Spammers

Just recently, we've gotten our first attempts at spam here on the blog.  People have left one line comments saying things like "Great job!" then just posting the name on the blogpost and then their website address.  Honestly, this is both funny and annoying.

Its funny because they think that it will get their website traffic on Google and Bing, when in all actuality, it gets them traffic for phrases like 'Great job', which are so general as to do nothing for your webpage.  (The phrase actually generates hits for a sketch comedy show by Tim and Eric.)  So I laugh because they are putting in all of this work for nothing.  No one will find their site.

Its annoying because as a moderator for a blog, I have to go through the comments posted on this blog, and check to make sure they aren't from legitimate viewers who really just want to thank us.  (I know that sounds lame, but you don't want to offend someone actually reading your blog by deleting their comments, no matter what those comments are.)  I don't like having to spend any extra time reading through worthless comments meant to help someone else's website rise to the top.  I'm seriously considering creating a black list of blog spammers so that my fellow bloggers can quickly search the list and find out if the comment is from a known spammer.

With such a list, spammers would have to personally apply for removal, and would only be given so many chances for re-admittance to the blogging community before they would be permanently blacklisted.  It sounds like a great idea to me.

So, if you, as a blogger are annoyed by all of the comment spammers out there, leave your rants, stories, and suggestions for a solution as legitimate comments to this post.

Adding Guest Bloggers.

     So, I'm posting today about something that took me a little bit of work to figure out, so I'm posting my own post about it.
     I was working on a new blog, Gamer's Top Hat, and I'm trying to get a couple of my friends access so they can co-blog with me.  Sounds simple right?  But I need to block access to this blog, for security reasons, so I can't let them just log into my account.  I've seen plenty of blogs do this, and when I was looking the other day, I couldn't really figure out how to do this with Blogger.  But, as Blogger is one of the two major blogging platforms for blogs, I knew there had to be a way.
     After digging through the help files in Google's Help section, I found an article on how to do it.  Even that seemed rather long winded though, so here is a visual guide.
     First, log in to your blogger account, then, click Settings:

     Then, click on Permissions:

     Next, you press the Add Authors button:

     You add the desired person's e-mail to the list, separating them with commas:

     Click the Invite button,

     Then just go ahead and wait for the author to respond.  That's about all it takes.  Hopefully this will be helpful to any of you bloggers out there.

Blog Spammers, And How I Despise Them

     So, in my attempts at staying relevant to the tech industry, and keep my readers informed, I was reading about the accusation from Google that Bing is just straight ripping their search results, (which is probably true of both of them).  That isn't the topic of this post, though.
     What is the topic is spammers.  As I read through the comments, I found the usual spam that had been flagged for deletion, but I've been noticing lately a new type of spam, and this article was filled with it.  I'm talking about the people commenting on tech blogs and forums that are obviously hired by the company the article is about.  They are hired to argue or make the point that whatever the business is, they are absolutely right.
     I'm sure you've seen them.  The trolls who get on and post about how Microsoft, or Mac, are the omnipotent, omnipresent being we should all worship.  The worst one I saw today was a guy posting about how Bing doesn't copy search results, its just superior data collecting that lets Google and Bing have the same top search result.  His login name is IE9, a Microsoft beta project that hasn't even been released yet.  Can anyone say shameless promotional plug?
     And on the game informer forums, only two hours after the midnight release of the Kinect, there were four posts, all dated minutes after each other, that all talked about how the Kinect was the end all of gaming, how they had been using if for weeks, and how they were getting rid of all of their other game systems because they now owned a Kinect.  They honestly didn't even have time to fully try out the device, let alone sit down and type out such length blog comments stuffed with praise.
     I'm offended by this practice, and unless it is in response to a question posted by one our employees to genuinely answer a question about something, Digital Fruit will never sanction shameless promotional blog comment crap.

Branching Out

     So, I decided to start on a new project to keep my web design skills all fresh and clean.  I'm going to maintain several websites based on my personal hobbies, with new and relevant content to their topics, so I can keep my web design abilities up-to-date and growing.  I'll be posting a list of them on the sidebar as time goes on, so make sure to go and check them out.  Its kind of like an ever-expanding resume of my skills, so don't miss out.

Google Blog SEO tip

     I'm learning the hard way that Google SEO is not an easy task when you write a blog.  With links numbering in the thousands, and plenty of keywords and HTML modifications, nothing seems to be coming about on the blog.  The only people who seem to be coming to the site are people who already know it is here.
     But I have noticed one thing with the eleven months of blog posting, that the number of hits to the site seems to correlate directly to the amount of content I post on the blog.  The more often I post, the higher the numbers seem to be.  This leads me to the conclusion that frequency of content is more important to the blog's SEO than any other tool.
     Hopefully armed with this, all you other neonate bloggers will be able to use to bring your blog into a greater light.

Finally! Success!

     For almost a week now I've been trying to get this blog indexed by Google, so that it would at least show up in the listings.  Its rankings are terrible, but as of today, the Digital Fruit Blog is officially indexed by Google!  I dare you to try and find it.  So, now that the first leap is taken, tell your mom, tell your neighbor, tell the random stranger on the street corner at lunch,  link to this blog!  The more that people link to a website, the better that it does in its respective rankings on Google, or any other search engine for that matter.  A few quick lessons in websites that I have learned over this journey. 
     First, you can see how many links that Google has recorded to your site by simply typing, without spaces, link:www.{yoursite}.com, where yoursite is the name of your website. (Warning, if your site does not have a www., then don't put one here, it will make this fail).
     Second lesson, always put your websites link on sites, forums and blog comments that pertain to your blog, or else the search engines will not properly classify your website!  Personal links from family and friends will not effect this part much, but will help your rankings, so they are most certainly welcome, but even here, the link must say something about what your blog is about, or it will still fall flat on its face.
     And Finaly Third lesson, be persistent.  I've read things on SEO, search engine optimization, and from what I've been able to get out of the most intelligent sources, SEO is a myth.  Yes, making your website search-engine-friendly is important, but it is not a instant link to success.  The only way that any of the successful bloggers I've read about have been able to get their blogs to where they are now is through diligently posting to their blogs, diligently posting their links of forums, and by patiently waiting for the readers to increase.  There is no way for instant success on a blog, just like in the rest of reality.