Google Penalizing for Ad Placement

Trying to keep up with Google's algorithm changes is a full time job.  One of the more recent announcements by Google discusses possible penalties for ad placement.  Advertisements on a website or blog are what brings in the revenue, but too many in the wrong spots and you're likely to get slapped by Google ... again.

Keep Content Fresh for Best Search Engine Placement

With massive overhauls in google's search algorithms in recent months, many article writers and bloggers are taking big hits in the pocketbook when content that previously ranked well is now buried on page eleventy-seven.  There's been a lot of speculation about how and what to write to get back into the running again, and fresh content is one of the topics that keeps popping up.

After what I saw this evening, I believe fresh content is key.

Changing Email Subscription Name on Feedburner

I have several blogs and purchased domain names for most of them, which meant that the feedburner subscriptions would change also.  I decided to leave the old ones in place so as not to confuse my current subscribers, but made a new feed for the new domain name URL also.

The downside to this was that those who subscribed through the old feed got email with the old name of the blog as the subject and header, which I obviously didn't like since I changed the name of the blogs when I bought the domains.  It was frustrating for me (and I'm sure confusing to my subscribers) to see an email with subject and header that read Every Day Crochet when the blog name was now The Crooked Yarn.

Welch or Welsh? Never Welch With the Welsh

I was typing a response to a friend on facebook a bit ago and wanted to use the word welch, i.e., welch on a bet, but second-guessed myself as I was typing it.

Was the correct word welch, or welsh?

I typed welch, but thought I'd best double check before posting, and was happy to see confirmation from online dictionaries that my initial use was correct.  As I dug further, I wasn't so sure.

End of Year Tax Deductions for Writers and Freelancers

If you freelance as a writer or otherwise, there are plenty of tax deductions you can take advantage of.  If you had planned on investing in your business, now is the time to do it so that you can take those deductions when filing your income tax for 2011.

Angie Mohr is a financial professional who has written several books and published countless articles on personal finance.  Her book, Tax Preparation & Planning for Freelance Writers, is a must-have for anyone with a home business.  The title mentions freelance writers, but the information contained therein is valuable to anyone who works from home.

Angie is offering the book at a discount until December 31, so don't put it off another day.  The money saved by applying the information will cover the cost of the book many times over, and it's deductible as a business expense.  I used this book as a guide when preparing my own taxes and highly recommend it.

Setting Writing Goals and Meeting Them

Do you set goals for your writing?  Is there a dollar figure you strive to earn each month, a word count total, or number of articles each day or week that you hope to attain?

Setting goals can help you be more productive, but make sure they're realistic.  You want to stretch yourself, but you also don't want to set yourself up for failure right out of the gate.  Setting the bar too high is a recipe for disappointment, so take a look at your past performance and adjust from there.  If you currently write an article each day, you might stretch that to 10 articles a week.  If you find you're able to do that easily enough, you can always up the ante.

Free eBook - Write That Book Already!

A must read for all published and would-be novelists, Write That Book Already!:  The Tough Love You Need to Get Published Now is available free today in eBook format.  Amazon lists 10 reviews, eight of them receiving five stars and the remaining two rated at four stars. Editorial reviews listed on the site give just as glowing a report.

Don't have a Kindle reader?  Download the free version from amazon and read from your computer.

Of Marines and Bracelets

My younger son bought me a bumper sticker the day he graduated from boot camp at Parris Island - DANGER - Retired Opinionated Marine on Board.  Yep, that would be me.

There was a big to-do in the news the other day about Marines wearing unauthorized bracelets while in uniform. I jumped on it and wrote a quick commentary news article and submitted it several hours before the Yahoo! Contributor Network news desk opened in Denver. It was delivered to Yahoo! News a few hours later, but not published.

Blog Post Title SEO

When writing your blog post, it's important to think SEO when creating the title, but choosing key search words may not be enough.  If you look at the URL of any of your blog entries, you’ll see that the title of the post comes after the blog name; that’s how a search engine will read it unless you tell it to do otherwise by changing the title tags.

You probably know to ‘front load’ the more important keywords that people will be searching for, but the name of your blog post appearing before your carefully chosen title will steal some of its thunder.

Free eBooks for Writers

To me, reading for pleasure doesn't include a computer, eReader or any other electronic device, but when I realized that I could download the Kindle app for my PC for free, I jumped on it.  Besides the free app, I was able to download  from a list of over 1,000 free eBooks of all genres, several of them specific to the world of writing.

Here's a small sampling of free eBooks about writing that cost only a few minutes of my time this morning: