Hidden Gems

Page Titles & Search Engine Optimization

nospam@example.com (Tracy) — Fri, 25 May 2007 10:46:00 -0700

The HTML tag – Title – is so important for search engine optimization that we feel it merits its own blog post. According to search engine experts, using keywords in a well-crafted Title tag is one of the most important factors for both:

Getting a site to rank accurately and prominently in search engine results, and

Getting the user to choose your website from the search engine results page.

What Are Page Titles?
The Page Title is the content within the Title tag on an HTML page. Each page of a website has its own Title tag.

You can see what a pages title is by looking at the (blue in Windows) bar in the browser window. In the browser Internet Explorer, for example, the title will be Page Title Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Another way to see the title is to select View -> Source from the menu. Towards the top of the page you will see the HTML title tags surrounding the actual title:

A Web Marketing Blog & SEO, Email Marketing,... Stephan Spencer's Scatterings

Here is how the webpage associated with this Title tag appears on Googles search results page:

Because Google accounts for the majority of total Internet search traffic, we think that tailoring Title tags to Google is very important.
(The search term we used was web marketing blog.)

How to Write Page Titles
Each page should have a unique Title tag that describes its content, similar to the title of a newspaper article, i.e., something that makes the user want to click on your sites link. Good webpage titles incorporate the following factors:

Accurately Describe the Pages Content
Write a title for each page on your site that accurately describes the content of that particular page. The search engines may discount a page whose title does not reflect the content on the page. Also, making a Title that is pleasant and informative for human readers will increase the likelihood that human readers will choose your site.

Writing an individual Title for each page of a site is labor intensive so many sites do not do this, which means that sites that contain accurate titles for each individual page have a key advantage.

Use Keywords
Whenever practical, use keywords. Keyword research indicates which keywords are more important for a site. However, it is more important that the Title should accurately describe the pages contents – with or without keywords.

Place Important Words Early in the Title
Search engines and people seem to believe that links that most directly reflect what theyve searched for are the most relevant. So it makes sense to put what search engines and people are looking for first this makes finding easier for them. Both are trying to find specific information.

The tendency is to always have a company name, followed by the real page title. This is usually counterproductive, since the user is probably not looking for a company name. For example, think about newspaper articles. They do not typically contain the name of the publication, as in

New York Times: Wayward Humpback Pair Moves Toward Ocean

In our first example, the website actually is a web marketing blog, and thats what the website owner puts first in the Title, and the title of the site, Stephan Spencers Scatterings, appears at the end of the Title.

Formatting the Title Tag
Its a good idea to capitalize most of the words in the title to give it more urgency.

Also, remember that Google only displays the first 66 characters of the Title tag.

2006 Tech Exchange Workshop

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 10:32:21 -0800

I'll be speaking on Ecommerce this Thursday December 14 at the Entrepreneur Center of the SBDC TAP (Small Business Development Center Technology Advisory Program, 84 W. Santa Clara St - downtown San Jose 95113)

The holiday party starts at 6pm and will include:

15 Minute Technology Demonstrations on Mobility, Ecommerce, Finance, VoIP

Valuable door prizes

FREE online subscription to Small Business Technology Magazine

Networking with Leading Technology Consultants and Local Small Business Entrepreneurs

What is a Landing Page and How to Write One

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Fri, 1 Dec 2006 14:55:00 -0800

The landing page is the first web page a visitor sees after she clicks on an AdWords ad (the little text-only ads you see on the right hand side of a search results page). The web address for this page is sometimes called the destination URL or the clickthrough URL.

Since the idea of placing AdWords ads is to generate an action from the user, the landing page should help the user continue on the path to completing the action. She already has initiated the action by clicking on your ad. You don't want to lose her after that - you want to "convert" her.

The best landing pages consider the users' intent when they click on an ad. You should consider your keywords and ads text. Ask yourself, What information does the user need next in order to (fill in this blank)? The whole point is to give the user what she wants and dont make her hunt around your website for it. The best thing would be for the user to land on a page that gives her the most useful and accurate information about what shes just clicked on.

The landing page may or may not be the same as your homepage. There are a few different ways to think about this:

If youve advertised about a specific product or service, the landing page should prominently feature that product or service. Maybe that product or service is the only one on the page. For example, if youre a shoe store advertising yellow boots, take the user to the yellow boots page, not the homepage.

