Thanks to my favorite web hosting personality and friend, Mitch Keeler of Mitchelaneous.com and the Web Hosting Show for asking me some really interesting questions in this interview. This is my first interview ever and I enjoyed it so much that I’m thinking of asking some of you for interviews. That’s what blogging is all about, isn’t it? People. Here’s a sample, but I suggest spending some time exploring Mitch’s sites to get the full impact of who he is as well.

How did you get your start on the Web?

Emory: My path into the web began in the mid 1990’s. I was a fairly uninspired surfer and email user until I discovered online multiplayer gaming. Meeting others and competing with them in a virtual world fascinated me. I spent a lot of time gaming back then when I should have been reserving domains like games.com. Looking back, I guess you could say that playing multiplayer games was my first online social networking experience. But, instead of the polite introductions we have with today’s social networking sites, you broke the ice by joining a game and chasing people around, taunting and blowing each other up.

 Gimme a Link and I’ll Stop Spamming Ya

Patrick Altoft of Blogstorm noticed the World’s Worst Link Exchange Request and asked “whats worse than a link exchange email?” Well, I’ve got a very strong candidate for you. How about a link exchange request delivered through the medium of comment spam requesting follow up on IM. Today I logged into WordPress to approve comments and found this unakismetted comment from someone named, Richard:

hello, my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments,

I can help you with this problem. I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50%. In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it, its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq [removed] or write me [removed], i will give you my site url and you will give me yours  if you are interested. thank you

I just may approve this comment after all :)

Update from Richard 9-10-07: This may be the first case of someone achieving celebrity status through spam. This time we see the human side of Richard the Spammer as he introduces his wife, “Dosia,” confesses his guilt and appeals to our sense of hope…

Hello guys ! This is Richard again,
Im here again to help you solve the comment spam problem, I got tons of emails and wasnt able to help all of you but Ill do my best. I am a very nice guy actually, and I want to save the internet world! As I told you I know a lot of spammers because my wife Dosia and I work at a large link spam company. When I saw the blogs, guestbooks and forums full of spammy links I was shocked! I wanted to stop this pest, and I know there is a note book in the office where these techniques are kept secret. Im trying hard to find this secret book. As soon as I find it Ill tell you guys how to prevent the spam comments. Im in danger now guys because my boss will spank me hard for this if he finds out I want to ruin his business! I feel very guilty because these people gave a job for us and we are ruining their business. I know they have a website and they look for links thats why i asked you for a link to their site for me not to feel so guilty and do something good for them too. My wife and I will probably be fired :( But we are ready for this to save you. Thank you guys, dont worry, Ill help all of you. Please believe me and our dream will come true.

From Richard and Dosia with love. icq [removed]

I can confirm that the both messages came from the same IP address. I can’t wait to see what Richard says next time!

If you want to get a feel for how controversial Google’s new paid links reporting policy is becoming among webmasters, take a look at these screen shots from the Google SERPs a few days ago. Over 600 comments appeared on Google engineer Matt Cutt’s blog post entitled “How to Report Paid Links.”  Judging by the whirlwind of debate that followed, both on the Cutts blog and many SEO blogs, I’d say the post seems to have caught many webmasters off guard and left them upset. The flurry of comments appear to have pushed the limits of the WordPress blogging software used by MattCutts.com. Google indexed the error:

This is what came up when I tried to access the actual page: Read more of this post »

3 Tips to Improve your Blog

Steven Bradley, aka Van Gogh, sent a blog meme my way last week. My mission is to come up with 3 tips to improve your blog. The meme is a fork from the what are your favorite magazines meme. I’m glad I don’t have to answer that question because I don’t read many magazines anymore. Most of the information I process is delivered via the online medium. With the onslaught of new media, I wonder if mags could be going the route of phone books–can’t remember the last time I used one. Okay, here goes…

Blog Tip #1: Write Well
In the flurry of trying to crank out regular posts, many bloggers seem to lose sight of what they are doing: writing. There is a big difference in the enjoyment I receive from reading a craftily written post vs. a hastily written one. In fact, good writing will often make me read further into a post even when the information is not so beneficial. It’s important not just to proofread, but go the extra mile for your readers in writing in a clear, interesting and provocative style that will make them want to read more of your posts. Think of it as akin to link bait. By the way, don’t get the idea that because I wrote this, I am a good writer. I’m still learning this principle myself.

Blog Tip #2: Take Advantage of Built in Blog Tools
What’s the difference in a blog and web site? One difference is that blogs are social. They have built in tools that allow intercommunication with other bloggers. Allow comments to be posted and approved on your blog. Take advantage of the trackback, pingback and ping functionalities. Utilize a blogroll. If you want, you can go a step further and deploy all sorts of plugins and widgets to sosh up your blog.

Blog Tip #3: Use Pictures
Whether landing on your blog deliberately or randomly from Stumbleupon, one of the symptoms of the hurried age we blog in is that readers scan the page quickly for something to latch onto. If nothing grabs their eye, they may be gone in a split second, perhaps never to return. Of course, it won’t always be expedient to find an appropriate pic to match your post (as in this post), but inserting a humorous or catchy image can be worth a thousand blogged words.

