TypePad HowTo

Live.com

When first entering Live.com we don't quite know where we are or even where to go. At the gate its a bit funky and seems awfully high-tech with the "beta" reference. Then all is understood, when one sees the Microsoft logo.  The typical lack of common sense features is further illustrated in a customer requested To Do List.  Many items such as "Why can't I drag and drop from one page to another?  Why not indeed! Status = in current backlog". So much for cutomer service.

Once the gates are dropped, and we get past the Bill thing we realize that live.com contains a set of ad supported (of course!) interactive web applications at your finger tips -- a virtual desktop. One feature allows one to monitor blogs of interest. This assists you in maintain and tracking conversations using your live.com virtual desk top. When blogs are added, the blog's most recent five postings will be at your fingertips to view, send to a friend, or blog (using MSN).

To add a blog to your live.com account sign on and perform the following simply outlined steps

My fingers did get a little too click happy, and as a result added the same blog twice. Haven't quite figured out how to delete the extra element.  May need to add it to the To Do list.  I'll keep you updated. 

G-metrics

To use G-Metrics another bloggn' tool go the the web site http://g-metrics.com. On the left hand side register with a valid e-mail address. Submit the registration, then g-metrics will send you an email with your "personal key", which is a bit long. Login to g-metrics using this personal key. Within g-metrics you can add query using one of your Google addwords (trackback to post). This will give you a trend time line, the number of hits, and provide you with the top 10 current results. The free service also provides an RSS feed. All of this data is another method for you to analyize your sites.

For my watch list I entered such items as stop smoking, how to blog, quinnipiac, pest control, and as an extra item feral cats. I was surprised to see that how to blog (975,000,000) beat quit smoking (14,800,000). Quinnipiac did well with 2,060,000. Feral cats had 1,260,000 and I narrowed my search to connecticut which returned 36,900.

The neatest feature of g-metrics is the top 10 sites they provide you with relating to your search term. It's interesting to see what the "competition" is doing.

When reviewing the top 10 for quit smoking, I saw some of the typical stop smoking organizations that I expected and a few product selling sites; however, I was a bit surprised with one site. I do not understand how this site beat other sites not listed, such as TLC (The Last Cigarette) or the American Lung Society. And quite honesty, I felt my site had just as much to offer, if not more.   

Stanford Guidelines

Supported by their research, the Stanford Guidelines web site provides 10 rules for "boosting your web site's credibility?"

When I first reviewed their guidelines I focused on their use of the word "organization" and the recommendation of listing a physical address. This recommendation became a stumbling block for me. I am in the process of trying to build a web site for my husband's pest control business. Using a physical address became a hang-up for me because he rents a garage. I do not feel that I can list that as the business physical address, especially since it is just a garage, not a store front.  However, after re-adjusting my focus, I did recognize the value this article provides for "personal" web site credibility.

The ten items of  advice are:

1. Accurate Information

2. Provide Legitimacy

3. Display Expertise

4. Honest and Trustworthy

5. Easily Accessible

6. Look Professional

7. Easy to Use

8. Frequent Postings

9. Avoid pushy ads

10. Avoid Errors or Misspellings (caught me!)

When evaluating the various blogs I am working on I feel they all have accurate information to the best of my knowledge. The quit smoking blog, QU graduate corner, and the HowTo  links to credible third party materials. When I have a linking idea, I spend a great deal of time "looking around" and choosing the site that I feel is the best. I don't link haphazardly or just for the sake of linking. Also when linking to other team mates blog I try to take a creative approach in order to entice the reader to link over to the other site.  All posts are written with a sincere honest intention. I am willing to share my opinions and thoughts. I also respect that, perhaps, you might not agree with me, and hopefully give the impression that the door is always open for discussion. I feel that all blogs have a clean, crisp and professional visual look. The quit smoking blog purposely used a gray theme in order to convey the smoke theme. We decided on a two column format for the HowTo blog since we wanted a wider column to hold "how to" verbiage. On the QU corner we used blue for the school colors. We also want to get some pictures on the header, but have yet to tackle that.  The blogs are updated frequently, although it's demanding to keep up with three blogs. I have noticed that on two occurrences responses to comments disappear. I kid you not. Don't know what I am doing or not doing but, whatever it is, I have it mastered, since it has happened on more than one occasion. None of the blogs have any annoying promotional ads. I too, hate those interrupting pop ups.