If youre have a special offer, your landing page should make the special offer very obvious. The special offer might be the only topic on that page.

If your ad references a section of your business, such as cat boarding in a veterinary hospital, you would want the user to land on the cat boarding services page of your website (not the homepage).

If your ad advertises your whole business, for example cat boarding, your landing page would probably be your home page.

Another reason to provide quality landing pages is that it could end up costing you less. According to Google:

advertisers who are not providing useful landing pages to our users will have lower Quality Scores that in turn result in higher minimum bid requirements for their keywords.

Over the past year (2005-2006), Google has twice made changes to its algorithms for landing page quality in AdWords. Google has stated that these changes only negatively affected a small number of advertisers, so they probably would not affect your website. Whats useful to know here is that Google is looking at your website the same way a potential user would.

Real Examples

I googled acupuncture for headaches. Here are the Google search results:

Search for "acupuncture for headaches" on Google

Heres what happened when I clicked each of the four Sponsored Search links on the right side of the screen:

Acupuncture New Jersey took me to this clinics homepage. I had to click three times to get to an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file with case studies about the use of acupuncture for headaches.
San Francisco Acupuncture took me to the homepage for the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I clicked twice to see a list of conditions they treat, but there was no specific information about headaches (The word "San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA" at the bottom of the ad indicates that this is a local AdWords result, which is useful, because Im near San Francisco).
Acupressure for Headache is an affiliate marketing website.
Acupuncture for Headaches is an online medical insurance broker.

If you were an SF Bay Area acupuncturist specializing in headaches and used local AdWords search, youd be one of two advertisers for this keyword, and you could do a much better job with your landing page just by reading this article.

Landing Page Content

Figuring out and answering the questions your visitors will have is the key to an effective landing page which results in conversions.

Taking the above example, what I would want to know if I were to land on an Acupuncture clinic page:

Is the acupuncturist licensed or accredited? Is this the industry standard?
Is the acupuncturist experienced? How many years has he been practicing? Did he go to a good school?
Does he specialize in particular conditions?
How long does treatment last? How will I know that this treatment is going to be effective?
Can I use my medical insurance?
I want to feel comfortable about the acupuncturist, the facility and the acupuncture process.
Does he have referrals from Western doctors or other clients?
Does he give well-thought out and useful information on his website?
Does he know a little about a lot of alternative therapies or a lot about acupuncture?
Can I get sense of what sort of person the acupuncturist is? Are there photos?
How do I make an appointment or ask questions?
If I had a specific condition that I had typed into Google, I would want to know if he treated it and about his experience and knowledge of treatment of that condition.

References

Wikipedia entry on landing pages
Seth Godin on Landing Pages
Google AdWords Landing Page & Site Quality Guidelines
Inside AdWords, the Google AdWords blog
Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing for Dummies, Peter Kent, 2006.

[Thank you to Tracy Rabold for this article - Ed.]

"Hidden Gems" Blog in Palo Alto Weekly

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 06:46:09 -0700

Yesterday this blog was menioned in the Palo Alto Weekly newspaper in an article entitled Living in a bloggers' world -
Proliferation of blogs creates new communities within Silicon Valley .

It's about how different Palo Alto residents use blogs, and includes Jeff Clavier's Software Only, David Hornik's VentureBlog,
Pamela Horniks Silicon Valley Moms Blog and Enoch Chois MedMusings. Enoch has been a friend for many years and he is a prolific Palo Alto dad blogger. He also pointed the author of the article, Cyrus Hedayati, to my blog - thank you Enoch, and thank you Cyrus!

Here are the couple of mentions of Hidden Gems:

Philippe Alexis, an online marketing specialist, writes a blog called "Hidden Gems," in which he gives advice on topics such as bringing more traffic to your Web site.

"That post is basically a way for me to say to them (clients), 'There it is. Go read it and then you know how to do it,'" he said. "Plus, it gets a lot of publicity for me, so it kills two birds with one stone."

Also at the end of the article:

Another important ethic of blogging, Choi said, is the encouragement of open debate on issues.

