The Article Writer

6 Warning Signs That Your Blog Is In Trouble

Has your blog died? Could it be just hanging on thanks to steady injections of guest posts, blog reviews, paid postings, or anything else but original content from you? You may not even know it, but your blog is dead and I really miss it! Yes, it is time for you to resurrect the corpse and breath new life into your blog. Before you do that, let’s identify 6 warning signs that your blog has died or is fast approaching death’s door:

Payola Posts — Not too many people mind the occasional disclosed paid posts, but when ReviewMe and PayPerPost articles appear as frequently as your regular content, then your blog has caught a bad case of pneumonetization and an antiblogadic is the only thing that will save it at this point. Yes, your traffic is still strong as other posties faithfully stop by to copy (read) your arthritis rub on cream review, but your regular readers have long since moved on.

AdSenseless — How is pay per click working out for you? It must not be working out all that well because that new 336×280 mega AdSense unit is sitting squarely above the fold rendering all of your content unreadable. Guess what? Many of your visitors simply cannot be bothered with scrolling down to find your articles.

Widget City — I found more widgets on your blog then content! Okay, maybe that is a bit of a stretch but one or two nasty widgets are taking too long to load and I, out of sheer frustration, have long since moved on to the next blog.

Filler Posts — Market Yourself Mondays, Tribute Tuesdays, Wordless Wednesdays, Guest Post Thursdays, Friday Freak Outs, and other once-weekly “specials” are now dominating your blog. Transplants are for organs, not for filler posts!

Straying Way Off Topic — The one consistency about your blog is inconsistency. You started off blogging about your subject (e.g., mortgages, teeth whitening, male enhancement) but you increasingly have veered away to cover hang gliding, kitchen appliances, and your personal take on search engine optimization. Okay, fine. However, if you re-purpose your blog one more time your readership will avoid it like the plague!

Outright Abandonment — You’re too busy to blog (or no longer interested) and you haven’t told anyone why you have stopped. Well, if you appreciate your readers then you need to show loyalty to them. Either tell people you have quit blogging or consider mercy killing and post a notice to inform visitors that you have terminated life support. Finished. Kaput. RIP.

Please don’t take your readers for granted — your blog is nothing without their participation. The look of death is evident to everyone except, to you, your blog’s undertaker. I mean caretaker.

Today is Google’s 9th birthday (or anniversary), the date when the search engine was introduced to the worldwide web. Of course, the company was incorporated a few weeks earlier, but today is the date that the search engine went live.

Search Was Different Before Google

I remember life before Google quite well. When it arrived, Yahoo! was my favorite search engine, with AltaVista, Microsoft, and a couple of other smaller ones catching my attention. It didn’t take long for me to make the switch to Google, especially when I could find a lot more targeted information through its search engine than with the others.

Of course, Google has morphed well beyond being just a search engine. A business juggernaut, the company has the midas touch, but with a twist: everything they buy seems to add value to the company.

Serge, Larry, and a Host of Capable Employees

Without founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google wouldn’t exist. Naturally, putting together the best team of people possible has worked to its advantage. That team has been instrumental in helping Google acquire dozen of companies expanding Google’s presence well beyond search.

10 Notable Google Acquisitions

For the fun of it, let’s take a look at 10 important Google acquisitions completed over the years:

Blogger — when blogging was still relatively a young phenomenon, Google’s 2003 purchase of Pyra Labs gave the company a stronghold in the blogosphere.

Applied Semantics — AdSense seems as if it has been around forever, but Google’s purchase of Applied Semantics, the developer of AdSense, was accomplished in April 2003. CPC hasn’t been the same since!

Picasa — In 2004, Google acquired Picasa, the photo editing and organizing software program.

Keyhole — Today’s Google Earth came from the company’s acquisition of Keyhole in 2004. With this acquisition and subsequent development, Google brought satellite spying to the masses.

Urchin — Google Analytics, the widely-used web analytics software program, was acquired by Google in 2005. Only recently has the program become widely available as demand far exceeded Google’s ability to maintain the program.

Upstartle — I had to look this one up, as I had forgotten that Writely — the online word processing program — came to Google with their acquisition of Upstartle. Today, the renamed Google Docs includes word processing, spreadsheet, and a recently released presentation program.

YouTube — The 2006 purchase of YouTube has been one of the largest acquisitions to date for Google. Less than two years after getting its start, Google paid $1.65 billion for the video sharing company. Hey, Google — you wanna buy my blog?!

Feedburner — Just this past June Google snapped up Feedburner, the news feed management provider.

Postini — Security and compliance software company Postini is in the fold and works side by side with Google Apps.

DoubleClick — Last, but certainly not least, the DoubleClick acquisition puts Google in the banner, video, and display ad business. Certainly, Google is not satisfied with serving up text ads only.

What Else Is In Store?

For a company that is so young, Google has billions of dollars at its disposal and is always on the prowl to expand their business, chiefly through acquisition. The company has its detractors who insist that its “Do No Evil” slogan no longer applies. Privacy issues, corporate dominance, greed, even arrogance are some of the concerns being raised about Google today.

Regardless of where Google may be headed, having a solid response to growing opposition is essential to its long term growth. When your corporate image is being defined by consumers, the ability to grow and expand your business is hampered, something Bill Gates has discovered at the helm of Microsoft.

Anyway, Happy 9th Birthday to Google!

It is now official: This blog has been upgraded to WordPress v.2.3. Ain’t that special? Well, for me it is: I usually wait about two weeks after an upgraded version of this blogging platform has been released before I go where bloggers fear to tread.

Hooray for FileZilla

Thanks to FileZilla, I was able to FTP everything inside of 10 minutes and, yes, I remembered to back up my database, turn off my plug-ins, and leave my config-sys file alone.

No Problems This Time

I recall one particular upgrade from hades that took me hours to complete simply because I was multi-tasking (read: not giving the upgrade my full attention) and having to re-do everything to find out what I missed. What a geek!

I Like The Tag Feature

So far, so good: I like the tags feature and the “Pending Review” under the post status is a nice option, particularly for multiple bloggers. One plug-in has been updated and I assume the other dozen or so are working fine.

Have you upgraded yet? What has your experience with the latest offering been so far?

WordPress Tosses Technorati In Favor of the Google Blogs Directory

BTW, I like when I click on the blog comments section on the management panel that it returns to be Google Blog directory results, not Technorati. I bet that change is causing some controversy.

Excellent Work, WordPress!

All right, the plug-ins have been reactivated and I think I’ll head over to WordPress to read about all of the nifty features of v.2.3. Kudos to the WP gang who spent a lot of time making sure that this version was delivered well tested and on time.