C'mon Chris, Vasity? That's just cruel.

Maybe, it was the bragging about rankings for a new site that brought the memories flooding back.

Originally Posted by Melanie

and came to this post and claimed my Blog to contain...

Actually, if you read the bit you quoted

I was refering to your posts here.

you'll probably notice that I wasn't refering to your blog at all.

I guess bragging about rankings will always bring Vasity to mind.

Originally Posted by vangogh

I'm going under the assumption in this debate that things are being done right or at least mostly right. If they are I do think blogs offer some advantages that static pages don't have. But yes if it's implemented poorly it doesn't matter much in either case.

If we're still talking about my blog, I would hope I'm doing it right. I've got six posts and plenty of links from sites I've never heard of before, usually in passing ... "for more on highlight preservation check out this blog post." That might sound like Vasity-style bragging, but it tells me the content I'm producing is useful and digestible ... rule 1.

Originally Posted by vangogh

I think everyone's being a little hard on Melanie. I won't say I agree with everything she's said, but I think the advice is all being given honestly and she does make some good points. Compare the advice to some of what we've seen here.

I've been reading her blog regularly, and I'm actually pretty impressed with it. I get the sense she splits her blog 50/50 between news and applying the scientific method to seo to figure out what can be learned. A lot of her advice doesn't really mesh with the most common advice here, but not in a black hat / white hat way. For example, have a look at what she wrote about sitemaps ... I haven't used one because my site is pretty easily crawlable, but she raises some good points and I don't see any reason not to at least give it a try.

Most of the regulars here know I'm intermediate at seo, probably a tad better than average. This is no secret, and most people who've given me advice know what they can leave out without keeping me in the dark. Melanie doesn't have this advantage. I think that's why a lot of her posts here have been aimed at beginners.

Chris and Adam are right about the class c addresses, but they also know exactly what quality my content is, what my goals are for it, and whatnot. Honestly that one sounds a little black hat, but I don't get the sense she's a spammer. Reading the posts on her blog, like this one about long tail, or this one about click distribution in the serps ... I hope Melanie doesn't mind if I quote a piece:

I complied my results today from these 3 wonderful studies.

• iProspect.com "Search Engine User Behavior Study"
• Pew Internet & American Life Project "Search Engine Users"
• Cornell University "Eye-Tracking Analysis of SE Users’ Behavior"

A great deal of webmasters will tell you they do not have time for statistical data, but if it was football they would surely be analyzing the data statistically! How can you have a effective strategy without effective research? So as I do regularly to those around me, let me leave you with a couple of relevant quotes from successful people.

I've been reading about "eye tracking" and it's fascinating stuff.

Anyway, we're all smart enough to make up our own minds and I'm not trying to change anybody's.

So ... back to thinking outside the box to get me more authority and ranking power?

I don't think you're gonna be able to rank for just plain "Seattle," bro. At least if you mean "come out on the front page" by rank? Sorry to break the news to you.

You have some great content, I mean I don't even care about photos and I love yours. Maybe you can reach the first page through image search? But you're going up against some billion dollar industries, and as much as I like to believe in the cleverness of mankind, and David & Goliath, I just don't see this happening.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

if the blog owner is smart enough to ping Google Blogsearch.

Through the rest client interface? I really don't want to learn enough about wordpress hacking to build an xml web service / remote procedure call.

Originally Posted by babychicken4u2

Then I would suggest a Seattle location Meta tag, or a Seattle address on the page(if that is wher you live) and wrap it in an a geo tag style.

I'm not comfortable publishing my home address to the world, but it can't hurt to try my district at least, and probably again on my contact page. On that note, I'm planning to add Google Maps to my site, and came up with a rough prototype. The idea is to put one of these on each page that has a single photo, but on the gallery pages themselves, it might make sense to show a satellite view pinpointing the city, or drawing a shape around the area of the Rockies or Sierra a gallery shows. More from a user perspective, though.

I like the Map integration. What would be really cool is if you could get the little balloons to appear so your images could be pinpointed better on the map.

You might even be able to have a few balloons on a single map that either show the images on one post or even better show some from other posts. I bet it would be a good way to get people to click deeper into the blog (or even back to the main site) and make the blog stickier.

I'm thinking you could have the map balloon with a popup showing a thumbnail of the image(s) taken at the location with a brief description and a link to a page where people could see a larger version. The image itself could be the link.

I'm also thinking you could release your new mashup to the world since many photographers would probably find this useful.

You create mashup + find way to embed link back to you + give mashup away = linkbait