Internet Babel

Time for another (very) quick round up of what’s been going on and what’s coming up, so welcome to the September Babelicious.

There weren’t too many Blog posts that really caught my eye this last week or two but there are a couple of things worth mentioning:

• A nice little piece on Netstrife about finding Clients if you are a freelancer
• Rules on Guest Blogging by Balkhis on TUK
• DigitalPoint long-running thread about paid search  
• Learn about Google Android – it will be big

As far as Internet Babel is concerned, my last post on ‘Big Bloggers’ (or more accurately, a link within it) got Stumbled and sent a major amount of traffic this way – in fact I got 30,000 page views in 24 hours, which is just ever so slightly more than normal I’ve no idea what kind of retention rate I’ll get but it goes to show just the impact even a silly little thing like that can link can have.

Domain wise, I picked up a heap of bargains this week. Made a couple of small sales too but the ones that I picked up have massive potential so there’ll be some exciting developments soon (either in terms of direct flipping the domain or developing sites on them). 

Anyway – that’s it for now. A few good posts are on their way, including part 4 of Domain Flipping, which will deal with the nitty-gritty of buying and selling on the Forums, Business Blogging, time management, some Free Web Hosting pointers and a few neat niche and audience pieces.

Also, just a reminder that the Comment ‘giveaway’ is still on.

Cheers

Everyone seems to be into this link love stuff, so I thought I might as well post about a couple of interesting things as well (just don’t want to feel left out really). So this will be a regular-ish post of things I like, don’t like, updates on old posts etc – except I’ve decided to call the stuff I like ‘Babel-icious’.

This time around, I’ve got a couple of Blog posts, one forum thread and a couple of other goodies.

• Dealing with negative comments on Rajaie Talks – nice post:
• Some nice posts revolving around writing for a crust at Write on the Edge
• Somebody slagging off ShoeMoney at Digital Point. Not saying I agree or disagree, but I did find it mildly entertaining. Unfortunately, the mods closed the thread before it could get really interesting (wonder why).
• Getting Real – a no-nonsense ebook about no-nonsense software development. Absolutely worth a read and/or a bookmark. Read it here.
• An update related to the ‘Bad Grammar’ post. This has proven to be one of the most frequently read posts that Nick put up here, and it still gets some traffic. As a follow-up on the whole subject I thought I’d let you know about a good resource site that came to my attention this week -  http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm. This site has a whole heap of useful information, quizzes and tests all related to different aspects of good grammar like what I write

Anyway – that’s it for now. A few good posts are on their way, including part 2 of Domain Flipping, some cool ideas about niche and audience stuff and an interview related piece with a top bloke in the affiliate arena.

Cheers

Hey everyone – just a quick wrap up about a couple of things making me grumpy today:

Google PR:
After Nicks previous Google bitch slap incident, I had vague hopes that Internet Babel may start getting some of its PR back this time around. No such luck, and even Jim at The Net Fool confirmed my lowly ranking ;-(  It doesn’t really matter of course, PR ain’t that big a deal and I’ve just got to carry on with building the quality content and link building/SEO stuff.

Link-Lies/Link-Fraud:
The term ‘linkbait’ can cover a number of practices – WikiPedia breaks linkbait down into a number of distinct types, but something that really bugs me is the trend towards totally manufactured stories.

Of course, this kind of rubbish has been going on in the mainstream media for a while, and I guess there’s no real reason to assume it wouldn’t take off on the Web as well, but it annoys me when you see some of the people doing this stuff actually being proud of the crap they put out and getting some level of ‘respect’ from other people for it. It’s not as if fabricating a ‘sexy’ story and touting it to a gullible press is so difficult, it’s just that not all of us want to stoop that low.

More to the point is that the big G will start to look at ways of punishing fraudulent link-bait and people using legitimate teasers/bait/promotion methods may get caught up in the crossfire and get dragged down as well. There’s nothing wrong with building and promoting traffic and links but doing it with stuff that has absolutely no basis in truth (while trying to pass itself off as a legitimate ‘news’ piece on a respected site) is just plain wrong. A great short term result for the guy who placed it, probably not so good in the long run for everyone else.

Adsense:
This last few days, Adsense (on my other sites) has been performing  like an arthritic, three-legged nag. Very sad.

Waiting for people:
I put a bid in for some sweet domain names a few days back and the clown isn’t responding. It is annoying.

On the brighter side, I’ve got some nice ideas for upcoming posts about SEO, WP, domain speculation and parking etc – plus I have some Domain name giveaways coming up soon AND a neat little SEO project that I hope to start and that I will update about on this Blog.

On the even brighter side, I’m about to go and sink a few well-earned beers

All will be well soon and I hope your day is going better than mine.

I love these round up type posts. Especially when they contain useful info or interesting links. I will be doing one of these form now on at the end of every month. You can check out the January round up here. Basically, these will posts covering interesting things that have happened within said month, whether that be on my blog or elsewhere on the web.

Google Shares Drop

I don’t know anything about stock markets, so I won’t pretend to But Google shares did drop to an all time low recently so that’s surely something to babel about!

Google’s explination for the drop in Adsense clicks is the new alterations to Adsense ads to stop accidental clicks. Which is what I’d tend to go with also. Not the assumption that the econmoic slow down has created this.

Blog Competition – 5 Bloggers, 1 Winner

From Feb 5th I’ve been competing in a competition against 4 other bloggers to see who can gain the most subscribers in 1 month. The competition will run till the 5th of March.

So far it’s been pretty close between me and The University Kid but I think I’m just about winning with a 109 subscriber increase so far. My reviews for my hosting giveaway could of had a ‘little’ something to do with this (wink!).

Anyway, still time to go and I could still easily be beat. Please, if you haven’t done so already, SUBSCRIBE! Help me win this! I’m sure I’ll have another quick prize in store before the 5th of March.

Aaron Wall’s SEO Book Discontinued

Aaron Wall aka SEO God has stopped officially selling his infamous web book on the subject.

I own it and it’s a great read. It cost $79 and was a good purchase and is still a good purchase. Basically the only eBook I’ve ever payed for. The only other one I will buy is Shoemoney’s when it comes out.

Anyway, for now I think the SEO Book is still available to buy, so if you haven’t already… get it!

Internet Babel Breaks 200 Subscribers!

It’s been a long time getting there but this blog has finally broken not 100 but 200 subscribers can only look up and onwards from here. Hopefully I’ll be saying 400 in the next post!

Each month from now on I’ll be posting a round up post so to speak. I’m calling it the ‘Internet Babel Round Up’ not to conclude a round up of this blog but just a round up of interesting links or things that I think are… interesting! … interestingly enough!

These posts will basically just be random things I’ve found, heard or seen as well as anything interesting that may of happened on here recently.

So, welcome to the very first one! Here’s the round up…

Shoemoney vs Danny Sullivan – SEO Debate

This is nice. Shoemoney recently blasted so called SEO experts in a post for being similar to used car salesmen. I totally agree, I have never payed an SEO but based on seeing the services they offer for the prices they offer and knowing how fast and vaguely and randomly SEO, not only changes but does and does not work. I think it’s a very fickle industry and I would agree that they would tend to promise what they cannot deliver.

Anyway, Danny Sullivan stepped up to defend SEOs and had it out with Shoe on Webmaster radio. Here’s the show:

Webmaster Radio
	Dislike of SEO Show: Shoemoney Show

StumbleUpon Voted Most Popular by ProBlogger Readers

Darren Rowse aka ProBlogger recently held a reader poll to determine the most popular social bookmarking site among them. So, here are the results…

1st Place – StumbleUpon

2nd Place – Delicious

3rd Place – Digg

(the rest don’t matter, 1,2 and 3 are what counts! come on people!)

So looks like StumbleUpon has been crowned king of social bookmarking by ProBlogger readers! I would definitely vote SU too. I just love the idea, even now. Just thinking about the core idea of SU, it is brilliant. Type of idea you wish you’d thought of.

Although I don’t use social bookmarking sites often or… lets say not as actively often and proper as I should, but the experience I’ve had with SU has far overwhelmed that of Digg or any others. I’ve no doubt a front page Digg article would yield incredible bummed server time and huge bounce traffic but… I’ve yet to have that privilege.

PayPerPlay = Pain in the Ass

This is a new ad company that has launched. Basically… audio ads. Already sound awful? not surprised!

I think this was launched with good intention to be innovative and clinch something that has not been fully exploited but… pay per play audio ads, just really terrible in my opinion. One reason for them being so terrible though is because they autoplay, probably could fiddle with the java to have them not autoplay but I just cannot see this working.

Anyway, just a very bad idea to me. I think the creators maybe thought

“This hasn’t been done yet! it’s going to be huge!”

When sometimes, you have to think to yourself… why hasn’t something been done. Maybe it’s not because somebody hasn’t thought of it but more toward the possibility of the idea being so bad that it’s been thought up… then thought down… then trashed!

Featured on Shoemoney and John Chow, in 2 Days!

A recent post I wrote titled Big Bloggers, Bad Grammar that of which mentioned Shoemoney and John Chow for having noticeably bad grammar at times, got mentioned by both of them!

Which I was really happy about. As you can imagine!

You always write about big bloggers and blogs but never really expect them to mention it or even see it. So many blogs out there, so really chuffed and surprised the post got mentioned on both blogs. Only other big blogger I mentioned not to have mentioned it on his blog is ProBlogger… Darren, care to make up the numbers ?

That’s all for now boys and girls!