The guys at MyBLogLog, Ian Kennedy and his team have been putting on some good show recently. First they released the MyBlogLog buttons , then they had a competition, and now they have a new widget, the AboutMe widget.

The ABout Me widget is an interesting one, if you have been planning to put all that social media profile links and a compressed profile with all the info on you, this is the widget for you.

Check this sample widget. It’s Ians. I had trouble customizing it for the blog and believe so many others too would’ve had the same problem. Yes, the colours and text were very much cusotmizable, but adjusting the width was a problem.

And guess that, the guys have gone ahead and added that option too. Now you can adjust the width of the widget suiting it for your blog.

I had tried the widget on the footer first, but thought I’ll wait for some more customization. Well, now with all the customization available, you might want to add it to your blog too.

After the Lijit guys, I’m liking the MyBlogLog guys too.

If you'd like to stay updated with SEO, grab the RSS feed now !What's this?

Some of you might have already spotted it.. for those who have not, here’s the news.

I have a new website directory launched at DaiySEOblog. You can find it here.

It is a simple directory which enables you to add your site with the Title, Description and URL to the appropriate category. No link back required ;)!

There are some interesting categories at the moment, and many of them are technology, blogging and internet related. I’ll be expanding it soon to at least 50 in number soon. My idea is to keep the listings close while focusing on the content.

Does it make any sense having two categories - Web 2.0, Internet, Blogging and Weblogs? No Isn’t it?
So I may stick with one category Internet. But it’s not that horrible as it sounds I have some really nice categories for you there.

I will be manually moderating the submissions to the directory, and ONLY quality websites will be added, just because I want to keep out spam and low-quality websites.

By quality, I mean sites with original content and good quality articles. If you have a young site with no incoming links at all, don’t fret, provided you have good articles and a decent post frequency, you’ll be included.

Why should you include your blog in the directory?

Good question. Here goes -

- It’ll fetch you some quality  google juice.
- Get indexed on Google and other major search engines in less than hours.
- Also some decent traffic (you may have to get creative on the description.)
- Get noticed by other DailySEOblog readers.
- You don’t have to copy paste a code to link back!
- It takes only less than a minute to submit a site.

Who is the directory for?

Yet another good question. Popular bloggers might find it irrelevant because, they already have submissions at various directories.
But this directory is for the young bloggers, the budding bloggers who have great content in their blogs but cannot find a place to show it off.

I have gone through this earlier when I started blogging. When I had a month old blog, I found it difficult to get people’s attention. And honestly speaking, even some of my friends today were not willing to link to me, they would simply avoid my request.

So this directory aims at taking young bloggers out of that frustration.

Here, we give free incoming links to all the quality bloggers out there who is looking for some attention and some google juice the next google update.

Having said that, I’m extremely concerned about the quality.

If you are still not convinced whether to submit your site or not, read this and this and this.
Meanwhile, if you have suggestions, forward them my way.

MyBlogLog who is running a competition for US bloggers to grow their community, has come up with a range of buttons for your blog.

Many of them are the standard 88×31pixels buttons that fits neatly to your sidepanel. I think they are a bit old fashioned and not really web 2.0.

Designers out there, if you have an idea for a button, do let them know. Ideas are always welcome at MyBlogLog.

I should ask this question probably to Mr. O’Reilly, but since he is not a reader of my blog (anyone who refers him will get a prize of umm….err…US $100! ) I’m happy asking this to you.

How many of you really like those lengthy signup forms? To be honest, I really hate them and I’d love to see someone disagree with me.

Every time I get an invitation to join e a web 2.0 service, the first criteria for me to help decide if these guys are here to stay or not is their length of the signup/registration form. I know what you firefox fans are thinking right now. “Mani, there’s a plugin that will help you fill in all those regularly asked details on any sign up form.”

My friend, you may be right in all senses, but I’m someone who looks at testing services from the most un-coolest perspective. When I test a web 2.0 service, I know no Firefox, I ain’t no CSS guy and I know no Social bookmarking. All I know is that when I use youtube, I can upload my video in “n” number of steps.

Click>Browse>Upload>Tag>Share - that would probably be the shortest process layout I’d accept in a web 2.0 service. Or else, I prefer call it Web-1 or beyond that. Hey I can give you a reference point. Commission Junction, which has been there for quite really a long while, is very web -1. I agree that their concept is awesome and they are one of the premiers for click fraud..errr..I mean affiliate marketing. But have you ever had a look at their signup form?

