Written Monday, February 11, 2008 by Ed Hill

Using Custom Suit Pictures to Increase Blog Traffic

Dress To Win Blog logo, A guide to custom suits and custom shirts

Dress To Win is my new blog that covers wearing custom suits and sport coats to overcome the modern trend towards business casual and other forms of sloppy dressing.

American men actually dressed pretty well during the 30's, 40's 50's and 60's. See the AMC TV series "MAD Men" for a great example of the great business suits worn by men in the early 1960's. After the 1960's it was just one bad clothing trend after another for men; the sadly misguided hippy look, followed by the excessive polyester of the disco trend. A brief revival of suits and preppies in the 1980's could not prevent the damage of the 90's grunge look and it's odious companion "corporate casual".

Last year, I just got tired of the sloppy, half-done business casual look. Instead I've gone full bore into more a traditional business look with custom sport coats, custom shirts and ties. Since summer of 2007, I've been experimenting with this look and I've had really good results with it.

The offshoot of all my sartorial research was learning how American men were once well dressed for business in my father's day and my grandfather's time. How did it come to be that today we try to dress comfortably, with no concept and no desire to look sharp? Why am I surrounded by grown men that dress like sloppy teen age children with no style? I blame the designers and the media for the whole comfort era of dressing.
Custom suit in gray worsted wool
I say we are not children who need to be comfortably swaddled in baggy jeans and hoodies. No. I am a responsible adult with enough life experience and business knowledge to dress well.

This week starts a new episode in my sartorial blog, in which we use photos and links from photos to experiment with building web traffic. Given the power of photos to attract and hold readers attention, we'll learn the effect of linking keywords to photos. At the end of the experiment we'll summarize the effects in a future report.

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Written Tuesday, August 21, 2007 by Ed Hill

Social Bookmarking Sites

Here's a list of social bookmarking sites:



AllMyFavorites.net - Create an organized page for your bookmarks that you can share with friends and family, access from any computer.

Backflip.com - Check out the most popular links each day, set “The Daily Routine” as your homepage so you can visit your must stop sites each day with ease.

BibSonomy.com - Public & private bookmarks, tag cloud, related tags, duplicate detection with the chance to merge their info.

BlinkPro.com - Dynamic folders, bookmark all links of a page plus all the usual features.

BlogMarks.net - Save your bookmarks, tag them with keywords for easy searching amongst your list, share with others.

Bluedot.us - Tabbed user page showing a network of friends, bookmarks, and related tags. Allows you to import contacts from all the major mail services such as GMail and Yahoo.

BmAccess.net - Bookmark a site, add tags, when you look up a tag, you get the names and a little thumbnail image of the site along with it.

BuddyMarks.com - Store your bookmarks online, share some or all of them, discover new sites to visit by searching the public bookmark area.

Chipmark.com - Browse random “chipmarks”, share them, sort, filter, and get personal recommendations.

Connectbeam.com - A themed social bookmarking site for enterprise-scale business.

Connectedy - Import your bookmarks, batch edit them, check in on hot topics.

Connotea.org - A themed social bookmarking site specifically for researchers, clinicians and scientists.

Diigo.com - Highlight portions of a page, write on it like you would a piece of paper, share with your group, and search all publicly saved pages.

Excites.com - Organize your bookmarks by tags, add comments and notes, share publicly, subscribe to certain tags so you can be notified when a new site is added that may interest you.

Feedmelinks.com - All the usual social bookmarking goodies, but you can also add links via email.

Hyperlinkomatic.com - Import/export, categories, notes, sharing, block users, RSS, tags.

IKeepBookmarks.com - Folders, search folder names and more.

Lilisto.com - Ratings, notes, categories, smart categories and in-page editing.

Linkroll.com - Links open in new window, subscribe to tags, browse by archives.

Ma.gnolia.com - Discuss all the saved bookmarks in groups, see what the Featured Linker is all about, join discussions in the Hot Group.

Mister-Wong.com - Bookmark and tag, search for tags that interest you, make buddies with people who have interesting saved sites.

Netvouz.com - Save your bookmarks in folders, tag them with keywords, share them with others or password protect them.

Nextaris.com - Folders, tags, clippings; store up to 100MB for free.