Part of being a blogger, he said, is "making yourself open to letting people comment on your blog, and you don't delete opposing comments."

Alexis echoes the sentiment, saying the most addictive part of blogs is the often-heated discussions on controversial topics.

Alexis remembers "not just reading a blog, but being involved in an online discussion of global warming. ... It forced me to check the facts, because I didn't want to say something that wasn't true. So I think the most rewarding part of blogs is that they challenge you to learn."

"Online Marketing" Course again

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 00:08:38 -0700

Every quarter I teach an Online Marketing Course for the Small Business Development Center Technology Advisory Program (SBDC TAP). It is not an online marketing course, but rather a real life course about online marketing - about how to promote your site on the Internet.
I try to make it as practical as possible, with a lot of "live" examples where we analyse websites and techniques (there is an Internet connection so we can go to actual sites in real time). We cover Search Engine Optmization, content creation, the importance of keywords, setting up an AdWord campaign (Search Engine Marketing) and more. It's a bargain at $25!

Here are the upcoming dates and locations for my course for the Third Quarter of 2006:

Sep 14 5:00-8:00 PM
San Jose San Jose Entrepreneur Center, 84 W. Santa Clara Street, San Jose, CA 95113

Sep 26 5:30-8:30 PM
Oakland Cal State East Bay SBDC Training Center 1000 Broadway, Suite 109, Oakland, CA 94607

You can register online too.

UPDATE - THESE COURSES HAVE BEEN CANCELLED AND WILL BE MOVED TO THE FALL

Hope to see some of you there!

How to do a Keyword Analysis

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:25:52 -0700

The questions you're probably asking yourself are "what is a keyword analysis?" and "why should I do one?". A keyword analysis will determine what the most effective words or phrases are for your web content and keyword advertising. By effective, I mean "most likely to lead to conversion", be that a sale, a phone call or a newsletter subscription. The value in using effective keywords is it can increase the probability of your website being found in Search Engine search results, and it can increase recognition and credibility in your visitors' eyes.

Here's a real life example to illustrate this point. A client of mine had a product which he called an electronic scarecrow, which was searched for approximately zero times per day. We changed how the product was described to electronic bird control and now that is the keyword his site is most often found under. Also, a visitor to his site will take less time to understand what he is selling - product recognition will be improved.

There are three parts to a keyword analysis:

A. Discovering the keywords
B. Evaluating the keywords
C. Using the keywords

By the way, when I say keywords I really mean key phrases, as in what a searcher would type into a search box. Even though they are usually phrases of two or more words, they are usually referred to as keywords.

A. DISCOVERING KEYWORDS

1. Draw up an initial list
There will be quite a few "obvious" keywords you and your colleagues can simply come up with

2. Look at your referral logs
If you've already have had your site up for some time, looking at how people find you already is an invaluable resource. If you don't know how to see your traffic logs, ask your web hosting company. If they don't know either, switch web hosting companies! Also check out Google Analytics for a powerful and free way to access this information.

A real life keyword referral log snippet from a yoga blog

3. Look at competitors' metatags
Go to your competitors' sites look at the source code of some of their pages (select View-> Source from the browser's menu bar). The tag should be near the top of the page, and see if you can find useful keyword ideas (thanks Peter Kent for the tip).
Also don't stop at the metatags, look at the pages themselves, and observe which words and phrases are used in the titles, headings and text.

4. Use Overture.com's tool
Overture.com (bought by Yahoo!) has an invaluable free Keyword Selector Tool which gives you alternate suggestions for searches. For example, a search for homeopathy will list homeopathy medicine, homeopathy remedy, abc homeopathy and homeopathy training as the most popular searches.

UPDATE 2/19/07: Overture's tool has become increasingly unreliable. Google has introduced a Keyword Tool which used to be available only to AdWord accounts, but it is now free for all to use and has become an essential part of our own keyword analysis here at no diamonds:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

5. Refine list
There are several ways to add to your list, especially for your top ten keywords:
- spelling mistakes (calender)
- synonyms (home - house)
- singulars and plurals (shoe vs shoes)
- hyphenation (ecommerce vs e-commerce)
- geographic add-ons (palo alto doctor)

Now you should have a list of at least 10 keywords and maybe more than 100. Try to order them by importance to your site.

