Search Engine Optimization All-in-one Desk Reference for Dummies, by Bruce Clay and Susan Esparza
If you want your Web site to show up quickly when people search, Search Engine Optimization All–in–One For Dummies has the whole story on how to build a site
The book has chapters covering how search engines work, keyword strategy, competitive positioning, SEO Web design, content creation, linking, optimizing the foundations, analyzing results, international SEO, and search marketing. It even gives you some ok information about geeky things like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, so that you can improve you ability to match metatags and keywords to page content.
- How search engines work and which ones offer the best exposure
- How to develop a keyword strategy and be competitive
- Designing an SEO–friendly site
- How to line up relevant links for better search showing
- How to get more from your server and CMS
- How to measure your success
- How to globalize your success
- Using SEO to build your brand
A good alternative to this book, equally good, is Search Engine Optimization For Dummies
, amazon US
, amazon CA
, and Suchmaschinen-Optimierung für Dummies (Fur Dummies)
.
CSS: The Missing Manual, by David McFarland
This is a CSS-bible you will probably sooner or later need. You may as well get it now! It has 500 pages of CSS help, with more than 100 pages of 
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is here to stay. But CSS isn’t just a tool to pretty up your site; it’s a reliable method for handling all kinds of presentational issues on your site: from fonts and colors to page layout. CSS: The Missing Manual explains this powerful design language in a clear, logical, easy to grasp manner, and shows how you can use it to build sparklingly new Web sites or refurbish old sites that are ready for an upgrade.
Author David McFarland (who is also the bestselling author of O’Reilly’s Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual
- Create HTML that’s simpler and is search-engine friendly
- Turn HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars
- Style images to create effective photo galleries and special effects
- Make HTML forms look great
- Overcome browser bugs
- Create complex layouts using CSS
A wonderful book, and a great reference manual!
Learn blogging from Huffington Post and Problogger
There
Learning to blog, and getting to be a good blogger, is pretty hard. Many try and very few make it. Thus, learning from the bloggers that have made it makes sense. Even though they may not give you all their secrets, and even though they may not be able to impart to you the golden style and the mode of thinking that sets them apart, learning from them may still be a good way to improve.
The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging is, as it turns out, both informative, fun, and useful. It gives you tools to help you build your blog, strategies to create your community, tips on finding your voice, and lots entertaining anecdotes from HuffPost bloggers that will make you wonder what took you so long to blog in the first place.
The most interesting chapters to me were chapter 2 through 5. Chapter 2 described some of the the basics of getting started.
Chapter 3 discusses how to your blog noticed. The tips are very practical and one I think actually work. It also gives tips on monetizing your blog in a realistic fashion.
Chapter 4 is about finding your voice. It advises you consider both what you will feel most passionate about and what you think your potential reader would want out of your blog.
Chapter 5 takes the notion of getting your blog noticed one step further, and talks about how you can foster a community through your blog.
I found the books intereesting and useful, and recommend it to others as well.
Darren Rowse 
and Chris Garrett’s Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income is another book from successful and profitable probloggers, and here they reveal at least some of their secrets. It is a well written book - in the clear, no-nonsense, straight to the point style that we have come to associate with Problogger.
This book gives a lot of useful tips and techniques for building a successful blog. The chapters deal with topics like Blogging for Money, Niche Blogging, Setting Up Your Blog, Blog Writing, Blog Income and Earning Strategies, Buying and Selling Blogs, Blog Networks, Blog Promotion and Marketing, Secrets of Successful Blogs, Creating Something Worthwhile.
Reading this book gave me a lot of knowledge in blogging and a lot of food for thought.
It is perhaps the most comprehensive and realistic book I have seen on blogging. It covers almost everything, but as the authors are skilled and know the business from every angle, there is advice for all regardless of current skill level.
I found many, many tips that hopefully will help me focus my efforts and produce a better blog. There is so much to learn and so much one can do to improve, and Rowse and Garrett give valueable assistance that makes it easier to avoid costly and time consuming mistakes. A great book!
Links to amazon: The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
Adobe Creative Suite 3 and 4 Web Premium: All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies
The most useful book of all for people that uses Creative Suite 3 (or 4) Web Premium from Adobe (as we do). This package has so many programs, with so many useful features, and learning them all is almost impossible 
The “for Dummies“-manuals that are lumped into one in this book are for Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Fireworks, Illustrator, Flash, Contribute, and Acrobat, all of them in the CS3-version. This is a stunning package, and the various programs work together relatively seamlessly.