Shadows.com - Share your already existing bookmarks, discuss and rate sites and see what you can find.

SocialBookmarking.org - User and global tag cloud, blogs, social networking, avatars and more.

StumbleUpon.com - It learns what you like and recommends more of the same.

Unalog.com - A basic social bookmarking site, but with the ability to look back at specific days and see what was going on.

WireFan.com - You can vote on links as well as add thumbnails for sites.

Xilinus.com - Tags, rating, search, public & private listing, drag-and-drop sorting.

Yahoo! My Web - One button click adds your bookmarks to the search engine giants system, features duplicate detection to help you keep your bookmarks tidy.

Social Bookmarking Sites With Clipping

BlinkList.com - Save sites for later reading, share your list or keep it private, even send your saved pages to your blog for wider sharing.

Clipclip.org - Like an online scrapbook, you clip out the part of the site you want, then share it with whomever you want, and discover new places to visit.

Clipmarks.com - Allows you to clip just the chosen bits of a webpage, save them to the main website, or even insert them into your own blog. Think of it as fancy block quoting.

del.icio.us - You add your bookmarks and access them from anywhere. Check out what others are saving and see where it takes you.

Furl.net - Not only can you do the standard bookmarking and sharing, you can save archived versions of a webpage and even export all your saved pages to a ZIP file.

Linktopia.com - Keep private, share, mark as friends only, edit bookmark dates.

RawSugar.com - Can cluster your tags for you based on recommendations by other users.

Simpy.com - This social bookmarker does all the usual plus detects links that have changed, and distributes your bookmarks via your blog’s RSS if you like.

Spurl.net - You can upload your existing bookmarks to get started, add more for centralized access, check out hot lists and recommendations.

SyncOne.net - All the usual features plus the ability to add your own Google Ads to the top of your profile page.

URLex.info - Inbox, group creation, directory, all of the usual features, plus being able to send your RSS feed to the site.

Blog-buzz.com - Similar to Digg, but for blog posts.

Digg.com - Synonymous with social bookmarking: you Digg a story, others Digg it, the more popular it gets the better chance it has of hitting the first page.

Netscape.com - A former contender in the browser wars, and the “mother” of Mozilla, it’s now a a social news aggregator with voting of stories similar to Digg.

Newsvine.com - Users can write articles on current news events, save links to external content; vote, comment and chat on article pages created by both users and by journalists.

Reddit.com - You vote up or down on a story making it move around on the home page.

Shoutwire.com - Similar to Digg, except instead of “Digging a story”, you “shout it”. Still a way to vote on unique Internet news stories.

Thoof.com - Add news stories you find interesting, anyone can “improve” the article by fixing the URL, editing the summary and more.
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Written Thursday, August 09, 2007 by Ed Hill

List Your Blog in Blog directories

In building your blog, it's very handy to build links and expose your blog
to more readers. A great way to do this is listing your blog in blog directories.
Naturally, you will also want to develop an RSS feed for your blog and ping
the major directories when you create a new post.


Here's another great list of 150 Marketing Blogs from Todd Andrlik at Ad Age.com.


Advertising Age Power 150




  1. http://dir.yahoo.com/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Weblogs/

  2. http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/

  3. http://www.blogcatalog.com/

  4. http://blogflux.com/

  5. http://blogs.botw.org/

  6. http://www.geekyspeaky.com/links/

  7. http://www.blogpulse.com/index.html

  8. http://www.blogdigger.com/index.html

  9. http://www.blogarama.com/

  10. http://www.bloghop.com/

  11. http://www.blogrankings.com/

  12. http://www.blogtoplist.com/

  13. http://www.findory.com/blogs/

  14. http://www.bloggernity.com/

  15. http://www.bloggeries.com/

  16. http://www.bloghub.com/

  17. http://www.lsblogs.com/

  18. http://www.blog-search.com/

  19. http://www.britblog.com/

  20. http://www.weblogalot.com/

  21. http://www.globeofblogs.com/

  22. http://blogstreet.com/?

