one engine: Google. It actually makes sense to branch out, widen horizons and see what makes the other search engines tick!

I wonder what the wider reaction to recent Google activity is/will be? Or will people just grumble about it and continue using Google? How many people are willing to take a stand?

Since switching to a widgets-based layout on a couple of my blogs, it’s been bugging me that I lost the flexibility to add AdSense code to the sidebars.

It turns out that there’s an answer. You start implementing the text widget:

1. Set up your ad code in AdSense.
2. On your WordPress admin, go to Presentation and Sidebar Widgets.
3. Drag a text widget to the sidebar you want it to appear on (and in whatever order you want it).
4. Click on the text widget to configure and paste in the AdSense code.
5. Save your changes and refresh your homepage. Couldn’t be easier!

Before I discovered this fix, I’d been thinking the most complicated thoughts about how to achieve this effect. Keep It Simple, Stupid still reigns!