For SEO-Minded Travel Bloggers

I enjoy reading Adirondack Base Camp. It’s got to be one of my favorite travel blogs! Since I get a lot of Entrecards travel bloggers passing through New York Traveler.net, I thought you all might be interested in checking out a great post by TourPro, about SEO Juice for travel bloggers. I’ve been seeing a lot of traffic through Google searches. I wish I knew what I was doing right, lol! I think I may have this subconscious ability to offer “linkbait,” which may attribute all the funky search words that lead here. I’ll have to post on that sometime.

Anyway, check out the post of you are interested in a few quick pointers on improving your presence in the online travel community.

Checking Out the New HomePagle

I’ve been digging in to marketing and advertising for this blog, and was surprised (and elated) to discover that my blog has over 100 feed subscribers! Hello and welcome! If you use Google Reader, you probably use Google as your home page, so you might be interested in a new customizable homepage feature I’m using. It is HomePagle, which is a really cool “skin” program for your Google Homepage. HomePagle offers lots of pre-made homepages, or you can upload your own pictures to customize it yourself as you desire. My sons would go nuts over these homepages:

Since I take so many photos of Upstate, I am using my own photo. How do you like it?

Not too bad, eh? It’s my photo of Seneca Lake when we visited last month. I think my photos are much, much more interesting than Google’s dull white background, don’t you think? It’s ze arteest in me.

HomePagle has instructions on how to make your HomePagle page your home page, and it’s excellent for people who like their browsers to start up with the Google search page. Some photos at HomePagle have celebrities in beaches, if you know what I mean, so use caution with the kids. But since you can customize HomePagle with any photo you want, I think it’s a winner. They have a very upfront privacy policy that says they will not share your email address (should you give it) with anyone.

By the way, did I mention that it is free?

Easy Does It

I am still very much building this blog. I know it will take months to rebuild it to the heights I attained at the Blogger blog. Many bloggy-linky places are hesitant to commit to your blog until you are “established.” This new blog is going to replace the old one, plus I have already paid up my annual fee, so I think I am pretty established already! But most sites look at your dates and your quantity of posts. All in good time.

I haven’t advertised at all about this new blog. I think in a few weeks, after I have some posts down, I will import everything from the old Blogger blog to here. I will keep the old blog going (won’t delete the thing), but eventually I will be working entirely from this new blog. I am excited about it!

In the meantime, if you have come across this new blog because you see that I have linked to you, I ask that you please link to me in return. Or– if you have already been linking to the Blogger blog– please change your links to this new one. I sure appreciate it! I’m taking on the big dogs here (Google) and trying to work independently of them!

Unhappy

I’m not unhappy with WordPress. I love WordPress!

I am very unhappy with Google and their stupid Page Rank. My New York Traveler blog over at Blogger is still rock-bottom at ZERO. Google says no one is interested in my blog! Google says no one links to my blog!

Google is lying. People love my blog and I have over 7,000 links to my blog.

My PayPerPost offers have slowed to a crawl. Today, I have five offers: two are on dating (including “Goth Dating.” — Goth dating?!) and three are on mortgage loans. All are offering pittance. I am very unhappy. It is terrible that Google has such power as to kill your business before you’ve even begun.