Now it’s time to be a good blogmemer and tag another blogger to carry on the legacy of the 3 Tips to Improve your Blog meme. One problem: I don’t know who to tag. Please jump in and pick this one up if you feel inspired.

The Revenge of 5 things you didn’t know about me

David Temple tagged me with a “meme.” This is the first blog meme I’ve participated in. I don’t really have an opinion on memes so it’s kind of an experiment to see what happens both inside my mind and among the pixels here.

David confesses he doesn’t really know why he blogs. I’ve gone into detail as to why I began this blog, but I am not sure that I’ve fully thought through on a behavioral level why I blog. After a bit of introspection, here are some of the major reasons why I believe I blog:

Read more of this post »

A Warning to Akismet Users

Everyone knows that Akismet is Matt Mullenweg’s/Automattic’s WordPress anti-spam plugin, “a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again” that runs “hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.” I’ll bet that most WordPress users who have comments turned on run it. Akismet normally works well–or so I had thought.

I just logged in and deleted a ton of spam caught by the Akismet WordPress plugin. Just as my mouse finger was releasing the “delete all” button, I noticed a real comment by a real person going away forever. I can’t describe how angry I felt. Here was someone who took the time to say something about something I had taken the time to say and it will never be seen by the readers.

I applaud Matt’s efforts to fight spam, but I realize now that I had built too much trust in Akismet. I wonder how many comments I’ve deleted by mistake. To Clickfire Blog readers, I apologize. To Akismet users, take this as a warning to occasionally take a peak into that vortex of filth spam bucket and check if there might be a good post.

I have been wanting to blog my thoughts about MyBlogLog, a social networking site that seems to cater largely to search marketers, bloggers and tech enthusiasts. I filled out a profile for the free service at MyBlogLog.com about a month or so ago when I noticed it on TechCrunch. I have signed up to test a great many social networking sites and have found only a few that I am willing to invest time into. MyBlogLog exceeded my expecations.

Here’s how it works. Every member sets up a profile with an avatar and any info they want to show about themselves including physical address, IM id’s and links to their profiles on other social media sites like digg, Flickr, MySpace, etc. MyBlogLog members can add sites and blogs they author onto separate MyBlogLog pages. Each site page becomes a community on MyBlogLog.com that other members may join and interact actively or passively with widgets (comments, rss feeds, top links). You can view stats on the number of visits to your community page on MyBlogLog and also page views to any sites you have setup there.

None of this sounds very new, but hold on and you will see the magic behind it. The avatar image that links to your user profile follows you around, both on MyBlogLog.com and on any user who has the MyBlogLog JavaScript pasted into their site. So if you visit Michael Arrington’s profile, your avatar now appears on Michael’s page. Everyone sees your image on Michael’s page and suddenly you feel cool. If you see a fellow MyBlogLogger’s profile appear on your page, you know for sure that they have actually seen your site. You can shoot them a quick message saying thanks for visiting and tell them what you like about them. Now you are connected.

I have seen several well known bloggers and marketers who have set up MyBlogLog profiles. What ends up happening is you start browsing through the profiles and checking out other user sites, leaving your trail. Other bloggers see your image on their site and curiosly click over to check out your site. I have connected with some interesting people that I otherwise probably never would have met. I’ve also run into an existing friend or two there. Read more of this post »

2006 has been a good webmaster year for me. It was my first full year blogging at Clickfire. Earlier in the year I landed a full time job with Response Mine, an intereactive ad agency in Atlanta. It’s a job that I really enjoy putting my heart into (doing SEO, webmastering, and some design–what else). I am working longer hours than ever, but oddly, enjoying it. It’s partly because of the work, but due a great deal to the very talented, kind and cool people that I work with.

I feel good about what I’ve been able to accomplish with my own projects this year, too. One of the biggest personal victories for me this year was winning my first ever SEO contest. Another accomplishment was finally redesigning and adding new content to Clickfire. Both of these efforts took an unimagineable amount of time to plan and execute. I don’t regret either of these. Now that the redesign is behind me, I feel like I can concentrate on the future of Clickfire. I might also mention that this was a record year for affiliate marketing revenue, another reward for all the sweating. In many ways, I feel like I’m coming into my prime, actually accomplishing things in life due to my own strategies and intitiatives.

This year I have met several very cool webmaster friends through the Internet and through that other thing; I guess you call it real life. I met several of these new friends via social networking sites, another discovery of the year that I hope continues next year. I will definitely be bloging about this in 2007.

Being my final post of the year, I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite blog posts I made during my first year as blogger. No resolutions for me this year. I just want to continue doing the same but more and better. Happy new year everyone!

• Why I Created a Blog
• Direction of Organic Search
• Sunday Afternoon
• Google Toolbar Buttons
• Chitika Account Suspended

When you do something that takes a lot of work and exposes yourself to the world, it’s nice to know why you’re doing it. I’ve enjoyed reading blogs for a long time now, but I haven’t felt the need to create a blog until now. Should I create a blog because I like to write? That was not enough reason. Anyone who has has clicked around the site or subscribed to the newsletter knows that I do have plenty to say in the articles. My thinking was that a blog was essentially a tool for publishing articles and would offer very little improvement in content experience. I was fairly handy with HTML, so why bother? Read more of this post »