  23. http://www.bloguniverse.com/

  24. http://www.top100bloggers.com/

  25. http://www.getblogs.com/

  26. http://www.delightfulblogs.com/

  27. http://www.bloogz.com/

  28. http://portal.eatonweb.com/

  29. http://www.readablog.com/default.aspx

  30. http://www.iblogbusiness.com/

  31. http://findingblog.com/

  32. http://www.all-blogs.net/

  33. http://www.bloglisting.com/

  34. http://www.blogdup.com/

  35. http://sportsblogs.org/

  36. http://www.blogcode.com/index.php

  37. http://blogannounce.info/

  38. http://www.blog-directory.org/index.php

  39. http://www.sarthak.net/blogz/index.php

  40. http://www.blogsweet.com/

  41. http://www.blogdirs.com/

  42. http://www.addurlblog.com/

  43. http://www.5starblogs.com/

  44. http://www.blogtagstic.com/

  45. http://www.blogscanada.ca/directory/

  46. http://www.industry-blogs.com/

  47. http://www.blogbib.com/

  48. http://www.kmax.ws/bloglinks.htm

  49. http://www.blogs-collection.com/

  50. http://www.diarist.net/registry/

  51. http://www.blogbunch.com/

  52. http://www.blog-watch.com/

  53. http://www.photoblogdirectory.net/

  54. http://blogsforsmallbusiness.com/directory/

  55. http://www.bloghints.com/

  56. http://www.search4blogs.com/bloggers/index.php

  57. http://www.thevital.net/

  58. http://www.highclassblogs.com/

  59. http://emarketingblogs.com/listings/index.shtml

  60. http://jenett.org/ageless/

  61. http://www.bestblogs.org/

  62. http://www.misohoni.com/bba/

  63. http://www.blogdust.com/blog-directory/

  64. http://blogs.tomstopsites.com/

  65. http://www.chinabloglist.org/

  66. http://www.blogadr.com/

  67. http://directory.etalkinghead.com/

  68. http://www.topblogsites.net/

  69. http://www.biggerblogger.com/

  70. http://www.blogroll.net/

  71. http://www.blogscholar.com/component/

  72. http://www.blogpoint.com/

  73. http://browseblogs.com/

  74. http://www.blogsrating.com/

  75. http://www.blogdir.co.uk/

  76. http://www.quickblogdirectory.com/
  77. The Ageless Project - Web logs by birthdate.
  78. AL Weblogs Directory - Thematic weblogs directory.
  79. All-Blogs.net - Sites grouped by keyword.
  80. Alliance Of The Anonymous

  81. AOL People Connection
    - Blogs
    - Directory of blogs

  82. Best of the Web Blog Directory
    - Categorized directory
  83. Big Blog Media -
  84. Bigger Blogger - Free listings, sorted by category.

  85. Blog Announce - Free-for-all
    links listing

  86. Blog Catalog - Sites are listed
    by category

  87. Blog Challenge -
  88. Blog Directory Submit - Submissions may be made in RSS Feeds or Atom XML.
  89. Blog Dirs - Human edited weblog directory.
  90. Blog Flux Directory - Based on tagging with related weblogs.
  91. Blog Hot or Not - View random weblogs and rate them from 1 to 10.
  92. Blog Point - Categorized by topics.

  93. Blog Ratings - Ratings and
    reviews of sites organized by topic.

  94. Blog Search Engine -
    Search engine and directory.
  95. Blog Toplist - Categorized and sorted by popularity.

  96. Blog Universe - Weblog,
    podcast, and video log directory.

  97. Blog Watch - Categorized directory
    with latest post.

  98. Blogadr - Free listings.

  99. Blogarama - Lists weblogs by
    category.
  100. BlogBunch - Topical listings.
  101. BlogCharts - Find weblogs by popularity or rating.
  102. Blogchild - Human-edited directory.

  103. BlogDir - Free blog directory.
  104. Blogdust - Categorized listings sorted by topic.

  105. Bloggeries - Categorized listing
    of weblogs

  106. Bloggernity - Searchable
    directory.

  107. BlogHop - Portal matching weblogs
    with readers.

  108. Blogion - Human-edited directory.

  109. Blogoriffic - Free blog directory

  110. Blogroll.net - Listed by popularity.

  111. Blogs Collection - Grouped
    by category

  112. Blogs Rating - Categorized
    by subject

  113. BlogScholar - Academic weblogs
  114. BlogStreet - Profiles, RSS ecosystem, and search.
  115. BlogSweet.com - Human-edited directory.

