"Reference worthy content" is a phrase you'll hear a lot in the SEO realm. The intent behind the statement is simple - build content that people will be likely to cite when they create works on the web. Parsing the motivations that inspire those citations, however, is anything but obvious. Tonight, I thought I'd try to list features that make content "reference worthy" and help to shed some insight on the psychological catalysts that build natural links.

There are two “weblogs”.

1. The first one is the weblog as media format, these are the websites that you can not describe simply as “weblog” but always in the context of what information they offer.

* A website which shows pieces of content called postings in revere order
* Every post has a title, sometimes a subtitle, a body of content and some metadata like a date and a trackback URL
* Tags, categories and other taxonomies are used to categorize the postings and provide sub portals
* Archives are generally available in monthly format to function as back reference
* Various extra’s like Feeds (RSS/Atom) and millions of plug-ins/widgets are available on

The website uses the media format “website” tot e.g. describe new gadgets, news on topic X or presents niche information on a specific domain. You can find these weblogs in the top 1000 in Technorati. Before the format was invented these websites could have existed, they would simply represent the information on gadgets, web2.0 news and so on, in a different way and would still be able to get their information across.

You can not simply describe these websites as “weblogs” since you always refer to “a site about gadgets” or “a site about apple”.

2. The second one is the weblog as website type. I will not define it here, but below, to not scare you off. You also know this one:

* It uses the same format as above, but can not exist without the specific format
* It displays postings related to all of the goals of one specific entity,
where goals can include “need to have hobby”, “need to have work”, “need to have life” and related subgoals such as “need to have hobby music”, which leads to a posting about buying a new cd. The postings cover the same goals-action money/time division as within the entity’s domain which is more than often a household.
* It has a wide range of different kind of content
* It has a wide range of different types of postings, where type can be: a link, a brainstorm, a hobby related postings, a job related posting, a budget related posting, an inspirational posting and so on.

Generally called “personal weblog about everything in that persons life”.

The reason that a weblog of the second kind is unique is that it really represents the thing it is and can not exist without the concept itself and is tied to that person’s life goals.

Choosing a domain name for a new project can be a little daunting.

All the good names are gone. Once you find something acceptable, you'll have to be sure you can live with it for a long time. And what about the implications for SEO?

So many considerations.
Do You Want A Disposable Domain Name?

Some domains are throw-away, so the domain name doesn't matter so much. buy-viagra-online-cheapest.com might be just fine for someones 100th pharma site. We all know it's going to be blitzed eventually, anyhow ;)

For such domains, brand is never going to be a major consideration. But for most other projects, I'd recommend devoting time to brand considerations and credibility factors.

Why?

If done correctly, a blog can attract a dedicated audience to build upon and share expertise, information, ideas and content, while boosting awareness of your company and brand. If done incorrectly, however, you can leave customers feeling dissatisfied and ready to turn to your competitor. Here are four ways you can leverage a blog:

With the emphasis on keywords, long tail and results page rank, many people in the search engine optimization industry forget that the people who will actually be reading their content are humans, not robots.

That's the view of Kevin Gibbons writing for Econsultancy who says that the view that the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) is to get to the top of a SERP is "like saying the purpose of cooking is to heat meat, rather than eat it."

Although keywords are important for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, Gibbons says they shouldn't be crowbarred into a piece and should fit naturally when possible.

But it's important to remember that the content is not for search engines, it's for actual living, breathing humans.

Philosophers have pondered the secret of happiness for centuries. The pursuit of happiness is set forth in the United States Declaration of Independance. Now a company out of Brea, California has discovered the details of what happiness actually is: web hosting.

