Crimson Crux

Another salvo of Performancing.com posts I’ve written in the last two weeks (yeah, I missed one weekly roundup, because I had nothing much to round up!).

• Problogger: Hate or Love the Title… — For me, it doesn’t matter. ‘Problogger’ is just a secondary job title, after ‘Writer’. How about you? Having trouble explaining to your peers that problogging isn’t about creating ad-heavy spam blogs?
• Blog Content from Article Directories: Evil? — When you rely on free articles and jampack your blog with ‘em, then yes, they’re evil. Get out of the echo chamber and get rid of duplicate blog content by trying out some of the techniques listed here.
• Lessons from an SEO Contest — Our battle-tested Go-Ogle.com.ph SEO team (me, J Angelo, Ia) might not be champions, but I hope our observations from the last two Philippine SEO competitions can help you and your blogs.

Also, some Performancing goodies you might want to check out:

• Blog Reboot — Need free suggestions on how to spruce up your blog?
• Free e-books — E-books that would normally set you back ~$70 are being given away from time to time. First come first served! The latest: Free Adwords E-Book.

Last week, I wrote about my new role in the problogging site Performancing.com. These are exciting times for Performancing, which is sporting new services and resources for the problogging community. Some of the features which might strike your fancy:

• Adsense Revenue Sharing — “We’re sharing 70% of all AdSense revenue generated by your own content…Additionally, you earn 10% of all AdSense revenue generated by users that you refer to Performancing.” Sign up here.
• Earn $10 For Front Page Blog Posts — “If we like your blog post enough to [promote] it to the front page, you’ll earn $10.” All blog posts made by Perf users appear on the Performancing Blog, and we’ll sift through these daily.
• Digg, Reddit, Netscape Voting Help — “Need a little nudge on your favorite social voting site? If you post a link to your Reddit, Digg, Netscape, etc. submission in our new social voting forum we’ll vote it up.” More info here.
• Blogger Jobs — Job postings are free! Visit the Performancing Blogger Jobs board.

Finally, here’s a summary of my Performancing posts this past week:
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Friends, I’m now writing at Performancing.com, one of the Net’s best information sites for professional and non-pro bloggers alike.

I started reading Performancing a year ago, and the tips and pieces of advice I found there helped me a lot in my early blogging days. So when I was approached by J Angelo to regularly write for the site, I grabbed the chance without second thought. (Thanks for the trust and vote of confidence, J!) Performancing.com is now my biggest problogging gig, both in terms of reader reach and compensation.

Performancing carries the tagline “Helping Bloggers Succeed”, and I’ll be dishing out writing, problogging, SEO, and website monetization tips. I’m also thinking of sharing tips for niche-blogs (e.g. literary, health, sports) based on experience.

Check out my first two entries: the perfunctory intro post, and Images: Another Problogging Ace Up Your Sleeve.

See you at Performancing.com!

Article Crux, our “free high-quality article directory” has been around for more than a month already, but I’ve been too busy with the site that I forgot to ‘formally launch’ it here on my blog!

Borrowing from the directory’s About page:

Article Crux is a free online article directory where writers can share their knowledge and publishers can obtain free web content. With ArticleCrux.com, authors can easily post their articles and ezine publishers or webmasters can effortlessly search through the collection of knowledge either through our search engine or by browsing through the many categories.

The directory’s elegant design is the work of Ia (read her design anecdotes on her portfolio). Together, we maintain the site, and are planning to open another one in the near future (this time niche-oriented).

Article Directories: A Primer

Article directories have always been popular with internet marketers, writers, and search engine optimizers. The basic reason: free links. Not just any ordinary free links, but free links from sites trusted by search engines (in this case, article directories). And you know what’s next when you’ve got good, free links — free traffic, TrustRank, and PageRank.

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For the better part (if not all) of my youth, I’ve been a poor suitor of girls. As some of my friends told me, “you’ve got the looks but not the moves”, which is unfortunate.

But thanks to Google, I can indulge in the illusion that I’m improving in the wooing department. Last month’s check of my Google Sitemaps account (just before Valentine’s) revealed that Slip of the Pen, more specifically this old essay of mine was number 1 for the search phrase “steps in courting a girl” (without the quotation marks).

Pretty neat, and pretty nonsensical, too! It’s certainly one of my most amusing “accidental SEO results”. For some reason, this blog gets “tame” search engine referrals (laptops, iPod, etc.) while my lit/writing blog gets the absurd (many of which are even downright pornographic!).

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an update here (no thanks to my recent bout with asthma). I should really stock up on emergency blog posts!

Anyway, for those out of the loop, the second Philippine search engine optimization contest, nicknamed “Ituloy AngSulong” concluded last Friday, February 23. While we lost steam in the last month or so (almost nil link-building), our team (Ia, J Angelo) still managed to grab three minor prizes (with equally minor cash), namely:

• #9 in Yahoo! for our Vox entry
• Google Bonus Prize (#11) for our Go-Ogle! Philippines entry
• Google Bonus Prize (#39) for our Vox entry

Our performance is a far cry from our Isulong SEOPH experience, where we placed a strong fifth. Again, almost zero link-building in the last month or so (the time when most SEOs would’ve been playing their aces) killed us. The beauty of too much work! Hehe.

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The pics and the title say it all.

Some of you might have encountered these before. I was introduced to these pests through comment spam, which unfortunately wasn’t blocked by Wordpress’ Akismet. Luckily I’ve always enabled comment moderation for all my blogs. Curiously, only my main site has received this kind of spam.

Had similar experiences, anyone?

Update: I’ve found a similar post with the same title by David Kirk, and he thinks this has something to do with PR and SEO.

Just weeks after the first Philippine SEO contest drew to a close, another one has popped up, giving SEO junkies and rookies alike a new shot at winning some dough (and gaining invaluable experience). This time, the keywords to die for are ituloy angsulong.

The Go-Ogle! trio — me, Ia, J Angelo — has decided to join in the fun. Please visit and support our Ituloy AngSulong entry; link exchanges are welcome!

Kudos to our resident webmaster (webmistress?) for the great design of our entry. By the way, I’ll be posting some of my personal SEO thoughts on the Corsarius.net Ituloy AngSulong page, so if you have the time, do drop by.

In my last entry, I talked about the Php 130,000 Philippine SEO Contest for the keyword Isulong SEOPH. Guess what? We placed fifth! Not worth much in monetary rewards, but still quite an achievement considering there were more than a hundred entries (or so I heard).

Congratulations to all the winners! A recap of the Isulong SEOPH Awarding Night can be found at the blog of my teammate J Angelo. (Ia Lucero, one-time guestwriter here, completes the, uh, stellar cast.)

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Subtitled: Blogging in the Dark

Typhoon Milenyo has just rampaged through Metro Manila, leaving our little neighborhood without power. Here’s to brownout blogging and all. I’ve got to love the scant 3-hour battery life of my Corsarify.

Anyway, we’re now down to the last three days of the Php130,000 Philippine SEO Contest. My team’s entry, Go-Ogle! Isulong SEOPH, is presently ranked 7th in the first Google search engine result page (SERP) for the keyword Isulong SEOPH. We’re hoping to at least maintain our position until September 30, the SEO competition’s end. Just a few hours ago we were at 5th place, and a month ago we were Top 1 in Google (can you believe it?).

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