What can be improved? Well, I still have an issue with trackbacks and am working on trying to get that mastered so that all links are working. Spelling and tense jumping has always been a challenge to me. I originally liked to draft my post in word and use the tools available to Word. I find typepad word processing tools limited and a bit cumbersome. However, I have discovered many issues when cutting and pasting from other sources. I still need to go back and correct some issues, such as verbiage listing in the post but not displaying or not being able to add any links because the entire post gets translated to HTML and the compose post area can not be used. Some clean up work still exists, but eventually, I hope to have all areas error free. In addition, I would like to add some more pictures, helping to convey that "real person" image. The "about you" areas have not been tackled and need to be defined. Finally, some forms of submissions are needed as side links. Once these few items are addressed, I feel that the blogs will pass the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.

Adwords Con't

Well I think I have actually reached a blog post limit, as I need to continue this post in this additional post entry .......

Besides running all of the blogs that I am working on I also ran some blogs of who I feel to be my husband's pest control competitors. Yes, you can use this tool to spy! Analysis of this information will also provide you with insight on improving your own site.   

After using the keyword variation and site-related keywords tools, you can select some keywords and then on the right hit "Sign up with these keywords". Then follow the check off standard edition path described below after using the click to begin entry.

There is another entry method to use these tools. Upon entry into the site, in the middle where you see Sign up Now click on "click to begin".  Then check off standard edition, once again don't be fooled to the starter edition. Continue through the two countries and territory screens. Next a screen will appear will you can create an add. Enter a few ad line descriptions, it really doesn't matter what you enter. Then enter your display and destination URL, here I entered my blog URL in both spots, then continue. Note, the destination URL seems to be the important field required. This will bring you to the keyword analysis. Once again you can select words provided by analysis of your destination URL or additional keyword searches. For the initial keyword and URL analysis I prefer the first entry explained earlier, since it allows a faster method to hop around various keywords and URLs.

After you select the addwords hit continue. At the bottom of this screen look for the View Traffic Estimator and enter via this link. Page down on this page and a statics matrix is displayed. To understand the various elements within this matrix click on the Traffic Estimator Glossary available in the yellow box labeled Things to Note.

Based upon analysis of keyword ad costs, positions, and clicks per day (CPC) you can evaluate what is the competitive nature of your blog topic. Quitting smoking is a highly competitive market compared to leadership or sports.  I would be safe to bet that the dieting industry is even more competitive.  If your site is selling a product or service you can determine if your advertising budget can handle and benefit from the anticipated traffic generated from the assistance of Google. If I were to spend some advertising money I would probably alter my site a bit to also address losing weight and pick the lose weight and quit smoking keyword for 44 - 55 cents rather than quiting smoking at $3.36 - $4.60; however, losing weight and quit smoking gets no clicks per day, whereas, the latter gets 90 - 113 clicks per day. I guess I better have a hot selling item to justify my advertising budget. Surprisingly blog hosting is more expensive at $6.52 - $8.57, but only anticipates three to four hits a day.

In summary, even without purchasing any Gogle addwords advertising, the site provides great tools that allow you to do some bloggn' analysis.  Just be prepared to spend some time to explore and satisfy your curiosity appetite.   

What is Adwords?

What is adwords?  Well, quite simply it is Google's "advertisement" money monster. But, for a more detailed definition click here. 

However, I must admit Google is a bit generous, since the Google's adwords application let's you do some "free" marketing analysis of your blog. This is important since blogs are discovered either by inbound links, outbound links, or search words. So in order to make sure your blog is achieving your desired image, adwords can be a cool on-line analytical tool.

There are a few ways to access the "freebie" analytical data. One way is to enter the website www.addwords.google.com.  If by accident you type in addword and forget the s, my Internet service kicked me over to other ads, the first one being "Don't sign up for Adwords! Check out JumpFly". I did check out JumpFly, and I jumped ship, no freebies there. I did discover one interesting item, the different partnerships that Addwords and JumpFly have made. JumpFLy interacts with Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, Excite, InfoSpace, NBCi, CNet, they profess others but failed to define others. Addwords engages with Google of course, AOL, Lycos, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, EarthLink, Shopping.com, CompuServe, plus AT & T Worldnet.  It will be interesting to see where Yahoo remains, since it is heavily affiliated with SBC which just recently merged with AT & T.

Moving right along, jump into the Google addwords website. This will bring you to an entry screen where 3/4 of the way down the screen you'll see sign up now /click to begin.  You can bypass this sign up entry and scroll all the way down till you see Keyword Tool on the left. One thing that you do not want to do is sign up now/click to begin then select  Starter Edition. This will bring you through a series of quick harmless questions, then the next thing you know Google sends you an email and says once you respond to this email your ads will begin. Hopefully, since no "payment" information was exchanged, this email will just die. I guarantee, Google probably makes the best catches of the day with the "starter" novice illusion. "Shame on you!", Google.   

