Whew, I’m tired! This will be the last installment of the quest for mobile speed, even if later on I may write about something new I’ve discovered. It’s finally time to end this journey, which has taken on a life of it’s own. The previous quest for speed post was pretty epic; I expect this one to be much shorter… then again, what do I know? lol
This time around I’m adding two of my business websites along with talking about the blogs. I still have one website I haven’t addressed, mainly because I still haven’t figured out what I want to do with it. This still means I have 7 web properties to talk about. First, take a look at the numbers from the previous post because I’ve improved on all of them: Continue reading The Quest For Mobile Speed, Part Three→
Two weeks ago I told y’all about the concept of mobile friendliness vs mobile speed and how I’d been losing all this traffic because the speed of my sites stunk even though all of my sites were considered mobile friendly. Well, I’ve been on a major quest to rectify this, and I’d like to share with you what I’ve been doing.
First, let me remind you that on the above post I showed that my friendly score was 100/100, and my mobile speed was 58/100. What I didn’t share was that my desktop speed was 61/100 at the time. All of my blogs were between 54 to 58 on speed and 58 to 61 on desktop before I started. Let me show you where I stand now, and I have to admit that I’m kind of proud, even if I’m not perfect yet: Continue reading The Quest For Blog Speed, Part Two→
I was looking at my site on Saturday night and I noticed my Alexa rank. Even though most people think there’s no use for Alexa, it turns out there is. and it scared me. I noticed that my traffic had dropped drastically and I wanted to see what the issue might be.
Friendly vs Speed
I looked at my Google Analytics and noticed that for every single one of my websites my traffic had dropped drastically around the beginning of May. I thought that was strange and I wasn’t sure why that was happening so I did some research. Continue reading Mobile Friendly Versus Mobile Speed→
I’ve written about spam around 125 times out of the almost 1,500 posts on the blog. I’ve talked about how much I hate it, ways to identify it, why it’s important to keep it off your blog and how to move more of it to go directly to your spam filter so that you don’t necessarily have to rush to your blog to remove it from going live as often as you might without putting certain things in place.
And yet, like the reason I have to wear this mask on my present consulting assignment right now (that’s another story) I don’t always understand the purpose of some of the spam. Back in the day most spam looked to be trying to sell something. Nowadays a lot of it is so nonsensical that the only thing you can believe they’re hoping to achieve is to get a link placed on your blog so that it goes back to their page. Obviously some of those folks got bad SEO advice of a different sort than the bad advice I mentioned in that post I just linked to.
What am I seeing? Let’s chronicle some of it:
1. The long, rambling post about nothing. I got a spam comment from someone calling himself “best gym supplements for muscle growth“, and other than occasionally trying to pop a link into it the spam comment was almost 100 lines of nothingness. Someone must have been told that writing a long spam comment gives it a better chance to be thought of as being legitimate; please!
2. The comment with lots of characters in it. What the heck is this type about? I got this mess: “ѕuρp&X6c;eme&X6E;ts mаy also re&X6e;еw the respira&X74;ory”. The thing is I get lots of these and I’m betting you do as well. It’s not even close to readable so why even bother? I’m of the opinion someone’s technology has gone haywire; I wonder if spammers can get their money back.
3. The short, incomplete and nonsensical spam comment. I can’t believe anyone even took the time to actually write this, so it must be some kind of randomizer: “Just file manufacture clear subject matter. What did you say? precisely I needed! I have been before browsing search engines like google the complete day for some correct clause such as this” That was it; didn’t even finish the sentence. Intelligence obviously belongs to other family members.
4. Spam that attaches itself to an image. This one is totally incomprehensible. It shows up at the blog with nowhere to go except spam because it thinks the image is the blog post. I hope the spammers didn’t spend too much money on this program because it’s a total loser, like the spammer.
5. The “good post” spam. That one’s been around forever, as well as calling you “webmaster” and asking you if you’re using a free theme. I’m always amazed when I visit a blog and I see the owner actually responding to those comments; well, at least they’re trying to be a good host. 🙂
6. Spam that shows up without any links whatsoever. Why did the owner even bother sending that one out? By now most blogs probably won’t accept posts without a link because those are usually trolls and what benefit is a spammer hoping to get from something like that?
7. Copying a previous comment as one’s new comment. I have to admit this one’s creative, and it can be easily missed. I’ve missed it a couple of times, even though the Spidey senses went off thinking it looked familiar. This one was actually a legitimate comment… the first time around anyway.
The first link I put up on this post links you to many posts where I’ve talked about ways to protect your blog from some of the spam. I hope you’re using the GASP plugin and, if it’s really bad, go ahead and use Akismet, even though some people run from it like it’s a bull chasing them. We own these blog spaces, not them; don’t let them get you down or chase you away.
Back in October I talked about Google authorship for the first time. If you follow that link, you’ll see an example of what it can do for you, but for those who are new to this concept, it allows for the possibility of people actually seeing your image next to a search term if it comes up during a Google search. If someone knows you it’s even better, but if not they might visit your link just because there’s a picture next to it. It can enhance your online presence greatly… isn’t that pretty cool?
What I’m finding out is that many people aren’t sure how to do it, or haven’t done it. Goodness, I knew about it, yet I figured out yesterday that I hadn’t completed it for all of my blogs; what a moron! I’d have slapped myself if I could have gotten my hands in the right position. lol
In any case, this is a quick tutorial, and the video below, with my Hot Blog Tips Hangout buddies, will talk more about it and its importance, and you can hear me giving this same advice there if you hate reading everything.
First, you have to have a Google Plus profile; without that, none of this will work. Once you have that, or if you already have that, you come back to your blog and, if you have WordPress software as your platform, you go into your User profile. I’m betting that most of you haven’t been there since you created your blogs. You’ll see what’s below, although in a totally different color:
Notice that last category saying Google+? You copy your Google profile About page link into this space. This is what G+ will be looking for when it goes to verify that it’s you. If you have multiple writers on your blog, if you enter this for each of them and they put their profile information in it’ll show them in search results as well.
After you’ve done that, go back to your Google profile and look at your About page. It looks like this:
The email address you have here has to match the email address you have on your blog associated with that blog. If you notice, since I have 5 blogs, I have 5 email addresses. What you don’t see here is the word “verify” next to each email address, since I’ve already done that. You’d click on that word and it will send an email to that address with a link in it. You’d click on that link, then come back to your profile where you’ll see this:
That’s when you know you’re good to go. It can take anywhere from a week to 3 weeks before your image finally shows up next to your content, but the first time you see it will make you happy. And, if you didn’t go back to that other post, know that during a search your image will only come upon the first post you’re found for, even if you’re showing for all the listings. I guess even Google only wants to see us just so much. 😉
There you go; easy peasy. If you want more, watch the video below; we’re always entertaining:
http://youtu.be/lzP2zFmjL68
Blogging, Social Media, Writing, Motivation and General Stuff