B. EVALUATING KEYWORDS

1. Search Popularity
WordTracker is the most popular fee-based online keyword research tool (about $8 per day or $250 per year). It will give you estimates of the number of searches performed for each keyword across all Search Engines, and will tell you how many sites appear in the search results giving you an idea of the competition. The site DigitalPoint.com allows you to use Wordtracker and Overture for free, but only for one keyword at a time.

Another good tool is SEObookwhich aggregates results from Overture, Wordtracker and more.

These will help you determine the relative popularity of search terms.

Here is a useful list of free online resources for keyword analysis from WebSiteTips.com.

2. Historical Trends
Google Trends shows you how up to five keywords rate against each other over time. This tool will give you an insight over the relative popularity of terms and highlight seasonality. Valentine's Day searches peak in February for example.

Google Trends can highlight seasonality in searches, as well as relative popularity

3. Focusing
Now that you know more about your keywords, eliminate the ones that are too general and the ones that are too specific. That is difficult to define exactly, but an example would be that solar is too general, solar power home installation is too specific, and solar power installation may be just right.

C. USING KEYWORDS

Now you should have a list of at least 10 keywords you have selected as most likely to provide targeted leads.

1. Place the keywords in your website (or if the terms below sound like foreign terms to you, get your webmaster to do it):
- Title Tag of every page
- MetaTags (not so important anymore)
- Headlines and Sub-headings
- Body Text
- Alt tags
- Title Attributes of hyperlinks
- File names and URLs

2. Start an AdWord Campaign
Having done this keyword analysis, you can use it as a basis for a Pay Per Click Google AdWord campaign. The finer details of that will be for another post!

Email Newsletters: the Best Way to Maintain Customer Relationships

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 10:45:28 -0700

Jaokob Nielsen's most recent newsletter was about newsletter usability. His main findings are:

The process of subscribing and unsubscribing is getting easier

the average time spent "reading" a newsletter is 51 seconds

the blah-blah text intro is skipped by more than two thirds of readers

eye-tracking test show the most read parts are the first 2 words of each headline

stored newsletters in inboxes become part of users' information spaces and thus will be found when they search their own environments

RSS

news feeds

newsletters: cut out the blah-blah text, no one reads it!

this ExactTarget study

35.5%

16.5%

6.6%

Latest Search Engine Market Share Data

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Thu, 8 Jun 2006 16:40:32 -0700

Google continues to gain market share over the other Search Engines. Here are the latest stats from a May 22 Comscore press release:
Total Internet Searches (April 2005) April 2006:

Google Sites (36.5%) 43.1%

Yahoo! Sites (30.7%) 28.0%

MSN Sites (16.1%) 13.2%

AOL- Time W (9.0%) 6.9%

Ask Network (6.1%) 5.8%

You can see the trend is positive for Google. On top of that, those numbers underplay Google's dominance:

Google powers AOL Search, so you can add almost 7% to its market share right there bringing it to 50%

Search Engine market share is based on the number of searches made (for example, Google served 2.9 billion searches in May vs. Yahoo's 1.9 billion). This is different from referral traffic from Search Engines, where Google ranks above 60%)

Google Pay Per Click market share for AdWords is greater than 70%

In most other countries other than the USA (with the notable exception of China), Google has a much bigger market share

So the mantra goes thus: if you optimize or advertise, do it with Google and you will rise

Users Decide First, Move Second

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Mon, 1 May 2006 15:39:00 -0700

I've always been reluctant to use Fly Out menus in the sites I've developed. As you can see from the image, these are navigation boxes which display more choices when you roll your mouse over the link.

The mouse is over the navigation link Leasing and displays further choices

Originally my hesitation was driven by the fact that keeping these submenus updated can be a maintenance nightmare for your friendly webmaster:
- they are often ignored by automatic link checkers
- they are written in JavaScript which makes them harder to "Find and Replace" using a code editor
- sometimes they do not work across browsers

I came across an article on the UIE site which for me puts the nail in the coffin for Fly Out menus:

users succeeded more often when they didn't encounter these design elements than when they did

The reason is that studies have shown that users decide where they will click before they move the mouse.