Upon entry into Keyword Tool you will have two neat tools available at your fingertips. One tool is Keyword Variation.  In this area you can enter a keyword or phrase, then hit Get More Keywords. Based upon the word you entered, adwords will provide additional suggestions. This tool is good to use when starting up your blog, since the tool will provide you with additional words that you can incorporate into your blog entries. For example, leadership returns 103 suggestions, such as teamwork, project management, John Maxwell leadership, or leadership books. So if you want to pull key search words into your blog just create a few blog entry using these keywords.

I played with the keywords leadership, how to, cigarettes, books, and for another business interest, pest control. Leadership returned 103 suggestions.  In addition to the keywords returned above it also suggested sports management, which I thought was interesting. "How to" brought up 156 items, some of them were quite rude! A more enlightening one was "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days", a cute chick flick, plus who couldn't love Goldie Hawn's daughter who shares her mother's charisma. Not to mention Mathew McConaughey's puppy dog appeal.  Cigarettes brought up 108 suggestions, Marlboro, Camel, and Virginia Slims were the only brand names mentioned in the suggestions. Cigarette racing was an interesting item and fags refreshed my memory of another term used for smokes. Interesting enough books only brought up 13 suggestions, i.e., the major book classifications. Pest Control retrieved 138 suggestions, with Terminix being the only large corporations suggestion.  I had to chuckle at this entry, since at least in Connecticut this organization is far from par in my opinion, as they nearly lost their Connecticut "exterminating" license. However, they may not practice pest control skill or quality work ethics, but they do know the marketing game. They even listed their business name and phone number on the outside pages of the phone book. If I had the time, I'd almost be tempted to file a class action suit against SBC for unfair marketing practices, since they never offered my husband that marketing option when he bought his telephone yellow page ad.  They just lost a class action suit about charging late fees on the yellow pages advertising.

The second tool that you have at your fingertips is Site-Related Keywords. On this tab you enter the URL that you want to Get more Keywords on. Google evaluates the site and presents you with what they classify as key word categories. So when you have a graduate site about a leadership program and donuts (do trackback) is your google hit word, you know some work is needed. How can you use this tool to find out what work is needed? Well, go back to the keyword variation tool enter leadership, volia! a keyword list of ideas is right under your nose. Leadership books gave me a bloggn' idea. After writing that blog entry, then I reran the graduate URL site for keywords the donut's addiction was successful eliminated. This also lead my curiosity to run a team mate's book review blog URL through the tool. Interesting enough this returned such items as book review classifications, Iraq war, and miscellaneous author keywords.

I also ran the Quinnipiac Quit smoking site through the Site-Related Keywords and received this message: "We're sorry, but there isn't enough text on this webpage to generate relevant keywords; at least a few paragraphs are necessary to provide results. You can try entering a different URL, or check the box labeled Include other pages on my site linked from this URL". I was actually happy to receive this message, since initially I totally overlooked this feature. When checking off the box "Include other pages on my site linked from this URL" four sets of keywords were generated; classified, smokers, tattoo, and miscellaneous keywords. An interesting and unexpected mixture. Under the miscellaneous keywords, smoking cessation was a suggested keyword. This is another keyword that I could possible weave into my blog. This word also gave me a chuckle, since the other day while giving a presentation I mentioned this term. However, I never thought to use it in my personal blog plus I had difficulty pronouncing this term and spoke to it as smoking "sensation".  Although, embarrassed, it did provide a little humor to my presentation.  I might also note that the Quinnipiac Quit Smoking site is rated by WhozOnTop website as number one (and the only one), when the keyword Quinnipiac is entered. This is an interesting site and would recommend spending some time exploring this site.

Posting word limit has been exceeded, please see Adword's con't post for completion of this post.

 