I was doing a little light domain research and happen to come across a domain registered through the DreamHost Proxy service. DreamHost’s web hosting service received a respectable 4 out of 5 star rating by our reviewer a while back. I guess I’d forgotten that DreamHost was an official ICANN registrar. Having spent probably too much of my life starring at domain registration records, I couldn’t help but notice a few unorthodox lines in a DreamHost customer’s proxy record. This first one appears in the name field:

The last time we discussed the grey PageRank Google toolbar indicator was just about two years ago. It was then when the gray/grey color changed from meaning banned to having no clear meaning. Back then, there was a blank white bar and a blank gray bar, both with PR0s. White meant PageRank was not yet calculated for the page, gray likely meant a ban or penalty. This is no longer the case.

Today, we have a thread at WebmasterWorld discussing what the gray bar means. There are a few theories that I will share with you.

One person thinks that gray is given to pages with not enough PageRank to reach the 1 level. Another person thinks that pages in the supplemental index receives gray. Some believe that pages with penalties still receive the gray indicator. Let me quote Tedster's post on this topic:

First reason to optimize URL structure is to increase search engine rankings which will bring us free natural traffic. Secondly human readable URL structure can increase your clickthrough rate. People click more on readable URLs as they give us idea about the actual content on the web page.

One of the first things you’ll hear from people is that “Twitter is not a broadcast medium.” It is, they’ll argue, a medium for two way communications. But let’s be realistic. Now that major celebrities and corporations are Tweeting, the service is featuring more one-way communications than ever before.

There’s no rule that says you have to follow everyone who follows you. Some do it because they think it looks like they’re interested in the law of reciprocity. But as the numbers of people following you go into the hundreds of thousands, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be personally communicating with everyone. So why fake it?



The larger your list of followers, the less likely personal communications remains the goal of your Twitter use

Once your list of followers becomes very large, the interpersonal aspects of Twitter start to lose appeal, and the marketing and broadcasting aspects of the new medium become more obvious. The potential for Twitter as a boon to marketing is not lost anyone who is trying to get the word out to the masses about a complimentary product or service.

Twitter is unique in that it limits messages to 140 characters, but since you can include a URL in your message, the limitation hardly matters. It’s a great way to point people to content or products on your website that might be of interest. In many ways, broadcasting to Twitter can replace many functions of email and email newsletters. Your followers are, in essence, a list of interested people who have “opted-in” to receive updates about you or your company.

To many people, the idea of guest blogging is fresh and new and very “Web 2.0.” Personally, I find the discussion to be a rather déjà vu-like experience. In fact, one participant on my blog responded to a post about articles by asking how I would contrast guest blogging with article marketing. He wanted to know how I chose between placing my articles on directories and writing an exclusive blog post. The short answer is: I don’t.

Remembering the Good Old Days of Article Marketing

Circa 1990, the first article directories began to pop up online with the invention of ezines (email magazines). Many publishers of these soon-to-be-popular email newsletters quickly got tired of writing all the content themselves. Others decided to offer compilations of recent articles published by others about a particular topic.

The article directories provided a wonderful new outlet for gathering quality content in exchange for a simple bio at the end with a link back to the author’s site. Articles were written to provide quality information to readers in the hope that they would favor the author with a click.

Who doesn’t want to write better content for Web pages? Great content can command online traffic, create revenue and help the writer of that content establish a good reputation or even an online fan following. Well-written, keyword-rich Web content is a very powerful tool. It’s also what most Web sites on the Internet desire. When you know how to write better content, there’s a lot you can achieve.

Content on the Web is a hot commodity and it’s what everyone wants. Well-written, keyword-rich content is attractive to readers, Web masters and search engines. In order to use it to boost your page rankings, levels of traffic and even revenue, you’ll have to learn how to create that content. Master a few tips and tricks, and you’ll learn the secrets of how to write better content.

Writing Better Content

Anyone can learn the secrets of writing better content, and online content can always be better. To write really good online content, it’s necessary to blend the needs of the site with the needs of the search engines -- and all of this must be molded into an easy-to-read, interesting bit of information for casual Internet readers. It may sound like a lot, especially when factoring in those all-important keywords, but writing better content should always be the goal. After all, why bother if it’s no good? Highly-polished, entertaining online content reflects well on you and the site where your content is displayed…and there’s nothing wrong with that.