Don’t miss out on your blogs most powerful aspect – the post titles!
If you’re a newcomer to blogging it’s all too easy to get swept up in the excitement of publishing – and overlook one of the basics of blogging – the role of your blog post title in getting found in Google.
There are two kinds of bloggers: those who understand the part the post title plays in Google visibility and want exploit that and those who don’t (or do understand it but choose not to exploit it). [Read more...]
Has upgrading to WP 2.6 made it suddenly impossible to wrap text around images?
Result? Text won’t flow around the image no matter how many times you click the alignment buttons.
As more and more people express their pleasure, frustration or anger at our products and services online, more and more of us are going to find ourselves wondering about the difference between legitimate criticism and defamation.
The latest bit of Goggledegook to enter the popular lexicon
Plain Inglish Guide to Google
Here are 3 basic rules of web design that should save you a great deal of heartache and stress

Blog comment spam – what does it look like?
Blog Comment Spam. What it looks like and how it works (a Plain Inglish Guide)
In plain English, blog comment spam is when people visit your site and comment on a post in the hope that your readers will click on the link in their name, visit their site and click on those Google AdSense ads you’ll inevitably encounter there. This will earn them a couple of cents. Not much – but if they have enough sites doing the same thing, this can create a substantial revenue. The fact that it fills the internet with more garbage doesn’t interest them.
So how does it work? The spammer monitors keywords relevant to the ads he is hosting. His software alerts them whenever those keywords have been used. In the case of mattresskings.info (above) the keyword was ‘mattress’ – and I used it in the title of a post I published recently on www.enterprisecafe.tv.
When they pick up a mention of their keyword, they then visit your site (either in person or via a ‘bot – I don’t know the technology involved) and leave a comment.
You can usually tell a spam comment because it tries to sound interested and human – but in a really naff and non-specific kind of way. “Great post, I’ll definitely visit here again – look forward to hearing more of your experiences about this topic” is a good example.
The hope is that you’ll be either be naiive, flattered or careless enough to allow this comment to be published on your blog. Why? Because the commenter’s name is a link back to their site with it’s AdSense ads waiting for your clicks.
Click here to visit this spammers ‘site’. Click on the picture (above) to see the components of a typically spammy site.
First thing you’ll see is that the Google ads that earn the spammer his living are always near the top. Google ads means ‘this site is about making me money’. The nearer the top they are, the more about ‘making me money’ the site is.
Secondly, the site doesn’t represent anyone, anywhere – and it isn’t selling anything (except your clicks to the advertising network.)
Thirdly, the copy is clearly junk – lifted from any and everywhere online. It’s not meant to make sense, just so long as it has the spammer’s keyword in it.
And finally, it has an endless list of links to internal pages filled with more crap designed to spam Google and get the site found in the search engine results for the keyword ‘mattress’.
So the quick and simple way to decide whether a comment on your blog is spam or not is to click on the author’s link (before you approve it) and take a quick scan of their site.
Remember: vague comment, AdSense ads on their site, not selling anything and crap content = SPAM.