Unfortunately the information in fly outs, rollovers, or dropdowns can't help users decide where to click because the information isn't available to users when they are making their decision. It isn't until after they've decided where to click that they see what the element has to say.

When this happens, users often stop in their tracks, confused, to re-evaluate the information presented to them. And confusion is not a feeling you want to elicit in your users.

Teaching Online Marketing Course

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:31:50 -0700

I've been teaching an Online Marketing Course for the Small Business Development Center Technology Advisory Program (SBDC TAP) since 2005. The course is subsidized by the Small Business Administration and costs $25 for 3 hours.

Here are the upcoming dates and locations for my course for the Second Quarter of 2006:

May 2 5:00-8:00 PM
San Francisco San Francisco Entrepreneur Center 455 Market St. 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105

May 10 2:30-5:30 PM
Oakland Cal State East Bay SBDC Training Center 1000 Broadway, Suite 109, Oakland, CA 94607

June 5 5:00-8:00 PM
San Jose San Jose Entrepreneur Center, 84 W. Santa Clara Street, San Jose, CA 95113

You can register online.

There are many other courses offered at very good rates:

Small Office Computer Networking Made Simple

Smart Tools to Manage Your Small Business Finances

Successful Business Contacts Management with MS Outlook

Technology Tools to Succeed in the Retail Business

Web Fundamentals and eCommerce Principles

Maybe I'll get to meet some of you there!

Local Search Engines

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:33:32 -0700

This year local search is really taking off:

So, the question is, how do local searchers search?

For shoes they type "Kansas City Shocks" or "Omaha shoes"
For an accountant it's "Chicago west suburb accountant"
For computer programming it's "Idaho .Net programmer"

That's the reality of search on the local level and the search engines get it and are rushing in to be the big players in the local directory game and deliver search results all around town instead of just around the world..

This is from Duct Tape Marketing, who is offering a new service to submit to the many local Search Engines. Here's the handy list of the main local Search Engines' submittal pages:

Google Local - https://www.google.com/local/add/login?hl=en_US
Yahoo Local - http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
Super Pages - http://www.superpages.com/about/new_chg_listing.html
City Search - https://selfenroll.citysearch.com/
True Local - http://www.truelocal.com/getlisted.aspx
SwitchBoard -
http://www.switchboard.com/cobrands/sb/help_yp.asp#YP31
YellowPages.com -
http://www.yellowpages.com/sp/contact/update.jsp
Local.com - http://www.local.com/partner.htm
Insider Pages - http://www.insiderpages.com/
Judys Book - http://www.judysbook.com/merchant/

Pre-Review of Paypal's Website Payment Pro

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:22:00 -0800

Paypal's recent introduction of their Website Payment Pro service has the potential to make much simpler and cheaper for small businesses to add ecommerce to their websites.

In my work with clients to find the right ecommerce solutions, 2 problems keep on reoccuring:

Setup fees and running fees are high
It can cost hundreds of dollars just to get setup, and it's difficult to find a solution for less than $50/month even if you're not selling anything.

Integration between the parties can be difficult
There can be up to 4 parties involved, each wanting their slice of the action and each of which needs to be able to work with the other:

- the shopping cart software on your site
- the payment gateway
- the merchant account
- the bank account

If one of these cannot integrate with the other you are in trouble.

With their new service, Paypal potentially removes these obstacles by getting rid of a few middlemen and charging less:

the prices on the left are a little high, but you get the idea

So in effect you get a payment gateway and merchant credit card account in one go, and for no set-up fees. Also there is no one-year obligation. Looks pretty good, but I will let you know how it fares once I get the chance to use it.

How to Get a Cheap Logo for your Business

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Sat, 5 Nov 2005 13:29:04 -0800

Some logos from thelogocompany.net: creative and cheap

There are many affordable ways to get a corporate identity. Wired Magazine recently conducted a test of some cheap logo providers. They invented a company and asked online shops to create a logo for them. Unfortunately the online version of the article Grading the logo shops does not show the logos they came up with.

