Celebrate Life: Do follow; site statistics

Spam

If your site is dofollow, one of side effects you might encounter, is the increase in spam.

Here at Celebrate Life several comments, never get published.  I use a few anti-spam Word Press plugins on my sites.

The chance of a spammers comments actually slipping through my anti-spam trap is very slim, and since I actually read each comment, I’d delete those that were published.

What is dofollow?

 

<a href="http://www.imcelebratinglife.com/" target="_blank" rel="dofollow">Celebrate Life</a>

 

Above, I’ve included the code that makes a link ‘dofollow‘ .

Making links dofollow enables search engines to follow whatever link your site has linked to, which can be helpful since the special markup language used tells search engines they can follow a link.

Not as important for those who aren’t looking for traffic, or ways to increase their page rank, but dofollow links are (normally) welcome by those who are trying to achieve that, as long it’s the right type of links…

That’s the main reason you’ll see dofollow on my sites, I like to reward my readers and do it in a few ways; Dofollow, Top commentators plug in, and CommentLuv.

If you’re a WordPress user, there are numerous plugins available to make this automated. I use NoFollow free on this site.

Normal link – No follow

<a href="http://www.imcelebratinglife.com/" target="_blank">Celebrate Life</a>

Since Nofollow is the default code, it’ll be found on the majority of sites a person visits. With nofollow sites, search engines won’t follow places you’ve linked to on your site, and why would they? You haven’t given them the ‘ok’ to follow the links you’ve linked too. Remember a special code is needed if you want search engines bots to follow them.

Do follow badge redheart

Do follow or nofollow, which one should I use?

Both types of links are good. However, dofollow links give the most benefits since it brings human traffic and SEO (search engine optimization) traffic to your site, SEO improves your sites online presence in search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.,). Nofollow links only bring human traffic.

People linking to your site within their posts are one way to bring traffic to your site, another way is to leave thoughtful comments with a link back to your site, so people know where to visit.

On commenting…

It takes time to comment, and so you don’t see me doing too much of that. However when I do, I stay on topic, and add to the conversation.  If you’re the copy/paste commentator, sorry that doesn’t fly here at Celebrate Life, and I’ll delete your comment. What I’m interested in is real conversation. It doesn’t bother me if people are commenting just to get a link back to their site; leave a real message, be part of the conversation.

Celebrate Life Bounce Rate 04 05 12

Site Performance

Although I haven’t been active on Celebrate Life, the basic principles that I use elsewhere were applied here. Why? I didn’t want too much of a headache to deal with, once I came out of hibernation.

Web stats at Celebrate Life are continuing to improve, my bounce rate is still low, 12.75%, and the amount of new visitors is increasing. I’ve had Google Analytics installed on this site since its creation, but it’s something I haven’t actively tracked until now.

Online success isn’t foreign to me, and it’s something I’ve been successful with on my business sites. Granted, the type of ‘success’ I’m striving for here, will be different, but the way I’ll achieve it, will be similar.

Photo Source: Vince Lamb

Apple Mac: Making the move to Snow Leopard 10.6

Apple-Snow-Leopard.07.01.10.jpgThe day before I went on vacation for Independence day I finally got around to installing Snow Leopard on my 17″ MacBook Pro.

The transition went smoothly. I encountered a few bumps after installation. For example, my System Preferences weren’t responding, thankfully it was a simple fix and I was up and running after deleting a file went wild.

In order to assist me with the new Mac OS, I’m purchasing Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual that will get me up to speed on the majority of things within the new Mac OS. I’ve a huge fan of David Pogue. His website, I really enjoy his writing style (his website and New York Times column – Pogues Post are in my RSS feed rotation) and have read many of his technology books.

It’s been a week, since I’ve installed Snow Leopard and I’m happy to say that I still haven’t encountered any major problems. The minor issues I did encounter were easily resolved by visiting the official Apple Mac forums. I’ll be sure to post some of the tips I’ve learned along the way.

Moving from Tiger to Snow Leopard 10.6 has brought quite a few changes to the Mac OS. However it’s not enough to make you lost if your upgrading from Tiger. I really like that. I’ll eventually get around to check out all the new features within Snow Leopard but for now, I’m happily doing my normal activities on my 17″ MacBook Pro.

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Apple, MacBook Pro, Moondancer, Snow Leopard, Technology