Run a search on nearly anything (especially related to books) and Amazon is likely to be in the top three results. How did they do that? They’re SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts. It all has to do with links.

First of all, people naturally link to Amazon. If you write an article about a book or other product, you naturally link to a place where you can buy it. There are tons of book review sites that link to an Amazon page for every book they review.

Second of all, you have an interesting little scheme service known as Amazon Associates. How does it work? In short, Amazon pays you to link to them. You read that correctly.

Suppose you review a book or other product on your blog. You link to the Amazon page so your readers can buy the book. In that link, you include an ID code that represents you. Whenever someone clicks through the link over to Amazon, the mega-shopping-giant starts logging what the visitor is doing. If they buy anything in the next 24 hours, you get a 2.5-8% commission. The big bloggers do this a lot, and make a considerable amount of money.

How does this help Amazon? Number one, you’re convincing people to buy stuff from them. Number two, that’s another link pointing to their domain. Once you realize that there’s a huge amount of people in the Amazon Associates program, it’ll hit you. Each one of those affiliates may have hundreds of referral links scattered throughout their sites. Multiply that by the thousands (if not millions) of Amazon Associates members, and…that’s a lot of links.

Don’t get me wrong, Amazon Associates is a great service. I’m just pointing out how much it’s benefiting Amazon. If they can do something like that, so can you. All you need is a valuable resource, and means of convincing people to link to you (I doubt you can afford to pay linkers, so I suggest coming up with something else).

Welcome to BlogBuzz for July 10, 2007. Here’s what’s going on in the blogosphere:

• Apple to Release “iPhone Nano” in Fourth Quarter: All I have to say is “They’d better not discontinue the iPod Nano!”
  
• Smashing Magazine has just posted their “Best of May/June 2007″ post. I haven’t even finished reading it. There’s just too much information to read in one sitting.
• Ars Technica has just released their In-Depth Review of the iPhone. Consisting of several pages, it’s loaded with pictures and video.
• ProBlogger has launched a series of posts known as “What We Wish We Knew When We First Started Blogging”.
• Connor Wilson of Devlounge presents “5 Reasons I Don’t Read Your Blog and How to Change That“. Heh heh, I don’t do any of those…

Are you just getting starting as a webmaster/blogger? Are you a little clueless when it comes to HTML? Need a primer on RSS feeds? It looks like you should read some books. The web is a great source for information, though sometimes it’s better to read a good old-fashion book.

How did I get to where I am today? I learned everything I know about the workings of the web from books and websites. I learned about HTML and CSS in books, I picked-up a little PHP in a book…then learned the rest online.

If you’re getting started as a webmaster, I highly recommend the following books. Read the rest of this entry »

Vertigo Red is a great theme, available in both a 2-column and a 3-column version.

For the uninformed, “2-column” means the theme has a content column and a sidebar. “3-column” means the theme has two sidebars.

In the case of Vertigo red, the two sidebars are both on the right. This is a current trend, that works well for some sites, though it limits the space available for content. Personally, I’d go with the 2-column version (which is the one pictured to the right).

Vertigo Red is a traditional-style blog theme, listing the most recent posts down the front page, unlike the innovative Gridlock theme, which only shows three posts on the main page.

Today’s highlighted design is….North X East. The owner of NxE, Collis Ta’eed, is obviously a designer. Take a look at the current design (as of July 6, 2007….who knows? It could change again. ). It’s not your ordinary blog design. It’s pretty unique. Then there was the old, design (which was really cool as well). Collis has even said “I admit I do tend to dislike my own old designs Actually you’ll laugh to hear that I’ve already started to dislike this one, but this time I’m going to ignore myself!”. That’s how I feel about my designs as well. I sort of….get bored with them after awhile. When you know how to design, you tend to want to design more often than you get a chance to, and you get tired of your blog’s same old design. Read the rest of this entry »

RSS is one of the greatest web technologies invented in the last ten years. It enables us to keep up with our favorite sites, listen to podcasts, and get niche news easily. Forget annoying old newsletters! Who needs them when you can just open your RSS reader and skim through headlines, looking for things of interest?