The top 3 were these (all comments are from Wired):

- The Logo Company
Service: Three business days; $75. Fast and easy. Ordering was a breeze, and they gave us four decent, relevant designs.
[You can see examples of their work here on the left.]
Grade: B+

- The Logo Loft
Service: Four business days and four options; $99. Sue, the customer service rep, called - called! - to clarify our order.
Grade: B
UPDATE 4/07: A client has had a negative experience with this company recently

- Logo Design Creation
Service: Overnight; $69. Placed the order at the end of one day and got three logos to choose from the next morning. Hey, we are living in the future!
Grade: B-

Gotlogos which I mentioned in the post Making small business look big, cheaply, only got a C+ because

Can't call customer service. Charged an extra $50 for a hi-res digital file of our logo.

How to Write for the Web

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:36:04 -0700

A few months ago I posted on the 3 fundamental skills of web writing. I re-read that post and realized it needed a real life example to truly be useful. So let's recap.

Writing for the web is different because people read differently on the web. In fact, they don't read but they scan, so everything you write needs to be scannable. These are the web writing guidelines:

- bolded, italicized and hyperlinked keywords
- lots of lists
- meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones)
- short paragraphs with one idea
- always start with the conclusion, giving readers what they are seeking upfront
- use lots of captioned photos, diagrams and graphics to illustrate your points
- make it less formal and more personalized

The following is a paragraph that appears on one of my clients' homepage:

At the Mind Wave Institute we use a unique and effective combination of Medical Hypnotherapy, Guided Imagery, Mindfulness Meditation and Life Style Coaching, to help you achieve optimal health and vitality using the natural healing power of your mind. Your mind has a powerful healing influence on your body, however most of us are not trained to access it. The mind body techniques taught at Mind Wave Institute allow you to access the full potential of your mind. Giving you the tools you need to create a life you love, free of pain and anxiety. Specialties include weight loss, pain management, anxieties, phobias, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, stress related medical issues and hypnosis for childbirth preparation - HypnoBirthing.

And here is (almost) the same content, but modified according to the web writing guidelines:

Are you suffering from:

Being Overweight
Smoking
Teeth Grinding (Bruxism)
Stress
Anxieties and Phobias
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)

At the Mind Wave Institute we use the proven techniques of Medical Hypnotherapy, Self Hypnosis Training, Guided Imagery, Mindfulness and Guided Meditation and Life Style Coaching to help you achieve optimal health and vitality.

These techniques tap into the usually unaccessible subconscious and allow you to use the natural healing power of your mind to its fullest potential.

Which one would you rather read?

Weblog Usability: Top 10 Design Mistakes

nospam@example.com (Philippe) — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 14:33:30 -0700

Jakob Nielsen's on a roll. The usability Guru recently came out with the Top 10 web design mistakes (I wrote a post on the top 3), and now he's just published the top 10 weblog design mistakes. I thought it would be interesting to test this blog against his list. So no holds barred, here we go!

1. No Author Biographies
The main reason to have a biography is to build trust: check (my bio).

2. No Author Photo
They serve to personalize and connect: check (my photo).

3. Nondescript Posting Titles

Jakob says:

Users must be able to grasp the gist of an article by reading its headline. Avoid cute or humorous headlines that make no sense out of context.

I think looking at the list of recent entry titles in the right column we can check that.

4. Links Don't Say Where They Go
Avoid sentences like there's more here and here. This one is sometimes difficult to remember to do, but looking at the links in this article I'll generously give myself a check.

5. Classic Hits are Buried
This means linking to your most read pieces. Not many people read this blog (yet!) so I have not implemented a "most read posts" - but will do soon. Verdict for now: fail.

this post is about navel gazing, so this is a photo of the navel of the earth

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
There should be 10 to 20 categories as additional navigation: check.

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
I've been trying to publish a post a week, but this area definitely needs improvement: C-.

Jakob adds:

you shouldn't post when you have nothing to say. Polluting cyberspace with excess information is a sin.

8. Mixing Topics
Try to stay focused on one (narrow) topic. I'll give myself a check on that one.

Another classic quote from JN:

The only people who read everything are those with too much time on their hands (a low-value demographic).

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
Hmm, maybe I should remove these compromising photos: B.

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
Jacob says that having a blog ending in blogspot.com or typepad.com will soon become the same as having a @aol.com email address: the mark of a beginner. Check on that one.

Verdict
7 or 8 out 10 - none too shabby.