I like to consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to blogs and the internet. By no stretch am I some uber genius, but, I do like to think I have a pretty vast knowledge of the blog-o-sphere. However, recently I was informed by a good friend of mine that I might have been doing something very wrong when it came to creating and maintaining blogs. Something so simple that could have a catastrophic effect on my blog. Something that most of us don’t even pay attention to.
You’ll notice that when you visit a website and/or blog, sometimes the blog URL will read “http://www.sitename.com and at other times it will read “http://sitename.com”. I never really thought this was much of an issue. I actually never even gave it a second thought. But apparently, I should have. The problem with this situation is that most search engines treat those addresses as two different domains, splitting your backlink count. That in turn effects a variety of things, especially your PageRank and where you place on search engine index’s. Now, be aware, not all websites and/or blogs have this issue but a fair amount do.
So the question begs - how do you fix it? Well, there are two ways to go about this. The more difficult way is to create a 301 Permanent Redirect using PHP which the average blogger simply lacks the knowledge to do. So, for those of us who need the easy road, there is Enforce www. Preference plugin. This plugin is extremely easy to use. Simply install it, activate it, and it will automatically create a 301 Permanent Redirect page for you and you’ll no longer need to worry about search engines confusing your website/blog as if it were two totally different webpages.
To find out more about Enforce www. Preference and/or to download it, click here.
I highly recommend this tool.
I’ve started to notice a great increase in the amount of “shortened” links on blogs recently, and that is starting to become a mild concern. I usually don’t click too many links I don’t trust anyway, but these newer shortened links are a hazard waiting to happen for many users.
These “shortened” links came to popularity around a year ago with websites such as TinyURL starting up. In essence, what these websites like TinyURL will do is take a long URL and make it short (into like 15-30 characters) as opposed to 70-100 of normal URL’s. It’s actually a really great service, especially for those on sites like Twitter and Twitterotti where you’re limited to a particular number of characters. The problem now however, is many blogs are starting to use these services to “mask” or hide their links. I’ve still yet to figure out why, but, it’s really starting to become a concern, one that Daniel of Daily Blog Tips sees as well.
The problem that I see (as well as Daniel) is the abuse factor. These links don’t show where the link is coming from and/or pointing to, so you really have no idea where you’re clicking. That’s a problem. When you click a normal URL on a blog, you can see where it’s pointing to and what website or blog you’ll be redirected to. I like having that power to see where I’m going. Now with blogs pointing their links using these shortened links, you might be clicking yourself right into danger. You could be linked to a website that uses “phising” techniques which is a fancy way of saying they’ll steal your info (anything you could input into that website/blog they could steal…e-mail, bank account, etc). In addition to those, you could also be clicking on some sort of spyware or malware that infects or slows down your system. So, in my opinion, it’s simply best to avoid them totally unless you trust the source. In addition to that, if you are a blogger, I would not recommend placing or using these particular type of links on your blog. Stay with the traditional format and your readers will be much happier.
If you do need to click on one of those shortened links though, there is a website out there now that will test the security for you, which is named Sucuri.net. To visit them, click here.
As I was looking around the internet this morning, I saw a blog posting on DailyBlogTips.com commenting on Google doing a PageRank update. At first, I thought this was pretty shocking since Google has notoriously only updated the PageRank a few times a year. The best estimate we’ve come up with was every three months or so.
However, there have been some unique jumps in PageRank the last few months. Over the past 6 months, I’ve seen a variety of blogs that I visit and/or use have their PageRank jump multiple times, and that includes this blog. To me (and to other bloggers) this is a clear indication that Google has decided to update their PageRank system much more frequently.
Rumors had been swirling the past few weeks about the new Google PageRank algorithm, and this appears to be a direct result of it.
To visit DailyBlogTips.com, click below:
Resource: DailyBlogTips.com