  116. Blogtagstic - Search by tags.


  117. Blogwidow.com - Web logging
    and weblogs.

  118. Bloogz - Search for weblogs.

  119. Blurt it! - Free directory.

  120. Britblog.com - British bloggers
    from around the world.
  121. BrowseBlogs.com - Topical listings with hit counters.

  122. Business Blog Directory
    - Business and corporate weblogs.
  123. Delightful Blogs - Reviewed for personality.

  124. FindingBlog.com - Searchable
    directory.

  125. Front Blogs - Add and browse
    the weblog directory.
  126. GetBlogs.com - Human edited directory.
  127. Guardian Unlimited - Weblog Guide - A "best of" selection of weblogs grouped by category.

  128. High Class Blogs - Nonprofit
    directory.

  129. I Like Blogs - Picture directory.

  130. I2blog - Categorizing bloggers by
    their country & interest.

  131. Industry Blogs - Business
    blogosphere.

  132. Kmax Blog Links - Alphabetical
    list.
  133. KookKoo - Listed by country and category.

  134. The
    Octopus Files
    - Iincludes excerpts from posts.
  135. Quick Blog Directory - Organized by category.

  136. Research
    Blogs
    - List that can be used by researchers and academics.
  137. Root Blog Directory - Weblog directory and RSS feed aggregator.

  138. Royal Artist Club - Provides
    a place for bands to communicate directly with fans.n.

  139. Sports Blogs .

  140. 5 Star Blogs - Human edited
    directory and search engine. .

  141. Start4all:
    Weblogs
    - Weblog tools, media, portals and meetings.

  142. TheVital.Net - Free categorized
    and searchable directory.
  143. Today.com - Categorizes by topic.
  144. Top 100 Bloggers - General top weblog rankings.

  145. Top Blogs - Readers vote
    for their favorite weblogs.
  146. Wutzle - Allows users to rate listings in the directory.

  147. XHTML Friends Network -
    Weblogs and personal sites. XFN sites.



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Written Thursday, May 31, 2007 by Ed Hill

Yahoo Search Submit Pro Does Not Buy Search Results

Yahoo Search Submit Pro

Yahoo's Search Submit Pro is a combination of natural search listings with a pay per click program that allows you to mix in chosen web page links with the natural Yahoo search results. The difference is that you can submit pages for Yahoo web search, instead of waiting for Yahoo to crawl them. You can also control up to three web quicklinks and control the wording of the listing for the submitted page.

This is worthwhile for any web site because of the control you gain. You choose how the pages on your site are listed in the search results. The Yahoo Search Submit Pro has been criticized by some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) writers as, "buying your way into the search results", but the result is quite different from that description.

Critical bloggers and posters in the SEO forums, have theorized that Yahoo is allowing Yahoo Search Submit Pro users to control where their listing appears in the Yahoo search results. The real life results of Search Submit Pro are different from what the casual viewer might expect.

Sure, Yahoo Search Submit Pro lets you place up to three links that you choose in the search result page listing, and you specify the keywords and description in the result page listing. But the real life results for this paid inclusion program, fall far short of buying a place at the top of the search engine results. If only it were that easy.

Here is an example from the last several months. I submitted a Dolce & Gabanna designer products web page from the site of a major upscale department store based in New York. This was a Yahoo Category Level Page (also called CLP) feed that used a web page with parameters in the page URL as the landing page. This URL page address was not listed in the Yahoo index and had no inbound links in the Yahoo index. The Yahoo CLP was optimized for keywords and description that listed the designer name, dresses and shoes as the keywords. After a month this landing page showed up in the Yahoo search results but it was always quite low in the Yahoo search results.

While some other product pages performed much better, the Category type Yahoo feeds would average maybe 4 clicks per day. This may be due to the fact that this landing page has very little text, or it may be that Yahoo has indexed no backlinks to the submitted landing page in the feed. The Search Submit Pro listing for this landing page was optimized several times with similar low numbers of clicks every time.

Search Submit Pro landing pages that show up in the first few search result pages, tend to have backlinks indexed by Yahoo and have good SEO characteristics. These Yahoo Paid Inclusion landing pages, that were well optimized, performed well and occasionally received hundreds of click throughs. This is evidence that well optimized landing pages would show up higher in the search engine results even without the Search Submit Pro feed.