Site Meter

Site Meter has made life a little easier, since for TypePad account users they have added the ability to install a Site Meter Widget. Just jump onto site meter and at the bottom of the screen Sign Up.   The next screen will bring you to some general "What is Site Meter?" information, after reading the summary hit Next. This will bring you to a "Site Meter Policies", after careful study (only kidding) of this screen hit Next. This will bring you to a screen where you need to enter the URL, Site Name, Code Name of the site you wish to record stats on. Enter this information and hit Enter. On the next screen they will ask you to tell us a little about you. The only important item on this screen is your email address. Hit Enter. The next screen will offer you options for more notification services, you can skip over this screen by hitting Next. This screen provides you with the important information about your account. I would recommend printing this screen to have a record of your site and password. After printing the screen, hit Next. This screen offers you gifts, go to the bottom corner and hit No Thanks, continue. This next boxed item provides you with a few options. Either add HTML or change the STYLE of your meter. I would first enter STYLE and choose the site Meter icon of your preface. Then enter on the left hand column HTML CODE. Select Adding Site Meter to a TypePad.com or Blogs.com blog. The enter Install widget of Typepad. Log in to your typepad accoung. This automatically brings you to Add a Sidebar idget with a preview of your Site meter icon. Choose your weblog you wish to add this particular Demetre to then at the bottom hit Add Widget. Presto! Site Meter stats are clicking away on your blog.

So after the first office hours I had thought I did this correctly via adding the HTML code, but only needed to add a link name; however, after going back the link name did not work. Redoing and trying to just insert code to top entry in typepad did not work (code cut off). Thank goodness for the upgrades since the new way is so easy and takes 5 minutes. Now that these "counters" are on the group blog and my personal blog, we then released some additional networking strategies. Guess what? We actually have vistors, even had one from Germany and Canada. Wish the site meter was successful earlier, as I feel that some of the few blogging comments networking may have been lost(MBA/smoke/general blogs). I'll have to try a few others.

P.S. How do you close down site meters that you are not using. I must have a half dozen "test" attempts sending me zero emails.

Adword Changes

Google Adwords can't make up it's mind on presentation; therefore, entry options change frequently making it difficult to publish a "how to".  Just within a short period of time, the post on Adwords no longer fully applies.

The entry of Keyword Tool has know changed to Option number 3. Explore Search Queries under the Learn More category. By substituting Explore Search Queries for Keyword Tool in the previous Adword post, hopefully by applying this substitution you will not get lost.   

Blog Objective

The QU Corner Blog objective was to be a forum for students enrolled in the various Quinnipiac University Graduate programs to use as a place to exchange thoughts, ideas, and information by sharing experiences with fellow graduate students, tips, hints, underground info on courses, etc. Our initial target was the Organizational Leadership students. In reviewing our objective I feel that the activity, commenting, and emails received inicate that we have successfully met our objective. In the future I would like to see us utilizing more "fancy" blogging techniques and extend ourselves to more graduate programs within Quinipiac. In addition, there are many other "graduate" type blogs and it would be neat to also pull in that audience.

Site Meter Stats

Site Meter provides the blogger with a variety of stats. Of course there is the summary stats that gives one the high level picture of total number of visitors and visits made within the last hour. Then there is the recent visitors stat the provides the domain of the visitor. After analyzing the QU Graduate Corner we have had a variety of different visitors who use a range of Internet suppliers. I can predict when it is the user's first time entry, since their visit length averages between 12 to 18 minutes. I can also see that a few of them are repeat visitors, which must indicate that they are enjoying the blog and are interested to see any new posts. When I evaluate the referral site I see that the majority of the entries are made directly to the site, probably due to our networking email.

I could not get Site Meter to "load" the mapped locations. Another stat Site Meter tracks is the location, usually by city and state name of the viewer. When evaluating this I can see that I am my own best fan. We have also had visitors from the following Connecticut cities: Rocky Hill, North Branford, Hartford, Sandy Hook, Newington, Wallingford, Stratford, Newtown, Cheshire, West Hartford, Wethersfield, and Yantic. Wow, alot of people travel to participate in the Quinnipiac Program. When looking at whose visiting out of state we have visitors from New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, California, Massachusetts. Perhaps some of these visitors are a result of some blog comment networking, and of course, one is the professor. One visit was even from Germany, I suspect this came from Typepad update list, since I noticed this one night right after I updated the blog.

Other stats Site Meter reports on is the out clicks and exit pages. The out clicks are the links that visitors clicked to view content outside of the site. The out clicks data shows me that visitors had taken a look at the Site Meter (perhaps that was us), I Just Finished Reading ... , the Rockwell paintings, Ciga Rest, HowTo, Sleeping Giant State Park, QU links (blackboard, email, and schedule). The exit page stats show hte links clicked by visitors to exit the site. Most exit pages were the first blogging post. Which hopefully indicates vistors were interested in reading the complete blog. A few exited via the Sikorsky blog or the food and drink link on the Neil's donuts' post.

A few folks are also leaving comments, especially on articles that are directly relate to the program. The hottest items are the compentecny exam/books and the feedback/grades received from course. I have even received a few emails about the blog. All and all, at least the blog is receiving visits from the OL program meat and potatoes, the remainder of the traffic is considered gravy.