To us, the book has been a great resource to have availble. So far it has helped us fixing problems using Flash CS3, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver. If you’ve invested in getting these programs, or plan to do so in the near future, then having books around that can function as a reference manual for them makes sense. Especially when you can get one book that covers them all. That really gives you the value you have earned for your money!
Check for Dummies - Web Suite all in one
Affiliates scammed at Commission Junction?
For me the whole story with Commission Juction started a long time ago. I have written about it in this blog previously, without mentioning the name of Commission Junction, is a post entitled Monetizing your blog - make the smart choices.
One of the ad agencies I had an affiliate deal with, I can reveal now, was Commission Junction. It, in turn was (is?) affiliated with eBay, and gave me ads from a number of great companies that I was happy to promote, like for instance eBay and Adobe.
And I spent a large number of hours finding the right ads, placing them on my pages, monitoring progress, and so on. And, according to the stats, a lot of people clicked the ads.
But guess what? I made no money at all! According to the same stats, not one of the people clicking the ads became leads for the advertisers. Nor did any of them buy anything. Not one single soul!
So in the blog post I cited above, I wrote:
So far, I haven’t made a nickel on those affiliate deals. Many of them, I think, are scams. At least a large number of them are structured in ways that favor the advertiser and possibly the agency, but definitely not me. So somebody else is getting the value I create.
It now turns out that mostly likely I was scammed! There is now a class action suit against Commission Junction pending, and a proposed settlement:
The proposed settlement will resolve claims that Defendants failed to adequately monitor Commission Junction’s Network for the use by third parties of software that does not
comply with Commission Junction’s (“CJ”) Publisher Code of Conduct and that is intended to steal or divert commissions from publishers on CJ’s network (“Non-compliant Software”), failed to adequately monitor or prevent third parties from engaging in the theft or “hijacking” of commissions from Advertisers and Publishers on CJ’s Network, and failed to make sufficient disclosures regarding the existence of Non-compliant Software and commission theft, resulting in losses to both advertisers and publishers on the CJ Network.
The suit, and proposed settlement includes ValueClick, Inc., Commission Junction, Inc. and Be Free. Neither of these parties, of course, admit any guilt or wrong doing. But they have agreed to pay publishers and advertisers even so!?!
So yeah, monetizing blogs and websites IS difficult, and there are scams! So look out friends, be careful, watch your stats and trust your instincts!
PS: Link to info about the settlement
Do big corporations hack blogs to shut them up?
I have had a couple of strange experiences lately. I’ve written a few things that are more than a little critical of a couple of huge corporations. Since then, I have twice had my blog infected with malware or badware, so that Google have blocked people from going directly to my blog from Google search results.
I am not critical of Google. I think that they did the right thing, given the presence of malware on my blog.
But the thing is, I run several blogs. This is the only one that has had malware. And now this blog has had it twice. And this is the only blog where I’ve criticised huge corporations. I can’t prove anything, I have no idea who did it, it is just strange. But I am cynical. And I am don’t really believe in coincidences. Not all that much.
I run a WordPress installation. So, the first time Google told me I had malware, I was running WordPress 2.3.2. I looked through all my posts. Then I looked through my PHP-files. I found a JavaScript that looked strange in a theme file. So I did a clean upgrade to 2.3.3 and changed theme.
A few days later, the malware was back. This time I upgraded to WordPress 2.5, and changed theme again. The theme is clean, the installation is clean, Aximet is there, only clean widgets and plugins. Just as the first time. I hope WordPress 2.5 makes this install more secure. This has cost me lots of time and work. I hate it.
Who knows. I am suspicious. I may be too suspicious. Have anybody else experienced anything similar?
ComponentLauncher.exe - a new annoyance from Adobe
I was hoping Adobe would fix the problems with apdproxy.exe, which crashes my machine ever so often, and that they would stabilize Dreamweaver CS3, which I love, but which also make my PC crash ever so often.
But instead the folks at Adobe seems to have used my remaining confidence in them to upload a program called ComponentLauncher.exe onto my PC, presumably calling it an “update”. This program too will suddenly come alive and steal all my CPU, thus making my mackine useless. Fixing the problem requires turining the program off in Task Manager, or, occationally, closing down everything and rebooting (and sending off a quick prayer that neither CompnentLaucher not apdproxy will kill the machine after reboot).