My conclusion from this experience is that the Yahoo Search Submit Pro does not allow you to buy higher result page placement. Poorly optimized pages tend to show up very low in the Yahoo search rankings, even when included in the Paid Inclusion feed. This validates Yahoo's claim that the search listings appear based on the Yahoo search algorithm. The Paid Inclusion feed only allows control of how the listing appears in terms of the title and description. This control of the listing is similar to how Google uses the web page title and description that you created to describe your web pages in the Google search results.

The advantages of Yahoo Site Submit Pro are:
  • YSSP guarantees indexing of site content URLs or product landing page URLs.
  • The reports and graphs of click through rate allow quick assessment of how good your title and description copy is performing.
  • The improved web copy in your natural search engine listing can be updated as quickly as 48 hours after submission.
  • You can link to a specific page with copy that best matches your chosen keyword. This is a method that often leads to higher CTR and better conversion rates.



Check the Yahoo Search Submit Pro success factors for yourself:
https://sspro1.searchmarketing.yahoo.com/session/login.html

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Written Friday, March 31, 2006 by Ed Hill

Aerial Real Estate Photography


Dave Margolis is a skilled aerial phototographer out of Connecticut.
I've always thought a job like David's would be fun. David has some great photos at his
Skyview Survey Aerial Real Estate Photography site

Check out his New York and New Jersey aerial photos. There are some great views of the baseball and football stadiums.
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Written Thursday, March 02, 2006 by Ed Hill

Independent Film Makers: YAHOO! Wants Content from Media Companies


In the NY Times, Saul Hansell writes that YAHOO! will drop plans to produce original reality shows and series programs for the internet. Could this be the next distribution market for Independent film makers?

"After proclaiming grand plans to bring elaborately produced sitcoms, talk shows and other television-style programs to the Internet, the head of Yahoo's Media Group said yesterday that he was sharply scaling back those efforts. He said the group would shift its focus to content acquired from other media companies or submitted by users."

The biggest potential news for independent film makers is the trend for web sites to seek independent content:

"With advertisers moving large parts of their budgets online, the market for content, created by professionals, bloggers and individual users, is expanding rapidly — as is the competition. Major media companies are developing video-based programming for the Internet. Myspace.com, purchased last year by the News Corporation, has become a major site based on user-contributed content. Many start-ups, like youtube.com, seek to follow suit."

Will websites evolve that pay significant fees for original films or episodic series?
This is the next step in web video content as advertising. Consider the YAHOO! produced Richard Bangs Adventures, a travel adventure content portal that features both video and text about travel adventures. The most intriguing episode in this series is the 6 day search for pirate's treasure in Panama. We follow the travellers as they chop through the jungle to an 80 foot pit that may be the final resting place for pirate treasure. See the Viper's Pit video.

Have you sold a film or series to a web site for a fee? Let's hear about it.
Submit your web link to comments and you may be interviewed for Atlanta PR Blog readers.
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Written Monday, February 20, 2006 by Ed Hill

Using Blogs to Promote Your Business


The 1991 to 1994 Mercury Capri convertible was reminiscent of the classic British open sports cars of the 1970's. This Mercury Capri roadster seated four and was assembled and built by Ford of Australia, then imported into the United States.

The sporty Capri has a following of owners and drivers who find and restore these vintage convertibles. Finding parts to restore cars like the Capri can be a struggle.

Modern Capri Parts of Pennsylvania helps Capri owners by selling the parts they need to keep their cars running. To build traffic to their online Capri parts site and increase their rank on Google and other search engines, Modern CapriParts.biz had an informative blog created.

Ed Hill PR created the business blog about the history, design and specifications of the Mercury Capri convertible in less than 2 months. Business blogs are a technique used by Nike and many companies large and small.

A business blog can be used for short term link-building benefits, a new product launch, or long term to build credibility with customers. The Modern Capri Parts blog offers useful information to Capri Owners and also helps build links to the ModernCapriParts.biz auto parts web site.

Call Ed Hill at 678-754-5181 if you want to know how a business blog can benefit your online business.
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