Ah, the RSS reader. Like with web browsers and email clients, everyone has a different preference. Some like desktop programs, while others like web-based apps. There’s no shortage of choices. You have Feedreader, Netvibes, Bloglines, etc. I don’t like any of the choices. I’m a big fan of RSS, but I’ve never really liked any RSS reader other than Firefox’s Live Bookmarks feature. Recently I’ve had two problems. Number one, my feed collection outgrew Live Bookmarks. Number two, I’ve often wanted to read my RSS feeds on other computers.

What did I do? I threw together my own web-based RSS reader. I call it MyNT (say “Mint”), which is short for My NTugo. It’s a little innovative, as I added a few…different features to it.

My favorite feature: You can read your RSS feeds without logging in at all (just go to http://my.ntugo.com/yourusername.html). Just bookmark that URL and you can check your feeds with a single click (let’s see Bloglines do that).

Take a look at MyNT, you may like it. I can’t guarantee everyone will like MyNT. After all, I made it mainly for myself (and anyone who thinks that most feed readers are too bloated). I wanted to capture the simplicity of Live Bookmarks in a different form, and I think I did a pretty good job at it.

Well, MyNT’s URL is http://my.ntugo.com, and you can read the official press-release-sort-of-thing here.

Are you a blogger? Whether you’re new to blogging, or you’ve been blogging for years, you should take a look at North X East. Once or twice a week, a nice informative article is posted, going in-depth on a blogging-related topic.

I often find myself waiting anxiously for another article to be posted (much like I do with Smashing Magazine).

So, which is the better blogging software? Wordpress or Movable Type?

Movable Type is one of the older blogging packages. Once they were the cutting edge, and the most popular blogging tool. Nowadays, that title has been given to Wordpress.

Wordpress, though in development back in 2001, is officially successor to the old B2 blogging script. I don’t believe they share any code, though. Currently Wordpress is the most popular blogging tool, thanks to it’s power, flexibility, and ease of use.

Can Movable Type still compete with Wordpress? Let’s see. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to BlogBuzz! I’ve decided to start doing some speedlinking on Webmaster-Source now and then, so…

• iPhone Launched, 500,000 sold. Despite constant jabs about it not being a total hit, selling out like the Wii or iPod Nano, Apple’s ahead of Mr. Jobs’ predictions. Who cares? It’s still a cool (and pricey) product. I’m waiting for the phoneless-iphone. Apple: Please make an iThing that’s like an iPhone, but without the phone.
• Google: the ISP? Could that mean cheap broadband and @#^#$-less phone contracts?
• MyNT: The Social Feed Reader. Gotta plug my latest creation. I got tired of looking for a good web-bases RSS aggregator, so I made my own. My feed collection outgrew Firefox’s Live Bookmarks, and I wanted a way to access my feeds from other computers.
• ProBlogger Darren Rowse on RSS-to-Email services: Unfortunately, not everyone uses RSS. I agree that it’s a good idea to offer email updates. I use FeedBurner’s RSS-to-Email thing, since I already use FeedBurner. Can Darren convince me to switch to another service for email updates? We’ll see.
• Smashing Magazine smashes you with Wordpress plugins: Of course I had to give them my two dollars two cents. As you can see by looking at the comments, I was the first to submit a list of plugins. Yeah, first comment!
• According to AlexKing, the iPhone works without AT&T’s service, though without the phone and web features. No thanks, I wouldn’t pay $500 for a widescreen iPod. Now, if you could use the iPhone (with the most important part: mobile web access) as a pre-payed phone, then I’d be interested.

Googlebombing, as you may already know, is a prank where massive amounts of links alter Google’s results for (generally humorous) reasons. It used to be that if you googled “Miserable Failure”, you’d be taken to the George W. Bush bio on the White House website.

It seems that Google has been “un-googlebombing” sites. Sure enough, all those famous Googlebombs have been altered. They claim that their intervention was not manual, but a change in their ranking algorithm.

Is it ethical though? Technically, the search results were that way because of genuine links. Despite their “Don’t be evil” motto, they’re tampering with the results. Should they be doing this? What do you think?

Personally, I think they have a responsibility, as the most widely-used search engine, to not fiddle with their algorithms for frivolously “fixing” things such as Googlebombs.