Man, that is one signup form you don’t wanna fill. It could ask you anything from your grandmas middle name to your first car model. Honestly, that is not anywhere near the web 2.0 bracket.

At the same time, I just love the new concept of short..extremely short sign up forms, where it asks for your email id and name, that’s it. There are cool sites like this one, which doesn’t even require those bare minimum information. 

I think it’s high time companies realized that surfers don’t have that extra time to sign up those lengthy forms, no matter how good the service is. I mean, there is no need for those details it’s just a waste of time.

When we are thinking of innovations that will elevate the user friendliness of a website, elements like this one are missed and spoils the whole show. User friendliness starts right from a visitor landing on a page, it’s not just limited to having a nice shopping cart or price calculator, as many so called web 2.0 services like to believe.

Have you noticed that Indian SEO’s are looked at with doubt by the rest of the world? A fact it is.

Just to get an idea how serious this issue is, first check out Mr.Seo’s(Joe Balestrino) podcast where he talks about SEO’s in India, and the “problems” he thinks you can run into hiring one.

Joe had a client who had initially outsourced his SEO work to a SEO firm in India and he ran into problems(which is why he approached Mr.SEO). The client complained that the SEO firm in India did not submit projects on time, and did not really communicate anything to him on what is being done. Joe adds on later that outsourcing SEO work to India may not be a good idea.

Well, if you ask me, I can’t agree completely with Joe because he’s talking from a single client’s experience. I think this is a one-off case, and Joe should not completely label Indian SEO firms(outsourcing) as non-credible.

The problems he found with the Indian SEO firm were..

They ere not on time with projects
Were incredibly cheap (So he suspected it was a fraud company)
Did not communicate with the client
Failed in on-site optimization, and rather emphasized more on link-building

Joe’s client was unfortunate, to having selected a poor SEO firm in India. This is not a problem faced due to outsourcing SEO work to India or any other company.
The real problem lies in un educated clients.
Clients sometimes may not know anything about SEO except the fact that they need their site on the top of SERPs. Many a times, they do not agree to the time  we suggest we require and wants to hurry things.

As you may be aware, SEO is not a miracle doer, it takes time, lots of time. In fact it’s an on-going project may a times rather than a “Start, okay, done” project. Search Engine rankings does not stand forever, they change as algorithms change. Unfortunately many clients are not aware of such things and blindly need SEO firms to..

- Get their site on the top asap.
- Make it stay there forever.
- Cannot stretch on time and
- Need guaranteed results.

I think with such unfair demands from an ignorant client, black hat SEO’s can grow easily. And which is what might have happened in this case.

As Joe’s observation goes, the client had copied articles from Amazon and other sites (which explains his motives), so there were lot of supplementary results in the site, which the Indian firm did not find out. And they rather focused only on backlinks. Joe further says that the Indian SEO firm did not let the client know as to where the backlinks came from. Which is a fair comment. SEO’s should let the clients know where the backlinks are from and firstly, why they need backlinks.

When ignorant clients are a reality (like this case), it could also be a fact that, Indian SEO’s don’t communicate well with the clients, making things tough.

But I don’t think it’s a healthy practice to label “outsourcing SEO work” as dangerous just because they are cheaper. Rather, efforts should be made to educate clients on why they need SEO, what can be done to help them and what cannot be.

Okay, everybody is complaining about the new Safari for windows. We have to wait until the full patched version of Safari gets out. Meanwhile, here are a few things you can do with your Firefox browser to make it look like Safari.

1. iSafari theme for Firefox - This is a cute safari like theme for Firefox, that will mask your favorite firefox in Safari skin. So much for the wait. Safari theme for Firefox
   
2. Jumpback feature of safari on Firefox - Safari has this cool feature called Jumpback where you can follow as many links to pages from a search result, and when you want to jump back to where you started, just click the small jumpback icon on the url bar.
   With this little addon, you can incorporate the same feature on Firefox.
   
3. Progress bar on URL bar - Another feature about Safari is that the progress bar is combined with the url bar. With this little plugin you can create the same effect on Firefox.
   

That’s it. The above three steps will help you convert your firefox browser to sleek Safari. There may be a few glitches though. It should keep you busy until the all new patched version of Safari is released.