Pop the bubble and leave a few comments

Many of you that may come by or drop by the site from traffic sources like Adgitize and linkrefferal may really feel the need to bounce as soon as you hit the door. In a way that may seem kind of like the thing to do to get your "required" visits in for the day. But would yo do this to a friend's home or a person that drops by your house for a "visit". Do you get perplexed by the occasional "I just stopped in to say, Hi! and then bye"? Well, sometimes I get a bit miffed about seeing a higher than 55% bounce rate.

Rude, isn't it. Well here at my site, I appreciate your visits and any time I see an email saying that someone left a valid comment, my eyes light up. First off, your comment tells me that you find fascination with something that either I posted here or tweeted about.

So to encourage comments, I've gone the extra steps of adding a more streamlined IntenseDebate comments box below. And with a bit of a headache from the previous weekend, I was able to add a fully functioning tweet box just above the IntenseDebate box. The good thing about these tools is that I will give them a go around of a month or so to see if they will encourage site visitors to leave a comment and maybe spark some interaction.

Keep in mind that the IntenseDebate box is a plugin and the tweetbox is built on an API kit that I received from twitter developers. So, as long as your tweet falls within the 140 character limit it will instantly hit your feed stream. I'd appreciate a comment or two as to what your ideas are on the full tweet box and whether this is something you would add to your own blog or website. And of course a scaled back plugin for IntenseDebate means that all of those sharing and rss doodads that many won't se at all. Giving you the reader a cleaner experience was the sole intent for me scaling it back from all of the flare that yo can have associated with its functionality.

If you see anything here that peaks your interest, by all means, use the contact form p top and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Or better yet, why not use my GoogleVoice number and leave me a snarky voicemail - 727-753-9704

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That's right, we've gone and done it here also. We've took the bait like thousands of other blogs and sites and upgraded to the new WordPress 3.0 "Thelonius" version. Looks and feels alot like the 2.9.2 but with a few standout "tricks" that i can see right off the bat.
Upgrading was flawless. and i found it so easy that I responded to several naysayers of the upgrade on twitter and had them up and running in little time with no "boogers" or site breaking plugin snafus. You know what I mean if you're a seasoned "upgrade your WordPress" veteran like myself.
Using the "Tools" upgrade was a breeze. I also took it as a "too simple" way to upgrade. But everything went smoothly, even with the multiple plugin updates. Seems like those Automattic guys are on their game for this one. If your suffering from "WordPress upgrade" phobia, drop a comment and let me know what's going on we can work through this together.

C ya 'round!

Use the Review stars up top to let us know how you feel about the new version of WordPress 3.0?

Matt Cutts of the big bad Google monster give his insight on the matchup between Bing and Google for search engine optimization purposes. This was taken from a partial Buzz that I saw in my stream. The man speaks with clarity and non-guru jargon. This is why he is one of my favorites. Keeping his head out of the clouds and talking to you like a real person, for this he gets a huge thumbs up from me.  I've learned quite a bit from him over the years about linking and all things search related.

His Youtube channel is a must. But you didn't hear that from me. Do you have any web heads that you follow from the big boys like Bing, Google, or Yahoo? Use the comments box below.

I'm on a panel called "SEO for Google Vs. Bing: How Different Are They?" Here's my two-minute take. Search engines do have different ranking methodologies and philosophies, so of course there are differences between how Google ranks and Bing ranks. But most search engines are pursuing what they think users want. So if you're trying to build a site that puts user experience first and foremost (and you succeed in creating a fantastic user experience), most of the time search engines are working toward returning sites like yours.

So my advice would be: rather than chasing search engines individually or (ugh) trying to make different pages/sites for different search engines, I'd work towards making a site so great that the search engines are working to try to make sure that they return your site. By chasing after a good user experience, you help ensure that you and the search engines are both working in the same direction. That's much better than you chasing the search engines, which are in turn chasing what we think is best for users.

Doesn't seem to heavy in "Guru-ese", does it?