Searching Google,
I find that a large number of people have the same problem as me.
So, what can I say, apart from “Congrats Adobe - you did it again!” I think Adobe is hell bent on shedding its customer base as soon as possible. Good luck!
Web Site Benchmarking from Google: Enhanced Google Analytics
Google Analytics is about to get a new facelift from Google, according to Web Analytics World.
Yesterday I had a chance to talk with Google Analytics’ Senior Product Manager, Brett Crosby regarding some of the new features being rolled out into Beta for Google Analytics. The one that I found most intriguing was their new benchmarking functionality which will allow users to compare your site’s metrics versus other sites. With opt-in permission from site owners, Google will be aggregating website data into different verticals allowing users to compare their data with companies in any other vertical.
Here is the blog about it from Google:
Benchmarking now available plus additional opt-in settings
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
We’re happy to announce the launch of two related new Google Analytics features: a beta version of industry benchmarking and a data-sharing settings page. Both are designed to give our customers more choice and better control over their data. We are also launching an integration with Audio Ads today, which we’ll discuss in more detail in tomorrow’s post. All of these features will begin appearing in customer accounts today, though benchmarking reports may take up to a couple weeks to show data.
Industry benchmarking is a commonly requested new service that enables customers to see how their site data compares to sites in any available industry vertical. We believe this data will provide actionable insights by providing context for users to understand how their site is doing. For example, if you have a travel website and you get a spike in traffic on Mondays, you may want to know whether other travel sites get that same spike on Mondays.
You can also compare your site against an industry vertical different than your own. For example, you might see that your industry’s traffic dips at certain times of the year while another industry’s traffic increases. Based on that information, you may wish to explore cross promotional opportunities to drive traffic back and forth.
For more information, take a look at the benchmarking FAQs in the Google Analytics help center.Of course, benchmarking only works if people can opt to share their data into the system, so we’re also introducing a new data-sharing settings page. On this page, customers can choose whether to opt in or opt out of sharing their Analytics data. To be clear, we are not sharing individual data with competitors; we bucket data into industry verticals and then anonymize and aggregate the data. Once you opt in, it may take a couple weeks for the reports to populate.
You can also elect to share your data with other Google services. This setting will allow us to provide you with additional advanced new features. For example, many of you have asked us to integrate Conversion Optimizer (which is currently only available to AdWords Conversion Tracking users) into Google Analytics. By opting to share your data with Google, you’ll be able to take advantage of these related new features as they become available. For more information, take a look at the data-sharing options FAQs in the help center.
This is good news, especially for larger sites and relatively standard sites where benchmarking is meaningful and usesul. However, at this point too few details are available to make it possibly to really know in any detail how useful this will be. But it is sufficiently interesting for me, at least, to eagerly await momre news and information from Google.
A Warning About Windows Live Writer
I have previously written a very positive posting about using Windows Live Writer as desktop editor for Wordpress.
I have installed and used Live Writer on my WordPress installation. It works beautifully, but has created huge problems for me. As it turns out, the program for some reason uses ISO code representation of extended characters instead of “standard” HTML (I have the Norwegian version of the program, and I am not certain whether this is a problem in other versions - but it probably is in non-English versions).
That is, « is represented as & #171; (ISO Latin-1, with a blank space inserted after & to prevent from not displaying) instead of & laquo; (HTML). And so on, for all the extended characters.
So why is this a huge problem: Because in WordPress, plugins like “Sensitive Tag Clouds” and the like assume standard HTML. And WordPress 2.3.x tags seem to be generated on this assumption as well. So my Wordpress installation generates tags that include these odd ISO-code numbers into my Google sitemap. But when that page comes up in a search, and the users wants to open my page, the page can not be found, and generates a 404-error.
So I am losing a traffic due to this program. I have gone through the documentation for Windows Live Writer, and as far as I can see, this is not at all documented. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to configure this. Also, you can only see the representation when you switch from normal to HTML view in Live Writer.
The only solution I have so far found is to write the text directly into the HTML-view instead of using the ordinary views. Then the characters will be correctly represented in WordPress.
So for me this has meant: (a) I have stopped using Live Writer, and (b) I have had to go back and correct all the post I had written using it before I detected the problem.
Be warned! This is not a good program to use with WordPress installations!
– Peter